Re: [stella] stuff

Subject: Re: [stella] stuff
From: Piero Cavina <p.cavina@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 11:38:55 +0200 (MET DST)
At 09.29 14/09/97 -0700, Glenn Saunders wrote:

>I have to spend more time figuring out how those dice-like guys work

Dices? I thought they were Swiss cheese! :)

>One simple request that won't take up many bytes.  Please have the game
>immediately go into screen-saver mode upon death ala Space Invaders and
>many other early games.

>Have it go out of screen saver not only when you
>press reset, but when you press select, so the text at the bottom remains
>readable.

Hmmm, sorry but I don't understand very well...
With "screen-saver mode" do you mean the slow color cycling of early games?
Ok, with a few bytes I've just added a cyclic, random change of the
background color (the part that is normally black), like in those old games.
But I can't really change any other color... don't even talk about the
enemies. This would mean to rewrite or adapt a lot of things in the kernel,
and I doubt this will be possible or worth the trouble.

>It is clear, though, that the game really has much more depth now than
>ever before. both in the graphical detail and the gameplay.
>
>Again, please keep the development going on Oystron, the 4K version, if
>not now, then take a break and come back to it, not so you can necessarily
>add features, but to tune the difficulty and enemy behaviors. This is the
>sort of thing that people need time with the game to evaluate.

>If you abandon the game then any loopholes or serious problems with
gameplay will
>be forever unaddressed.

Well, I don't want to abandon it! I've no reason for doing that. 

Playtesting action games is a complex affair and may take time. Making the
game available to a wider user base, I would receive more feedback and this
could help me to tune up things. So I think that the game could be put on
Nick's page, and announced around with the clear request to send comments
and advices on gameplay.
Don't you think this would be a good idea?

Let's remember that this game doesn't have to go either on Eprom or CD soon.
I'm not like a company that has to manufacture thousands of carts, where bug
fixing means replacing the cart, with all the related problems (BTW, luckyly
Microsoft doesn't make carts :)

>Also, when you send the game up to the list, why not give it the Oystron
>filename?

uh... why not?

P.



Ciao,
 P.



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