Screenshot of "The Core", the lost homebrew from 2001

[N0mi]

20 hours ago, diddlybopshubop said:

Fair enough! Thinking about it a bit further, he has more avenues to release what he had - assuming he still has anything - to the community today than he had 20 years ago.

Maybe things have settled down for him a bit since then.

I really hope so, it's been quite a long time.

As far as I understand the code and everything related is lost so he needs to rebuild from scratch. 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

On 1/3/2023 at 3:35 PM, x=usr(1536) said:

2-player Tempest, with both players - two humans or one human and one AI - shooting at each other from the inner and outer circles while trying to avoid and/or destroy enemies that appear?  Add in some sort of co-op aspect that makes it less appealing to just nuke the other player and it might be workable.

The problem is, that there are zero objects left for enemies. I have attached an update version, which now shows all the elements. With debug colors (ALT+ .) you can visualize them in Stella.

Playfield (purple), ball (cyan) and missile 1 (green) are used for drawing the borders and the inner core, player 1 (yellow) for the inner paddle, player 0 (red) for the outer paddle and missile 0 (orange) for the ball. 

 

The updated version simulates simulates some very basic gameplay. By default the paddles are moving automatically, with left difficulty = A one can control them. Tell the emulator to use driving controllers. 

The_Core_006.bin

[CrazyChris]

Really nice job. 

[N0mi]

So The Core came to life again after 25 years!

Thank you, Thomas 👍

Now I wish I hadn't sold my Indy 500 cart and those driving controllers BITD... 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I am trying to find out, if I can create an even remotely interesting game from the idea. So far I am not convinced.

 

The new version allows you to move inner and outer paddles. And if you turn the DC while fire is pressed, you can rotate the paddles. Without paddle rotation, the ball would always bounce 100% identical and the player would have no chance to influence the new direction. The difficulty switches define if the paddle rotation should follow the paddle movement. 

 

Problems so far:

• The hardware collision detection is buggy, I doubled the ball width to improve it
• The paddle rotation is too coarse to make much sense. There have to be (much) smaller rotation steps, but less allowed rotation.
• The paddle positioning is also problematic. Since the paddles move in fixed steps and there is no overlap between positions, it is often tough to hit a ball which is in the middle of two paddle positions. So either I increase the paddle size or I add intermediate steps. In both cases the paddle positions have to overlap.

I removed the border bouncing, because it became way too buggy. Instead the ball is started from four starting positions and directions. So currently you cannot trap the ball between border and paddle anymore.

The Core 2 V0.1.bin

[+nanochess]

It is so cool how you have replicated it starting from a screenshot. Kudos!

[+x=usr(1536)]

5 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I am trying to find out, if I can create an even remotely interesting game from the idea. So far I am not convinced.

It seems like there's the very fundamental basis of a game in there, but that the 2600's stock hardware may be creating some hard limits that prevent the idea from being fully fleshed out into something playable.  Maybe this is a case where using something like the DPC+ would be beneficial?

 

In any event, I really can't help but feel like there's potential here.  For some reason it just seems to me like there's a good mix of frantic action and strategy waiting to be combined.

[8bitPoet]

This is just some quick concept art, but what if the core plays a different role?

In this concept, there are two player colors (orange and blue).

The outer divisions start off evening split, half blue, half orange.

The color of the core determines what color the section becomes when hit by the ball.

The core color toggles between blue and orange when struck by the ball.

The first player to turn all sections to their corresponding color wins.

Maybe powerups could appear inside the core?

 

This could allow for the ball to move much faster, since the outer player is more on the defensive.

[8bitPoet]

2 hours ago, 8bitPoet said:

The outer divisions start off evening split, half blue, half orange.

This was supposed to say "evenly split", but typos. Here's what the start of the game might look like:

 

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

56 minutes ago, 8bitPoet said:

This was supposed to say "evenly split", but typos. Here's what the start of the game might look like:

 

 

Might be better to start with equally-divided quadrants.  Making it a one-hit-and-it's-done opening level seems a little easy, even for what's essentially a trainer.

 

Still, the ideas are good.  Has kind of a Q*Bert aspect to it in terms of changing the colours.

[8bitPoet]

17 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Might be better to start with equally-divided quadrants.  Making it a one-hit-and-it's-done opening level seems a little easy, even for what's essentially a trainer.

 

Still, the ideas are good.  Has kind of a Q*Bert aspect to it in terms of changing the colours.

Each side would still be divided into 9 sections. You just can see the individual sections when the entire side is one color.

[8bitPoet]

The distribution of the color sections and the number of sections could lend itself to a variety of game modes or difficulty levels.

 

For instance, starting the game with this pattern would be a slightly easier than starting from the previous mockup that has all sections evenly divided horizontally with player 1 colors on the left and player 2 colors on the right.

 

 

And for a quicker, easier game mode, the sections are reduced and evenly distributed on each side. Like this example with only 4 sections. Gameplay would be pretty crazy trying to keep the core toggled to your color and then targeting your opponent's sections.

 

I wonder if there's an advantage to being the outer ring player or the inner ring player. Maybe the game is played in rounds and the players swap rings for each round.

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I started a development thread in the 2600 programming forum. Let's continue there, please.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

16 hours ago, 8bitPoet said:

This is just some quick concept art, but what if the core plays a different role?

In this concept, there are two player colors (orange and blue).

The outer divisions start off evening split, half blue, half orange.

The color of the core determines what color the section becomes when hit by the ball.

The core color toggles between blue and orange when struck by the ball.

The first player to turn all sections to their corresponding color wins.

Interesting idea. However I see some problems. E.g. as soon as the core has his color, the outer player can fully control the game. And while it has the inner player's color, he only must defend it. We would need something to avoid keeping such strike situations for to long.

 

16 hours ago, 8bitPoet said:

Maybe powerups could appear inside the core?

Something very simple, using playfield graphics only would be possible.

16 hours ago, 8bitPoet said:

This could allow for the ball to move much faster, since the outer player is more on the defensive.

Depends on how good I can get the targeting. Currently I find quite hard to aim for something. Maybe I should allow the player to control the ball direction (a bit) after it has hit his paddle.

Edited January 10, 2023 by Thomas Jentzsch

[rolenta]

In March 2000 I wrote an article for Gamespot about homebrews. Here’s what I had to say about The Core:

 

https://mytestinfo5.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/part-6-promises-promises.pdf

[+jgkspsx]

Holy cow, I remember that screenshot! Those were the days.

[KidGameR186496]

7 hours ago, rolenta said:

In March 2000 I wrote an article for Gamespot about homebrews. Here’s what I had to say about The Core:

 

https://mytestinfo5.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/part-6-promises-promises.pdf

That's a very nice throwback to the past.