>>
1) Will all four players be against the same wall,
will each have his own wall, will it be two to a wall,
and assuming one or more paddles share a wall, do they
have complete independent movement the entire length,
or do they only cover so much area?
<<
I think the design that will work best would be all four players which can
move horizontally starting off equally separated within the middle third of
the screen, plus some mechanism for them to control their vertical
position, but the game would enforce vertical separation. If you try to
get one paddle on top of another, it will pop you one sprite-height below
or above automatically.
>>
2) Does it have to be four player? From the sound of
the control scheme, it sounds like two players with
driving controllers would offer more control. Either
that, or have, say, one twist of the controller spin
the paddle around three times so that, once you catch
the ball at the bottom of the play area, you don't
have to rotate the paddle all the way around to aim it
up.
<<
It has to be 4 players. That's kinda the point of the exercise.
>>
Well, I would imagine that, if you have the paddles
lined up on the left and right sides of the screen,
you could simply draw those paddles with playfield
graphics. You would still get collision detection if
the ball hits them, and with 192 (I don't remember off
the top of my head and the docs aren't in easy reach)
lines to draw with, the animation would be relatively
smooth.
<<
The playfield needs to be reserved for other game elements, I think.
Remember that the sprites aren't paddles per se. They are lines that can
rotate all the way around under certain circumstance.
>>
Uh...need a slightly clearer idea of how the game
would look to comment on this.
<<
I think gameplay will become clearer after the kernel starts to get
written. There is no need to overdesign it now because odds are reading
the paddles and RAM limitations will enforce design constraints.
The most important feature of the game is to break away from the one
dimensionality of traditional paddle games. And I want the players to aim
and pass or shoot balls after they catch them. If the game id distilled
into some generic rules, then it should be possible to write a kernel that
can support several interesting game variations like the early titles
always did.
Glenn Saunders - Producer - Cyberpunks Entertainment
Personal homepage: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/1698
Cyberpunks Entertainment: http://cyberpunks.uni.cc
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