Would it be feasible to fix Cosmic Ark?

[Butt_Rogers]

I'm a big fan of flying saucers. I've watched the entirety of Lost In Space, I love Forbidden Planet, my favorite Twilight Zone episodes are the ones where they reuse the C57D saucer props from Forbidden Planet.

So basically I'm just extremely drawn to Cosmic Ark, and I like the game play that's there, but it's broken.

The Game:

You start out shooting meteors approaching the fixed mother ship from 4 directions. You point the joystick/d-pad in the direction you want to fire. Very simple.

Next screen the mother ship is above the planet where two little beasties roam about. You depart from the mother ship in a smaller flying saucer to abduct the beasties, trying to make it back to the mother ship before more meteors arrive, and starting in the 2nd world, avoiding planetary laser defenses. You use up your fuel when firing in space, and when hit by a meteor. You regain fuel by abducting beasties. Your mini saucer can get destroyer without a loss of fuel.

Ok, well that sounds pretty fun.

The Problem:

The problem is that the meteor shooting stages get way too fast, way too soon. By the 6th or 7th world (known as the PacMan Planet because the beasts look like pacmen with eyes & legs), or soon after, it becomes quite literally impossible.

The only way to get an impressive high score in this game is to cheat. You pick up one beastie on Planet 2, defend against meteors in space, then when you're back on Planet 2 to try and pick up the second beastie, you let your mini UFO get blasted by the planetary defenses thereby releasing your beastie back onto the planet - after already gaining fuel from it. Thus you can enter a never ending loop on Planet 2 where you derive most of your points from shooting meteors and the difficulty never increases. This is mind numbing tedious but it's the only way to a really impressive high score. If you see any really high scores listed, this was the trick they used. I refuse to do this as it's just tedious and not fun at all.

The Solution?

The meteor stage should get capped in difficulty/speed when it gets going really fast. Human reflexes simply don't scale the way the difficulty does. To up the difficulty, the speed of the planetary laser defenses should increase. In fact, they already do, but I have no idea what they do after the PacMan planet so they might need to be tweaked.

I feel like with a little experimentation you could reach a level of difficulty where there was an ever present challenge, that sweet spot where you can rack up impressive scores and have a lot of fun but inevitably reach game over.

As it is, without using the cheat, my high scores will always be around 10500. Forever. This isn't just about high scores though. I think the abduction stage likely does get more challenging, and more fun, in later worlds that are simply unreachable due to the scaling of the difficulty in the meteor stages.

Would it be feasible to fix Cosmic Ark?

I think this game could get a whole new lease on life just by capping the speed of the meteor stages. That might be all it takes to make this game far more enjoyable. But is that sort of hack feasible?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I had this game back then. And yes, it the meteor shower becomes too hard eventually. I even used some photo sensors which triggered relays which handled the joystick to get a few stages further. Because I really wanted to find all those little creatures. But eventually the relays became too slow and I increased the voltage to make them faster. But even then, I never managed to get through.

 

Fortunately I have disassembled the game some years ago, so a hack is be pretty easy.

 

So...how much slower should we make them? Currently (for NTSC), the speed starts with 624 (regular) or 752 (advanced) and is increased by 16 with each level. Therefore, after 8 levels, a regular game becomes as fast as an advanced game starts.

 

The speed difference may seem low, but this is only the initial speed when the meteor enters the screen. While it is moving, the speed is decreased by a constant value (24 vertical, 8 horizontal) with each frame. This means, a slow moving meteor will be slowed down over much more frames before it hits the ship than a fast one. And effectively the player has much more time to react.

 

Anyway, if I would reduce the speed increase per level from 16 to 8, the speed would only accelerate half as fast as now. So you can play twice as many level before the meteor showers become too fast.

 

Please check the attached ROM and let me know how it works for you.

Cosmik Arc (slower meteors hack) (NTSC).bin

[+save2600]

Jeez, and here I thought all these years that Cosmic Ark was damn near perfect! Love that you rigged photo sensors to "cheat" TJ!

 

This is NOT the kind of game that should last for too long anyway. Not like it's a planetary expedition/military/strategy/RPG game. Pure arcade action that relies on reflexes to see who can get a high score within an appropriate amount of time! Always felt that since it strays from such a simplistic arcade game and has you picking up little beasties to return to your "vault", is a bonus and a clever way to build on an already great game.

 

btw: how many different little beasties are there? always assumed unlimited or repeated. No true ending to the game... just like Space Zap!

[+RichG1972]

I'm a big fan of flying saucers. I've watched the entirety of Lost In Space, I love Forbidden Planet, my favorite Twilight Zone episodes are the ones where they reuse the C57D saucer props from Forbidden Planet.

 

So basically I'm just extremely drawn to Cosmic Ark, and I like the game play that's there, but it's broken.

 

The Game:

 

You start out shooting meteors approaching the fixed mother ship from 4 directions. You point the joystick/d-pad in the direction you want to fire. Very simple.

 

Next screen the mother ship is above the planet where two little beasties roam about. You depart from the mother ship in a smaller flying saucer to abduct the beasties, trying to make it back to the mother ship before more meteors arrive, and starting in the 2nd world, avoiding planetary laser defenses. You use up your fuel when firing in space, and when hit by a meteor. You regain fuel by abducting beasties. Your mini saucer can get destroyer without a loss of fuel.

 

Ok, well that sounds pretty fun.

 

The Problem:

 

The problem is that the meteor shooting stages get way too fast, way too soon. By the 6th or 7th world (known as the PacMan Planet because the beasts look like pacmen with eyes & legs), or soon after, it becomes quite literally impossible.

 

The only way to get an impressive high score in this game is to cheat. You pick up one beastie on Planet 2, defend against meteors in space, then when you're back on Planet 2 to try and pick up the second beastie, you let your mini UFO get blasted by the planetary defenses thereby releasing your beastie back onto the planet - after already gaining fuel from it. Thus you can enter a never ending loop on Planet 2 where you derive most of your points from shooting meteors and the difficulty never increases. This is mind numbing tedious but it's the only way to a really impressive high score. If you see any really high scores listed, this was the trick they used. I refuse to do this as it's just tedious and not fun at all.

 

The Solution?

 

The meteor stage should get capped in difficulty/speed when it gets going really fast. Human reflexes simply don't scale the way the difficulty does. To up the difficulty, the speed of the planetary laser defenses should increase. In fact, they already do, but I have no idea what they do after the PacMan planet so they might need to be tweaked.

 

I feel like with a little experimentation you could reach a level of difficulty where there was an ever present challenge, that sweet spot where you can rack up impressive scores and have a lot of fun but inevitably reach game over.

 

As it is, without using the cheat, my high scores will always be around 10500. Forever. This isn't just about high scores though. I think the abduction stage likely does get more challenging, and more fun, in later worlds that are simply unreachable due to the scaling of the difficulty in the meteor stages.

 

Would it be feasible to fix Cosmic Ark?

 

I think this game could get a whole new lease on life just by capping the speed of the meteor stages. That might be all it takes to make this game far more enjoyable. But is that sort of hack feasible?

Ummmmm that's why the game has several variations for different difficulty levels. There is nothing to fix. Even when I played this game in 1985 it was a fun game as it is, a game is SUPPOSED to get harder as it progresses, it's not supposed to REMAIN simple unless you're on a "kiddie level" like in Crystal Castles. If a person can't handle a game that gets harder as it progresses then move on to an easier game, also stay away from Spider Fighter because when you hit the Banana stage the action gets INCREDIBLY fast.

 

Games that get faster as the game gets further into the gameplay is mostly a test of skill, and if you play it enough times you master them as I have, the games that get fast are the ones that HONE your skill over time, if the games stayed slow with every level what would be the fun in that? Heck even in MOUSE TRAP the cats get faster as the game gets further in, but I've already flipped the score clean back to ZERO on that game, but anyway there is not a single thing wrong with Cosmic Ark, it's just a challenging game pure and simple.

[+Nathan Strum]

I had this game back then. And yes, it the meteor shower becomes too hard eventually. I even used some photo sensors which triggered relays which handled the joystick to get a few stages further. Because I really wanted to find all those little creatures. But eventually the relays became too slow and I increased the voltage to make them faster. But even then, I never managed to get through.

 

Best. Peripheral. Ever.

[+xucaen]

This is just the way Atari games are. Take Yars' Revenge for example. Considered to be one of the best releases for the 2600 and it eventually will get too fast to play - that is the fun and the challenge. If you are playing real hardware on CRT TV you can get pretty far. But on modern TV, the lag time time will make it nearly impossible to get a good high score.

[Butt_Rogers]

Please check the attached ROM and let me know how it works for you.

The slower meteors hack definitely helped! I thought what I had been seeing was "PacMan Planet". Nope. There's an actual PacMan Planet where the beasties look exactly like PacMan. That's amazing! But by that point the laser defenses are pretty much one continuous bar of death that never stops and getting past them is pure luck...

 

I tried again used save state (I don't usually like to use it) to get past the PacMan Planet, just to see what's next, and the next beastie is the first beastie you encounter in the game, so the game does "wrap around", with the PacMan beastie being the final one before it loops. The terrain colors do seem to change though.

 

And replying to a few of the other comments, yes I know arcade games are supposed to get harder, a lot harder, perhaps to the point of being unplayable. But for me this just happens too fast in Cosmic Ark :/ ... If you can beat a level, the next speed/difficulty level should make you go "I bet I can beat this with enough practice!" not "WELP. No mortal being can get past this." Of course that's just my opinion though...

[Thomas Jentzsch]

But by that point the laser defenses are pretty much one continuous bar of death that never stops and getting past them is pure luck...

Yes, everything is this game gets harder and harder. The defenses zap at a maximum speed of 7.5 shots/s.

 

I am not sure if it is pure luck to get through, though.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

 

Best. Peripheral. Ever.

Thanks.

 

Since I only had 2 photo sensors, I used them for left and right and had to handle top and bottom myself. Now that I think about it, I am not 100% sure, that it wasn't me who failed eventually.

 

Else I would have probably blown the relays with too much over-voltage.

[Schizophretard]

As it is, without using the cheat, my high scores will always be around 10500. Forever.

10500 is also the final score shown on How To Beat Home Video Games. So, maybe you beat it.

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I just created a spreadsheet which calculates the speeds and how they accumulate. While the game is speed adjusted quite well for PAL, there are some significant differences:

 

This is the available reaction time for the 1st level, before the meteor (movement directions X and Y) hits the ship:

X: 833 ms (NTSC); 900 ms (PAL)

Y: 783 ms (NTSC); 1020 ms (PAL)

 

The same for the advanced game level 9:

X: 417 ms (NTSC); 380 ms (PAL)

Y: 550 ms (NTSC); 600 ms (PAL)

 

And for level 17:

X: 283 ms (NTSC); 280 ms (PAL)

Y: 433 ms (NTSC); 460 ms (PAL)

Summary:

1. The speed increases are getting lower in higher levels (this seems pretty fair).
2. NTSC starts slightly faster in X direction, but eventually PAL becomes slightly faster here.
3. NTSC starts a lot faster in Y direction, but the gap decreases with the level.
4. In the early levels, the reaction time for horizontal or vertical moving meteors is about the same, but later on the horizontal ones become much more dangerous.

Overall this matches my observation while playing the PAL version back then. I was able to handle the vertical moving meteors quite well, even in higher levels, but the horizontal meteors became insanely fast.

 

The defenses zapper shooting frequency is initially about the same in both versions. But it accelerates faster in NTSC. The maximum frequency is 7.5 shots/s in NTSC and 6.25 shots in PAL.

[Video]

I may be remembering wrong, but I seem to remember the asteroids almost stopping before hitting your mother ship (even on the higher difficulties) I just got to where I couldn't react fast enough to the pile of asteroids coming at you. I could usually wrap the planets though so that it started redoing the same creatures on the planet. I almost always died on the planets from ruing out of fuel before getting back to the ship with my captives.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

The meteors always slow down, but in the higher levels much less than in the lower ones. Because they have already reached the Ark before the slowdown becomes noticeable.

[WolfAmongWolves]

Yes, everything is this game gets harder and harder. The defenses zap at a maximum speed of 7.5 shots/s.

 

I am not sure if it is pure luck to get through, though.

 

Could you elaborate on that, Thomas? I always thought the two stages scale in difficulty at the same level, i.e. usually when I start getting destroyed multiple times in the meteor stage I'm not able to pick up any more beasties on the planet surface stage either. Those lasers just fire so fast that I always thought it was pure luck whether you make it through or not. Is there a secret technique that I am not aware of?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Nothing to elaborate, I just haven't been able to develop any tricks on the planets because I died before in the meteor showers.

 

Also a quick look at Youtube did not reveal any tricks here.

[SSG]

I love Cosmic Ark. Just picked it up CIB a few weeks ago!