atari2600land's Blog

I just got a chance to play this all the way through. Anyway here are my thoughts:

 

- I liked the easter egg screen.

 

- A lot of the mazes were really similar. Get crazy with it. Also, you might want to consider taking the best half of your mazes and having a contest similar to Comat Redux to get the other half. (I worded that really bad, but I think the message was conveyed.)

Contest page.

 

- I liked the actual engine of the game. I remember when you were working on "Ants" before, and people (inlcuding myself) were saying that they liked the premise and look, but the actual engine was too simple. I think you've gotten better at giving the player control of his character without just giving him control of his sprite (if that makes sense).

 

- I like how the game begins each level from a paused state. I had to leave the game for a few minutes to heat up some spaghetti, and was able to come right back.

 

- This is the kind of game where you could have a lot of people playing turn-based multiplayer. (This is kind of my solution to everything.) I think it would be worth cutting out music to include this. You could have it be up to eight players. You could have it be elimination based: start each player with a set number of lives. If they use all of them they're out. Last one left wins. Use the other sprite for lives.

 

Or you could have it be score based. Each player could have up to three chances at a level. With more points for beating on an earlier try and more points for beating levels (Something like 10 points for beating a level+the number of the level+9-(number of tries*3) Use the other sprite for some bonus items.

 

Or you could have some stuff set up to select from different options.

 

- In the one player mode, you could have an enemy that spawns from your spawn point a few seconds after you leave and chases you. The fire button could be used to lay mines.

 

- You asked about the speed. I'd prefer it faster. Maybe you cna use the difficulty switches to choose?

 

And a few questions I had:

 

- What are you planning on using the other sprite for?

 

- Are you planning any Atarivox support for saving games?

 

 

I think I remember you posted about losing a lot your code because of computer problems. I'm glad to see that didn't stop you from coding. I look forward to seeing what you do with this.

 

Good luck,

R. Jones

Great ideas!

- I just might have a contest.

- Right now, the left difficulty switch is used to toggle sub speeds. An H for Hard will appear throughout the regular game if the left difficulty switch is set on A.

- The computer problem you mentioned is that it died, so I had to get a new one. Unfortunately, the bBasic codes for Space Bacon & Ima Dyma were lost, but this is sort of like a new & improved Ima Dyma.

- I'll think about adding an enemy in there somewhere.

- As for AtariVox, I don't know what that is or whether bBasic programs can support it.

- And I think I will cut the music for a 2-player turn-based and/or simultaneous game. The music wasn't that good, anyway.

 

Thanks for the suggestions and compliments. You've given me a lot of stuff to keep me busy with this project.

-Chris