I just spent some time Digging and was having fun, even though all the
gameplay elements are not yet in place! I think this has the potential to
be a great game, especially with the element of trying to maximize points by
going after the treasures. Thus you'll have to think more carefully about
where you're digging. Kind of like in Boulder Dash, one of my favorite
Atari 8-bit games. :)
Can't wait to see how this further develops!
..Al
____________________________________________________________
Albert Yarusso (albert@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
AtariAge.com - Atari News, Rarity Guides, Discussion & More!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Tumber" <christophertumber@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <stella@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2002 11:28 AM
Subject: [stella] Big Dig (My Other 2600 game)
> It's not nearly done, but, a couple people have expressed interest and I'm
here now, so what the hell...
>
> The reason I got hooked on Space Instigators was that I started looking at
using the RESP0/RESP1 trick (you'll se what I mean if you run it) to do the
display. And then I switched over in part because it looked like I was going
to have to do a major overhaul of the existing routines to try and improve
performance. As it is gameplay is not as smooth as I'd like (You have to
stand around and wait for blocks to react a little more than you should)
which could become a real problem once the missing parts of the game engine
are added (As is the game engine actually reacts over several frames, hence
the slight pause before blocks disappear or blocks begin to fall) The big
thing that needs to be done is that when 4 or more blocks of the same colour
come together they should disappear (actually, most everything beyond this
that still needs to be done is bascially cosmetic). However, what I've
learned with Space Instigators should be really helpfull (Like putting code
in the Overscan)
>
> Use joystick to move, joystick+button will cause the block(s) in that
direction to disappear. There's no dying yet, but having blocks fall on your
head is supposed to kill you... Blocks of the same colour will stick
together to form one unit that react as a whole wrt to falling or
disappearing.
>
> The second sprite (currently a skull, there should be other related
treasures - thigh-bone, gems, arrowhead - Archeaologist theme) will be a
pick-up for bonus points type thing (doesn't do anything at the moment).
Scoring will be heavily balanced towards picking them up (1pt per eliminated
block vs 100pts per treasure type thing) which can be dangerous due to
overhanging blocks and the resulting chain reactions from removing blocks...
That OR you may be up against a timer and picking up the treasures will give
you more time (But I don't really want to have to display a timer as well as
the score. Well, maybe a bar wouldn't be too bad...). Thus increasing their
importance and increasing the rate (and therefore potential sloppiness) and
which the player has work his way through the blocks..
>
> There's also no score, no sound fx, yada, yada...
>
> I probably won't be back on this one until I've finished UTG for the
Vectrex is done (plus maybe a little break after that) but in the meantime
here's a little appetizer...
>
> Chris....
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