Pattern to Kaboom?

[flammingcowz]

In the manual for Kaboom! it says that there is a pattern that if you figure it out makes the game easier. I can play it until the highest speed and end up losing all of my lives. Is there really a pattern? And what is it?

[+DamonicFury]

Is the manual referring to the 8 different 'waves' in Kaboom? The bombs do fall at different speeds in each wave, and it does help (a little) to anticipate the changes in speed. As you probably know, after successfully completing a wave, the next one is a bit faster until you get to the 8th wave, which repeats endlessly. And if you drop a bomb, you go back to the previous, slower wave. This is the only 'pattern' I'm aware of in Kaboom.

[keilbaca]

I've played this game a lot, and I do think there is a pattern. I've yet to figure it out, just because the game is going pretty fast, but I did notice on certain runs, on certain drops, the pattern is always either an easy one or a difficult one. Is there one there? Possibly. I haven't been able to figure it out.

[SoundGammon]

...there is a pattern to each wave. The bombs always fall a certain way each wave...hit reset and press the fire button on the first wave and watch how the bombs fall, hit reset again and repeat, you'll see the same pattern for the first wave.

[Atarian7]

There are several patterns that once memorized make it easier to play. But it will sometimes throw in

a variation of certain patterns to make it more difficult.

 

The first and easiest pattern is the one where it just goes back and forth across the whole screen.

 

Another pattern is when it drops two, goes to the right drops two, goes back to the left drops two for about 4 to 6 times. There are many variations on this pattern some easier, some more difficult.

 

There are more but I find them too difficult to explain.

 

Keep trying really hard and you'll figure out how to play level 8. It took me a few days to be able to play it and it took a few weeks until I was able to get a score above 150,000.

[Dino]

I'm amazed that the bombs don't fall in a random pattern. Surely that would not have been too hard to program and would make the game more interesting long term....

[+Random Terrain]

I'm amazed that the bombs don't fall in a random pattern. Surely that would not have been too hard to program and would make the game more interesting long term....

 

That's the main thing I don't like Kaboom. I don't want repeated patterns. You can't keep from memorizing certain patterns, even if you don't want to memorize them. As I've said about a billion times before, many Activision games are pretty to look at, but too many of them seem to be devoid of randomness.

[Atarian7]

I'm amazed that the bombs don't fall in a random pattern. Surely that would not have been too hard to program and would make the game more interesting long term....

 

It does have randomness to a certain extent. The combination of patterns going from one to another

in different sequences. And it sometimes throws in little wrinkles to the patterns that you have to be

ready for at all times.

[128bytes]

I'm amazed that the bombs don't fall in a random pattern. Surely that would not have been too hard to program and would make the game more interesting long term....

 

That's the main thing I don't like Kaboom. I don't want repeated patterns. You can't keep from memorizing certain patterns, even if you don't want to memorize them. As I've said about a billion times before, many Activision games are pretty to look at, but too many of them seem to be devoid of randomness.

 

The thing I really like about Random Terrain is that he is random about anything except his defense of randomness as it comes to playability -- in that area, he is very consistent (that is genuinely meant as a compliment, RT - I respect consistency of purpose, and standing up for what you believe in, and you do both)

 

The thing I really like about Kaboom! is the exclamation point. Beyond that, I love the look of the game - it was the first Atari game I ever owned that was great looking and great playing, and wasn't a "looks almost as great as the arcade" kind of great -- it was great standing all on its own, and it was the ultimate best version of the game.

 

The other thing I really like about Kaboom! is that it plays better on real hardware, as opposed to an emulator, than any other game. The fast twitch action of a (working and well maintained) VCS paddle playing Kaboom! has yet to be replicated anywhere.

 

Lastly, I really like how it is a really tight game - single purpose, only 2k code size, easy to figure out, easy to learn, hard to master (yes, even without total randomness ). Also, the lack of total randomness gives some reward to sticking with the game and practicing - it still gets so hard so quickly that even knowing the patterns doesn't give a massive, original arcade Pac-Man sized, level of advantage.

Edited April 27, 2012 by 128bytes

[+SpiceWare]

I'm amazed that the bombs don't fall in a random pattern. Surely that would not have been too hard to program and would make the game more interesting long term....

 

There's no such thing as random to the Atari (and computers in general), so we use things like an LFSR to generate a sequence of numbers that appear to be random, but really aren't. The Atari has limited resources, so most games used an 8-bit LFSR, which means the sequence repeats after 255 numbers have been retrieved. However, depending upon how the LFSR is coded, there could be fewer numbers before the sequence repeats.

 

You can check out the Kaboom source code to see how they implemented their random number generator:

NextRandom
  lsr randomSeed
  rol
  eor randomSeed
  lsr
  lda randomSeed
  bcs .leaveNextRandom
  ora #%01000000
  sta randomSeed
.leaveNextRandom
  rts

 

I plugged that LFSR into my C= 128 using it's built in monitor, and wrote a quick BASIC program to call it. I found that Kaboom's LFSR repeats after 127 numbers.

 

In my Harmony games, Frantic and Space Rocks, I use a 32-bit LFSR (specifically the 32 bit Galois LFSR). It's sequence repeats after 4,294,967,295 numbers have been generated.

[atari181]

I'm amazed that the bombs don't fall in a random pattern. Surely that would not have been too hard to program and would make the game more interesting long term....

 

That's the main thing I don't like Kaboom. I don't want repeated patterns. You can't keep from memorizing certain patterns, even if you don't want to memorize them. As I've said about a billion times before, many Activision games are pretty to look at, but too many of them seem to be devoid of randomness.

If it was Elliot dropping Reese's pieces to ET you like it !

[Pioneer4x4]

The thing I really like about Kaboom! is the exclamation point.

[+SpiceWare]

I found another LFSR that has a sequence twice as long as the original routine used in Kaboom. It's the same size, so I just replaced the original routine via Stella and saved out the hacked version.

 

kaboom_newrandom.a26

[devwebcl]

I'm amazed that the bombs don't fall in a random pattern. Surely that would not have been too hard to program and would make the game more interesting long term....

 

There's no such thing as random to the Atari (and computers in general), so we use things like an LFSR to generate a sequence of numbers that appear to be random, but really aren't. The Atari has limited resources, so most games used an 8-bit LFSR, which means the sequence repeats after 255 numbers have been retrieved. However, depending upon how the LFSR is coded, there could be fewer numbers before the sequence repeats.

 

You can check out the Kaboom source code to see how they implemented their random number generator:

NextRandom
  lsr randomSeed
  rol
  eor randomSeed
  lsr
  lda randomSeed
  bcs .leaveNextRandom
  ora #%01000000
  sta randomSeed
.leaveNextRandom
  rts

 

I plugged that LFSR into my C= 128 using it's built in monitor, and wrote a quick BASIC program to call it. I found that Kaboom's LFSR repeats after 127 numbers.

 

In my Harmony games, Frantic and Space Rocks, I use a 32-bit LFSR (specifically the 32 bit Galois LFSR). It's sequence repeats after 4,294,967,295 numbers have been generated.

 

could you bee a little more explicit in the algorithm ?

 

Does it mean that every 128 bombs will fall in the same position ?

[+SpiceWare]

I can't tell you that without looking at Kaboom's source code in more depth, and I'm not inclined to do so at the moment as I'm busy working on Space Rocks.

 

As a guess, the random numbers would be used to position each bomb relative to the bomb before it, so you might get a sequence like this:

bomb1x = starting position

bomb2x = bomb1x + 10

bomb3x = bomb2x - 7

bomb4x = bomb3x + 5

 

the +10, -7 and +5 would be derived from the random numbers, and because the numbers repeat after 127, you'll see that same +10 -7 +5 sequence 127 bombs later.

 

However, Kaboom "wastes" random numbers while waiting for you to hit fire to start the next wave, so if you just finished a 10 bomb wave, instead of the next bomb sequence starting with the 11th random number it'll get something else. The "wasting" is why each game starts out different, but over time you'll notice patterns.

 

The "wasting" trick based on human input is used to help make games appear to be random. One way Kaboom could have made it more random would be to do something like "waste" a random number ever time the bucket's X position was an even number. The player's input would cause the sequence to change, and it's unlikely they'd repeat the exact even/odd X sequence of X positions.

Edited April 28, 2012 by SpiceWare

[DEBRO]

Hi there,

 

In the manual for Kaboom! it says that there is a pattern that if you figure it out makes the game easier. I can play it until the highest speed and end up losing all of my lives. Is there really a pattern? And what is it?

 

This may be referencing the pattern David Crane and Al Miller talk about in Stella at 20: Volume 2. They mention that you are basically following or repeating the bomber's movement. I never really thought about that until watching that episode.