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Gosub


atari2600land

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It's almost finished, and I want you people to look at my game I'm making called GoSub. (All you Basic programmers will understand the pun.) In it, you guide a submarine to the treasure without touching the walls. All I have to do is add a couple more mazes and it'll be done. It was made using Batari Basic, and it's not 4k, it's a "whopping" 8k! Take a look and tell me what you think.

gosub120306.bas.bin

gosubinstructions.txt

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It is pretty cool. Lots of mazes! More than I anticipated. :) And nice sub graphic, very cute. :)

 

Some suggestions:

-add inertia/momentum to the sub.

-Allow diagonal movement

-Add a ping sound, like Nathan wrote.

-Come up with a better explosion/crash sound

-Use the score for something other than how many times you've crashed. Like the score.

-Give a finite number of subs, display them somehow, and end the game when you crash them all.

-When you complete all the mazes, start over again on the first maze with a harder difficulty (sub moves faster or something).

-Maybe make some of the mazes more maze-like (i.e., with dead-ends or with multiple paths).

-Maybe some themed mazes? Gives an incentive to keep going, to see all the mazes.

 

Also, it is too easy. To fix this:

-Add inertia as mentioned above

-Start the sub moving immediately

-Make the sub faster.

-add obstacles like Nathan wrote

-Have the fire button give a speed boost and then, to force you to use it, make the levels timed. :evil:

-Add a "current" to the ocean - i.e., a small outside force moves your sub. For example, if the "current" is from L to R, then the sub goes R faster than it goes L and if you are going straight up or down it drifts very slowly to the R so you have to correct occasionally. This probably won't work very well unless you allow diagonal movement and add inertia.

-If you add a "current" or drift, vary it in strength and direction from level to level. :twisted:

 

:thumbsup: Nice start to a game, I like it. :)

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Here's the latest version of GoSub:

 

Added/changed:

-Added lives for the subs

-Added periodic sonar "ping"

-minigame disabled (because of bug - hope to fix it soon)

 

Got rid of:

-Title screen music

-password system

 

Tech specs:

2245 bytes left in bank 1

2780 bytes left in bank 2

4028 bytes left in bank 3

661 bytes left in bank 4

 

And for those who want a faster submarine, flip the 'virtual' left difficulty switch to A. An "H" for hard will appear, and you'll get a faster submarine. After a full day of actually going back to work, I need to rest. I might work on this later today, and if not then, tomorrow.

gosub120406.bas.bin

Edited by atari2600land
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I'll check out the latest version, but I'll say that of all the changes I suggested, I think adding inertia is by far the most important. ;)

 

EDIT: Comments on new version:

-Ping sound is a good start, but it needs some shape to it. A good ping should start at regular volume, get softer fairly quickly, then "ring" at a low volume for a while before disappearing completely. Use something like these values for AUDVx:

8

8

7

6

5

4

4

3

3

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

1

0

Or something. Sound requires a lot of tweaking to sound good.

-Hard version is, indeed, very hard, but not in a fun way IMO. Plus having the sub move that fast ruins the underwater feel.

 

Keep up the good work! :thumbsup:

Edited by vdub_bobby
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I'll work on the "ping" sound tomorrow. I don't know how I'll do the inertia thing, though. The major changes to this version are the addition of diagonal movement (I think I did it right).

EDIT: I accidentally screwed up the slower setting, so I just made both settings the same (i.e. if you press the left difficulty switch, it'll be the same as if you didn't.) It's a slower setting either way.

gosub120406b.bas.bin

Edited by atari2600land
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  • 2 weeks later...

Looks and sounds good, though I (still) think that it *needs* momentum to give it a real underwater feel.

 

Also - the sound is better, but the volume decay should be faster: hold for half a second, then decay to nothing fairly quickly.

 

Maybe instead of the values I posted above, something like:

8 7 7 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 3 2 1 0

 

A small, quick, initial decay followed by a ring, followed by a very quick decay to nothing. The key with sounds is to experiment experiment experiment. ;)

 

Other comments:

-Nice addition of diagonal movement. :thumbsup:

-The timer is awesome; that should be the default.

-More of the mazes should have multiple paths, preferably of differing difficulties (i.e., 1 long-but-easy path with 1 or more difficult-to-navigate shortcuts).

-I never seemed to lose any lives

-When I crashed the score display would flicker some numbers in the blank spots.

-And speaking of the score display, nice job making it display multiple pieces of information in a clear way. :thumbsup:

-A crash sprite (broken sub?) would be nice.

-The level-clear sound effect and the crash sound effect could both stand some improvement. Maybe a simple two-tone "tune" for clearing a level; the crash effect could just be made longer and louder (maybe with a volume decay to smooth it out) and it would be fine.

-I like the title-screen tune - simple and sounds good. :)

 

Good work so far. :)

Edited by vdub_bobby
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Hey Chris!

 

I've been quietly following this game ever since it first appeared in the Bb forum and I have to admit this is probably one of your best. I find quite a few of the mazes "challengingly addictive" as I call it, and I think, with a little bit more work, this could turn out pretty good.

 

:)

 

One suggestion though. With the extra player sprite you have left (at least I think you have it) you could add an enemy ship which would patrol a few of the easier mazes and basically try to crash into you, a "kamikaze sub" basically.

 

Just an idea...

 

Keep up the good work!

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I've been quietly following this game ever since it first appeared in the Bb forum and I have to admit this is probably one of your best. I find quite a few of the mazes "challengingly addictive" as I call it, and I think, with a little bit more work, this could turn out pretty good.
I totally agree.

 

It's good to experiment, but this is by far the best game concept you've come up with (and I've played them all).

 

Now try to make something special out of this.

 

Remember how much time Bob Montgomery and John Champeau put into the polishing of their games to make them sparkle?

 

If they wouldn't have done that, their games would have never stand out of the rest.

 

8)

Edited by Rom Hunter
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Thanks for the suggestions. :) I'll add a crashed sprite and a "kamikaze" submarine. As for the current, you mean like have it go faster for a few seconds and then go back to the same speed? I could try to put that into the game, but wouldn't it be a little disorienting? I'll try to work on a better sonar ping and a better getting treasure sound. I have two more days to work on this before the weekend is over (thank goodness for new year's day! ;))

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The next big update to this will be once the enemy is programmed in and working. I'm thinking it should be something different than another sub. An electric eel or shark perhaps? For those who have bBasic, you can compile all the builds in the "GoSub problem thread" in the Batari Basic forum.

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The next big update to this will be once the enemy is programmed in and working. I'm thinking it should be something different than another sub. An electric eel or shark perhaps? For those who have bBasic, you can compile all the builds in the "GoSub problem thread" in the Batari Basic forum.

 

 

Thats way to unrealistic for a shark or eel to be a enemy.I think you should stick with it being another sub.Just my two cents!

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The next big update to this will be once the enemy is programmed in and working. I'm thinking it should be something different than another sub. An electric eel or shark perhaps? For those who have bBasic, you can compile all the builds in the "GoSub problem thread" in the Batari Basic forum.

 

 

Thats way to unrealistic for a shark or eel to be a enemy.I think you should stick with it being another sub.Just my two cents!

What about a giant octopus? If it touches your sub, the sub slows down. If it gets too close and wraps itself around your sub (i.e., the sprites overlap) before you can get away, it stops you and you end up losing a life. If it squirts ink and you run into the ink cloud, the screen goes black (no visibility) until your sub can get out of the ink cloud-- assuming you don't crash into a wall of the maze while your visibility is nil.

 

Michael

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The next big update to this will be once the enemy is programmed in and working. I'm thinking it should be something different than another sub. An electric eel or shark perhaps? For those who have bBasic, you can compile all the builds in the "GoSub problem thread" in the Batari Basic forum.

 

Well...whatever it is, I expect it to be in traditional "enemy red". :D

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You can always make the enemy into a mine. In higher levels you can have more then one.

 

If you have an unintelligent enemy such as a mine you can restrict it to a predetermined path instead of using the random movement. That would put more of the puzzle aspect back into the game and do away with player frustration at having a random enemy suddenly change directions.

 

You can also have a chase sub/mine that starts the maze a few seconds after the player.

 

 

Enemy Sub chases player thru the maze

post-3832-1167670236_thumb.jpg

 

Mine with predetermined path that the player must avoid

post-3832-1167670256_thumb.jpg

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