Re: [stella] Seawolf: Day Fifteen

Subject: Re: [stella] Seawolf: Day Fifteen
From: Manuel Rotschkar <cybergoth@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 13:52:27 +0100
Hi there!

> I'm going to have to try the real thing on Mame and 
> compare the timings and such but the explosions seem 
> closer to my recollections now as far as timing goes.

The general timing should be close. A difference I made 
is that I don't have the sub and the PT boat sinking, 
but exploding, as I couldn't fit more grafics into a 
page. That's also what the 8-Bit version does, it has 
only explosions and no sinking at all.

> I know in the original didn't it superimpose point 
> values?

True. But I can't display any sprites above the ships. 
And the sinking animation is the same for all of the 24 
pixel wide ship types, so if I'd scroll in a score there 
instead of "void", all ships would have the same score.

> Also, your mine spawning routine should probably 
> prevent stacking of the mines.  Right now it's pretty 
> common to see two mines overlap eachother.
> You should enforce some kind of minimum distance.

Good point. I'll take care of this.

> Also, you might want to think about doing double or 
> triple-copy mines ala Space Invaders to help clutter 
> up the bottom.  This would complicate the kernel, I 
> realize.  It's just that right now you can only have 
> two mines per level and the coinop may have done more.

Hm... I think I do it almost exactly like the arcade 
here, at least I haven't seen it doing more than two 
mines per level so far. Only difference I see is that in 
the arcade mines are popping in in the middle of the 
screen, wheras I let them all slide in from the border.

Also I let the mines in he middle run into the other 
direction.

In fact, the mines kernel is dead simple, I could easily 
do tripple copies here. I opted against it, because now 
I'm more flexible here. Instead of a mine, I plan to 
launch supply boxes there as well, so you can 
occasionally refuel and rearm your sub.

> Other than that, I guess the next step is to make the 
> score dynamic, right?

Yup, that's one of the remaining tasks. I'll also soon 
add the SFX engine I wrote a while ago and the final 
steps then will be gameplay tweaks and introducing a 
difficulty ramp.

> BTW, as you may know, the original Sea Wolf 1 used an 
> analog control on the periscope.  You were controlling 
> a crosshair.  Isn't this also the case in SW2?

It is, yes. I recently found flyers of both arcades 
(There is a homepage focused on collecting Arcade flyers 
somewhere) where both cabinets are pictured. It seems 
like the sequel was using exactly the same kind of 
periscope controlers, only two of them.

> I'm assuming paddle control is out of the question 
> here, right?

This was the first thing I thought of when Thomas gained 
me the big bunch of cycles with his DCP-Missile code. I 
didn't think it'd work too well though. 

If you carefully trace the way of a torpedo, you'll 
realize a certain kind of jerkiness in it's movement, 
coming from the repositioning lines, where the missile 
code isn't executed. Now I feared that the very same 
jerkiness would also be introduced into the paddle 
movement.

Well, anyway, the cycles have now been used up for the 
animation of the water... :-)

Greetings,
	Manuel

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