At 10:08 PM 3/26/2001 +0200, you wrote:
Uhm... before I forget this: Glenn: I'm sure that Joe will think about
some proper gameplay for his game. And I think it might be cool to play
a drivehead. Maybe you remember the C64 cult game 'Gerry The Germ'?
There you play in the inner parts of a human body, being a germ that
tries to disturb the workings of the heart, liver, brain & other more or
less useful bodyparts. I see in Joe's approach a similar opportunity of
making a fun game out of normally boring stuff.
Yeah, I admit there's nothing sexy about playing a drivehead (yet...) I
think the concept itself works wonderfully - you've got the hexadecimal
score, data latency buffer, byte counters, defragmented data bits.. Just
like a real hard drive.. Man. I am definetely a geek. :) I prefer this type
of thing to space-age-type games. The more obscure, the better (for me). In
reality, you don't even need to follow the concept to play the game. It's
simply "Click on the colored blocks as they pass by. Miss and your game
ends." or something like that.
If anyone has comments on how to spice up the gameplay, they would be
greatly appreciated.. Remember that this is my first game, so I've tried to
keep it very simple. I just need to make sure it is still _fun_. It will be
easier to understand the concept once I get more written, but I don't want
to spend too much time going down the wrong path if the gameplay is going
to suck.
This whole idea started because Kaboom! is my favorite game and I wanted to
do something along those lines (very simple and very addicting). I think
with the right speeds and using the paddle, this game could work. I'm
envisioning a fairly fast game play, so I don't think the "lateral
wraparound" will be an issue. The game will quickly be over if you don't
pay attention and read the right bits. I don't know how I will set the
patterns of the data bits, but I don't expect them to be constant so you
can't memorize patterns and locations (not very easily, anyway).
To answer one of Glenn's questions:
I think what you've got here is a play pattern that has shades of Pac Man,
Stampede, and Defender. I would focus on what's going to happen within
the main portion of the screen. Do you want to have anything visual show
up there or will you simply be using the indicators to navigate around?
The main portion of the screen (on the 10 tracks) will have the data bits
you need to read.. They will be whizzing past and the drive head will need
to "read" them (e.g. get to it and hit the button). The indicators aren't
for navigation. Think of the "data latency buffer" as a timer - if you
don't read a bit in time, the time decreases. The "byte counter" on the
right side of the screen is just for show and will just increase each time
a data bit is read..
Anyway, thanks for the comments!
Joe
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