Posted By
Csabo
on 2004-08-20
17:39:48
|  Upcoming 4K Game
I tried to encourage everyone to participate in this year's MiniGame compo, but so far I haven't heard anyone actually doing it. So I guess I have to lead by example. This way at least the Plus/4 will show up in the list, it would really be a shame if platforms like ATARI had games and ours did not. (And yes, that IS a good enough reason to write a game - that's my answer, you know how you are.)
Anyway, I'm breaking my tradition of not releasing (or even speaking much about) upcoming stuff. It's sort of an experiment. Here's the current state of my game:
You can download it from here: [ edit : link removed ]. One request: please DO NOT copy, release or upload this anywhere. A full release (with source code) will be coming soon.
The reason: You ALL can get involved. I need help with the following things:
- Testing. Please test it HEAVILY. All gameplay features should be perfect. (If you want to see how much it took, run the older versions and watch as the ball flies "into" blocks.)
- A name. Cool sounding and preferably short, and descriptive of the game. I still laugh when I think of "Orthopede". "Mini Crillion" and such aren't good, especially since this version is already better than the original: all the features + better sound + better graphics. Anyway, get creative.
- Ideas. What else can I cram in there that will make the game better? Try to think of your favourite games, and see if you can pinpoint the ideas that give it that WOW factor. What are the things that you would NOT expect from a 4K game? We have to make it so when the unsuspecting folks from other platforms open this game, they say: "Wow, the Plus/4 can do that?!"
I find that 4K is astonishingly huge. The game (exomized) is only 2.06 at the moment. However, with 20 levels planned it will be around 3K. Still gives me another 1K to put in. I already have title music, about 256 bytes, but needs polishing. One more note about the game: it only has two levels for now, and then it crashes.
Anyways, let's see what will come out of this. Maybe someone else will feel like coding a game after all. If this doesn't make y'all excited, I dunno what will.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2004-08-20
19:39:36
 | Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Can't say more, it's IMPRESSIVE!
Start testing right now...
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Posted By
Luca
on 2004-08-20
19:59:41
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Very first suggestions list:
- ESC is used to suicide the ball, maybe could be good a pause key too;
- you can implement the joystick option
- (TED)music/fx selection
- a name for this game could be ERASPHERE
- what about a "smart drawn" logo for a title screen with rasterbars?
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Posted By
Luca
on 2004-08-20
20:09:08
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
I guess you must preserve a good number of level (16 would be the best, but 12 too...), then count the left memory, hence decide:
- short TED jingle (title and ingame optionable)
- easy title logo
- various addable features
Apropo, and the hiscore? And if storable on disk? 
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Posted By
Luca
on 2004-08-20
20:23:25
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
The name again:
playing with blast/sphere/blaspheme:
BLASPHERE
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Posted By
MIK
on 2004-08-20
23:22:13
 | Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Awesome Csabo!! Quality!! 
I'm a little colur blind with Blue and Purple and find it hard to see the difference between the Pink and Blue colour changer blocks on level 1. The colour changers look cool, but lack of colour makes it a tad hard for my eyes. Pink looks ok, maybe a light grey, yellow, orange or a darker blue for the blue blocks?
How about adding a Minus Score for hitting a wrong colour block? No two games will ever be played the same so this can change the score tables alot adding replay value maybe. Dont start the Minus Score until all the reds have been cleared?
We know which colour block you are ment to be hitting but how about changing the colour of the word BLOCKS to the same colour your ment to be going for as a reminder? Or maybe something else you could add to show this?
I love the way that if you make a mistake and change the color you can't clear the reds and have to kill your self. Some real nasty play could be had in later levels.
How about reverse control blocks, with a lot more death blocks this could be really nasty later in the game.
Love the idea that you can move those blocks on level 2 helping work your way around the death block.
Very good Csabo! Lov it.
That WOW FACTOR is a stupid idea from me because you would go wow and at the same time it would be the special 64k version Imagine those moving blocks working on gravity insted of being pushed. If the game screen was a perfect square you could rotate the whole game area 90 degrees to get the blocks to fall. Would take some crazy maths and you would not beable to rotate the screen in real time, but a screen updated with everything turned 90 degrees could work. An why would you want the screen to rotate.... So you could move the blocks around the death blocks. You would have two 90 degree blocks turners, either one goes left or right so you have to play between both of them. Some clever maps could have the blocks falling out of the edge of the game area so you would miss the chance to use them unless you turned the map the correct way.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2004-08-20
23:30:56
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
As for a name. Umm..
Seeing as the game is about colour something meaning colour...
Picasso - just that on its own.
Picasso Noid
Or some other great painters name?
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Posted By
bubis
on 2004-08-27
03:00:23
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Hmmm, qool!
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Posted By
MIK
on 2004-08-27
03:25:11
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Another name: Spectroid
pronounced as Spec Troid.
Spectr part of the name as in the Colour Spectrum. Take a peek at this link and look at the colour bar below the Visible Light and what do you see?
C= Commodore (color bar) Plus/4 etc...
and the oid part of the name as in Noid aka Arthur Noid, meaning Game/Knockout.
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Posted By
Rachy
on 2004-08-27
03:30:26
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Nice game, the only problem I had: I could not figure out how to play...
So what is the goal on the first level? Or the level skipping is not yet implemented?
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Posted By
MIK
on 2004-08-27
03:39:48
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Aim of the game:
Like any classic bat'n'ball game the idea is to clear all the blocks, but this version has a twist.
On level one you can see 2 coloured blocks that have a star shape in them, when hit these determine which colour blocks you can remove so if you hit the blue colour changer you can only remove the blue blocks and so on.. Your notice there is no red colour changer so if you change the colour order at any time before clearing the reds you can not clear the reds so use the death blocks to reset play.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2004-08-27
04:23:18
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Rachy, don't tell me you'd never played Crillion on C16
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Posted By
Rachy
on 2004-08-27
16:58:25
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
I did play with Crillion, just could not figure out the pupose of the special bricks. Now I got it.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2004-08-29
18:16:04
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Thanks to everyone for the feedback! If you try the link in the first post, you can now download the latest version of this upcoming game. The following have been added/fixed:
- Pause game by pressing P
- Control the game by joystick (either port), and additional keys (Z/X or S/F)
- The levels don't start until you press space/fire
- Lando's comment on the colors was helpful: I changed the graphics so that different colored pieces can have different luminance levels (it was just a way of cutting corners to have every piece show with lum 4, but they were different to tell apart).
- Score counter thingy... just play and see, I think it's cool
- 6 levels done so far...
- You can skip levels with C= key, it's for testing, I'll probably remove it from the final.
The name suggestions were all cool. I've also heard "Cretillion" and myself though of "Crapillion" which sound funny. But we still haven't found the true name yet!
If you have the time, test it, and give me more ideas/comments.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2004-08-30
00:47:26
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Well, simply great! I have no more words.
I guess it's time to show some hardpacking features, in order to keep balanced the "gamescreen vs extra" fight.
E.g.: can you pack this 36x4 veeeeery very simple ($01b7 big!) logo?
In your mail right now.
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Posted By
SVS
on 2004-08-30
03:11:14
 | Re: Upcoming 4K Game
As a title I suggest: BAL-L-LAB (the "B" in the right side could be mirrored to remember the bidirectional reading property of this word )
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Posted By
Luca
on 2004-08-30
16:40:34
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
OMG Csabo, I was very tired last night! 
The logo is 36x2 shaped.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2004-08-31
19:19:39
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Just under a month left! Do you think your do it Csabo??
Fisrt up the new colours are great. Thanks!
Some ideas:
I would change PAUSE to SPACE BAR, fast game and Space can be pressed without looking.
Indeed without question remove level skip on final release. The whole point of it is a game that you play, not look at.
Level 5 needs to be recoloured..? From the start of the game the aim is to clear the reds first and this is a good rule to work with for every level. Level 5 changes that rule and may confuse people, I'm sure you intended it to be confusing and it does work, but for some reason it feels like it spoils that polish from the game, (I dont mean that in a nasty way).. Change the GREEN blocks to RED and swap that GREEN back to the PINK colour...? Well I classed PINK as the second colour of order because of Level 2 and 4. Blue as colour 3.
The game needs a TIMER for each level, like Pin Point. Once you know what your doing with each level you can just take your time and clear each level..... Having a timer/countdown would give the game an edge and may lead to mistakes trying to rush it. Would need play testing to get some realistic times to do each one in. Any time that was left gets added to the score board.
Do you have enough memory for a high score? On the GAME OVER text box you could have
GAME OVER
Score: 000100
BEST: 000200
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Posted By
MIK
on 2004-08-31
20:13:54
| Re: Upcoming 4K Game
Another thought...
Am I right by saying you have the LIVES balls changing colour to the colour you ment to be hitting. I was blind to it first time around..(looks like the old colours BTW). DOH!
If you liked the idea of having a colour order as above then this could be removed if you wanted or liked the idea of adding a timer... Not sure if a timer would effect the game speed... ? 
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