Goat game

[+DZ-Jay]

 

DZ: I've already commented on some of your thoughts. The colors are what I'm limited to - you cannot have a cyan sky with purple mountains, for example. Unless I go Color Stack, which will end up taking away some of the multi-color cheating that I'm doing. I may play around some. The goat jumping speed went down when I started MOBing the heck out of the title screen. The goat may end up walking around instead of jumping - the jump was just a placeholder, I didn't think anyone liked it. Oh and the stage selection acts weird because it's a dirty hack just to let you guys see the other stages without having to play through the entire game.

 

 

You could have Cyan and Purple on the same card in FG/BG Mode; you just need to make the Purple your background colour. Think "reverse video."

 

In any case, don't be afraid of Color Stack mode... it is very powerful, especially considering that your colour palette is not that extensive.

 

-dZ.

[GroovyBee]

You could have Cyan and Purple on the same card in FG/BG Mode; you just need to make the Purple your background colour.

Thats not quite right because cyan isn't in the first 8 colours in the palette (there are only 3 bits for the foreground palette index in FG/BG mode).

[+DZ-Jay]

Thats not quite right because cyan isn't in the first 8 colours in the palette (there are only 3 bits for the foreground palette index in FG/BG mode).

 

Oh crap! You are right. I confused Cyan with Blue, sorry. Then I suggest going with Color Stack.

[Rev]

Will this Goat game have an ice level??????

[+DZ-Jay]

Will this Goat game have an ice level??????

 

It already does!

[freewheel]

Will this Goat game have an ice level??????

 

Fully one quarter of the game so far is set in winter, with a snow and ice background. And, no lie, this was entirely due to your seeming obsession with it. I figured I'd code something in for fun, and it ended up driving the entire structure of the game (it's now based around 4 seasons). So consider yourself flattered but also it was just a nice idea and has had a lot of positive feedback.

[+DZ-Jay]

Fully one quarter of the game so far is set in winter, with a snow and ice background. And, no lie, this was entirely due to your seeming obsession with it. I figured I'd code something in for fun, and it ended up driving the entire structure of the game (it's now based around 4 seasons). So consider yourself flattered but also it was just a nice idea and has had a lot of positive feedback.

I think the 4 season concept and the little story that drives the game are inspired decisions.

[Rev]

well, i didnt know there was any snow levels in GOAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

You didnt post any screens or Gifs that I noticed except one on the first page. How else would I know!

 

(i havent read every post though, sorry)

 

(and i dont know how to download and load roms on my cc3, DZJay never showed me!!!!!!! that darn DZ!)

[+DZ-Jay]

(and i dont know how to download and load roms on my cc3, DZJay never showed me!!!!!!! that darn DZ!)

 

Hey! Wutthefuh...?! It's not my fault you're as dense as molasses!

 

My grandma compiled jzIntv and installed it into her Raspberry Pi, all by herself.*

 

I'm willing to try again, just send me a PM when you're ready; but make sure you charge the batteries on your brain first.

 

 

 

* not really.

[freewheel]

My apologies, I just assumed that anyone with more than 5 posts on AA knows how to download files and run an emulator For the record, putting images in posts here is so counter-intuitive compared to just about every other webforum that running an emulator is in fact easier. Maybe I'm missing the button, but it takes me like 5 mins to post an image here.

 

Screenshot of winter goat, in all its glory:

Edited November 9, 2014 by freeweed

[freewheel]

Wow, this was a LOT more work than I expected. All for a dozen lines of code. Aaaanyway:

 

This comes from an earlier suggestion, I forget whom. Instead of a score, I now have a "Nom meter" which is basically a visual indicator to show progress. It's basically just your score (in a given season) converted into a linear gauge. It has "empty" and "full" ticks to give a nice bit of feedback in terms of season progress. Like before, you gain points for eating the good items or kicking the black ones. You lose half the point value for missing the good items, and at later stages for getting hit by the black item. And in winter, you also lose points for missing the black items.

 

I think it makes more sense than a numeric score, because everyone ends up with the same score anyway (the season ends when you hit a certain value). And I like the visual. Each season now has its own threshold to reach - spring is pretty quick, summer twice as long, and fall/winter are 50% longer than summer. There's a reason I went with this but in theory it's fungible. The later seasons now need more play to complete, plus they're just harder in general. Someday I'll write up the entire scoring/progression system as I suspect by now people may be confused by all of my jumping around with ideas.

 

Thoughts? I'm curious what people think of the idea itself, plus if it seems to have introduced any bugs or lag into the game. From what I can see it works "perfectly" but I haven't exactly played for hours.

 

 

goat.rom

[pimpmaul69]

Odd suggestion but in winter u have a gernade. Wouldnt the lump of coal (rock) be more fitting?

[intvnut]

My apologies, I just assumed that anyone with more than 5 posts on AA knows how to download files and run an emulator

 

Heck, even if you're a purist that only runs on the real hardware, there are alternate mechanisms to get a game onto a CC3, such as SoulBuster's alternate GUI or even his service where he does it for you.

 

 

For the record, putting images in posts here is so counter-intuitive compared to just about every other webforum that running an emulator is in fact easier.

 

Hmmm... The main step I usu. forget is to click "More Reply Options." Then I remember "oh yeah, they put all the useful stuff there." There's three steps:

 

Browse...

 

Attach...

 

And then Add to Post, which shows up obscurely in the summary of attachments.

 

The Add To Post part is the trickiest, as it adds the tag wherever you last left the text cursor in the text box. If you forgot to leave it somewhere useful, you end up with an ugly tag in the middle of a word, or something equally useless.

 

Bonus: If you click those attachments, you can see me complain that the Add to Post is in Flyspec-3. I revised that opinion. It just shows up where I wasn't expecting to see it, making that step easily the most counterintuitive. It was the step that took me longest to learn. In the process of taking the screenshots, though, I was reminded that the font wasn't small, just my peripheral vision, apparently.

Edited November 10, 2014 by intvnut

[+DZ-Jay]

Thoughts? I'm curious what people think of the idea itself, plus if it seems to have introduced any bugs or lag into the game. From what I can see it works "perfectly" but I haven't exactly played for hours.

 

 

Here are my thoughts:

• The "Nom-o-meter" gets all glitchy when you start a new season: it fills up completely, and starts flashing the end until you start eating; then it clears a bit at the beginning and starts filling up, with 2/3 of it already red. (See attached)
• I don't really understand the "Nom-o-meter." It doesn't give me any indicator as to how much I have to fill it to advance to the next season. I think it's supposed to be a full length per season, but with the glitches, I can't tell.
• I never see the "Nom-o-meter" full; it gets close to the end, and then the game just abruptly switches to the next stage. Would you consider adding a bit of "end-of-level flair," where the meter is shown full for a few frames, perhaps play a little jingle or blink the meter or something that indicates an accomplishment; before changing seasons?
• I still see items accelerating mid-flight. I agree with a previous suggestion that it would be better to wait until the next item thrown by the farmer.
• There doesn't seem to be a way to skip the intro scene. Trust me, as much as I and everyone loves that scene, skipping it will come in handy during testing and extensive play sessions. (Skipping cut-scenes was a highly requested feature of Christmas Carol. The consensus seems to be: "it's nice, but once I've seen it, get me directly to the action!")
• I see that the goat is back to its frantic jumping spell! I also noticed that the rising moon went away. Oh well.
• On higher levels, when things go very fast, it would be good to add acceleration to the goat's movements, so that you can move around the screen faster. It feels like you can never catch up to items that are not directly on your same horizontal line.

<-- Click to animate

Edited November 10, 2014 by DZ-Jay

[freewheel]

Next version. I've addressed much (but not all) of DZ's comments:

 

1. The meter was glitchy for a whole HOST of reasons. I appreciate you finding out what you did because it led me down a path where I discovered a bunch of stupid assumptions I made. Hopefully it's now pretty robust. Sadly this is now several hours of coding for what ended up being *a single line of code* (plus some variable setting elsewhere).

 

2. Yup, the idea is to fill up the meter to complete a season.

 

3. You will now see it fill up. I've added some filler music and blinking animation to the meter. Right now I think it's a bit fast but it should give you an idea.

 

4. The mid-flight acceleration is a) exactly how Astrosmash (my muse) works, b) pretty much embedded into the code, and c) part of the challenge That being said, I'm still toying with how to handle this. While it may seem counter intuitive, I like the idea that the player can't just blindly go chomping around. If you have a food item followed by a rock, there is a risk in eating the food. I've been caught myself many times on this and it adds to the difficulty. That being said, it may be a "cheap" death so I'm open to change here.

 

5. You can now skip the cut scene. I am the first person to suggest this - I couldn't stand the Playstation and a lot of games since, for this very reason. Hell, I can't stand firing up 1st party INTV or CV games for this reason. So consider me a bit embarrassed, and thanks for the reminder. The ending credit scene is currently unskippable but I don't think people have problems with those. Open to suggestions though.

 

6. The moon rising animation really slowed down the goat's jumping. The title screen may be rather different in the end so keep the comments and suggestions coming.

 

7. As you play through a season and things get faster, the goat DOES move faster. There is an intersection point where you are faster than some (but not all) of the items. Then towards the very end of the season, the items are as fast as you again. A few people have commented on the speed issue. To me, the whole point is to plan your movements ahead to be able to eat everything. I think the game would be way too easy if you could just fly back to pick up what you've missed. However, this is all part of the game balancing that is slowly happening, and will really take shape towards the end of development. So again, comments and suggestions please

 

 

Oh - and I changed the lives counter. At one point it was a blatant Astrosmash ripoff (extra life every X thousand points) but now it just doesn't make any sense. So, you start with 3 and get an extra life when you complete a season. Whether that's too many or too few will only come out once the final difficulty is adjusted and I get a lot more feedback.

 

And with that, here's the latest ROM.

 

 

goat.rom

[freewheel]

And another OOOOLD suggestion. Instead of "1UP:" (which I still adore for its 80s sensibilities), you now have a graphic representation of the # of lives in the game. A small goat head for each. Unfortunately it loses the colors and has to be a bit modified but I think it works as good as it can.

 

And I never realized images could be added this way (thanks intvnut!) so I'm doing so.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

goat.rom

[+DZ-Jay]

Next version. I've addressed much (but not all) of DZ's comments:

 

1. The meter was glitchy for a whole HOST of reasons. I appreciate you finding out what you did because it led me down a path where I discovered a bunch of stupid assumptions I made. Hopefully it's now pretty robust. Sadly this is now several hours of coding for what ended up being *a single line of code* (plus some variable setting elsewhere).

 

2. Yup, the idea is to fill up the meter to complete a season.

 

3. You will now see it fill up. I've added some filler music and blinking animation to the meter. Right now I think it's a bit fast but it should give you an idea.

 

4. The mid-flight acceleration is a) exactly how Astrosmash (my muse) works, b) pretty much embedded into the code, and c) part of the challenge That being said, I'm still toying with how to handle this. While it may seem counter intuitive, I like the idea that the player can't just blindly go chomping around. If you have a food item followed by a rock, there is a risk in eating the food. I've been caught myself many times on this and it adds to the difficulty. That being said, it may be a "cheap" death so I'm open to change here.

 

5. You can now skip the cut scene. I am the first person to suggest this - I couldn't stand the Playstation and a lot of games since, for this very reason. Hell, I can't stand firing up 1st party INTV or CV games for this reason. So consider me a bit embarrassed, and thanks for the reminder. The ending credit scene is currently unskippable but I don't think people have problems with those. Open to suggestions though.

 

6. The moon rising animation really slowed down the goat's jumping. The title screen may be rather different in the end so keep the comments and suggestions coming.

 

7. As you play through a season and things get faster, the goat DOES move faster. There is an intersection point where you are faster than some (but not all) of the items. Then towards the very end of the season, the items are as fast as you again. A few people have commented on the speed issue. To me, the whole point is to plan your movements ahead to be able to eat everything. I think the game would be way too easy if you could just fly back to pick up what you've missed. However, this is all part of the game balancing that is slowly happening, and will really take shape towards the end of development. So again, comments and suggestions please

 

 

Oh - and I changed the lives counter. At one point it was a blatant Astrosmash ripoff (extra life every X thousand points) but now it just doesn't make any sense. So, you start with 3 and get an extra life when you complete a season. Whether that's too many or too few will only come out once the final difficulty is adjusted and I get a lot more feedback.

 

And with that, here's the latest ROM.

 

 

Great! I'll test when I get home.

 

Regarding #4, it's not because it's harder or easier, my comment was because it looks cheesy. It's little things like that which make a game look polished.

 

On #7, I can tell it gets faster, but I was actually suggesting acceleration as in, the longer you press the disc-controller, the faster it goes.

 

And another OOOOLD suggestion. Instead of "1UP:" (which I still adore for its 80s sensibilities), you now have a graphic representation of the # of lives in the game. A small goat head for each. Unfortunately it loses the colors and has to be a bit modified but I think it works as good as it can.

 

And I never realized images could be added this way (thanks intvnut!) so I'm doing so.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

Looks good in the screenshots.

[mthompson]

1. I like the meter better than the numeric score. As you said, the score itself doesn't mean much.

 

2. I also prefer the graphic to show lives remaining, though unlike Astrosmash, a single goat head at the top is my last life, not one in reserve. I find that counter-intuitive.

 

3. When using controllers, it's tricky to "Press Any Key To Try Again" without jumping past the title screen. Not as bad on a keyboard, but you often want to give those controller buttons a firm press, and the game doesn't lock out what it's registering as a second press and continuing past whatever is supposed to come next. I often don't see the cut scene now because I pressed too long (and it doesn't take much).

 

Also, this seems like the kind of game that should start with a tap on the disc, no?

 

Better and better

Edited November 10, 2014 by mthompson

[freewheel]

Always appreciate the comments You guys are helping with a lot of the fine-tuning.

 

Re: the life counter. Yeah, I've debated this. Some games display how many lives you have left INCLUDING your current life (which this currently does), some display the EXTRA lives only (which I think is what you're suggesting). I'm open to either. I suspect people will vote for the latter, it seems to be the more popular way. I was just lazy for now. I don't want to code up a bunch of logic (ok, an off-by one) just to have people say "ugh! goat heads are stupid!".

 

Re: the buttons - you are absolutely right. Because I'm whipping stuff up quick, I do not have the most exacting handling of which button does what to select/skip things. Remember, the stage selection will not be in the final game (at least I don't see why it would be...). You'll press fire/action, and then immediately go to the intro screen. And I'll probably do a quick button de-bounce there to make sure you have to choose to skip it. This is one place where I need people with multicarts to scream at me if I do something stupid. Until the LTO or similar comes out, I don't really have a way to test this on real hardware. And nothing is worse than coding for an emulator.

 

And now I'm going to sound like an ignoramus: is the INTV disc a clickable button? If so, IntyBASIC does not have a way to read it (although I can work around that easily). However - how the heck do you trigger this with JZINTV? Now that I'm going down this path - are you simply referring to games allowing *any* disc input to start a game? That.. is probably do-able.

[+DZ-Jay]

Always appreciate the comments You guys are helping with a lot of the fine-tuning.

 

Re: the life counter. Yeah, I've debated this. Some games display how many lives you have left INCLUDING your current life (which this currently does), some display the EXTRA lives only (which I think is what you're suggesting). I'm open to either. I suspect people will vote for the latter, it seems to be the more popular way. I was just lazy for now. I don't want to code up a bunch of logic (ok, an off-by one) just to have people say "ugh! goat heads are stupid!".

 

 

The rule that I've noticed in old-school games, as I mentioned in the GoSub thread, is this:

• When displaying only "extra" lives, the counter starts with all lives and the player's avatar hidden, then one life is taken from the lot for the player's avatar when the level starts. When the player loses a life, the same thing is done again. This way the meaning is clear that the counter represents the reserve lives.
• When displaying all "available" lives, the counter starts with the number of lives, including the current one, and the player's avatar is shown at the same time. When the player loses a life, it is subtracted immediately. This way the meaning is clear that the counter represents all lives.

Edited November 11, 2014 by DZ-Jay

[intvnut]

And now I'm going to sound like an ignoramus: is the INTV disc a clickable button? If so, IntyBASIC does not have a way to read it (although I can work around that easily). However - how the heck do you trigger this with JZINTV? Now that I'm going down this path - are you simply referring to games allowing *any* disc input to start a game? That.. is probably do-able.

 

The disc doesn't have a separate 'button axis' like some modern controllers. It just has the 16-direction control. Basically, your last statement is what was being suggested: Allow any disc-tap to start the game.

 

I'm a big fan of the 'tap disc to start' approach myself. That's how most of the classic Intellivision games worked, if you wanted to start them at full speed.

[freewheel]

OK, for a second I thought I was either really stupid, or something worse. You can tell I've been developing (and testing) on the PC too long - it's been weeks since I've played on a real console. Because now that you guys mention it, my muscle memory knows exactly what you're talking about. Of course you start most games with the disc. I just don't even think about it when playing.

 

So now the only question is "how". I'll have to take a look at what the controllers return to see if I can genericize it enough. I don't want a block of 16 IF statements

 

PS: not that I'm worried about ever using this level of granularity, but does jzintv support all 16 directions? Do I have to define my own keymap to make it happen?

Edited November 11, 2014 by freeweed

[freewheel]

Well that was easy enough. Gotta love bitmasking. Although... I know IntyBASIC has a generic mask for "any" button being pressed, which is handy as all hell by the way. Perhaps it would be nice to have CONT1.DIR or something similar. I have no idea how it's implemented at a compiler level but this is what I used:

 

c1=CONT1
IF (c1 AND $E0)=0 AND (c1 AND $0F) THEN GOTO init_game

 

Probably a way to condense that but I'm tired and the Flames lost.

 

Unfortunately I've now lost my "shortcut". As I test and want to quickly skip to the good stuff, I find myself choosing the stage select option first. This also triggers the "init_game" section because all CONT1.BUTTON is doing is returning true if any of the first 3 bits are set, so a long keypad press translates into BUTTON as well as the KEY in question. I'm not sure if this was intentional of an oversight by nanochess ("button" is a pretty loose term), or if BUTTON is just supposed to read the side buttons.

 

Oh also, the life meter now shows your EXTRA lives only as suggested by DZ and mt. I agree, it makes more sense this way.

 

The bonus of using the disc to start the game is that it no longer overlaps with other button presses (earlier comment about pressing a button after Game Over). I can see why they used the disc to start so many games with.

Edited November 11, 2014 by freeweed

[pimpmaul69]

OK, for a second I thought I was either really stupid, or something worse. You can tell I've been developing (and testing) on the PC too long - it's been weeks since I've played on a real console. Because now that you guys mention it, my muscle memory knows exactly what you're talking about. Of course you start most games with the disc. I just don't even think about it when playing.

 

So now the only question is "how". I'll have to take a look at what the controllers return to see if I can genericize it enough. I don't want a block of 16 IF statements

 

PS: not that I'm worried about ever using this level of granularity, but does jzintv support all 16 directions? Do I have to define my own keymap to make it happen?

yes it does support all 16 directions. When you use a controller with an analog stick it will give you 16 directions on that as well. Not that i know a game that you can notice 16 directions on.. I sure would like to know though.

[+DZ-Jay]

yes it does support all 16 directions. When you use a controller with an analog stick it will give you 16 directions on that as well. Not that i know a game that you can notice 16 directions on.. I sure would like to know though.

 

There are many Intellivision games that support 16 directions. I'd say that all "free-moving" games support it, such as TRON Deadly Discs, Worm Whomper, Major League Baseball, etc.

 

Believe it or not, even Christmas Carol supports 16 directions. Sure, it boils them down to four, but it accepts all 16 values from the disc and uses some fancy heuristics to try to determine user intent. This means that you can turn tight corners by intuitively rolling your thumb around on the disc (*ahem*, like God intended the disc to be used), and the game will always take you where you intended to go.

 

For a "free-moving" game like Goat Nom (is that now the official name?), I would highly recommend supporting 16 directions.

 

-dZ.