Check out this WIP video and see if we can turn it into a fun game.

[+Random Terrain]

I made this video of my work in progress for another thread, so I figured I'd post it here and ask people if they can think of ways to make it fun:

 

youtu.be/0xWuy0AQTCA [THERE ARE NO SOUND EFFECTS OR MUSIC IN THE VIDEO]

 

It's a DPC+ work in progress that is based on the example program on the batari Basic page called 8 x 8 World (64 Rooms).

As of now, each room has a reptilian extraterrestrial that has invaded from another dimension through a Portanic Mirror. Your job is to hack the Portanic Mirrors and send the reptilians back to their own dimension.

Touching a reptilian saps your energy, but your energy will build back up over time.

 

To hack a Portanic Mirror, just walk over it and hold the fire button until the job is done. Hacking a Portanic Mirror uses energy, so make sure you have enough energy stored up. After hacking a Portanic Mirror, the colors of the mirror will constantly change until a reptilian touches it. Once the reptilian has been sent back, the Portanic Mirror will be burned out and cannot be used again.

 

When not near a Portanic Mirror, you can hold the fire button to activate your Energy Cocoon which makes you invisible and invulnerable to reptilians. it uses energy, so you can't use it for long. At the moment, the Energy Cocoon isn't needed that much since the hostility of the reptilians haven't been cranked up yet. If they get a good look at you, they'll come after you, but most of the time they just wander around.

 

Thanks to Karl G, the game will remember when you've sent a reptilian back to its dimension. Any time you return to a cleared room, there will be no reptilian and the location of the deactivated Portanic Mirror is remembered.

 

 

Problem #1

There's no score yet. Don't know if there needs to be a score. Any ideas?

 

 

Problem #2

As you can see in the video, hacking the Portanic Mirror is kind of fun, but I think the reptilian will need to be more aggressive. I could add different clothing colors for the reptilians. Their aggressiveness could be shown by the color of their clothing. Reptilians wearing red would be the most aggressive.

 

 

Problem #3

There needs to be more to do besides hacking the Portanic Mirror. It could start feeling like a boring job before too long.

 

 

Problem #4

Getting the energy bar all the way down should cause the player to lose a life or something. Right now there is no danger.

 

 

Problem #5

The plan was to have a semi-random room to find like in Marauder, but that was before I came up with the idea of hacking Portanic Mirrors. Maybe a semi-random object will appear in one of the cleared rooms after all of the rooms have been cleared? That extra hunt for an object might be fun, but only if there is some danger in cleared rooms. Maybe electricity or something could randomly shoot out of burned out Portanic Mirrors?

 

 

Problem #6

Do I need to work on the room colors? What about the walls in the rooms?

 

 

Problem #7

Ever since I moved 5 or 6 months ago, I haven't had the space for a chair and desk. I finally have an adapted hospital bed table that will go across my whole adjustable bed, but it's kind of uncomfortable to use. Sleeping and working in the same spot is also kind of claustrophobic. I'm guessing because of that, it's harder to work on computer-related things, so I've been dragging my feet on this game. Maybe ideas posted in this thread will help me ignore the uncomfortableness and become energized enough to get this game finished.

 

 

 

Thanks.

[MrTrust]

The most obvious start is to have several mirrors with different effects in addition to the one that opens the portal.  Possible examples:

 

Dummy - Does nothing but waste energy.

Recharge - Restores player's energy to full.

Stunner - Momentarily disables the joystick.

Scrambler - Temporarily inverts the joystick inputs (up is down, left is right).

Conduit - Player/Reptilian that walks over it is transported to a random hacked mirror

Blocker - Mirror expands to create a new wall.

Wrecker - Player punches a hole in the next wall it touches

Cloaker - Player temporarily invulnerable.

 

The next simple idea is a "boss" room with a more complicated procedure than normal rooms.  For instance, walking over the main mirror triggers a sequence of audio tones, colors, or symbols.  The player has to memorize this and find the correct items by walking over the other mirrors and hacking them in the correct order.  Pulling off the right sequence temporarily energizes the player who can defeat the boss by touching it before the energized time elapses.

 

 OR

 

Pulling off the correct sequence opens a portal to the Reptilian dimension that the player must cross over.  Now the player must pursue the Reptilian, which hacks the mirrors to create new walls attempting to trap the player.

 

OR

 

After completing X number of rooms, the player gains a handheld mirror, which can face 8 directions.  Pushing fire and a direction changes the mirror facing, otherwise the player can walk and point the mirror in independent directions.   Player then enters an open arena with a Reptilian armed with a Lazer.  Player must use the mirror to reflect the Reptilian's weapon back at it.

 

There are many possibilities.  I guess it all depends on how much ROM you have left to work with after your basic gameplay there.

[+x=usr(1536)]

On 9/4/2022 at 8:30 PM, Random Terrain said:

As you can see in the video, hacking the Portanic Mirror is kind of fun, but I think the reptilian will need to be more aggressive. I could add different clothing colors for the reptilians. Their aggressiveness could be shown by the color of their clothing. Reptilians wearing red would be the most aggressive.

Agreed.

On 9/4/2022 at 8:30 PM, Random Terrain said:

There needs to be more to do besides hacking the Portanic Mirror. It could start feeling like a boring job before too long.

In addition to the above: collecting pieces to assemble and / or hack it could be one possibility.  Or having a third character (autonomous or under the reptilian's influence) that somehow hinders the player from going straight to the portal.  Could also have the reptilian drag the portal elsewhere in the screen if it touches it when it's not open.

On 9/4/2022 at 8:30 PM, Random Terrain said:

Do I need to work on the room colors? What about the walls in the rooms?

Colours weren't really something I noticed one way or the other, but it did seem a bit obvious that the room layouts were mirrored.

 

Overall, I thought it was an interesting early concept with very good sprite animation.

 

[+Random Terrain]

Thanks for the replies.

 

I should have mentioned that the program uses a special rand that is separate from normal rand. The special rand lets the program "remember" what a room looks like, so it will always look the same when you return to that room. Also 8 variables (64 bits) are used to remember when each room has been cleared. You can read more about it here:

 

 

The special rand is also used to choose the room colors and the position of the Portanic Mirror. That's how you can leave a room and enter it again and the Portanic Mirror is always in the same place and the colors are always the same. If I used variables to remember all that, I'd have no more variables to use for anything else.

 

Speaking of the Portanic Mirror, it's made out of the ball and a special trick by Lillapojkenpåön is used to change individual playfield row colors. Since the ball uses playfield colors and no playfield pixels are turned on at the top or bottom of the screen, the color changes only seem to show up where the ball is. So all colors you see in the Portanic Mirror are made using playfield row colors.

 

Since the Portanic Mirror is placed using the special rand and it has to be at a specific position for the colors to be correct, the Portanic Mirror can't be moved if we want to give the player the illusion that the position of each Portanic Mirror in each of the 64 rooms is somehow magically remembered by an Atari 2600 game.

 

A person might ask why I didn't just use another multicolored sprite to make the Portanic Mirror. I personally hate flicker and try to avoid it whenever possible. Any time the reptilian would be sharing the same horizonal space with the Portanic Mirror, both would flicker.

[+Gemintronic]

At first I saw Wolfenstien for the Apple II as a way forward for inspiration.  But, the more I look at it, Door Door for the Famicom might be a better muse.

 

Glad you found a working solution for computing/developing with the table.  Keeping hobby projects going is healthy brain food.

 

 

[keithbk]

For some reason,  the guy turning to the screen reminded me of Impossible Mission, which I played ALL THE TIME on the C64.

 

 

[+Stephen Moss]

In the video each mirror appears to take 3 of the presumably 6 energy units to hack a mirror. I don't know if you are intending to increase that at higher level to make it harder (particularly if the mirrors have to be hacked in one go) but if not your could try randomising the amount of energy and thus time each mirror takes to hack.

 

Also in a similar same way that Crystal Castles sends the bees after you if you take to long to clear a level, if you have the sprite capacity perhaps additional reptilians can appear in the room if you take too long to hack the mirror, as logically with the game scenario being an alien invasion it would make sense that the longer the portal stays open the greater the number of reptilians that would come through it.  

[chavert]

The reptilian can have a laser gun and the character can use a shield that recharges it thanks to an item that will be randomly found in the levels.   score :  earn points when the mirror is closed.                                                                                                                                                          

[+x=usr(1536)]

Temperature control for the room - too cold and the reptilian slows down; too hot and your character becomes fatigued.

 

Not sure how best to implement that, and getting it balanced for gameplay would be interesting.  There'd have to be a range in the middle where there are no effects.

 

Maybe have it be a feature of some rooms but not others?  Engine room, refrigerated cargo hold, objects that raise or lower the temperature of the room or weapons used directly against the player and reptilian, etc.

[+Random Terrain]

Thanks again for the replies. Instead of clothing colors indicating how difficult an enemy is, maybe they all start out easy, then get meaner over time. The longer you are in a room, the more the enemy comes after you. I'm not married to it. Just an idea.