SpiceWare's Blog

In the coinop warlords, when you hold onto a fireball, your shield turns into a fireball and sparks fly off of it and start eating away at your castle.

 

Any way you can implement that?

Taking out your own bricks by holding a captured fireball for too long is planned.

 

I doubt the shield will change into a fireball as the color of the king is the same color as the shield.

 

Likewise, I'm not sure if the sparks will be visible.

Taking out your own bricks by holding a captured fireball for too long is planned.

 

I doubt the shield will change into a fireball as the color of the king is the same color as the shield.

 

Likewise, I'm not sure if the sparks will be visible.

 

Why can't you use the same missile/ball for the spark? If you're holding onto the fireball then you don't otherwise need the sprite for anything.

Why can't you use the same missile/ball for the spark? If you're holding onto the fireball then you don't otherwise need the sprite for anything.

 

In the arcade game, I expect the sparking behavior was needed to prevent people from tying up the machine. In a home version, if someone's holding onto a ball too long, one of the opponents can simply reach over and punch him.

 

Besides, as I've said before, I think the bigger issue is the question of whether to allow backhanded catches. Using the relationship between ball angle and shield angle should make it easy enough to tell whether an action would be a backhanded catch; the question is what to do if it is.

 

IMHO, being able to select the backhanded catch result on a per-player basis would be a good way to handicap the game.

I still think the spark feature is important for the home version. The sparking happens almost immediately and it forces the player to DO something with the fireball instead of just teasing the other players by wiggling the paddle back and forth endlessly which is SOOO common with 2600 Warlords.

Once I get some of the other functionality working I plan to go back and look into backhanded catch.

 

The spark feature will be added - just not sure if it will be visible or if the bricks will just disappear. Visible would be better, but is not currently at the top of my todo list.