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All Aboard The FAILboat


Peter G

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Hey, everybody! Long time, no see!

 

Life caught up, and I fell out of working on things (literally. Every artistic endeavor I usually pursue stopped production). I figured I'd been goofing around enough, and wanted to get back in the swing.

 

So I decided to start with an Atari game. My Tower Of Pimps project isn't working quite right, but it's been so long, I lost the mentality that coding in bB requires. So I decided to start with something else.

 

(I wanted to post some kind of game because I'm aware of the number of people who start out and then bail when things get tricky. I wanted to show I was serious about working with the system and that I wouldn't be discouraged by the system limitations. I know I'll have more questions soon, and I just wanted to show some follow through.)

 

I wanted simple, but not too simple. I thought about making a version of the Fruit Ninja electronic game I have, but that's just a simple shooter -- slide horizontally, shoot. I wanted something a little better than that, something that wouldn't work easily, something took some effort.

 

So I decided to make an Atari version of my Linux game FAILboat. The original game was pretty simple -- you steered the boat past obstacles floating towards you, and you had so many lives to rack up the highest score you could. My twist with the game was currents -- your boat rarely if ever simply moved the way you wanted it to. The currents would change at random, and you had to compensate for that. So if you were being shifted up, you HAD to press down. And so on.

 

The Atari version brought me up against a very sharp limitation in the system, and it's not one that going assembly would fix. Simply put, the real estate on the Atari is very small. The Linux game was on a 600X800 screen, so there was plenty of room to adjust if things went awry or got tight. Not so here, the resolution just wouldn't allow it.

 

I made some changes to the play mechanics. I got rid of the "lives" thing and went with a straight set amount of time. I set up borders on the top and bottom of the screen you could drift into, which would freeze your score. While the original game had up to five obstacles appearing at once, I simply went with one here. I have tried, and no matter what, I hit the borders at least once in a while, and the obstacle, too. By going with a time limit instead of "How long can you make this torture last?", it lessens the game's frustration (I'm not trying to make the next Flappy Bird here).

 

Your score goes up for each machine cycle you don't hit anything. Colliding with the borders freezes your score, colliding with the other boat subtracts 3 for every machine cycle you are in contact (to keep it from bugging out, I put a check in there to make sure your score never goes below 10. Without it, it was possible to roll the score over and brag to your buddies, "I got 999,994 points! Top that!" Just trying to keep things fair). The fire button starts the game, and each game lasts a little over two minutes (seemed like the right amount of time). Standard up down left right. Unless I miss my guess, this is less than 1K of code.

 

And now, I present my first finished Atari game. What do you think, sirs?

FAILboat.bin

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My first thoughts are:

 

1. the control is too sensitive..needs a little drag to it

 

2. The object's that you are supposed to avoid path is to predictable..mix it up a little

 

3. I like the way you mixed up the attract of the player.

 

4. I know there is only so much you can do with 4K

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My first thoughts are:

 

1. the control is too sensitive..needs a little drag to it

 

2. The object's that you are supposed to avoid path is to predictable..mix it up a little

 

3. I like the way you mixed up the attract of the player.

 

4. I know there is only so much you can do with 4K

 

1) Yeah, they seemed a little touchy to me, but I just couldn't figure out how to stall it out without making everything stutter across the screen (working with game engines kind of spoils you). I thought of making the FAILboat's velocity less, so it wouldn't move so crazy, but doing so meant that, if you pushed down while being pushed up, you held still. Dodging the obstacle not only could get real nasty, but if you were being moved while stuck in the border, you were REALLY stuck. The extra makes things touchy, but it enables you to minimize your collision time.

 

2) Something to think about, but not quite sure what to do. In the Linux version, the currents affected those objects as well in later levels. But I don't feel there is enough space -- the ship will either miss you entirely or is guaranteed to hit. I felt players would have enough to worry about just trying to keep going correctly with the currents, making the obstacle ship unpredictable just seems like piling on.

 

3) Thank you. Like I said, it's a simple mechanic, but when it works, it works beautifully.

 

4) You aren't asking for miracles, just making suggestions that you think would help, and you're being very nice about it. And sometimes, yeah, the idea isn't feasible with limited space, but you don't always know until you give it a whirl. Remember, Star Castles was supposed to be impossible on the Atari 2600, but a way was eventually found. So please don't think I read your suggestions and went, "What do you want from me?!?"

 

Besides, I review homebrew games for Video Game Trader. I dish it out, I darn well better be able to take it. ;)

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