Well I’ve been assembling the core components of a vertical scrolling shooter using various parts of the Hoth Strike game as a starting point. For the most part Hoth Strike came out pretty much as I’d planned it so it seemed like a logical starting point.
I’m keen to explore ways of scrolling rich content through the game window so as I’ve alluded to in earlier posts a 1942 style shooter seems like a good way to go.
Just now I have the bits you’d expect from any arcade game – title screen, ready state, score / status bar, keyboard controlled player ship, multiple rapid fire lasers, explosions, game over etc. In itself that’s the seeds of a game but I wanted to explore a new area in game design; staged content. So I also wrote a simple tile-based background scroller that repeats Scooby Doo style.
Currently I have created enough tiles to fill the game window with a static water texture.
The way I want the scrolling to work is fairly simple theory.
Each tile is 64 x 64. The game window is 384 x 512. I can therefore fit 6 x 8 tiles comfortably within the tile area.
But 8 rows of 6 tiles (48) isn’t enough since the tiles that fall off the bottom of the play area don’t reappear until they’ve fallen to their height beneath the play area. e.g. the canvas is 512px high. When the x,y of a tile is 0,513 I reposition it at 0 – tile height (i.e. -64px). Using this approach I theoretically leave a glaring gap in the tiles.
So I need more tiles to fill the gaps to make the whole process seamless.
By effectively reusing these tiles I can create the illusion of a complex background scrolling through the game window.
Illustration to show the movement and re-use of background tiles within the game window. Click to enlarge.
So, stepping back to the tile dropping beneath the canvas height, I increment a tile marker each time this happens.
In a separate array I store which images are stored in each of the 6 tiles for the current tile marker.
Currently the only images are water tiles but I intend to create a wealth of different tiles.
In short then, when a row of tiles drops out of view I “re paint” them based on my level design and re-position them above the playing area such that they are about to reappear. All the time I am re-using the same 60 tile objects.
What falls out of the bottom of this approach is the need for a simple level editor.
An editor that allows me to create dozens (maybe more) of tile graphics and simply construct a level.
Currently each level is a collection of tiles with no other purpose than to look pretty. What I may implement is the ability to animate or alter certain tiles if the player moves over them. Not sure yet where the design is going to take me.
Finally a word on staging the action. Shooters like 1942 and Don Pachi use a staged approach that allows enemies to fly in at set intervals. This interval is not always based on the position that the game is in in relation to the background (some is since tanks moving along roads wouldn’t work otherwise), more it is in relation to the structured order of events. If a squadron of planes flies in formation and loops around inviting the player to attack it it may take the player 1 minute or 5 seconds to despatch them. If the staging was tied to the scrolling scenery then we’d soon see enemies bunching up on screen.
What I intend to create is a triggering of action based upon an “ideal” time (probably based on the incrementing tile marker) but more strongly dictated by whether or not the stage is clear for the action to take place.
More on that later.
I’m inbetween game projects just now. Have been for some time. I keep picking up my adventure / RPG game idea and tinkering with it and then it all seems a million miles away from starting so I sit back in my chair and ponder other ideas. As much as I love the thought of getting my hands dirty with a large scale game it’s the smaller games that give me a real buzz as a game designer.
So I’m looking around and piecing together some ideas.
I’m currently thinking vertical scrolling shooter. The manic type. Think Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun, Border Down; that kind of thing. They are the single reason I own a Dreamcast and it’s still plugged in and used. Manic shooters like this are just the epitome of awesome in my opinion. My all time favourite, Bangai-O, is just too mental. I couldn’t begin to think about the mechanics of representing something like that in JavaScript. But a vertical shooter might just be on the cards.
In my teens I was a huge fan of 1942 in the arcades. In recent years it’s undergone a few facelifts but ultimately it’s the same game. I’m pretty keen to use the model for my own shooter.
I put together a few tests for scrolling a patchwork static background that worked well. I refer to it as the moving stage. At various points on the stage I position sprites and scenery that slowly scroll in to view as the stage slides down through the play field. As soon as any adversary sprites hit the playfield margin (typically CanvasOrigin – 128px) they come to life and start to move in their own particular way.
Better still I put a starship (actually it was a helicopter since I wanted to animate it convincingly and I LOVE Border Down) at the base and had it shoot dozens of bullets around the screen at once.
Aliens would come in to view, fire their missiles and swoop off out of sight never to be seen again.
It was pure chaos and just what I’m after. The mechanics of a game like this are pretty simple. The skill is in the staging to actually make a decent game out of it.
More theory to follow as well as a working title for the game. Exciting times :)
I really have to write to this blog some more. It’s not that I’m short of ideas or thoughts more that I just don’t have the hours in the day any more.
I recently took a week’s break at the coast with the family and really enjoyed the clarity and countless ice creams. On a few occassions we wandered in to the seafront arcade where my daughter got hooked on dropping 2p coins in to the simple betting games. One such game is Grand National. We’ve all seen it. You drop the coin in to the horse that you wish to back then watch as they all race.
If your horse comes in you win the prize depending on the odds. My daughter absolutely adored this game and actually became quite good at guessing the winners.
So naturally I got thinking about creating a digital version using JavaScript that she could play on screen.
Here’s the result http://www.rebelideas.co.uk/games/national/
Hopefully it’s intuitive enough to just pick up and play :)
Bored one afternoon flicking through an old magazine online. Loved the type and layout so thought I’d crank up Photoshop and have a go.
Font is Delicious and Delicious Heavy.
Further to my last (admittedly over critical) post I decided to explore a form of adventuring that I enjoyed in my youth. The Fighting Fantasy series has always fascinated me since it is so simple and so creative. It allows the creator to conjur up some incredible scenarios and locations with just words. Images help but it’s the detail in the descriptions that captures the imagination.
For the reader there is a true escape. I admit I prefered the troll style fantasies to the sci-fi but the point was there was something there for everyone.
The mechanics behind the books were really rather simple and consequently extremely accessible. You started the adventure / story with Stamina, Skill and Luck that were determined by the throw of a dice. You had to track your stats as well as inventory items and general notes that might be of some use.
Your Stamina was essentially your health. When zero you expired. Your Skill was essentially your skill in battle and your Luck was your likelihood of winning the flip-of-a-coin situation.
Assembling a game with these core rules is no great task.
So I had a go.
Although it’s not quite ready to post up just now it’s certainly well on the way. I have a number of game elements in place and a game editor that I decided was the best approach for this kind of project. I empower the editor so that I can just sit back and create some exciting locations, monsters and scenarios.
I’m also going to enjoy using pen and paper again after nearly 30 years !
So far the player can be met with one of 5 scenarios per location.
- Standard location (no challenge)
- Monster
- Treasure
- Luck test
- Stats nudge
All should be self explanatory except perhaps for the last one, stats nudge.
I wanted the ability to reward or harm the player through their stats based on their decisions or success in combat.
It makes sense for a player to find himself surrounded by health potions immediately after battle, for example.
Similarly a player with no luck might find themselves in a room full of slime or poison.
In each case I can simply add or subtract from the player’s core stats: Stamina, Skill or Luck.
Monster fighting and Luck testing are handled by some JavaScript that visibly rolls a dice and determins the outcome of the action.
As in the gamebooks the rules for combat are simple; roll the dice and add to your skill. If the result is greater than the monster’s skill then you hurt them. The same is true of the reverse scenario where the monster is attacking you.
The one element of the game that I was reluctant to try and implement was the inventory and gold mechanism.
Just now the only information that persists across each location is Stamina, Skill, Luck and Game ID. The Location ID changes with each click, naturally.
So I decided that the best way to implement an inventory would be to simply force the player through a location where a new inventory item resides. This allows me to always assume that the player actually carries the item. It might seem lame but it’s a deliberate sacrifice in my pursuit of an arcade text adventure. I want the player to spend 5 – 10 minutes at a time playing this game so the lifespan is short enough anyway and there are other ways to challenge people.
A future enhancement will probably see the inventory feature implemented.
Finally I want to draw some locations. I’m a seasoned artist so sketching out some fantasy locations is right up my street.
The final part of the editor therefore is the image selection tab. For each location I can simply pick an image to display.
I’ll post a link to the game when there’s something to actually see.
The journey home from the office is about 20 minutes and plenty enough time for me to wander with my thoughts. I just can’t shake the idea of organic text-based adventuring just now. Here’s some more thoughts.
I researched a fair bit on amateur adventure game creation this afternoon. There are a glut of forums out there for this kind of thing and I have to say I’m not a member of any of them. Nor shall I be. I’ve done the forum thing in the past and find them to be pretty awful “smart-arsed” howitzer affairs between semi-clued up idiots. But there were some interesting points worth picking out.
Firstly, it seems that amateur adventure game creators appear obsessed with their “systems”.
In my system there shall be this method of trading and that method of combat and some other such method for moving around.
There shall be this elaborate system of talking between characters where certain phrases are allowed and certain actions are allowed depending on the phrases… etc etc
This is common and to me somewhat surprising.
Investing so much time and effort in to a clearly restrictive system for a game that ought to allow for tremendous freedom seems to me like trying to solve an unnecessary set of puzzles.
Second, players are shown everything with fancy icons, graphics and maps.
At first you might think ‘fair enough’. The player wants to see himself, his location and his attributes. But what surprises me is that this appears to be one of the first considerations for the designer – how the game will look. Before any thought is given for the experience it seems that amateur game designers are telling us that their game will look like SNES Zelda and play with a system borrowed from Elder Scrolls. Or some such.
To me both of these things miss the mark by a long way.
Anybody willing to play an adventure game, even a casual one, is probably willing to invest a little of their imagination. At least enough to flesh out the scenario in their mind. The inclusion of rich graphics in an RPG is surely more of a marketing gimick than a true aide to the gamer. Some is good but too much makes the entire process of adventuring a banal affair. Give the player pointers and let him “create” the rest.
I tried to figure out a process where I could prove an adventure game “on paper” by allowing for the most natural decision making process known to man – conversation.
Consider this text transcription.
Although it looks horribly basic try and look in to what I’m trying to achieve. Look at how the decisions are made.
There is no game here. No underlying “system”. It’s purely natural and uses simple, available technology.
You can also see that the game continues to tick in my absence and all I am ever doing is offering myself a window in to the game.
Note: square brackets denote a user action e.g. [ SLEEP ]
Decisions are not tied to a game system. In fact the only system is the means to view information that then allows you to make a decision.
This method of communication is accessible to everybody since it is a form of communication we all know. There would be no instruction booklet to describe your “chat” system.
World of Warcraft appears to dominate the online gaming community. (I still don’t see the relevance of the word Massively in MMO, surely it’s implied by virtue of the world wide web)
I would suggest that a large part of the reason for its dominance is its simple and highly effective communication system. Not only that it actively encourages the formation of guilds.
Talking with a colleague and avid WoW player I understand that simply belonging to a guild is considered an achievement. Indeed of the 200+ members of his own guild he is convinced that a significant portion are there simply because “it’s a guild”.
Gravitating towards like-minded people through conversation and basic human interaction is the most natural process we know.
In many respects this kind of thing doesn’t require restriction.
Just some thoughts. I expect they will evolve.
Sometimes I find myself surprised by the simplest things.
For the last few days I have been working on a simple JavaScript arcade game the killer feature of which is a scrolling floor similar (but not identical) to that of Space Harrier. As I’ve been piecing the game elements together and scaling sprites and other game content I’ve also been pre-occupied with the notion of online adventure gaming.
It’s distractions like this that lead me down all manner of thought trails and ultimately, and inevitably I have to shelve my current project to go and investigate my ideas a little further.
I am not an adventure gamer by rule. I much prefer to play “arcade” games. I rather enjoy the theory if it all but the concept of pretending to be an Orc or a Paladin and venturing off to find treasure in “them thar hills” is a bit beyond me.
Atleast that’s what I thought.
I recently picked up a few old games, one of which was Dungeon Siege. I was convinced it’d get an hour of my time and then I’d uninstall it. To my surprise I played it through and thoroughly enjoyed it. Being a designer of games I decided to invest a little thought in to what it was that actually grabbed my attention so much.
I found the answer was within my definition of the term “arcade gaming”.
To anyone older than 20 years the thought of an arcade game meant standing in a game arcade waiting patiently for a “go” on a game machine. I still remember fondly pacing the grotty floorboards of the local arcade with a fistful of coins looking for a cheap laser thrill. Great days. But arcades of course died a death thanks in no small part to their abuse by factions of society that used them as havens for pushing drugs and getting smashed on cheap booze.
To a modern gamer an arcade game is a simple, casual game enjoyed thanks to the internet. Probably.
My problem is that I’d always assumed an arcade game was a ton of sprites drifting around with a wee player sprite striving to destroy them all in some way shape or form. Certainly these are the games I love to play.
I re-evaluated this and decided that a truer description was probably better defined by my attitude towards the game rather than the style of the game itself.
In the arcades you were prepared to spend a short space of time playing a game. You certainly didn’t expect to be there for hours on end.
I simply haven’t got hours on end to spare for gaming. Those days are gone.
But I am a keen gamer in that I enjoy the challenge of computer games.
Dungeon Siege allowed me to progress through a fantasy game world at my own pace without the hassles of guild membership or any kind of commitment to a pre-arranged tournament. I’m sure those things are available but I didn’t use them.
So it strikes me that a great game might be found in a fantasy adventure that is designed to be played in short bursts.
A kind of “dip in and dip out” style of game that prompts the player for a decision or action then shuts up shop until the next time the player returns. In the background you might move the game world on a bit so that the player returns to a “living” situation.
This is quite different to the “what do I do next?” style of game that I had previously been thinking about.
Better still the game needn’t use any graphics whatsoever.
I could play the game on my mobile phone and just “dip in” once in a while to see what’s changed and what I need to do to survive.
This may sound pretty pedestrian to anyone used to the graphical thrills of World of Warcraft but from a designer’s perspective (especially somebody happy to consider the more cerebral aspects of such a game) this is where the fun is.
So I am now moving more and more towards an adventure game in an open world where the player initially must simply survive.
Once I’ve finished the “inbetween” game that I’m working on I am going to enjoy sketching out the framework for a big fantasy project.
I haven’t had a lot of time just lately what with babies, work and stuff. But I was keen to finish my web site so that I could finally establish myself properly on the web.
My site, Rebel Ideas, can be found at www.rebelideas.co.uk.
During the development of Invaders from Mars I sent a link to a couple of guys whose work I have admired for some time; Douglas Crockford and Chris Crawford. They were both kind enough to reply to me and offer a few brief comments. I’ve included those comments on the site.
I also sent emails to Eugene Jarvis and John Romero whilst developing Hoth Strike. I figured John as a game designer may be interested and, well, Eugene’s Defender is pretty much what Hoth Strike is modelled on. Again they both replied and were kind enough to offer comment and suggestions.
I included part of John’s comment but as yet I haven’t received permission from Eugene. (I only sent the request yesterday !)
I’m really delighted to now have a firm platform from which to work from and will be diving in to game development with some renewed gusto !
I’ve been thinking a fair bit about a new project. In fact I’m a compulsive thinker of new ideas. Even whilst I was trying to bring Hoth Strike to a tidy close I was off in cuckoo land dreaming of a fantasy universe with fancy map and character editors. I still love the idea of having this super rich world with different races living side by side each with their own geo-political issues. I love the idea of different races, communities and individuals having their own particular agenda and I absolutely love the idea of dropping the player right in to the middle of it all. I even started to code a framework to put some flesh on the bones of the idea.
But mid way through something dawned on me. I hadn’t even considered the application for the game. I had no idea how the game would be played and no consideration for the visual appearance / appeal of the game.
I am essentially an arcade gamer. I love the ability to dip in to a game, wreak havoc, obtain a score (high or otherwise) and then just leave it all behind until next time. The games I play are pretty much this sort of game. For some reason I have just harboured this love of computer fantasy role playing and always thought it would be an interesting challenge.
Growing up with a love for Infocom’s Zork probably didn’t help this much. In my youth I wrote all manner of linear adventure games in BASIC. You know the sort, YOU ARE IN A ROOM. DO YOU GO LEFT OR RIGHT. > YOU WENT RIGHT. YOU HAVE FALLEN DOWN A PIT. END. Hmm. Should have gone left.
Those kind of games were littered with GOTO statements and were pretty dreadful to be honest. All the fun was in the creation.
A step beyond all that is the Fighting Fantasy style. These were huge in my youth. I particularly remember Citadel of Chaos for it’s rich definitions and grotesque characters.
I got a pen and paper out and sketched out my own idea for a game earlier today. It came out something like the map above. What struck me as fascinating about this was just how easily it translates in to a coding structure. Using JavaScript to create this sort of thing would be a breeze with every location an instance of a Node class of some kind populated individually with specific attributes to prompt the player in to having decisions to make.
So I set about coding a simple structure for this kind of game.
Using JSON I defined the following type of structure:
var locations = [
{
id : 0,
title : "The Entrance Chamber",
description : "You are standing in a tall but rather narrow chamber. Paintings from a long forgotten time adorn the walls and portray past members of the household. They appear to watch your every move. Quietly you turn to face the open door behind you. It creaks in the wind then SLAMS shut. Darkness falls and you are suddenley met with a shiver.",
prompt : "A staircase leads up away from the chamber. A dusty old chest sits in a dark corner.",
actions : [
{
text : "Climb the stairs",
nextlocation : 1
},
{
text : "Open the chest",
nextlocation : 2
}
]
},
.
.
As you can see that array definition could easily go on for several megabytes more. And indeed it will.
Locations 1 and 2 are naturally going to hold information relative to the Staircase and Chest.
I could expand on the location definition to include attributes for light level, HP damage (e.g.poison), gold, inventory items, monsters and so forth. All the game code would be concerned with is picking the details out for that element and presenting the player with a number of choices. As with the map diagram above all roads would ultimately lead you back to the central “spine” of the game until ultimately you reached your goal.
There are two reasons why I particularly like this approach to a game.
Firstly, it’s 100% flexible and easy to replicate. By administering a data source you could rip out a data.js file and bang a new one in there that is a completely different game ! This appeals since I could probably think of countless adventure scenarios.
Secondly, it’s playable on the move. I could simply render text and providing my handset supports JavaScript, CSS and HTML I get a reasonable game experience.
But for the game to really capture my interest it would need a separate combat element. A means of accumulating enough strength, experience, dexterity, intelligence etc to actually do some damage in battle. Further in to the story / game you would then come up against some tough adversaries.
This loosly linear approach to a game also gives me the chance to flex my atrophic literary muscles. I love the idea of being able to go to town describing a location and situation. Better still I could crank up photoshop and sketch out the location with a simple JPG. Where an image exists I simply present it above the text.
There are a great many creative positives to a side project like this. I could have a serious amount of fun just pencilling out the map for the adventure and coming up with a ton of tricky scenarios in which to plant the adventurer.
Check out my extremely roughly coded example here: http://rebelideas.co.uk/proto/adventure1/
Take a look at the data.js file for the structure. You will see that only a couple of locations are coded. But it’s an interesting starting point.
Meanwhile…. I am preparing some graphics for my next graphical arcade game. I’ve already done my own takes on Space Invaders and Defender. Next up I hope to apply a similar spin on Robotron. Somewhere in between Robotron and Gauntlet you will hopefully find my next game, set in a very familiar and extremely popular universe. More soon.
Just a few changes.
- Fixed invulnerability bug with speeder sliding in to probes on direction change and not being harmed
- Made speeder blink at start of wave to indicate invulnerability (note, this period decays with subsequent waves)
- Extra life at 100,000. Listen for R2. If you hear him you have the extra life.
