Pong Wars

[Zoyx]

Edit ... This is the development thread for Pong Wars for the Atari 2600. Thomas Jentzsch is taking the lead.

 

Fun project for someone. Pong wars. Add some audio similar to Super Breakout. Change colors based on which side is winning. Now you have a fun screensaver for your Atari.

 

 

 

Edited February 1 by Zoyx

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Looks simple enough.

 

And if you could influence the balls, this might become a good 2 player game.

[+bent_pin]

I've been working on a similarly titled but very different game, Pong of War. I expect it to be finished before this summer rolls round. The concept you posted looks like fun too.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Here is a first result.

PongWars_V0_1.bin

[Zoyx]

That is fantastic! Curious to see what you come up with next.

[Zoyx]

5 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Here is a first result.

 

PongWars_V0_1.bin 2 kB · 3 downloads

A bug. This seems to be the same bug on the javascript version that I linked to. If the two balls collide, the game glitches.

I did get "winner" before it glitched, the white ball managed to make hole to the opposing wall. Is there a random element in the game, or is it playing the same game over and over?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Yes, I saw the bug in both implementations too. Which is no surprise, because my code uses the same collision detection. It is far from being perfect, but OK for a start.

 

So far there are no random elements. Everything should be deterministic. The plan is make a game out of it, then we will have player input.

 

Currently I am wondering how the game play should look like. The goal could be e.g. reaching the opposite wall (you mentioned that), or covering a certain amount of area (e.g. 10% or 20% extra). Also player input has to be determined. The player could fully control the ball or it could only influence it. My current experiments are not exactly convincing.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

2 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

So far there are no random elements. Everything should be deterministic. The plan is make a game out of it, then we will have player input.

 

Currently I am wondering how the game play should look like. The goal could be e.g. reaching the opposite wall (you mentioned that), or covering a certain amount of area (e.g. 10% or 20% extra). Also player input has to be determined. The player could fully control the ball or it could only influence it. My current experiments are not exactly convincing.

 

Excellent twist on Pong and visually amazing! I left it to run on Turbo mode in Stella for about 5 minutes and neither ball reached the opponents wall. I think it definitely needs some sort of power up or bonus system that would accelerate the destruction of blocks.

 

I think that either reaching the opponents wall or reaching a percentage of the playfield destroyed would be both great ways to win a round.

 

- James

[CapitanClassic]

You could go crazy and make it 4 player using the interleaved 4-color backgrounds (Xevious homebrew). Not sure if that would leave enough time for paddle capacitor reading.

 

if the screen was vertically situated you could make it 4-player doubles (2-color) with two players on the same team. Since at most you would have 4 “balls” (P0 M0 and P1 M1) over lapping each other in the major part of the playfield. I suppose at the very top/bottom ht has some issues if you wound up with a players “paddle” overlapping all 4 balls.

 

Perhaps a standard “power-up” would be holding down the button. Upon contact the ball would move faster. Missed balls off the defending side would result in having to wait for a certain amount of time before a new ball is served (possibly with variations of increased waiting time for every ball missed)

Edited January 31 by CapitanClassic

[Thomas Jentzsch]

2 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

You could go crazy and make it 4 player using the interleaved 4-color backgrounds (Xevious homebrew). Not sure if that would leave enough time for paddle capacitor reading.

That way exceeds the capabilities of a stock 2600. I am not even sure if an ARM game could handle this.

 

The current kernel, which is quite optimized, has exactly one cycle free.

Edited January 31 by Thomas Jentzsch

[CapitanClassic]

2 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

That way exceeds the capabilities of a stock 2600. I am not even sure if an ARM game could handle this.

I expected as much, since the paddle capacitors need to be read almost every display line for accuracy.

I would guess that if it wasn’t paddles, but instead joystick movement (with button presses for speed/slowdown) it could be possible.

[Zoyx]

Spitballing some ideas...

 

To keep it simple. If it hits your paddle, it goes fast. If you miss it, it still bounces back, but at about half speed.

 

You can make the paddle get progressively smaller with each hit. The paddle's size is reset on a miss.

 

A win is when a path is cleared to the other side. I don't think you need to have your ball touch the other side.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

V0.2: This has some basic game play implemented. You can influence the balls direction and speed. This is also possible for the 2nd player, but this version is meant for 1 player. To counter the player's advantage, the ball of the other player (computer) moves faster.

 

The counter at the bottom shows how much cells the white area is below or above 50%.

PongWars_V0_2.bin

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I have created my own topic here. For any discussion related to my 2600 version, please continue there.

[JetSetIlly]

Similar effect in a new Amiga 8k intro from Abyss. Multiple balls per player would be an interesting but challenging addition

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

1 hour ago, JetSetIlly said:

Multiple balls per player would be an interesting but challenging addition

For the 2600, two each with flicker would be quite easy. Any more would require flicker management. Which would make the kernel quite complicated. But that discussion now belongs to that other thread.  

Edited February 2 by Thomas Jentzsch