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Get your Qix?


atari2600land

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Don't get all excited just yet. This little program is just an idea and isn't playable, but I think if someone were to expand on my very little beginning, Qix could be do-able with Batari BASIC. By making the playfield 200 squares big, you could just divide the number of squares cleared by 2 to make it part of a 100% total (shown in the score). The thing that makes the lines could be manipulated in a Nibbles-like fashion until it gets to a side, created by the player or not (maybe?) with the player0 sprite leading the way. The Qix (player1) might be moved randomly (I don't know how), and could double in later rounds and even triple with the NUSIZ1 thing. I wish I could do this, but I just started BASIC programming a couple months ago and I don't have the capability yet. Maybe when someone gets done with a project, they could work on this, because I think it would be cool to have Qix be on Batari BASIC. To get past the funky title screen, press reset.

qix.bas.bin

qix.bas

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Don't get all excited just yet. This little program is just an idea and isn't playable, but I think if someone were to expand on my very little beginning, Qix could be do-able with Batari BASIC. By making the playfield 200 squares big, you could just divide the number of squares cleared by 2 to make it part of a 100% total (shown in the score). The thing that makes the lines could be manipulated in a Nibbles-like fashion until it gets to a side, created by the player or not (maybe?) with the player0 sprite leading the way. The Qix (player1) might be moved randomly (I don't know how), and could double in later rounds and even triple with the NUSIZ1 thing. I wish I could do this, but I just started BASIC programming a couple months ago and I don't have the capability yet. Maybe when someone gets done with a project, they could work on this, because I think it would be cool to have Qix be on Batari BASIC. To get past the funky title screen, press reset.

 

Any screenshots? :D

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  • 1 year later...

Sorry to necropost yet again, but I thought I'd give this another try. Unfortunately, my code is a mess. What I want to do is when the line is moving by itself, once it meets a line already there to stop and then fill in the space where the Qix (little green thing) isn't. I think to get the space filled where the Qix isn't is making the computer guess where it is (for example, 1 to m), and if that space is filled, then undo the fill in and fill in the other side, very quickly so the player will barely notice it if it's wrong.

qix.bas.bin

qix.bas

Edited by atari2600land
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Here's a little-less buggy version. I still need help with the above things mentioned, though.

 

Looks good. I can't think of an easy way to fill in the areas unfortunately.

 

If you had to rate the difficulty of getting something similar enough to Qix to call it Qix implemented in bB, I'd give it a 12 out of 10.

 

The right way to fill in the blocks is to have the application smart enough to determine what the smallest area is to fill the blocks in is after you complete a line.

 

A possible way of filling the blocks if it wasn't that smart is to use the variables to store the last direction the player moved since starting a line. Then as soon as the player hits the playfield, it uses those directions to determine how to retrace the line but move it over +1 x/y coordinate at a time (depending on the last move) and then do pfread to "stop" painting the shape when it hits a line.

 

Another way is to register the starting point of the line (as x,y variables) and then paint straight across when you complete the line, starting with those coordinates and doing pfpixel across (+1 x if x>16 or -1 x if x<=16 for example) until you hit a block then start at the same starting x again and paint across. Or you could track the x coordinate of every dot in the line and draw over from that.

 

But neither of those ways will probably do it.

 

It will be tough, and probably is not what you want to take on (hard games to write can sometimes be demotivating).

Edited by Fort Apocalypse
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I got an IDE for Batari installed once.. that's my knowledge of programming in it :)

 

That being said, why not think of the Qix monster as 2 sprites. Those 2 sprites would stay within a certain distance of each other and each would have its own collision check. A bullet sprite could traverse the distance between them and kinda sorta resemble a line between the 2 main sprites.

 

The only trouble I see is making a good fill algorithm for when you complete a line. I don't even have a clue how to fathom that.

 

EDITED: For spelling and additional description.

Edited by theloon
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I had another idea on this yesterday. Maybe you could just register the running average of x and y coordinates (each move you recalculate the average by also keeping track of the number of dots drawn) and also keep track of the starting and ending x,y coordinates. With that information you may be able to figure out the "centerpoint" to determine area. An easier way would be to just assume that the greatest x-1 and least y-1 is a fill point and fill by drawing each line left until you run into something. The latter wouldn't work well though. Just guessing. No answer yet.

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I had another idea on this yesterday. Maybe you could just register the running average of x and y coordinates (each move you recalculate the average by also keeping track of the number of dots drawn) and also keep track of the starting and ending x,y coordinates. With that information you may be able to figure out the "centerpoint" to determine area. An easier way would be to just assume that the greatest x-1 and least y-1 is a fill point and fill by drawing each line left until you run into something. The latter wouldn't work well though. Just guessing. No answer yet.

 

Forgive me if this is retarded, or much, much, worse, but could the lines be filled in, sonar style? Say if there's a block in the way, bounce backwards, and if there's no opening, move down one line, repeat process, until blocked and bounced back upwards. If the scan returns to it's starting coordinates without finding an escape, it marks all squares inside the area as claimed territory, then counts the number of squares as .5 points each, to create the percentage.

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If I made the playfield 200 pfblocks, then I could just divide the # of pfblocks filled in by 2 to get a %. This is what I did in this next version. Also, the automatic line stops once you reach a playfield block, whether it be the border or not and adds the %age to the score (the 5th figure should be a '%', I just haven't gotten around to making it yet.

qix6.bas.bin

qix6.bas

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  • 1 year later...
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  • 8 months later...
  • 1 year later...

Just tried this one out - you could really be on to something here! Concerning the inability to turn a corner mid-line, maybe you could make it more like Jezz Ball? It's certainly very Qix-like. Anyway, great work!

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I couldn't find the score kernel that gives you two two digit scores. I searched everything imaginable. So I had to settle with one four digit score and one two digit score. The two digit score is the % of the board filled while the four digit score is, well, the score. To start a new round, press fire.

qixster6.bas

qixster6.bas.bin

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I couldn't find the score kernel that gives you two two digit scores. I searched everything imaginable. So I had to settle with one four digit score and one two digit score.

 

Is this what you were looking for?

 

www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#playerscores_minikernel

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