Tron Light Cycles for Colecovision - Work in progress

[+Tarzilla]

I've been playing around with creating levels. I'll be sending you some in a few days.

 

A technical question you may have answered but are you compressing the levels in your code or are they stored as we see them?

[parkfun101]

I've been playing around with creating levels. I'll be sending you some in a few days.

 

A technical question you may have answered but are you compressing the levels in your code or are they stored as we see them?

Actually, I have a function that grabs 1/4th of the characters from the screen and quickly pastes them in a mirror like effect on the other three portions of the screen. For example, for a game like Pac-Man, if I needed a total of 100 dots on the screen, I'd just draw 25 dots and have this function duplicate the other 75 for me. The function also has the option to just duplicate vertically or horizontally instead of just both. For some of my levels, instead of having to use 12 lines of code to draw the lines for the level, I only need 3. This isn't really compression just a code trick. This code wouldn't be helpful for games where there is no "mirror" of the graphics however.

[mightywiz]

how about a tradition snake game mode where the light trail disappears for a longer game play.

 

that would also be a good place for your sideguns.

Edited January 28, 2015 by mightywiz

[parkfun101]

how about a tradition snake game mode where the light trail disappears for a longer game play.

 

that would also be a good place for your sideguns.

Well, I do have the Line Destroyer weapon. If you touch it, it destroys the line for which its color matches. It is a fun thing to use to get out of trouble spots and makes the gameplay last much longer!

[parkfun101]

Tarzilla has been working with me on some ideas for the game. One of them was for the Enhanced mode to have walls that have some of the symbols and shapes that the movie had. I have now added this to the game for the Enhanced mode. Here are some examples:

 

New Outer Walls for Enhanced mode: (inner walls may change as well, see 2nd image)

 

Outer Walls with an example of what I may do for the Inner walls in Enhanced mode:

 

NOTE: The multicolor font is ONLY for Enhanced mode. The Arcade mode still has the basic blue text.

 

[thevnaguy]

Tarzilla has been working with me on some ideas for the game. One of them was for the Enhanced mode to have walls that have some of the symbols and shapes that the movie had. I have now added this to the game for the Enhanced mode. Here are some examples:

 

New Outer Walls for Enhanced mode: (inner walls may change as well, see 2nd image)

 

Outer Walls with an example of what I may do for the Inner walls in Enhanced mode:

 

NOTE: The multicolor font is ONLY for Enhanced mode. The Arcade mode still has the basic blue text.

 

Oh man this is freakin awesome!!!!!! Take my Money!!!!

[Kiwi]

Dude!! This is looking mighty awesome!!! I'm definitely in for one, once this is done.

[NIAD]

Now that Opcode is back, I wonder if he has noticed this seeing the big fan of Tron that he is.

[Rey]

Love the new walls! Now I'm interested =)

[parkfun101]

This is just a thought.

 

How about another object that, if touched, swaps 2 bikes with each other. This would change the location and direction of the bike that touches it with another random bike on the screen. You have to be careful using this object, because you could swap with a player that is trapped (since you don't know which one you'll be swapped with). Also, the CPU can use the weapon as well which could make for some interesting matches. This would be different than teleport since you kind of know where you'll end up. Teleport also doesn't change your direction, only position, so it will be a bit different. I may try this out and see how well it goes. If it is fun to use, I'll add it.

[parkfun101]

02-11-2015 Update:

I was thinking about it and I realized that the Arcade and the movie have the bike colors reversed. In the Arcade, your bike is blue and the enemies are yellow. In the movie, the good guys are light colors like yellow, gold, and red and the bad guys are blue. For the enhanced mode only, I decided to do somewhat of a mix. I made P1 be yellow and P2 be red. The bad guys are blue, green and magenta. I would have used all blue, but it just looks more colorful to have it this way. I tried it just blue and it kinda looks dull since the walls are already blue. I also changed their second color to white since the movie has it as a metallic white color for the bikes.

 

ENHANCED COOP mode: shows P1(yellow) and P2(red)

ENHANCED P1 mode:

Updated Title screen with score display like the Arcade has and Tron style lettering

 

A.I. update:

I've been concentrating on A.I. before I move on to more levels, weapons, obstacles, etc. For the defensive portion of the A.I., I've added the ability for the CPU bikes to avoid head on collisions with other CPU bikes. This basically makes the computer "less stupid".

A.I. Offensive moves:
Offensive moves will occur after about the 3rd level of play so that a beginning player will have some time to learn how the computer plays before just getting crushed by the computer. There will be about 5 or more different A.I. moves/patterns that will be randomized.

The first move I've created is what I call the kamikaze. It uses the Recognizer's code for finding a player. By doing this, it seems somewhat random in how the bike moves. It generally tries to move toward you, but not every 8 pixels. Sometimes, I will be going by a player with kamikaze mode on and he won't move toward me at all, other times, he does step patterns towards me, other times he suddenly cuts me off and crushes my bike completely, and other times he crashes into me destroying both bikes. I love this move due to its random behavior.

 

A.I. Difficulty - Arcade mode:

In the Arcade, it starts out with 1 bike going a medium speed and then goes to 3 bikes at fast speed with a hard difficulty. I've decided to keep it that way for my Arcade mode just to keep it true to the arcade.

 

A.I. Difficulty - Enhanced mode: (this isn't final, some things may change)

Level
1st - 1 bike on medium speed.
2nd - 2/3 bikes (depending on mode) - 1 bike is fast, the other 2 are medium speed
3rd - 2 bikes fast, other 1 is medium speed

At this point they will be only using defensive moves - Now we start on Offensive moves

4th - All bikes fast - 1 bike will use offensive moves
5th - 2 bikes will use offensive moves
6th - All bikes will use offensive moves (highest difficulty)

What's next:

1) More CPU Offensive moves:
In the Arcade, bikes never change speed during a round. ArcadeUSA was at my house about a month ago and when we were playing, he did a step-pattern at slow speed. I tried to cut him off and right before I could, he went into turbo speed crashing my bike. I told him, "I'm adding that to the game" since it worked so well. One of the randomized cpu offensive moves will be the speed boost which will speed up as you get close.

Another cpu offensive move I plan on working on tonight is the cut off where the cpu will detect that you are in either the left or right 1/3 of the screen and tries to close you into that small area. All offensive moves due a "Can I Turn" test to make sure they won't just crash right when they turn.

2) Remove the flashing laser - After testing with this, I've realized it is not easy for the cpu to test for it and I'd rather concentrate on objects that the players can control.

3) Add the temporary Invincibility weapon - This will allow you to break through lines for about 3 seconds or so. This could get you out of a tough place and allow you to crash through enemies.

More info to come.

[Tron Unit]

So... when can I order one?

[parkfun101]

Instead of the Invincibility option, I had a similar idea. I call it Power Boost. It is the fastest move in the game. It will push the player about 6-8 spaces or so spaces instantly while keeping your line (unlike teleport). The player is invincible during this quick move and will destroy any player or line in their path. From a coding standpoint, it would be fairly simple and the CPU bikes would not have to be specially coded for it. Plus, it would not require any special timers.

 

See the one on the right. That is the proposed weapon. I still may add more weapons as well, but I wanted something a little unique for this game that wouldn't take up too much file space. The white << icon is the Power Boost weapon. The image shows the Before you touch the << on top and the After you touch the << on bottom. In this example, the magenta player hits the Power Boost rocketing them through the green player's line and crashing the gold player at the same time.

Let me know what you all think.

Edited February 12, 2015 by parkfun101

[+Tarzilla]

Instead of the Invincibility option, I had a similar idea. I call it Power Boost. It is the fastest move in the game. It will push the player about 6-8 spaces or so spaces instantly while keeping your line (unlike teleport). The player is invincible during this quick move and will destroy any player or line in their path. From a coding standpoint, it would be fairly simple and the CPU bikes would not have to be specially coded for it. Plus, it would not require any special timers.

 

See the one on the right. That is the proposed weapon. I still may add more weapons as well, but I wanted something a little unique for this game that wouldn't take up too much file space. The white << icon is the Power Boost weapon. The image shows the Before you touch the << on top and the After you touch the << on bottom. In this example, the magenta player hits the Power Boost rocketing them through the green player's line and crashing the gold player at the same time.

 

 

 

 

Let me know what you all think.

Interesting idea, care would have to be taken to not put the power up too close to the outside walls. Is the direction of the << signifigant? If it is pointing left do you have to hit it traveling in the direction of the << or if you hit a << traveling downward it would do a left turn and the teleport?

Edited February 12, 2015 by Tarzilla

[parkfun101]

You're right, I would just have to make sure it doesn't push someone into the outside walls. The direction arrow will change your direction and speed boost you at the same time. Once the speed boost is used, it is gone. I'm going to play around with this to replace the flashing laser that I just didn't think worked well with the game. I'll let you all know how it goes.

[parkfun101]

I think I will make this speed boost you into whichever direction you happen to be going. That would make it more fun because you don't know how the player will use it....plus that's smaller file size which is cool.

[parkfun101]

Update: My tester, Aaron, who has helped test on other projects for me, tried out the game yesterday. Together we found some bugs and did some testing playing on blueMSX using SNES, NES controllers and the keyboard. We noticed we would crash fairly easily when we used gamepads (NES / SNES controllers). After some thinking we wondered, if you're going UP and press a diagonal, perhaps it should turn left or right? I decided to implement this change to see how it would play, but before I did, I tested just to see if the Arcade version on MAME does this, and to my surprise, it does. If you hold UP LEFT, for example, the bike will make a stair like pattern going up left! I modified my code to have this feature which should make playing more responsive especially for those of you who use gamepads like Genesis controllers.

 

Watching Aaron play made me realize that the game is getting good in terms of fun gameplay and smart A.I. He actually said, "The game is getting good." which of course made me jump up and down with excitement just like when I watched him and his family play Tank Challenge together. Currently, I still just have 4 levels built for testing. Level 1 has Line Destroyers, Level 2 has teleports, Level 3 has the new POWER Boost and Level 4 has the escape level with the Recognizers.
We were both having fun while he was playing and I got to show him the Kamikaze A.I. feature which he thought was pretty unpredictable and fun to play against. At first he couldn't get through the 1st 3 levels without dying. His second try, he got all the way through and it looped back and then he got to level 2 again and died(with no A.I. Offensive moves active). We played against each other and had some fun with the limited amount of levels I have currently. He also felt that removing the flashing laser and replacing it with the Power Boost was a good idea. He liked how you could escape through lines or crash bikes using Power Boost. Another note he said was that he liked how the bike's windshield flashes. ArcadeUSA also liked this "feature" that was actually a bug, but kind of looks cool.

 

Some things I'm planning to add due to what I saw during testing:

1) DONE - Angles now allow you to turn like how the Arcade controls work and makes using gamepads easier to control and much more responsive.

2) Continue feature - I want this in case there are a bunch of levels, that way you can get to the later levels without having to start from level 1 each time.

3) (maybe) A Bonus stage every 5th stage or so. This one, will be similar to the Mario Bros. style Bonus stage where you have about 30 seconds to collect disks before time runs out and there are no enemies to worry about. With lines, it will be a bit tricky to get all the disks since you can't go back over your own path. This should give you a nice break from the action before you go on. In coding terms, it shouldn't add to the filesize much.

4) Due to the different A.I.'s, Defensive coding, special weapons, and obstacles, the game may not need anymore A.I. coding. When Aaron was playing one time, the Kamikaze A.I. was coded for just 1 bike and he thought it was very unpredictable and couldn't imagine all the bikes having offensive A.I.'s....He thought it was tough enough.

 

5) The Difficulty of the game will still increase the way I said in earlier posts, it will be gradual so players can get used to the CPU bikes and then in later levels, players will get a surprise when the cpu starts making moves that are unexpected and uppredictable.

 

6) I may add a Difficulty setting > EASY NORMAL. Easy will never have Offensive A.I. moves like Block-In or Kamikaze.

 

At this point, I'm still very confident that the game could have at least 50 levels.

current filesize: 26,219 out of the max of 32,768

[parkfun101]

UPDATE for 03/03/2015:

New features:

1) Continue (infinite continues, but your score starts at 0 after you continue)

2) New Colors for specific levels like Recognizer and BONUS levels

3) BONUS levels - There will be 1 every 5 levels. Collect all the disks before time runs out. If you collect all the disks before time runs out, you get 100 bonus for each remaining second on the clock. If you crash, you just go on to the next level (no life lost). In 1P VS 2P mode, this will be similar to Tank Challenge's Save POWs mode. Whoever collects the most disks wins. The only difference is, if you crash, you still lose, even if you have collected more disks than your opponent. Another difference, you have to still avoid hitting your own line, which makes collecting a bit more interesting.

1P BONUS level example (These screens will be green ....the regular levels are still blue)

1P VS 2P BONUS level example: (The idea for this level came from Tarzilla and this would be a later level since it has so many walls)

4) On 1P or COOP games, you will have a "LEVEL" displayed on the right side of the screen to let you know how many levels you have beaten.

5) POWER BOOST icon flashes which looks cool.

6) POWER BOOST now has a cool sound effect and pauses for a second before moving to add to the effect and match the sound effect. Aaron tested this past weekend and really liked the way it works now.

7) Major bug was fixed that caused weird graphics to be displayed randomly around the screen after about 5mins... the fix actually reduced the file size of the game by almost 2Kbs! (Since the MAX is 32Kb....that is pretty big!) It had to do with me trying to print long scores to the screen. My score allows up to 7 digits like the Arcade game does. The change did not need any special include files which greatly reduced the file size.
8 ) There are now 11 levels in the game including the Recognizer level and I still have over 5000 bytes remaining to add more levels (more than I expected).
9) The A.I. is now coded to change as you play and will do new moves later on in the levels. If you think the game is easy within the first 3 levels, just wait, it changes....and changes....etc.

What's next?
A] For POWER BOOST, I was thinking....if you hit the icon moving slow, it should only move like 4 or so spaces....hit it fast and it should move about 6 or so. This could help you time how to get out of a maze and give you more control.
B] MORE LEVELS - (If you are interested in creating a level to add to the game, PLEASE do it soon )
C] A.I. - I've got a couple ideas of some A.I. elements I may want to add

 

When will it be done?
This game has taken more time than I previously expected due to work being very busy. I'm in no rush to hurry up and finish working on the game so my plan is to have it done by either the end of March or April....probably no later than that unless something comes up. I'd say the game is 90% done. I really just need to add more levels and do a bunch more testing....anything else would just be extra.

The game is currently at 27,192 bytes out of 32,768 bytes max.

[Pixelboy]

This is shaping up to be the most feature-packed light cycle game on the planet.

[parkfun101]

Thank you Pixelboy, that means a lot coming from you! :-D

I think the BONUS stages really help the game, you go from battling enemies, to battling the clock every 5th stage. It changes up the way you have to think if you're going for the high score. Since you can't back track, it makes it fun. Some of the BONUS levels will probably have the same power ups as the regular game just to make things even more interesting.

[+Tarzilla]

I think we will all agree, no rush, I'll wait 6 weeks or 6 months. Like Pixelboy says, in its current state it is already the best Light Cycle on any platform.

 

Hopefully the other iconic moving obstacle we discussed can make it in.

[Bodyshots]

Take my money now… Can I begin with payments?

[parkfun101]

Thanks Tarzilla, you guys are helping me make this game much better than I originally envisioned.

[+cmart604]

Wow! Is this looking fantastic or what? Can't wait to play this one

[parkfun101]

Quick update: 03/05/2015

1) POWER BOOST can now go either 5 or 7 spaces depending on what speed the bike is going.

 

2) New obstacle for certain stages: Orb - If an Orb is touched, all bikes temporarily can not produce a line. This causes some strange matches. The example below has a bunch of Orbs. I will probably use less and in some cases the orbs can help you since there will be a bunch of missing lines from the enemies. This plays MUCH differently than the line destroyer weapon. Best of all, to code this only took less then 100 bytes.