[WIP] [PORT] Beyond Parsec

[KevKelley]

So I started programming the basics for the secondary game with bonuses. I was trying to think of items so I was working on one where it will stop asteroids if shot and another that will reverse directions. These will appear on what appears to be little platforms in the city. 
 

i am trying to think of the best way to make it work. I also want to have your shots charge up or deplete and perhaps different laser lengths. 
 

I think if I make a single player with enemy AI I may have to delete an asteroid to make it work. Should be fun to make. 

[John Phillips]

On 3/12/2023 at 5:05 PM, KevKelley said:

Game Title: 

 

Beyond Parsec

 

Gameplay:

 

This is a port of the 1988 Texas Instruments 99/4a game by John Phillips that I wanted to try making for sometime. As some may know the TI 99/4a was my first computer.  I never had this game but had played it a couple years ago when I bought a FinalGROM cartridge and thought it was awesome. I had also tried to figure out how to make this work and originally thought about simplifying gameplay but eventually landed on using DPC+ and after reading in the forums (I think it was a Robot Zed thread) I decided to experiment using the DPC+ stack. 

 

The basic idea is that there are ten asteroids and two spaceships.  Each player controls a spaceship and can move back or forth and fire.  You can fire at the asteroids to make them accelerate or decelerate in either direction, shoot the opposing player, or crash into the opposing player, all while dodging asteroids.

 

Here is a quick video of the gameplay test where I have all the asteroids moving: CLICK HERE

 

This game is not finished.  Right now I have preliminary code for the asteroid movement but I notice that the scanlines jump to 263 every once and a while when the laser is fired but I noticed when I remove one collision statement detecting the laser hitting the asteroid I don't have an issue apart from the asteroids moving really slowly.  There are some tweaks I need to make before I continue, as right now the player just has to be on the same y-coordinates as the asteroid and fire but I want to make the collision more precise, and this kind of ties in with the first issue I am having.  I am still trying to hammer out those details but it is exciting to see all the moving parts.

 

I also need to program the city at the bottom of the screen, the second player firing, and the spaceship collisions. Those shouldn't be too hard once I get the movement worked out and hope I can figure them out in the next week or two.

 

If I get all that taken care of I want to try to add a little bit of a twist to this game, maybe by adding either more obstacles, gun turrets at the bottom of the screen, teleporters, or random enemy spaceships.

 

I am including the .bin and the .bas in case anyone wants to peak under the hood. 

 

 

 

BP_2023_03_21_10AST.bas 30.44 kB · 6 downloads BP_2023_03_23_8AST.bas 30.55 kB · 9 downloads BP_2023_03_23_8AST.bas.bin 32 kB · 21 downloads

BP_2023_04_01_8AST_b.bas.bin 32 kB · 18 downloads

Honored that you're cloning it. It was a blast to program.

[KevKelley]

1 hour ago, John Phillips said:

Honored that you're cloning it. It was a blast to program.

I wish I had it growing up. It is still a really fun game to play and even now my children love playing it. Thank you for programming it. I may not be the best but it is providing me some fun trying to figure out how to make it work on the Atari. Hopefully I do the original justice. 

[KevKelley]

This is just a little update.  

 

I have been tweaking some things under the hood.  I added a titlescreen and menu, with a couple options - normal laser or continuous, different planets, or maximum speed of asteroids.

 

There are still a little kinks to work out with the asteroid speed and collision with the lasers and asteroids (they may occasionally speed up towards you or skip several pixels!)

 

If you choose normal lasers a power up will appear above the planet that can recharge your lasers.

 

I also added a "Ready" graphic to give you time to, well, get ready.  I also made a Game Over screen once a player runs out of lives.

 

There are a couple scanline issues but I am narrowing down the culprit and think I found a workable solution.  But then I may call this done to finish up some other projects I was working on.

[CrazyChris]

I've enjoyed watching your progress.

[KevKelley]

So after some playing around I hammered out some scanline issues. The main culprit was the audio when you would crash. But after playing around with that now the audio is not as nice.

 

I uploaded a new playable version.  I still need to clean up some of the audio and then the only real main issue is the asteroids occaisionally speeding up whe you shoot them.

[KevKelley]

Did a little more testing since my last post and while there are still scanline jumps I had started to go through and strip more audio from the game (namely the crash and spawn code) and have noticed remarkably less jumps so I will undergo a process of removing the sounds and then work to find a way to make some new sounds with no issues.