Piero Cavina wrote:
>
> [Rescue]
>
> > I'd like to A) add more comments, and B) rework the kernel to support
> > missiles, before providing original source code.
>
> While the game looks very good, I think that there's something wrong in the
> gameplay: it is too easy.
It's a demo. I can make it *much* more difficult ;)
> Since I don't think that faster asteroids alone would solve the problem,
> I've played the original Lunar Rescue on Mame to refresh my memory.
>
> Well, the most important differences I've spotted are:
>
> in the original,
>
> 1- there are more rows of asteroids
On the first level, I think there are ten rows in the original, and this
has 9, so it's pretty close for a VCS game. In the original, I think
more rows are added, but closer together vertically, as you advance.
You might double check that in MAME though, I'm not sure.
> 2- they're smaller than yours
I can make mine smaller ;)
> 3- sometimes there are two of them in the same horizontal line and they may
> have opposite directions
Double sprites are no longer working in mine. I changed around the
asteroid movement and need to figure out what I did wrong. It's just
been a low priority thing but I'll figure it out eventually. The
opposite directions are pretty much out of the question though. Making
single enemies change direction might make up for that.
>
> The last point is very important, in fact it is what makes the landing
> phase of the game difficult and interesting.
>
> Thus my advices are:
>
> - try add two rows of asteroids reducing their size and making the landing
> platforms shorter;
I can do this, but I'm not sure I will. I have some other ideas for
adding difficulty as well.
> - add sprite replication (two-medium would be perfect, but also others
> could be interesting)
I think two-wide is really good, but variety is best of all.
> - double the number of asteroids with sprite multiplexing: you could put
> the left-to-right moving ones in the even frames, and the right-to left in
> the odd frames.
I don't want flicker.
> Sometimes flickering is the price to pay for a good gameplay. After all,
> Atari Asteroids did flicker, but was also a very good game!
Perhaps. I didn't care for it. But I didn't like the original a whole
heckuva lot either. The shooting is fun, but the flight controls never
did much for me.
One thing I figure I'll do to increase difficulty is to reposition the
men so they give you less platform space on which to land. I also think
repositioning one or more enemies on the return flight so that they
change direction and "chase" your ship will make it more challenging.
In this version, I think it's also harder to return to the mothership
because I keep it moving until you're right up to it, where the original
stops and let's you aim at the entry point more easily. I'm not sure if
I'll keep it like that though. There are lots of things to do. In most
cases I'm trying to be faithful to the original, but I'm also thinking I
can improve on it in some areas making it possibly more appealing to
some people. Maybe.
--
mor@xxxxxxx
http://www.crl.com/~mor/
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