Cartesian Chaos (Final)

[+littaum]

How about an easter egg to change the title screen to Karl G's-ian Chaos?  Ever since that was mentioned on the ZPH stream that's the name of the game in my head canon.  

[+Muddyfunster]

*deleted, I do no want to derail this thread.

 

I love how this is coming along Karl.

[+Karl G]

8 minutes ago, littaum said:

How about an easter egg to change the title screen to Karl G's-ian Chaos?  Ever since that was mentioned on the ZPH stream that's the name of the game in my head canon.  

I must have missed that being mentioned. 

[+Karl G]

17 minutes ago, Muddyfunster said:

*deleted, I do no want to derail this thread.

 

I love how this is coming along Karl.

Thanks! You mentioned playing before and after playing the 2600 Universal Chaos, so I'm curious if you had any thoughts/suggestions based on that comparison.

[Ecernosoft]

2 hours ago, Karl G said:

Thanks! You mentioned playing before and after playing the 2600 Universal Chaos, so I'm curious if you had any thoughts/suggestions based on that comparison.

Maybe if you die.. there could be a chance of creepypasta?

[+Karl G]

Version 7 added to the first post. Changes include:

• Several fixes to two-player co-op mode
• Different fire sound for second player in co-op mode
• Two-player versus mode has a more visible white drone for the second player
• Alert sound when down to 3 drones (right before the music shifts)
• New game variant: ricochet edges. Players and enemies bounce and turn 180 degrees without loss of speed when hitting the edges of the screen. This greatly affects game strategy

Two-player co-op mode is pretty fun, but the music is really missed, unfortunately. I don't think there's any cure for that, though, since two players generate too many sound effects to effectively pipe through a single channel. Also, I don't want to use a POKEY for this project, so there has to be some trade-offs.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

ZeroPage Homebrew is playing an Exclusive WIP Update of Cartesian Chaos on tomorrow's ZPH stream LIVE on Twitch, hope you can join us!

 

Fri Nov 18, 2022 | LIVE @ 6PM PT | 9PM ET | 2AM GMT+1Day

WATCH LIVE: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/
WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:

• Cartesian Chaos (2022 Exclusive WIP Update | 7800) by Karl Garrison @Karl G
• Tunnels of Hyperion (2022 WIP Update | 7800) by VHZC Games / Vladimir Zuñiga @vhzc

After Dark:

• Lode Runner (2022 Retail | 2600) by Tozai Games / Dion Olsthoorn @Dionoid (Programming) / David Exton @liveinabin (Packaging Artwork)

 

(WATCH AT 1080P60 FOR BEST QUALITY)

 

 

 

[+Karl G]

Version 9 added to the first post (the version played on tonight's stream). Changes include:

• New title music from @mvo
• 4 different screen transitions added between waves

[+Atarius Maximus]

I just wanted to chime in and say great job.  I'm enjoying playing this one, Karl. 

[+Pat Brady]

1 hour ago, Karl G said:

Version 9 added to the first post (the version played on tonight's stream). Changes include:

• New title music from @mvo
• 4 different screen transitions added between waves

 

Nice additions! Of the screen wipes, I especially like the 2nd and 3rd ones. And I always dig @mvo's stuff.

[+Karl G]

10 hours ago, Pat Brady said:

 

Nice additions! Of the screen wipes, I especially like the 2nd and 3rd ones. And I always dig @mvo's stuff.

Thank you! I had fun figuring out how to make them. I thought the second one (dissolve) would have been the hardest, but it ended up being dead simple using an 8-bit LFSR algorithm.

[+Karl G]

I've started on making a high scores screen. One thing I'm not sure of is how to handle the solid edges vs ricochet edges option when recording high scores. It seems like it would be a bit much to have 6 different sets of scores for easy, normal, and hard in ricochet or solid flavors. Should I visually distinguish the scores that are played with ricochet in some manner, or just ignore that entirely?

 

Also, is there interest in a cart for this title?

[Silver Back]

I'd be interested in a cart release. I've found the game to be easy to understand and hard to put down which is what Atari was built on back in the day. A quality title deserves a physical release imo. 

[Lord_of_Sipan]

Just started playing this today. I can only get to the third wave so for on normal. I’m still not 100% sure I understand how the acceleration/music tempo change mechanic works. Does it just happen once a certain number of enemies are killed?

[+Karl G]

7 hours ago, Lord_of_Sipan said:

Just started playing this today. I can only get to the third wave so for on normal. I’m still not 100% sure I understand how the acceleration/music tempo change mechanic works. Does it just happen once a certain number of enemies are killed?

As far as acceleration goes, your ship has 3 speeds, and the music speed corresponds to your current ship speed only. Enemy speed is separate, and music speed is unaffected by the speed of the enemies. Enemy speed does indeed increase with the number of enemies killed, and each wave has enemies starting out faster than the previous wave (or every other wave is faster in Easy mode).

[Silver Back]

1 hour ago, Karl G said:

As far as acceleration goes, your ship has 3 speeds, and the music speed corresponds to your current ship speed only. Enemy speed is separate, and music speed is unaffected by the speed of the enemies. Enemy speed does indeed increase with the number of enemies killed, and each wave has enemies starting out faster than the previous wave (or every other wave is faster in Easy mode).

I started to think I didn't understand the game at all after reading what @Lord_of_Sipan posted. It would've been embarrassing after saying that the game was easy to understand and it turned out I had no clue how the game worked lol.  But yeah the way you described the gameplay is how I understood it @Karl G

Edited November 23, 2022 by Silver Back
Spelling

[Lord_of_Sipan]

I guess what I am asking is how do you change speed? Just hold stick in direction long enough? Is there like “momentum”? 

[+Karl G]

1 hour ago, Lord_of_Sipan said:

I guess what I am asking is how do you change speed? Just hold stick in direction long enough? Is there like “momentum”? 

Yes, that's exactly it. Push in the dire that you are already going to speed up, and push in the opposite direction to slow down, and eventually turn around when you overcome your momentum. Blue is the slowest speed, yellow is medium, and red is the fastest. 

[Lord_of_Sipan]

So I played tonight with my brother to try to the 2 player coop mode, which worked great by the way, and we used proline controllers instead of control pads and the acceleration “clicked” way more for me with a joystick. Not sure if it is that soft Sega-like feel to the cx78 dpad but I found the game easier to control using a proline joystick.

 

that’s one of the things I really love about the 7800; the two radically different controller options. Some games I have pretty much the same performance with either controller but other games I really prefer one over the other and a lot of times I have to try the game out with both to make up my mind.

 

I’ll second the folks recommending this for a cartridge release when it is finished. It’s a really fun game.

[+Karl G]

Version 10 has been added to the first post. Changes include:

• High score support (see below)
• High scores shown on title screen after theme music completes
• Wave numbers now displayed at the beginning of each wave
• Mines in hard mode now deploy more quickly, and explode for longer when shot
• Bug related to counting of mines for scoring purposes corrected

High Score Support:

 

I figured I would make saving scores to a save device a feature for the cart release of the game (if there is one), but I've included a high score screen in this version that persists as long as the game is running. This version does not distinguish between difficulty levels when displaying high scores, but the cart version will have separate scores for easy, normal, and hard modes.

[+Karl G]

Whelp... since my MacBook has crashed and the data is effectively inaccessible, I've lost the source code for this game. It's almost done, but since I can't easily tweak it further, I won't try to have it added to the AA store. However, I think only one byte needs to be changed to allow it to save high scores to save devices for each of the game difficulty levels. That part seemed to be working, and my demo had it disabled witht he aim of saving it for a cart release. Once I can figure out how to change that and reassemble, I'll make the new version available, and grant permission to anyone who wants to let @Albert make a cart of the game for them, if desired.

[Albert]

Oh no, that really sucks, sorry to hear that. 

 

 ..Al

[RevEng]

F

 

My sympathies, Karl. If you need a hand working anything out, reach out.

[+Muddyfunster]

Hope you get this sorted Karl.

 

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

That's terrible news, sorry to hear that Karl. 😞 I hope that you'll eventually find a way to eventually retrieve your lost data.

 

- James