Zach's Next Project

[Zach]

Now that Four-Play is wrapping up, I'm starting to think about what to do next. I have plenty of ideas, and I've narrowed them down to my top three. The various minigame projects I have going on are not included in this poll.

• Chess is pretty much what it sounds like. It would be a homebrew, not a hack. Although it would be easier to use code from Atari, that would preclude making cartridges.
   
  
• The 19x19 board game would be similar to Pente or Go-Moku. Holding a board with 361 positions will take a lot of RAM, so the superchip will help here.
   
  
• Catacombs of Mu is a maze game I designed a few years ago and prototyped in DOS. It differs from Pac-Man et al. in that you will not have enough time to catch all the treasures, and the NPC's don't hurt you. They just get in the way.
  

Disclaimer: I still get to choose my projects however the poll turns out

Edited October 17, 2006 by Zach

[Albert]

I like the idea of an original maze game best.

 

..Al

[supercat]

Chess has already been done. While I do not doubt that it could be done better, there's no way a 6502 with 256 bytes (I'm being generous and assuming Superchip) is going to play a really good game of chess with a "think time" that anyone is going to find reasonable. Even a 4A50 cart would have a hard time of it despite the fact that 4A50 includes some features that could allow the game to run faster than even a straight linear 64K memory map.

[SeaGtGruff]

[*]The 19x19 board game would be similar to Pente or Go-Moku. Holding a board with 361 positions will take a lot of RAM, so the superchip will help here.

I like Pente, so I voted for this one. Would it be a one-player (against the computer) or two-player game? It looks like there are at least three players (colors) in the pictured game.

 

MR

[Zach]

I like Pente, so I voted for this one. Would it be a one-player (against the computer) or two-player game? It looks like there are at least three players (colors) in the pictured game.

One-player. A two-player version would be simple to do, now that the kernel is done, but IMO if two players want to play a game, they are better off with a physical set. Anyway, I might do two human players vs. computer. As for three human players, I don't have any good ideas what to do about the controllers.

[SeaGtGruff]

One-player. A two-player version would be simple to do, now that the kernel is done, but IMO if two players want to play a game, they are better off with a physical set. Anyway, I might do two human players vs. computer. As for three human players, I don't have any good ideas what to do about the controllers.

Assuming the game could involve either two or three players, I think it would be neat to have the game be one human player against one computer player, or one human against two computers, or two humans against each other, or two humans against one computer. I guess you could do three humans if the idea was for two players to pass a joystick back and forth depending on whose turn it is to move next. For that matter, you could have a variation that uses only one joystick, with three players passing it back and forth as they take turns moving.

 

Anyway, 19 times 19 is 361, as you said. Dividing by 8 gives 45 remainder 1, so you would need 46 bytes to store the grid-- assuming that each position has a binary possibility (on/off, black/white, occupied/unoccupied, etc.). But if there are three players, that means each node has 4 possibilities, hence it would take 91 bytes to store the entire grid. If you used zero-page RAM, you'd still have 37 bytes of RAM for other stuff. So if you didn't need to use a lot of RAM for other stuff, you might be able to do it without any Superchip RAM-- although I'm sure you've already worked out what would be needed, and using the Superchip would probably give you more than enough RAM for this.

 

MR

[Cybergoth]

(I know how to spell "should", but I don't know how to edit polls.)

 

Fixed, voted & pinned the poll

[vdub_bobby]

It seems we have a consensus...

 

Zach's first non-puzzle game?

[Cybergoth]

It seems it's kinda like a choice between elephant dung, guano and strawberries

[Zach]

It seems it's kinda like a choice between elephant dung, guano and strawberries

Except 5 people would not have voted for dung or guano. Edited October 19, 2006 by Zach

[Mord]

It seems it's kinda like a choice between elephant dung, guano and strawberries

Except 5 people would not have voted for dung or guano.

 

I don't know about that. Some people don't like strawberries.

[Cybergoth]

Except 5 people would not have voted for dung or guano.

 

We'll see

 

Well, I think it's basically because board games don't have that "video game" appeal.

 

I personally find that realising chess and other board games on the 2600 makes an interesting, but rather academic challenge from a programmers point of view. I don't think I'd ever sit down wanting to actually play one of those though - I never play any board/card games from the original library either.

 

A slightly different kind are puzzle games. Solving a Jammed or Marble Jumper board is something I enjoy every once in a while.

 

I guess a lot of people think similar, you rarely see "Video Chess" listed in someones Top 10 for example.

[vdub_bobby]

Chess is more popular as a computer game than as a console game. Older crowd, I guess.

 

I enjoy quick board video games (Four-Play, Othello), not so much longer ones, like Chess.

[Zach]

Of course chess on the Atari is not for everyone. Then again you can say the same thing about the Atari in general. We don't play it because it's popular. The number of people who are both Atari and chess enthusiasts may be small, but they do exist.

 

I understand what supercat is saying about the Atari not being able to play a really good game of chess, but that wouldn't be my goal. I'd be satisfied with improving on Video Chess. Maybe the Atari can't handle serious strategy, but at least we can have better graphics and good controls.

 

As for Catacombs of Mu, I'm interested in that too. The challenge there will be the game design. My only hesistation is that Ladybug is a tough act to follow.

[Albert]

Of course chess on the Atari is not for everyone. Then again you can say the same thing about the Atari in general. We don't play it because it's popular. The number of people who are both Atari and chess enthusiasts may be small, but they do exist.

 

I understand what supercat is saying about the Atari not being able to play a really good game of chess, but that wouldn't be my goal. I'd be satisfied with improving on Video Chess. Maybe the Atari can't handle serious strategy, but at least we can have better graphics and good controls.

 

As for Catacombs of Mu, I'm interested in that too. The challenge there will be the game design. My only hesistation is that Ladybug is a tough act to follow.

That's okay, because other games will have come out after Lady Bug and before your next game.

 

..Al

[Zach]

It's clear at this point how the poll will turn out, and IMO this thread is ready to be unpinned. As for my next project, I am going to wait for news from Philadelphia before making any decisioins.