Dragon's Lair Like Game

[Primordial Ooze]

Would it be possible to program a Dragon's Lair like system where if the user presses the right direction it would take him to the next screen and if he doesn't it takes him to a death screen? I would imaging it would be very difficult but not impossible as it would require a lot of table data as well as timing coding. Any assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

Sincerely,

 

Primordial Ooze

[Sprybug]

Would it be possible to program a Dragon's Lair like system where if the user presses the right direction it would take him to the next screen and if he doesn't it takes him to a death screen? I would imaging it would be very difficult but not impossible as it would require a lot of table data as well as timing coding. Any assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

Sincerely,

 

Primordial Ooze

How good wood the graphics and animation have to be? That'd be the biggest obstacle for this type of game.

[yllawwally]

You would need to use something like andrew's chronocolour, with a resolution of 96x128. Digitized sound can be played, for example in the upgraded berzerk. I'm not sure if you can do sound and picture at the same time. And the size of the cart would quickly become a limiting factor, even the harmony has limits.

[+Gemintronic]

Are there any tutorials or documentation on the extra space in the Melody/Harmony?

[yllawwally]

The best harmony can do is 32k rom, with 128k rom on an upgraded harmony. Sounds is probably about 4k per second, and video I would think is about 20k per second(a very rough estimate).

 

These are forums with demo code

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/163495-harmony-dpc-programming/

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/163834-harmony-dpc-arm-programming/

[haroldoop]

I guess you'd have a few options if you wanted to do a Dragon's Lair clone for the Atari 2600:

1. Store the animations as low resolution video in the ROM, and reuse parts of the video over and over, in order to make it longer;
   
2. Find some way of generating the animations (or at least parts of them) procedurally, so you could fit more animations on the cartridge;
   
3. Cook up some custom hardware that would allow you to stream the video data from an SD card or something like that;
   
4. Forget about the video format and do the game the standard way, but make the gameplay rely a lot on memorization and timing.
   

Anyway, the end result would be a game that would have all of Dragon's Lair gameplay limitations, and none of its virtues... but, still, that would be OK as a tech demo.

[+save2600]

How good wood the graphics and animation have to be? That'd be the biggest obstacle for this type of game.

 

Hey, is that a woodchuck in your avatar?

[yllawwally]

Maybe you could use text? Make it a combination of a choose your own adventure/ dragons lair. That would allow you to save space. Another way might be to use the supercharger. It can load an unlimited amount of info. Each time a player chooses, you would have to load the data from a CD. Perhaps the CD can be played all the time, each time there is user input there is a time limit, so just force the player to wait that amount of time. Then when they choose display the winning or losing picture. The game would last no more than the length of time a cd plays( which is 70 minutes I think), but that might be a way to do it.

[+Propane13]

Well, how fun would this be?

 

I think what sold Dragon's Lair was all of the stuff going on, animation-wise.

Gameplay-wise, it kind of is a drag.

 

Here's an example of what it looks like without the animation stuff:

- a picture of a cat is on screen

- text: "You meet an angry cat."

- text: "Go up / left / right / down"

User presses the wrong way "You died!"

User presses the right way.. goes to next screen.

 

So, if someone just made some images with some text underneath, and some death images, you could have a cute little homage.

Would it be fun? I don't know. Maybe.

 

-John

[+Propane13]

Personally, I'd prefer a shadowgate-styled game.

[pacgreg]

I always thought jungle hunt was very dragon's lair-like. Just how you need the timing diwn to hit the buttons and such.

[Nukey Shay]

Well, how fun would this be?

 

I think what sold Dragon's Lair was all of the stuff going on, animation-wise.

Gameplay-wise, it kind of is a drag.

 

That is the correct answer. The whole point of LD games was that they used visuals that CG could not match at the time. This element would be completely lost if using lower resolution graphics. C64 DL sucked.

 

But anyway...

Apart from A/V data which would be impossible to get even remotely close to the arcade game, the rest of it would be pretty small. Just a few values for each sequence (entry delay value, correct joystick value, exit delay value). If the proper stick value is not initially used or not used between the entry and exit delays, you die.

[haroldoop]

Basically, the only possible justification for doing a Dragon's Lair clone for the Atari 2600 would be as a technical exercise, something you would do just to say "Hey, take a look at what I can do!"; Dragon's Lair itself has zero gameplay value.

[moycon]

C64 DL sucked.

 

Wow! I have fond memories of that game and thought it did a great job (at the time) for providing a fun DL experience at home.

 

It's funny you brought up C64 after someone mentioned a text version of Dragons Lair. I used to make choose your own adventure type text games on the C64 and Dragons Lair was one of them and it used the actual moves from the game! I still have it on a floppy somewhere I'm sure. I'll have to admit though, that one was pretty boring! GI Joe was much better!!

[Blacklight]

I made a pro wrestling game that was basically a text "Choose Your Own Adventure". I remember flow charting it for weeks to get in tons of variations and opponents. It ended up spanning multiple floppies.

[Ringman]

I'd like to defend these sorts of games. If you add a larger number of commands to input during each sequence, then play the thing with a dance-pad, these type of games become much more enjoyable. Try playing the segacd "Power Rangers" game on a dance pad, and you'll see what I mean. Games like DDR and Guitar-Hero, are simply Dragon's Lair games set to music! And look how popular those games are.

[haroldoop]

Just for the hell of it, I tried to see how such a game would look at a small resolution with limited colors:

http://www.haroldo-o...er-sms-0.01.zip

This one is for the Sega Master System; It plays a 64x48 2bpp video at 10fps. An Atari 2600 equivalent would probably look just as blocky (or less blocky, but shorter).

Edited September 22, 2012 by haroldoop

[NinjaFlicker]

If you're going to do this, take your cues from Ninja Gaiden, Scooby Doo, Dragon Ball Z, and minimalist art.

 

Because you have limited space to work with, play with camera movement (a basic scrolling sprite can be a slow pan), high contrast lighting that obscures memory eating details, and use things like eye movements /faces - they're easy to animate, and it's easy to invoke emotion with them. You can repeat basic animations like running, lightning, etc.

 

Also, remember that the first Dragon's Lair was more than just Simon says. The level design was tightly controlled, turning the art into a visual puzzle...

[Godzilla]

Search, somewhere I posted about this way back n there was even a 2600 screenshot of actual dl graphics; it can work, I believe, it would just take a lot of effort tho I don't know if it would have sound or not from a coding perspective.

[Crazy Climber]

Just do a hack of one of the swordquest games then slap a DL label on it to help sell it

[Godzilla]

Here you go, has a actual 2600 screenshot in it too.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/20679-the-time-has-come-for-atari-2600-dragons-lair/page__hl__%20dragons%20%20lair%20%20godzilla