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Chaotic Grill (BurgerTime remake) in progress


splendidnut

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The designers of the Tron arcade cabinet had a solution to hunting the exact pixel perfect gaps between playfield blocks in the tank mini game that might work for ladders as well, but I already see some posters in the thread that may complain.

 

If you can't implement wider zones for the ladders, I dislike the idea of "snapping" the player to the ladder, because that creates an incentive for players to gain an advantage by always trying to climb early. "Snapping" to a grid also gives games a sloppy, jumpy, and inconsistent feel.

 

Perhaps if there isn't a ladder available, the player could continue to go the last known good direction that was pressed? That would allow players to press up or down before a ladder and "pixel perfect" ladder detection is no longer an issue.

 

"Sliding" to the ladders/platforms using a 3/4 pixel wide zone is one of the ideas I'm thinking about doing. It looks like the arcade version does "snapping" to each ladder rung, and "sliding" to a ladder when on a platform and that's probably what people are use to.

 

I believe I had wider zones on the ladders before the August 2018 builds... which people didn't seem to mind that the player could hop on the ladder earlier and climb offset to center.... But then there were issues with getting on the platforms... since they did not have the wider window. Which is due to the fact that I was/am using a trick to calculate whether the player Y coordinate is at a platform.

 

I basically rewrote that code this past March/August to the current implementation which is pixel perfect. To compensate, I implemented the "diagonals" of the Atari controller which some/most Atari games ignore. The code prioritizes the opposite axis to which the player is currently moving allowing easy turning when moving (i.e. if the player is moving right and pushes right/up, the player will turn onto the next available ladder going up).

 

I think the big issue comes when people use the joystick as if it were a 4-way arcade joystick... passing thru the center point when trying to turn. This is what I've noticed when I test the game out on an actually Atari. I believe this is the situation I need to handle better. This is probably where "sliding" should come into play, when the player starts to move from a standstill near an intersection.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I took a break from working on the flicker management and worked on some tweaks and improvements.

 

Changes:

  • Level layout fixes
  • Tweaked all of the chef animations and added chef throwing pepper animation
  • Fixed pepper spray collision boxes.
  • Fixed score resetting issue
  • Added floating score to squashed enemies
  • Added ability for enemies to climb back to level.

Enjoy.

chaoticGrill-2018-11-11.bin

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Thank you for the update! There are (as always) some things that occur to me:

- If you squash an enemy, there's now a display how many points you get for this. However it seems that those points aren't actually added to your score

- There's something wrong with the enemy spawn points. At least in the 3rd screen, where I usually follow a pattern in the arcade version that I go right and then up from the starting point, reaching the lower right burger. Around that burger is where I usually meet up with the first two enemies, and there's a way to defeat them without using any pepper. However, in your version, I already have my first enemy encounter while still being on the ladder reaching up to the lower right burger.

- If you've completed all the rounds, the game starts over, however, in the arcade version it gets harder this time, and Mr. Egg even joins the gang in the repetition of the first round. However, in your version, Mr. Egg is absent in that round.

 

But all in all, good update!

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Just wanted to chime in and say I'm really really hyped for this one! It's looking great!

 

Is the name "ChaoticGrill" set in stone? I rather liked this suggestion from waaay back, "HamburgerHavoc." :-D

 

I like it also, but it is a bit redolent of Hamburger Helper... :grin: I wonder if anyone else feels that way about it or if it just me. :?

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To my mind, the name Hamburger Havoc is a nice tip of the hat to the name BurgerTime.

 

By which I mean to say, if you'd never heard of this project before, and you heard the name "Hamburger Havoc" you'd immediately think, 'Oh! Must be a BurgerTime port!' Would you not? And, you want folks to make the association, right? :idea:

 

Another idea suggested back around page two was "BurgerTime Arcade." That's pretty much to the point... not to step on splendidnut's toes. ;)

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The name is not set in stone.

 

But I think Hamburger Havoc is a little overzealous:

 

 

havoc noun
  1. great destruction or devastation; ruinous damage.

Last I checked, the chef made burgers... didn't destroy them :)

At some point (in the Zeropage Homebrew stream featuring Chaotic Grill ) Thomas Jentzsch suggested Burger Chaos, which I like.

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Thank you for the update! There are (as always) some things that occur to me:

- If you squash an enemy, there's now a display how many points you get for this. However it seems that those points aren't actually added to your score

- There's something wrong with the enemy spawn points. At least in the 3rd screen, where I usually follow a pattern in the arcade version that I go right and then up from the starting point, reaching the lower right burger. Around that burger is where I usually meet up with the first two enemies, and there's a way to defeat them without using any pepper. However, in your version, I already have my first enemy encounter while still being on the ladder reaching up to the lower right burger.

- If you've completed all the rounds, the game starts over, however, in the arcade version it gets harder this time, and Mr. Egg even joins the gang in the repetition of the first round. However, in your version, Mr. Egg is absent in that round.

 

But all in all, good update!

 

1) Scoring squashed enemies is definitely working correctly... and is added to the score at the top immediately before the floating score disappears. It gets tricky to notice if burgers are also falling and bumping into one another.

 

2) It may not be the spawn points, but the fact that the enemies all spawn at the same time and start moving right as the level starts. I still need to add in spawn/start delays for them.

 

3) There are only 6 levels.... and hence only six sets of character initialization data. :)

 

The code only allows up to 4 enemies on a level; whereas, the arcade allows up to 6 (I believe). I'm pretty sure I don't have the available time to do all 6. I've set up a simple time sliced approach to handling enemy movement. Currently, only one enemy is allowed to move per frame, and so it takes 4 frames for all four enemies to move.

 

Overall, I'm thinking I'm going to differ quite a bit from the arcade here, since I'm thinking of adding in more level layouts. And I'll probably be letting you guys be the ones that design them :)

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The name is not set in stone.

 

But I think Hamburger Havoc is a little overzealous:

 

 

Last I checked, the chef made burgers... didn't destroy them :)

 

At some point (in the Zeropage Homebrew stream featuring Chaotic Grill ) Thomas Jentzsch suggested Burger Chaos, which I like.

 

It is an honor just to be considered!

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OK... thanks for the update! I didn't feel a great improvement in the player code now since I got used to the old way, but it definitely plays pretty smoothly.

As for the spawn points, I didn't realize you had reduced the number of enemies on screen. In this case of course it makes sense to balance this by making other things a bit harder, like the spawn delays. Right now I can't feel the real difficulty of the game because the enemies still have the habit of stopping in their tracks quite often.

 

Also, yes, I see it's true that the squashed enemies are in fact scored, I just didn't realize that this only happens when their score appears, which is a bit after they actually get hit by the burger parts. What definitely isn't being scored yet is the enemies' ride on a burger part.

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OK... thanks for the update! I didn't feel a great improvement in the player code now since I got used to the old way, but it definitely plays pretty smoothly.

As for the spawn points, I didn't realize you had reduced the number of enemies on screen. In this case of course it makes sense to balance this by making other things a bit harder, like the spawn delays. Right now I can't feel the real difficulty of the game because the enemies still have the habit of stopping in their tracks quite often.

 

Also, yes, I see it's true that the squashed enemies are in fact scored, I just didn't realize that this only happens when their score appears, which is a bit after they actually get hit by the burger parts. What definitely isn't being scored yet is the enemies' ride on a burger part.

 

It seems there was a little bit of wackiness with the scoring of the squashed enemies... I've fixed it so that it lines up with the floating score being displayed (and extended how long the floating score is shown). It'll be in the next build.

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BurgerCide: Death by Burger

 

In a world where undead condiments prey upon those who would use them for garnish, one brave chef must harness his years of culinary training, and summon the courage to SANDWICH them out of existence. YOU are Peter Pepper. Turn your enemies into hamburger meat, before they eat you for LUNCH!

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