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There's a request for Galaga.


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A guy on Facebook asked me if I'd make Galaga for the TI.

 

If I attempted this I'm gonna be honest it would only be a half-arsed attempt and I know for sure other programmers would do it justice.

 

There is a Galaga type game done by that chap who makes games for about 100 systems at one time, I forget his name ...

 

Anyone interested in making a Galaga game for the TI? 

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I'd be interested in playing Galaga on the TI.

 

Honestly, the thought keeps popping up in my mind to implement Galaga, based on patterns, not sprites. And each time, shortly after, the note in my mind pops up that there is a bunch of open problems that are first in line to be finished.

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As a point of reference, Galaxian on the Colecovision is an amazing port. Really solid and they've maximized the visual presentation with a seamless mix of character and sprite based animations (characters for the formations and sprites for the breakout enemies).

 

The thing with Galaga is that you really need to nail the feel and timing of the game for it be completely successful, which would be a fun challenge (for someone).

 

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52 minutes ago, mizapf said:

Honestly, the thought keeps popping up in my mind to implement Galaga, based on patterns, not sprites. And each time, shortly after, the note in my mind pops up that there is a bunch of open problems that are first in line to be finished.

I think the aliens would have to be patterns while they are "parked" at the top of the screen. However, just thinking about how to recreate the paths of the aliens while they are attacking makes me want to think about something else. 🙂

8 minutes ago, retrodroid said:

As a point of reference, Galaxian on the Colecovision is an amazing port. Really solid and they've maximized the visual presentation with a seamless mix of character and sprite based animations (characters for the formations and sprites for the breakout enemies).

Yes, that's a excellent port. If only we had the source code...

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2 hours ago, ti99iuc said:

Niicee, i also think graphics on the ti99 could be multicolor? 

 

I think the MSX and ColecoVsion share the same Video Graphics processor so the graphics would look similar to both of those ports - single colored sprites and chars.

Edited by Cheung
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Atari 2600 on one of their Galaga type games (can't remember which) did a cleaver like trick of using patterns when the ships moved left and right on top of the screen but when they swooped down that pattern character changed to sprite (p/m). it was fairly obvious but worked well.

FYI I'm 2/3 through a version of megamania for the TI99. I'm having to use patterns and sprites. finished should be a nice template for a Galaga type game.

 

MM39.png

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3 hours ago, ti99iuc said:

Another Galaga style game we have Is Guntus by inufuto

 

GUNTUS http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/guntus/#ti99

 

 

 

That's the guy I was trying to remember the name of.  

I like his games, they're great ... but he uses a tool that produces games for multiple systems at once ... so I don't know if any proper "optimizations" are done for the TI , if it could run better if coded on the TI natively?  I wouldn't have a clue.

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From what I have read, a game like TI invaders, would have taken a seasoned assembly program about two months full time to complete.

 

Usually getting help from a sound person and maybe a graphics person.

 

TI's development system didn't really seem to be a huge advantage, when comparing the quality of their games vs atarisoft.

 

Any thoughts?

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On 10/6/2024 at 5:33 PM, dhe said:

From what I have read, a game like TI invaders, would have taken a seasoned assembly program about two months full time to complete.

 

Usually getting help from a sound person and maybe a graphics person.

 

TI's development system didn't really seem to be a huge advantage, when comparing the quality of their games vs atarisoft.

 

Any thoughts?

Not sure how good their corporate development tools were back in the day. I assumed they programmed the games they produced using assembly. There are other options nowadays like C or the new BASICs that can be compiled (including the just released CV basic).

 

As far as sound goes, I've found that with the last game I made, Pacman++, I could get the sheet music for the theme and intermission tunes pretty easily. I would assume the same could be done for Galaga.

 

For the sound effects, I was able to use YouTube's 1/4 speed feature to slow the audio of the arcade game down to a point where I could hear what was going on and come fairly close to reproducing it on the TI.

 

Here's a Sprite sheet for anybody interested. Would need to convert most everything to single colors, but it should allow someone to get all the shapes right.

Arcade - Galaga - General Sprites.png

Edited by Cheung
Added sprite sheet
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9 hours ago, dhe said:

I would like to put in a request for Wizard of Wor. If it can be done on a ColecoVision, it can be done on a TI.

 

image.png.7f7462d26e33d750159c9be46b0b54ed.png

For XB, I think the hardest part about this game would be the interior wall detection, since the walls don't appear to be characters and are drawn lines and thus would not be able to easily use character type from a GCHAR to determine if the space can be occupied by the player, missiles, enemy, etc.

 

Normally, for collision with drawn lines like this, you would just PEEK the value at the screen locations for the sprite's 2 corners based on the direction of movement and check if it's the wall color. If it is, then you wouldn't be able to move in that direction. I don't believe this is possible for XB. Maybe GEM has something in a different graphics mode that would allow this, but I've never been able to get anything to work apart from XB256.

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7 hours ago, Cheung said:

For XB, I think the hardest part about this game would be the interior wall detection, since the walls don't appear to be characters and are drawn lines and thus would not be able to easily use character type from a GCHAR to determine if the space can be occupied by the player, missiles, enemy, etc.

 

Normally, for collision with drawn lines like this, you would just PEEK the value at the screen locations for the sprite's 2 corners based on the direction of movement and check if it's the wall color. If it is, then you wouldn't be able to move in that direction. I don't believe this is possible for XB. Maybe GEM has something in a different graphics mode that would allow this, but I've never been able to get anything to work apart from XB256.

Probably be best done in Assembly using Bitmap mode but that's a realm I have no knowledge in.  

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