Fun with tiles: another weekend experiment

[+DZ-Jay]

41 minutes ago, cmadruga said:

I know they say size does not matter, but any preference?

 

To match with the original C64 version (which, in my opinion, is the canonical version), you should go with the third one.  Looks very good!

[Kiwi]

Third one is great.  I would go with the third one.  It matches the road line much better. 

[Kiwi]

Another thought in mind, the small one could buy back some mob.  Just have 4 black MOB to be 16 high, and the 1 white Mob to be double size x and y.  I seen Commodore game uses 1 color sprite over 1 multi color sprite like the Ninja in Ninja Gaiden, so it looks like a high resolution multicolor sprite.  So you could use the remaining mobs for the ghost, vacuum, and drunk drivers Ghostbusters leaving the vehicle. The stripes in the road can be smaller and narrow.

[+cmadruga]

@Kiwi

Unfortunately the 4 black mobs are zoomx2 and zoomy4 already. 

By making the 2 internal white mobs zoomx2 and zoomy8 - and making them #6 and #7 to hide color bleeding-, I was able to save 2 mobs with the same end result.

Good suggestion, thanks!

 

[+cmadruga]

 

[+DZ-Jay]

1 hour ago, cmadruga said:

 

 

Looks very good!  I am so impressed, and I can't wait to play it.  The original C64 Ghostbusters from Activision was always one of my very favorite games back in the 1980s.  I played that thing over and over and over, and finished it many times.

 

I'm not too sure about some of the colour choices on the building façade, but I suppose it's hard to pick good colours from the Intellivision palette.  That said, you may want to dispense with the green, and focus more on a subdued palette.  The colour combinations used in the original seem more mellow.  For instance,

 

 

 

Notice that they most they use for highlights is a bit of yellow; otherwise it's mostly gray, black, white and red.

 

    -dZ.

[+cmadruga]

Well, the choice of colors for the buildings so far has been driven by the MSX version, which I'm aware is not your preference ?

Here's s a comparison.

In this particular case, I agree the green jumps out. Some people might say that type of detail is what gives the visuals some character... lol.

Anyway, I will keep tweaking it... the game will probably end up having some hybrid elements. I haven't studied the C64 buildings a lot yet.

 

Question (to anyone interested):

Inside Oscar's latest book he has a voice digitalization program written in C.

Would anyone care to digitalize the voice from the C64 game using that program and sharing what comes out?

 

           

 

 

Edited May 31, 2021 by cmadruga

[+cmadruga]

 

[Kiwi]

That's really awesome!  I really like it!! Turning on the top border mask will make the road line come in smoother from the top. I believe it shows the bottom of the screen on the top row.  Make sure to turn it off when leaving the driver part. 

[+cmadruga]

I’m already using a top row mask for scrolling during the car sequence. It could be something about the video framerate.

[+DZ-Jay]

Looks very good!  A few suggestions:

• Perhaps the white lines should be shorter to give a better sense of motion.  The Intellivision vertical resolution is rather limited.
• In the original, the car accelerates to top speed from rest, which is reflected in the white lines starting to move slow.  It also decelerates before it stops.
• When the roaming ghost is captured by the ghost vacuum in the car, it should move a little faster towards the car.

 

By the way, what is that blue interstitial screen that pops up during the driving sequence?  I don't recall that in the original, it's kind of weird.

 

     -dZ.

[+cmadruga]

The shorter lines and ghost vacuum acceleration are good suggestions.
Acceleration / deceleration will come in time.

The in transit screen is something that can be called at will by the player, just need to press a key. It’s not a feature of any existing versions.
 

 

 

[carlsson]

One thing that is funny is that Ghostbusters started from several existing snippets of game ideas that David Crane et al had worked on, stitched together into one game. Now you are replicating all those mini games one by one.

[+DZ-Jay]

8 hours ago, cmadruga said:

The in transit screen is something that can be called at will by the player, just need to press a key. It’s not a feature of any existing versions.

Gotcha.  You may want to test that once the game is finished, just to make sure that providing distance and progress information does not affect the overall balance of the game.  Although I'd be hard-pressed to imagine why it would in this case, sometimes additional world-state details can give an unwarranted edge to the player.

 

By the way, does the "in transit" screen tell you how many ghosts are in the way?  Also, is it scaled to the distance?  One of the things I remember when playing the original is that the time you spend in the "driving" stage correlates to the distance to your destination, and as the city's PK energy rises, with greater distance comes a greater chance of encountering multiple roaming ghosts.

 

Also, if I remember correctly, if you do not capture those roaming ghosts, the PK energy increases or accelerates.

 

If I could make another suggestion, perhaps the ghost sprites in the transit screen should be smaller, like teeny tiny icons.  As it stands, it looks a little dense.

 

1 hour ago, carlsson said:

One thing that is funny is that Ghostbusters started from several existing snippets of game ideas that David Crane et al had worked on, stitched together into one game. Now you are replicating all those mini games one by one.

 

Interesting.  Although I have to give Mr. Crane and his team much credit for figuring out a way to tie all those mini-games into a cohesive storyline that fits the movie's themes and retains its spirit.

 

I remember the very first time I saw the game.  I must have hit the "F1" (or whatever game reset key it was) over and over and over to hear that initial speech sample.  It was very impressive for the time.  Sometimes I just even booted the game up just to play the title song.  To this day, the lyrics are imprinted in my brain for all the many times I silently sang along.  Having the old-time bouncing ball to sing-along was a terrific idea, and the track rendition was fantastic.

 

     -dZ.

Edited June 5, 2021 by DZ-Jay

[carlsson]

Apparently Ghostbusters was another 6 week affair (just like E.T.) and was initiated after the movie had launched. I thought that by 1984 the movie and games industries had come along closer so video games were planned alongside filming or at least editing the movie. I suppose David Crane had a bigger team at Activision plus some half done games to build it upon, comparing to HSW's mostly solo work two years earlier.

[+cmadruga]

1 hour ago, DZ-Jay said:

Gotcha.  You may want to test that once the game is finished, just to make sure that providing distance and progress information does not affect the overall balance of the game.  Although I'd be hard-pressed to imagine why it would in this case, sometimes additional world-state details can give an unwarranted edge to the player.

 

By the way, does the "in transit" screen tell you how many ghosts are in the way?  Also, is it scaled to the distance?  One of the things I remember when playing the original is that the time you spend in the "driving" stage correlates to the distance to your destination, and as the city's PK energy rises, with greater distance comes a greater chance of encountering multiple roaming ghosts.

 

Also, if I remember correctly, if you do not capture those roaming ghosts, the PK energy increases or accelerates.

 

If I could make another suggestion, perhaps the ghost sprites in the transit screen should be smaller, like teeny tiny icons.  As it stands, it looks a little dense.

 

My motivation for creating the transit screen was both technical and related to gameplay.

 

The technical aspect comes from not wanting to waste the limited vertical resolution of the driving screen with a fixed blue bar that shows PK, etc.

Gameplay wise, I just thought of the boredom of "endless" driving. To me that has always been the weakest aspect of the original game overall. "Are we there yet" is what I'm trying to answer, because that was what I asked myself while playing it as a kid ?

 

The number of ghosts you find along the way is not random, those match the ones you intercept while moving around the city screen. That is applicable both to the original, and to my port.

The time when ghosts show up along the itinerary is not random either, and my port also captures that by keeping track of total distance and the specific points when you intercept ghosts while at the city screen.

 

Capturing a ghost on the driving screen will reset its coordinates on the city map, and my port also does that.

If you fail to capture a ghost while driving, it will continue its path to Zuul. 100 PK gets added to your tab once it eventually gets there.

The speed at which ghosts converge to Zuul (plus Gatekeeper/Keymaster movement) steps up at 1000 PK increments, up to 5000.

I reproduced all those mechanics faithfully in my port.

 

The transit screen is already scaled. Ghosts already captured show as white.

 

I don't think the transit screen gives the player any real edge, other than knowing when a ghost will show up while driving. Even then, diligent players should be able to anticipate it anyway.

 

Edited June 5, 2021 by cmadruga

[+cmadruga]

3 hours ago, carlsson said:

One thing that is funny is that Ghostbusters started from several existing snippets of game ideas that David Crane et al had worked on, stitched together into one game. Now you are replicating all those mini games one by one.

Indeed, the game does not feel like a collection of minigames. It feels very cohesive.

[+DZ-Jay]

1 hour ago, cmadruga said:

My motivation for creating the transit screen was both technical and related to gameplay.

 

The technical aspect comes from not wanting to waste the limited vertical resolution of the driving screen with a fixed blue bar that shows PK, etc.

Gameplay wise, I just thought of the boredom of "endless" driving. To me that has always been the weakest aspect of the original game overall. "Are we there yet" is what I'm trying to answer, because that was what I asked myself while playing it as a kid ?

 

 

Good points.  What if you have the horizontal "HUD" bar take up space only when invoked with a key instead of a full separate screen, and then disappear after a few seconds?

 

Although that wouldn't solve your "are we there yet?" concern.  My point was that having insight into "are we there yet?" is additional world state information not available in the other versions, and adding information necessarily has an impact on balance.

 

All that said, I admit that the impact may be trivial, and may even be desirable to overcome boredom.  However, if the driving mini-game is boring in itself (and I agree it can be), perhaps there are better ways to spice it up.  Just a thought.

 

I do like the ability to gauge driving progress.

 

Quote

The number of ghosts you find along the way is not random, those match the ones you intercept while moving around the city screen. That is applicable both to the original, and to my port.

 

Quote

The time when ghosts show up along the itinerary is not random either, and my port also captures that by keeping track of total distance and the specific points when you intercept ghosts while at the city screen.

Yes, none of those things are random.

Quote

Capturing a ghost on the driving screen will reset its coordinates on the city map, and my port also does that.

If you fail to capture a ghost while driving, it will continue its path to Zuul. 100 PK gets added to your tab once it eventually gets there.

The speed at which ghosts converge to Zuul (plus Gatekeeper/Keymaster movement) steps up at 1000 PK increments, up to 5000.

I reproduced all those mechanics faithfully in my port.

 

Cool!  I'm very happy to hear that you are reproducing the original mechanics.  It wasn't clear to me from your comments at the start of this project that that was the case.  For some reason I got the impression that you were just toying with the program to see where it went.

 

My apologies for not understanding the context of your effort.  Now I am even more excited about this project.

Quote

The transit screen is already scaled. Ghosts already captured show as white.

 

 

Cool!

Quote

I don't think the transit screen gives the player any real edge, other than knowing when a ghost will show up while driving. Even then, diligent players should be able to anticipate it anyway.

That works for me (see above). ??
 

   dZ.

Edited June 5, 2021 by DZ-Jay

[Kiwi]

There's a way to have the status bar on top with information is to print the street strip with it offset graphic in GRAM every frames instead of using the scrolling feature.   Should be light on CPU cycle since there's only about 4 strips on screen at the same time. 

[+cmadruga]

It looks like this last video I posted is going around and being described as an upcoming release or something.

 

To be clear, this game is for my own enjoyment. I'm making it because I can't afford the existing version.

 

Which I'm sure is worth $500. 

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by cmadruga

[+DZ-Jay]

5 hours ago, cmadruga said:

It looks like this last video I posted is going around and being described as an upcoming release or something.

 

To be clear, this game is for my own enjoyment. I'm making it because I can't afford the existing version.

 

Which I'm sure is worth $500. 

LOL!

 

5 hours ago, cmadruga said:

 

Nice!

 

A few suggestions:

• The blue looks a bit too harsh.  Perhaps cyan would fit better? Or white, to keep with the subdued palette?
• I do not know how much GRAM and MOBs you are using here, but is there a chance that you could make the ghost using two 8x16 MOBs at double-vertical resolution?  As it is, the slimer ghost looks too chunky.

Looking good!  I can't wait to not pay $500 for this game when it is not released! ?

 

   -dZ.

[carlsson]

The last screenshot seems to be from the existing $500 version, not what cmadruga is developing (see video above for a comparison).

[+DZ-Jay]

1 hour ago, carlsson said:

The last screenshot seems to be from the existing $500 version, not what cmadruga is developing (see video above for a comparison).

Aha!  I just noticed.  Sorry about that.  I guess I completely missed the point of his message.  Whoosh!

[+cmadruga]

Sorry, I thought you knew where that came from. Posting some additional pics for ghostbusting fans out there who (like me) couldn't play it.

 

          

 

3 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

I can't wait to not pay $500 for this game when it is not released! ?

?

Edited June 6, 2021 by cmadruga

[+DZ-Jay]

2 minutes ago, cmadruga said:

Sorry, I thought you knew where that came from. Posting some additional pics for ghostbusting fans out there who (like me) couldn't play it.

 

          

 

?

I had not seen those screenshots before.  God, those graphics alone are worth $500.00.  How could you ever pretend to fill in those shoes ... ?

 

     -dZ.