>OK, now things are becoming interesting.. I still think that you'd better
>go further than the simple shooting concept... after all Oystron would be
>much less interesting whithout the collect-and-defend-the-pearls part.
Yes, I will be going further than simple shooting. I may even go a step further than Sabotage. Though this game is based on Sabotage (apple // version), I am very willing to add other items to enhance gameplay. For instance, you may notice that you get 3 shots, well, maybe you start off with 1 and get powerups or something? Or maybe vica-versa (sp?), and you start out with 3 shots, and as you get damaged you lose a shot? I don't know at this point and would like some help thinking of things.
>A note on explosions: when something is hit, you remove it and add an
>"explosion-object"; since there can be only one of these on the screen at
>once, if you hit something else while the explosion is still around, it is
>immediately replaced by the new explosion. I don't like this very much, I
>think it would be better to always let the explosion finish, and what is
>hit before the end of the explosion just disappears.
Very perceptive of you! Anyway, I tried that and was less than excited about how it looked, not enough positive feedback. I'd like to hear what others think about this subject though, and if enough people think I am wrong, I will look into it further.
>Alternatively, you could handle an array of explosions - but this can be a
>real waste of RAM since you've to store all the information (position,
>status...) for each explosion.
Right, I use a LOT of variables already since I have values for each sprite's x-position, y-position, x-motion, y-motion, shape, size, etc... I want to conserve some RAM for gameplay variables. Maybe when the game is done, and if I have some extra bytes of RAM, I can polish it up a bit :)
>Another option could be what I've done in Oystron: objects disappear when
>hit unless they're the last in a group, in this case the object changes its
>ID and becomes an explosion which is handled exactly as the other objects.
I don't think that is satifying enough, I like to see an explosion, even if it is just the start of one, when I hit something.
>>This can all be easily fixed by making sure that a cloned object doesn't
>>"wrap". (Whew, I'm outta breath now)
>This is easier to do than to explain... tables, tables... ;-)
Yep, just have to get around to doing it is all :) I think at this point, the best thing for me to do is to sit down and see about cleaning up the code I have and optimizing it a bit before continuing on. Maybe after that I will post the source code so I can get some input on how I can improve that.
Thanks for the input!
Bob
Wanna write a game for the Atari 2600?
Check out http://www.novia.net/~rcolbert
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