Intellidiscs: Weekly development log

[+Philsan]

I love Intellivision Tron Deadly Discs too.

I am glad you're working on a conversion for Atari 5200 (I hope eventually a version will be available for computers).

 

In 2008 I thought of making a Tron inspired game (not a conversion) for Atari 8-bit computers and I started making the titlescreen.

 

If you want you can use and enhance it.

 

 

Philsan_Tron.xex

[+Ryan Witmer]

4 hours ago, Philsan said:

I love Intellivision Tron Deadly Discs too.

I am glad you're working on a conversion for Atari 5200 (I hope eventually a version will be available for computers).

 

In 2008 I thought of making a Tron inspired game (not a conversion) for Atari 8-bit computers and I started making the titlescreen.

 

If you want you can use and enhance it.

 

 

Philsan_Tron.xex 10.04 kB · 0 downloads

That's a great screen!  Unfortunately, I want to stay away from any official Tron imagery for legal reasons.

 

I just tried playing this on real hardware, which I probably should have done before posting a build, but I'm a terrible person.

 

It seemed to play really well, and I just zoned out killing dudes for about ten minutes.  I do think that I need to increase the dead zone on the joystick, it seemed like it was too hard to stop.

[+Ryan Witmer]

Here's a picture of the enemies carrying their discs:

 

 

They don't throw them yet and there's no collision detection with the player, so they aren't the eponymous Deadly Discs quite yet.

 

Right now I'm trying to get the enemy disc throwing in place.  The first step is to generalize the disc code that I wrote for the player.  I just kind of brute forced it to get something working, and now I need to make it better.  While observing the Intellivision game, I noticed that the enemies have 16 directional disc throwing.  I'm considering giving that ability to the player in both the twin-stick and Berzerk control styles.

 

Something else that I'm pondering is the leader enemies.  The original manual says that enemies move faster and aim more accurately when a leader is present.  The faster movement is plain to see in the original, but I'm not entirely sure what the more accurate aim actually is in game terms.  Just need to keep researching, I suppose.

[Indiana Quack]

So great to see your progress! Glad you’re trying to make this as close to the Intellivision game as possible! Something else to possibly consider is that either when the player or enemy gets hit with a disc they slow down and so does the speed of the disc Also once you throw a disc if you need to get it back quickly to you, you hit the fire button to get it quicker than to just let it go where it will then return on its own Trying to remember a few things Keep up the great work!

[+Ryan Witmer]

The disc throw canceling was actually one of the first things I did.  I had to change it slightly, in this version you have to press a key other than the one you used to throw the disc to recall it early.  This is because of some difficulties with how the 5200 handles keypad input.  This is something I'm going to revisit later to see if I can come up with a better solution, but for now that's how it works.

 

I got the enemies throwing their discs, but not aiming them.  Right now they just throw them straight up all the time.  I'm actually working on the aiming logic right now, typing this during my lunch break.  Hoping to have it working by the end of the day.

[+Ryan Witmer]

Well, I did manage to get the enemy aiming system in place, but it's not great.  The overall structure is fine but I clearly need a different method for determining the angle.  I have a few ideas that I'll play with later.

 

Wasn't able to get all that much done this weekend, just too busy.  Still, the project slowly marches on.

[Indiana Quack]

I fully understand how time with things seems to slow at times Meaning certain things you want to do in life sometimes need to take a backseat to the things you have to do Have a great day!

[+Ryan Witmer]

Here's another video with some of the stuff I've gotten working recently:

 

 

[Indiana Quack]

Very, very cool!!!!! 

[+Ryan Witmer]

Another busy weekend, but I did manage to patch up a couple bugs today.

 

It turns out that when the player tried to recall his disc early it would also cause any in-flight enemy discs to return.  Got that fixed up.  Also put in the code to prevent enemy discs from jamming the doors.

 

I mentioned a weird disc erasure bug in the video and I saw that one come up again while testing.  I was hoping it was a side effect of the disc return glitch, but apparently it isn't.  Still need to figure out what's going on there.

[Indiana Quack]

I totally understand how life gets busy Normal stuff, work, yardwork, errands, etc Then trying to squeeze in family time and maybe some downtime to fully relax Where did the time go? I think you’re doing great by tackling things a little at a time! Im sure it can be frustrating and quite overwhelming at times trying to get a game to do what you want it to do Looks great so far! 

[+Ryan Witmer]

 

I implemented the complete scoring system today.  The manual for the Intellivision game has a nice score table in it, so I didn't have to reverse-engineer very much.

 

The one thing I had to figure out was the behavior of the wave bonus around the points where the score values change.  For example, initially every kill is worth 50 points.  Once you reach 1,000 points, the kills become worth 100 points.  If you can kill all three enemies in a wave before reinforcements arrive, you get a bonus equal to 5 times the kill value.

 

Is this bonus based on the value of the last enemy you killed, or the score after the last enemy dies?  That is, if I kill the last enemy in a wave when I have 950 points and earn the bonus is the bonus 250 points (5x 50, the value at the time of the kill) or 500 points (5x 100, the value after the kill)?  It turns out the value is computed based on the value at kill time, so the answer is 250.  These little details are a pain to figure out sometimes.

[bikeguychicago]

I love that TRON and the enemies are _finally_ the correct colors (I'll take white or blue for TRON over red in the Intellivision version).

[+Ryan Witmer]

16 minutes ago, bikeguychicago said:

I love that TRON and the enemies are _finally_ the correct colors (I'll take white or blue for TRON over red in the Intellivision version).

Yeah, I mentioned much earlier in the thread that I wanted to do something that looked more like the movie.  The player won't be white in the long term.  I'm going to change it to some shade of blue eventually, I just haven't gotten around to doing it.  I need to find one that doesn't get lost in the background.

[+fdr4prez]

7 minutes ago, Ryan Witmer said:

I need to find one that doesn't get lost in the background.

 

I've not tried the test roms, but from the videos I have a hard time seeing the *deadly* discs against the black background - the wavy returning discs aren't an issue because they are thicker and waving - but it could be the framerate of the YT videos

 

 

[+Ryan Witmer]

12 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

 

I've not tried the test roms, but from the videos I have a hard time seeing the *deadly* discs against the black background - the wavy returning discs aren't an issue because they are thicker and waving - but it could be the framerate of the YT videos

 

It's definitely the frame rate and compression on the video.  In real play they're quite visible.  The disc colors will eventually be changing as well.

[+fdr4prez]

27 minutes ago, Ryan Witmer said:

 

It's definitely the frame rate and compression on the video.  In real play they're quite visible.  The disc colors will eventually be changing as well.

great, thanks for the confirmation

[+Ryan Witmer]

Today I got the system in place for varying player running speeds.

 

Different enemy types move at different speeds, and some of these get faster as the game goes on.  The player and enemies that can take multiple hits also get slower every time they get hit and eventually recover their health and speed over time.

 

I can now create a set of speed tables and each combatant will maintain a connection to their speed table, so changing running speeds is just a matter of adjusting the table that the character references.  I only have one table right now.  When I get around to implementing the player's health I'll create the other tables.  It might take some time to play around with the speed values until I get ones that I'm happy with, but that's just a matter of time and experimentation.

[phuzaxeman]

Really cool stuff Ryan.  I know you're still in the beginning stages but one of the cool things in the original movie back in the 80s was seeing an enemy against Tron get hit by a disc and would blow up into a yellow fireball and then disappear into the air.  Would be amazing if you could something cool with the explosions.     

[+Ryan Witmer]

There would be some problems in doing too fancy of a death effect, mostly because of how the 5200 handles sprite coloring.  However, you just gave me an interesting idea.

 

I should probably finish the running animations first though...

[phuzaxeman]

I don't know if you've gotten to work on the sound but it would be cool to get that ricochet sound when a disc bounces off an enemy that's blocking like in the movie.  Sounds like a gun shot bouncing off a brick wall in the cartoons.

Edited September 16, 2020 by phuzaxeman

[+fdr4prez]

2 hours ago, phuzaxeman said:

I don't know if you've gotten to work on the sound but it would be cool to get that ricochet sound when a disc bounces off an enemy that's blocking like in the movie.  Sounds like a gun shot bouncing off a brick wall in the cartoons.

In Deadly Discs, the enemies do not block Tron's disc.

 

There are times when they go into the blocking stance, such as when hit, when they derez, and sometimes they go into the blocking stance for no reason while they are running around, but they never actually block Tron's disc.

 

And that isn't to say that enemies blocking Tron's can't be added into this version  

[phuzaxeman]

3 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

In Deadly Discs, the enemies do not block Tron's disc.

 

There are times when they go into the blocking stance, such as when hit, when they derez, and sometimes they go into the blocking stance for no reason while they are running around, but they never actually block Tron's disc.

 

And that isn't to say that enemies blocking Tron's can't be added into this version  

I never mentioned that the enemies on intellivision's version blocked Trons discs.  My post was in reference to the sound effects based on the movie when the enemies block Trons discs. 

 

I do know that on Intellivision's version that Tron can block discs and to have that ricochet sound would be a neat feature.

[+fdr4prez]

sorry for any misunderstanding

 

 

sounds like this?

 

 

 

EDIT:

And it is shown here that enemies can block, too, so adding this feature into a new port would be a nice twist over the original game

Edited September 17, 2020 by fdr4prez

[phuzaxeman]

15 hours ago, fdr4prez said:

sorry for any misunderstanding

 

 

sounds like this?

 

 

 

EDIT:

And it is shown here that enemies can block, too, so adding this feature into a new port would be a nice twist over the original game

Yes, good find.  Would be a cool feature to have the 5200 enemies to block like the movie.