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Arkanoid remake on A8?


José Pereira

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As I said on the AA A8/5200 Programming Forum I always want to get a way that works and that can really build a more faithfull to the arcade version on A8.

And I think I finally got it...

 

 

 

Now we have:

PF0: 'The backs' gfxs (any colour)

PF1: Always white

PF2: Any colour that with DLIs get different line bricks colours

PF3: Always the lilac blue (7A)

BAK: Always black

 

 

The PMGs use:

(Paddle/Vaus is now like in Arcade same colours (Red and Grays) and always the same colour in all the game's Rounds)

P0 is the middle of the paddle/Vaus (DLIs different grays shades)

P2 and P3 are the Red sides of it (also other colour for the sides when the Vaus turns into the 'shooting possibility)

P1 is the bonus 'balloon'

 

Missiles are in 5th Player mode where's:

M0 and M1 are the letter on thne bonus

M2 and M3 are the sides 2pixels of the Vaus

 

 

Then, Enemys and balls/shots are are software sprites.

Now we also have P2 and P3 free that we can haveone or two more colours per each bricks line (even a third more colour if P2+P3 in Multicolour Mode).

Here you can see a 'free example' of this that I did (now we can have, in certain circunstancies 7colours on each bricks line):

post-6517-0-53119400-1384529009_thumb.png

 

 

I also re-done some bricks so that we always know wich need just to be hitted be time, two or three times or are indestructible:

post-6517-0-78235100-1384528920_thumb.png

 

 

 

 

 

Here is two screens and the correspondant old and other versions:

ROUND17:

-> Old A8: post-6517-0-42079500-1384528627_thumb.png

-> New A8: post-6517-0-92006800-1384528655_thumb.png

-> C64: post-6517-0-79543700-1384529695_thumb.gif

-> BBC/Electron: post-6517-0-89910100-1384528716_thumb.gif

 

ROUND10:

-> Old A8: post-6517-0-58708100-1384528547_thumb.png

-> New A8: post-6517-0-35184200-1384528578_thumb.png

-> C64: post-6517-0-91103900-1384529705_thumb.gif

 

 

 

 

 

Here that Round17 4versions to compare the screen's dimension and the bricks line(s):

post-6517-0-75221300-1384529072_thumb.png

 

 

 

 

 

I think this can really become true if anyone wants to get the code with me and we already have the Presentation screen re-done of the C64 version by Tezz:

post-6517-0-72998500-1384529208_thumb.png

Just need to ask him to free-up PM0+PM1 Multicolour on some scanlines so that we can have the animation sequence of the enemy spaceship comming and destroy that 'our ship' top circle and then the Paddle/Vaus goes out into space.

 

 

 

 

 

What do you say?

:)

Edited by José Pereira
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No they aren't and the reason is that because of the screen taller size they went into putting the status at the right side and this result in having only 11bricks per line where ours, C64 and CPC have like the original arcade version 13bricks.

And the screen top status on top and number of still available Vaus images at the bottom are more faithfull to arcade version.

 

Of course it can't never be an exactly port but the A8 Pallete and DLIs can 'do miracles'!...

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Hi Jose,

 

I have thought about an improved remake of Arkanoid in the past also. The commercial release by Mike Hutchinson was not too bad but the game could certainly be done visually better. Some of the backgrounds were too bright and made gameplay difficult and the low-res pmg ball in particular was a weak point but single line pmgs although an improvement cannot get around their low-res horizontal movement.

 

When I was putting some xbios examples together in February this year I created an xbios boot disk to load and save the high score and added that c64 loading pic (that I put together back in 2004). Whilst doing that, for fun rather than using Mark Jones c64 picture I started drawing my own loading picture from scratch based on the arcade graphics with the mothership, vaus and logos. I'm busy finishing off two projects at the moment before jumping into something else though.

 

post-4724-0-13899700-1384540123_thumb.png

xbios.atr

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No they aren't and the reason is that because of the screen taller size they went into putting the status at the right side and this result in having only 11bricks per line where ours, C64 and CPC have like the original arcade version 13bricks.

And the screen top status on top and number of still available Vaus images at the bottom are more faithfull to arcade version.

 

Of course it can't never be an exactly port but the A8 Pallete and DLIs can 'do miracles'!...

 

I would add to your design the possibility to have two different color registers changed by DLI's (I did that with my own game).

Also you should look at the arcade "color design", I think is a better model than the home versions, for example I like more my version of this level:

 

original:

post-11240-0-91638900-1384573242_thumb.png

 

adapted:

post-11240-0-57457000-1384573262_thumb.png

 

I don't like much the idea of straight ports of these games (when you can have inspiration from all the arkanoids and add some new interesting concepts), but I understand that some people prefer the classic experience.

 

(Other idea that was discussed before was using gr.8 .. limited in color but with very smooth movement of the balls and enemies)

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Tezz you're in-game looks great but you can't have that when you start destroying bricks and have bricks and ground at the same lines.

From your picture you already lost the 5colours of the ANTIC4 charmode.

I think you have there something like this:

PF0/PF1: white and dark blue

PF2/PF3: gray and light blue

BAK: black

 

But then 'How to?' with grounds and bricks at the same scanlines? Diferent and many bricks colours in the same line are what, mid-scanline one of the PFs colour changing (maybe better PF2?) because they are done outside the Bad-Lines where you have black BAK colour register?

 

And if this you still go into 3balls=3Players?

And the Vaus seems software sprite white and gray but then sides are Players more Players for the bonus and then you must put the balls/shots (white?) and enemys as software sprites only?

Edited by José Pereira
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the thing with Arkanoid/Breakout is that the graphics are a false distraction. I reckon anyone could do it if they spent a little time on it.

Having written a couple of clones myself I've found the almost impossible part of it is capturing the smooth flowing feeling of playing the original Atari Breakout. It's deceptively difficult.

 

If someone could come up with something with the detail of 'the Pacman dossier' (another game that suffers the same issue) for Breakout and Arkanoid then we could build a game around that and go all-out on the graphics knowing that there was a solid and satisfying game underneath it.

Edited by sack-c0s
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Just a thought for any ball games... after a recent play of Joust in the HSC the egg "ball" movement is superbly smooth when they go bouncing/flying around with a bit of spin on (I played on expert if that's makes any difference) ;)

 

I find it frustrating when Super Breakout (and others) limit the range of bounces so you end up getting almost stuck in a loop of moves; especially when you only have 1 brick left to target - some occasional random angles or additional postions would improve these games. Another issue some have is with too many power-ups and inconsistent scoring where the power-ups give more points than doing the levels so you end up collecting them even if you don't need/want them :ponder:

 

I think NRV's excellent (recent) Pad (ver 1.81?) game could be one of the best with a *little* bit more work (think the thread was on the programming forum). It also supported paddles and ST-Mouse :thumbsup:

 

:)

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Tezz you're in-game looks great but you can't have that when you start destroying bricks and have bricks and ground at the same lines.

From your picture you already lost the 5colours of the ANTIC4 charmode.

Hi Jose,

 

iirc, the 3 balls were 2 pmgs and 2 missiles, 1 pmg was used for more colour options for the bricks with prior0 and it's missile was used quad size to highlight the grey bricks that have to be hit more than once. The remaining pmg and missile is the white highlight on the side borders. The falling objects and laser fire etc would be software sprites.

 

It was something like that anyway, it was a few months ago :)

 

The 2 blues on the background tiles were pf0/1 but I would probably not waste a second colour on the backgrounds and use one for the falling objects or more brick colours. pf2/3 were the bricks (grey and whatever colour). If I also rc, I considered reusing one of the ball pmgs to overlay the falling objects. There's plenty of options to create a better conversion.

 

*Edit, I think the two background colours were used because the enemy sprites also made use of them. Also it may not have been the missile highlighting the grey bricks as there can be more than one hit with the 3 balls. I've had a busy day today and too tired to remember exactly.

post-4724-0-40082800-1384990158_thumb.png

Edited by Tezz
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PAD is excellent btw Nelson :thumbsup: I hope you get some spare time soon to work on it again

 

Thanks, I'm working on it.

As I said, I had a version with some improvements that I didn't release and I have done some more fixes and improvements the last weeks.

I want to publish also the source code. Right now I'm thinking about adding some simple enemies or not, before posting the next version (but that would take more time.. is not difficult to do the code, but creating some good behaviors and the graphics and animations take me more time than a real artist x) ).

 

By the way, the code have some small research that I did about Arkanoid 1, 2 and Tournament, because I took and mixed elements from them.

 

There is info about those 3 here:

http://strategywiki.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Games&pagefrom=A

 

Didn't use: x)

 

post-11240-0-77536600-1384997823_thumb.pngpost-11240-0-71317400-1384997832_thumb.png

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I don't see why single missiles can't be use for the balls. I know it was a feature of Arknoid that the balls didn't look like squares, but I think it's worth the compromise for the Ataris in order to free up the PM's for using elsewhere. They're such a small graphical element in the game, physically, compared to everything else.

Edited by MrFish
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I don't see why single missiles can't be use for the balls. I know it was a feature of Arknoid that the balls didn't look like squares, but I think it's worth the compromise for the Ataris in order to free up the PM's for using elsewhere. They're such a small graphical element in the game, physically, compared to everything else.

Would the extra corners affect collision detection due to its slighty greater cross-section?

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Would the extra corners affect collision detection due to its slighty greater cross-section?

 

Affect it in what way? Programmers have the liberty to set up collision detection in whatever way is necessary. In this case the collision registers, which are based on pixels, could handle it.

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Nothing major, was just wondering if the ball (or square!) hitting the edge of the bat at an angle making the difference between a hit or miss due to the shape having corners now.

(If you see what I mean)

 

I guess you mean when changing an existing version over to use 2 pixel wide missiles as I've suggested. It depends on the method used for collisions in the first place. Like I said, P/M's can use the registers, so it wouldn't make any difference in that case, because it's detecting overlapping pixels for whatever shape they happen to be.

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