Sync

[seemo]

Hi Everybody,

Sync is a compilation of 4 simple games that I have already presented here, in a way or in another.

 

I think it's a good alternative to Moth, since it's way less user-manual oriented, and is a lot more colorful and noisy

 

I included a word document, that illustrates the games and explains their rules.

 

I hope you have fun with this !

 

Simone

 

P.S. : Thanks to Nathan Strum for suggesting 'Synchronicity' in a previous thread, I have cut it to 'Sync'

sync.zip

[+Nathan Strum]

Very cool - I love these games!

[vdub_bobby]

Very cool indeed! Be better to have a slight delay between losing a game and getting dumped back to the title screen. It's rather abrupt right now.

[seemo]

@ Nathan and vdub_bobby : Thanks for your feedback !

 

Here's an update of the binary :

 

- whenever a game ends, there's a second of delay before returning to the game over screen as requested by vdub_bobby - this also allows to understand 'what went wrong'

 

- fixed a timing issue in jitter and updated the timing values

 

- in gate you can now encounter every symbol right from the start - in the former binary new symbols appeared as the level increased : I compensated for this slowing down the game a little

 

Simone

sync.bin

[seemo]

Hi

here's another update, with changes/fixes to jitter and flow.

 

Simone

sync.bin

[+Nathan Strum]

Thanks for the update!

 

Just wondering... whatever happened to Mantra? Was it just a predecessor to Jitter?

Edited November 10, 2006 by Nathan Strum

[seemo]

Just wondering... whatever happened to Mantra? Was it just a predecessor to Jitter?

 

Hi Nathan,

well, I'd rather say that Jitter is just a successor of Mantra.

 

After I posted Mantra here, I got a lot of feedback, and I tried to put everything into it to embrace all the suggestions I got.

At a certain point, I had to change some features, ending up with a game that would have driven Mantra out of its initial concept, so I called the new binary Jitter.

 

The name Jitter was inspired by the new 'jittery' pace of the game: instead of being forced to wait for the cpu to pass control to the next symbol, the player had control over the pace of the game: as soon as he moved the joystick for the current symbol, he was in control of the following symbol, and so on...

 

Moreover, if you did the right action in Mantra, you could hear a 'drone' sound, that was muted whenever you missed.

If you kept moving right, there was this continous background sound that gave the game its 'Mantra' feel.

The background audio in Jitter is different: it keeps alternating two notes, at a speed that increases as the time allowed for an action decreases.

(the 4k version of Jitter doubled the speed of the background music whenever you reached 500 points for every level)

You also get a high-pitched feedback for every correct symbol.

 

Finally, the third main difference is the graphics: Mantra used playfield to draw symbols, while Jitter uses players.

In Jitter the symbols are a lot more understandable, but the Mantra approach gave the game a more 'colored' feeling.

 

Both games share the same gameplay concept: move the joystick according to the current symbol... as an aftertought, I could have removed some options in Mantra, and introduce a 'Jitter' option in its main menu... but today I feel like these games are quite different, just like a father can distinguish between his twin sons

 

Simone

[+Nathan Strum]

Thanks! I was wondering about that, since it seemed to me there were a number of differences between them. Just curious - why is not include Mantra in Sync?

[seemo]

Just curious - why is not include Mantra in Sync?

 

Last year I started working on a 1k version of Jitter and Flow, but I didn't try a 1k version of Mantra, because I thought that working on only one 'symbol driven' game was enough

 

During the development of Moth I thought that the Gate and the Debug minigames would have made for a nice group with the two 1k games I already had, so I started thinking about a 4k compilation.

 

So here's why Mantra is not in the group: it lost the race to the 1k version

 

Simone

 

EDIT : Forgot to mention your post about a mantra/jitter/flow compilation in this forum, it really helped a lot

Edited November 12, 2006 by seemo

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

We'll be featuring Sync on the ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch stream LIVE today at 6PM PT/9PM ET! Hope everyone can tune in to watch us play!

Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.t...ropagehomebrew/

 

Featured Games:
Thrust+ Platinum (2003) by Thomas Jentzsch

Alien Pinball (2015 WIP) by Ed Riley aka winkdot
Sync (2006 Compilation) by Simone Serra aka seemo

 

EDIT: Link to Episode Archive

 

Edited January 20, 2019 by cimmerian