New Development Teaser: The Battle of Midway

[TROGDOR]

Hi All,

 

With the MiniComp all wrapped up, I'm taking a break from Master of Arcturus to start a new 2600 development project, The Battle of Midway.

 

I'm pretty sure you can't copyright historical events.

 

I'm going to try to squeeze this game into 4K, but if it won't fit, I may expand out to 8K.

 

Here are a couple teaser screenshots from version 0.02. The ships only use 36 bytes of ROM each. I'll post more details about the game as development continues.

 

TROGDOR

 

 

[Rob Mitchell]

Nice! I look forward to seeing the USS Yorktown!

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

[djmips]

I like it a lot. I like that minimalist look using the playfield to make big objects.

 

Horizontal scrolling?

 

Of course it's common to try to put a game idea in terms of games you already know and I can't help but think of Wings of Fury... I'd never thought about it before but after seeing your screens, a decent Wings of Fury game should be possible on the 2600

 

Or will it be actual naval battling. Is it an action title or more of a strategy game?

[TROGDOR]

Nice! I look forward to seeing the USS Yorktown!

 

Yep, the USS Yorktown will be in there.

 

I like it a lot. I like that minimalist look using the playfield to make big objects.

 

Thanks for the positive feedback guys.

 

I've got some ambitious plans for this game. I'll have to see if they can actually be implemented on an Atari.

 

There's a whole lotta blue sky there. That's going to get filled up with Japanese Zeros and anti-aircraft flak (aka Dangerous Black Squares.)

 

The main jist of the game is an action flying/bombing game. Here are some planned features for the game:

 

- You will be flying an SBD Dauntless scout-bomber.

- You can drop bombs on the ship, which will cause visible damage to the ship.

- Each bomb will knock out one pixel of the ship. The pixels of the ship will be stored in RAM.

- If you can bomb enough times in the same place to knock a hole all the way to the water, the ship will sink.

- The plane will be armed with a machine gun that will shoot in the direction the plane is flying.

- The plane can fly in 16 directions, represented by 8 different sprites (included below).

- Both your plane and the bombs you drop will have 16-bit inertia, velocity, acceleration, and gravity effects.

- Japanese Zeros will be flying around trying to shoot you down.

- Colliding with a Zero will crash your plane.

- Zeros will either take off from the ship in the case of the aircraft carrier, or they will come down from the top of the screen in the case of the battleship.

- Flying too low to the ship means instant death by AA fire. (Saves me the trouble of drawing the ship, the bomb, and the plane on the same scanline. )

- Both your plane and the Zeros will wrap from one side of the screen to the other.

- The game will have vertical scrolling, but probably not horizontal scrolling. That would require too much RAM for single bit rolling (12 rows X 6 bytes = 72 bytes. Too much.) Unless somebody out there has a super-efficient single bit horizontal scrolling routine that I'm unaware of. I wonder if I could replicate two quad-sized sprites. Hmmmm....

- The ships will have 2 or 3 anti-aircraft cannons (drawn as sprites) that can be bombed.

- There may be a tactical target on the ship that will sink it instantly if hit. (Ammunition storage.) This target will be under the towers, to encourage you to bomb the towers.

- You will get bonus points for bombing the 3 18-inch cannons on the battleship.

- Your plane will have a fuel gauge. When fuel runs out, you will crash.

- Your plane will have a gun overheat indicator, so you can't fire constantly. If the guns overheat, they will be inoporative until they cool down.

- Your plane is weighed down by all its bombs. If you fly at a sharp upward angle, your plane will slow down, and could stall out. (Anyone remember Triple Action Biplanes for the Intellevision? :wink:)

- The plane controls are left and right to rotate, press down to bomb, fire button to fire guns. Or I may make the controls up and down to rotate, left and right to speed up or slow down, tap button to fire guns, hold down button to bomb.

- Anti aircraft fire will fly straight upward until it reaches the targeted altitude, and then explode into a cloud of flak, which will fade from black to gray for 4 seconds.

- Zeros will occasionally attack in a formation of 3 planes, with a klaxon alert.

 

- There may be multiple stages to the game (not sure yet):

 

- Stage 1, defend your aircraft carrier from incoming Japanese bombers. You will control 2 50cal anti-aircraft cannons which will operate similar to the anit-aircraft cannons on the Japanese ships. Pressing the joystick left or right will control which of the 2 cannons fire. The flak detonation height will either be controlled by a target that is moved up or down, or by how long you hold down the button. The button technique sounds like more fun. When you shoot down all the enemy bombers, the stage is done. If both your guns are bombed, you lose a life and get 2 new cannons. If your ship takes too much damage and gets sunk, it's game over. AA fire can knock out enemy bombs aimed at the AA cannons.

 

- Stage 2, defend your aircraft carrier from incoming Japanese bombers. This time you control an F4F-3 Wildcat fighter. Similar to stage 1, except you need to shoot down the enemy bombers with your plane. The plane flies similar to the SBD, but it will handle better, and there's no bombs. AA guns on the ship will fire automatically to assist you, and you can't be damaged by the flak clouds. (On harder levels, I may make your plane susceptible to friendly AA fire.) If your plane is shot down, you lose a life. If the ship is sunk, game over, man.

 

- Stage 3, Attack the Japanese ship with an SBD, as described above.

 

- Stage 4, Land on your aircraft carrier. If you crash, you lose a life. There will be some congratulatory special effect here if you land successfully. Starts over to stage 1, but harder. (More Zeros, more AA fire, etc.)

 

- If I go with an 8K game, I will add a tactical element to the game, and the obligatory 12 character text display. The tactical portion would be real-time rather than turn based. There will be an overhead map of Midway Island and the ocean. You deploy your fleets, and launch planes to scout for and then attack enemy ships. All battles are resolved by playing the corresponding stages above. This would also include a battle where you defend Midway Island itself, with a plane or AA cannons, if Midway gets attacked.

 

A 12 to 16 K version of the game might include:

- 1st-person submarine battles

- Destroyer battles, hunting submarines with depth charges.

- Battleship battles (entering cannon trajectories to hit a moving target.)

- maybe even let you play the Japanese side.

 

I've got a lotta coding to do.

 

The SBD/F4F-3/Zero graphics are done, included below. I'm happy with how the horizontal and vertical planes came out, but the diagonals look kinda crappy. The light gray pixels will be strobed to simulate the propeller. The plane graphics are based on the photos from the Naval Historical Center website, which is also where I got the ship photos.

 

TROGDOR

[Godzilla]

drooolll.... kinda reminds me of the old 'wings of fury' that would rock.

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

Any news regarding this project?

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[TROGDOR]

Hey Cybergoth,

 

This is the first time I've logged in in about 9 months. After a long hiatus (no thanks to America's Army and Runescape for eating most of my coding time for the past year), I've decided to continue work on this game.

 

I had made decent progress on this game before I shelved it. I already have my plane, the enemy plane, AA fire, and inertial bombs working, and some sound fx. I'll post a preview demo soon.

 

I blew off the 2005 mini comp, but this is a good time to focus work on this game for the 2006 comp.

 

Hopefully you'll be seeing more of me in the next few weeks.

[Godzilla]

MORE! MORE! preeeeze? me love wings of fury.

[simbalion]

Wow! Looks good so far! I would buy it if you got it done.