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Tron HD

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Xiaou2:


--- Quote from: IAmDotorg on July 31, 2014, 03:22:51 pm ---
--- Quote from: Le Chuck on July 31, 2014, 02:29:06 pm ---So... what I'm basically seeing here is you volunteering to make a TRON clone in a weekend using Unity and we'll all test it.  I'll be set to test on monday ;)

--- End quote ---

Unfortunately I'm spending most of the weekend swearing at Unity for how lousy their GUI capabilities are for an entirely different game. That one isn't currently designed to work on an arcade cabinet / controls, but when its done I may do a special version of it for mine. Its intended to be an ID@Xbox game, and maybe a PC game, but if I end up selling it I may look into selling a special cabinet-compatible version.

Seriously, though, its pretty easy to pick up. I did a Pac Man clone as my first experiment of doing a 2D game in it, and for those simple early 80's type games, its really pretty easy to throw them together because the original game logic is so simple.

Why do you think there's so many total junk Android/iPhone games out there? Unity makes it simple to crank them out over and over and over.

--- End quote ---

 
 Im curious to see what you are capable of.

 On the other hand...  I have a feeling you are underestimating things.

 Yes.. there are a LOT of Clone games out there...  but how many people prefer them to the Originals?   How many people, especially those less likely to be age-biased (younger people tend to say new stuff is always better)..  actually Rave that the remake outshines the original by Miles  ?

 To date, Ive played Countless clones that looked interesting visually...  only to be completely disgusted with the gameplay.    Poor difficulty (almost always WAY too easy).  Poor difficulty ramping  (If you dont mind falling asleep through 30 levels before the game has a pulse).   Overall, Poor game balance.   Artificial Intelligence routines are are 'way' off the mark..  too easy too fool...  buggy...   worthless.     Poor use of mathematical formulas..  so things like a Mario Bros jump.. is absolutely nothing like the original.   Additional 'features'  like  Powerups that are too powerful.  Things that make the game look, play, feel, and even sound...worse.    Horrible low-poly models, that are shaded very badly.  Wretched animations that look very artificial and 'wrong'.  Bad use of colors..  and the typical "eye burning flash explosions.. that stay onscreen for about 200x longer than they should... and totally mess up the ability to SEE whats happening.   Reduction of projectile speeds..  making the screen littered with dog slow bullet fire... without any adrenalized reaction needed or felt, to speak of...    And things like 3d FPS versions of 2d games, that do not play anything like the original games... to the point where it cant even really be called a clone.  As well as the typical flippy camera angles / camera in the way.   Artwork thats actually drawn with a worse 'flat' look...  not using proper artistic shading with good Contrast in the shades  (see Original Rayman -vs- new Rayman)...
And lastly.. remakes that Butcher the Controls.   Like Midways remakes that have Spy Hunter in them..   Theres no way you can play that game on a gamepad!  lol    Games like Supersprint..  never play anything like supersprint..  and part of its probably due to the fact that none of them have a spinner... and dont design their games to properly support one.   No trackball?  Use a joystick to play Marble Madness..   Uhh.. No.   Not ever worth wasting your time.

 Asterioids remakes?   They almost always look like garbage, with cut and pasted graphics that dont match well..  dont animate well.. dont break into pieces well.  IMO, This also includes Atari's own remake, blasteroids...  which is clunky at best..  and not really anywhere near as fun as Asteroids Deluxe in intense gameplay.    Often the thrust of this game is reproduced very poorly.. and so its a lot less about to be controller as smooth and well as the original.    And out of all of the remakes, I dont think Ive found any to be even close in approximate value.  None of the added gimmicks have ever worked... and have only made the games worse.


 Now, lets be honest though...
 As much as I loved Tron,  the original movie,  as well as have love for the Cabinet and Game...   Tron isnt really a shining example of a "great" game...

 
 - Lightcycles:   As cool as they look in the movie...  the game version is infuriating.  Its almost completely random that you will survive it... unless you memorize some patterns... and to me, thats not good at all.
 - Grid Bugs:  The concept is cool.. but the bugs are too slow, and your fire rate is too slow.   The difficulty is pretty stable, because either you have time to shoot them... or your outnumbered and its impossible.
 - Tanks: Love the Tanks. My 2nd Favorite.  But... it gets way too unfair with the shear number of tanks, and your limited ability to hide from them all.
 - MCP: Love this one.  It can get really tough in the higher levels... but its possible to accomplish... and this challenge actually adapts in difficulty far better than the others.

 But... in the sum total,  even with its money eating ploys and its quirks..  its still quite good in its hardcore-challenging fun.   

 The sounds are epic. 
  Its got really cool interpretive art / design... and cool use of color cycling.

 The cabinets design, is really great... with its use of Blacklight glowing Trigger Stick, and ultraviolet glowing lines works on the Artwork.  The Sound reverberates so well
in that cabinet.. and off the sidewalls.  Really draws you in, and keeps you focused on the tasks at hand.

  It captures the spirit and soul of the Tron experience.   I dont think any other Tron game has come close to doing that so completely.


 Discs of Tron was cool too...  but it suffers from a lack of intensity and variety.   
 Admittedly, the Env. Cabinet is the most insanely awesome  cabinet, ever produced  (non-moving).
The discs fly a bit too slow...  and theres times when you can volley discs for far too long.
The added Sark powers help liven things up a bit..  but it kinda cheapens the overall experience you want to have.   Sark is pretty good with his AI in the later
levels..  but its almost like most of the time... either you are getting him on accident, or because the game is 'giving' it to you.  Its ok for its day.. but still a bit too clunky.

 Now, the game is pretty hard.  But it never feels like much fun.   The up and down section didnt help either.  Seemed to make an ok game even worse.
I do love dual control games..  and the spinner is unique and cool... but sadly, the games doesnt really make it fun to use.  Unlike Mad Planets.. which is a
completely blast, start to finish, without the additional axis.  heh

 I liked the wave with the scrolling blocks.  But, it was too difficult to get through at times, and made it less fun than if it were eased up and
allowing more stuff to pass, only to get a random block to deflect that perfectly timed and aligned shot.

 I do often wonder if a Two Player hack would make the game much more fun.  One player would hack into Sark..  but
all of Sarks extra powers stripped, in that mode.   Add faster discs, maybe more of them too... and faster character movements.

 Maybe hack together a way to link two games together as well.  4 player would be interesting ;)   (two dual hack cabs linked)
(probably have to reduce the projectile count to 1, on 4p.. but just move it much faster   heh)

 A StereoScopic 3d hack/version  would also really add to that experience vastly.  Able to increase difficulty due to better perception
of spatial depth.

 
 Actually, Ive got an even better design in the works..  for the original Tron..  (Ive almost finished the the Disc battle section,
and its leaps and bounds in gameplay, over the DOT version.  Top-view / and or in the typical arcade Tron Style Perspective)   
but Id really need a capable team behind it.
Could be quite awesome...

 Maybe he would be interested in an expansion co-op project  ...   ;D



Le Chuck:

You know what I'd like to see?  DOT put into TRON as the fifth level it was originally designed to be.  Play the four others and the fifth sequence before difficulty increase is a DOT level.  We've got all kinds of people here saying that how easy it would be in Unity to do one or the other, somebody do an update of both. 

I'd recommend rotating TRON to a horizontal orientation as most the the levels wouldn't have a gameplay impact in doing so (MPC Cone withstanding). 

RandyT:

I had a look at the Unity stuff.  Anyone who thinks they could crank out TRON in a couple of days is delusional.  Sure, it's a rapid game development platform, but just creating the visual assets would take longer than that if quality was of any interest.  Asteroids isn't TRON.  I can see how simple a clone of this game would be for someone who knew what they were doing in Unity.

I think the TRON remake is pretty amazing, and the author did a great job.  I'd love to see it released.

IAmDotorg:

Actually the assets are pretty simple -- there's no that many in the original game, and most are pretty simplistic. It'd take a couple hours in Illustrator to create high-resolution versions of all the original tiles, and even then only if you're working pretty slowly.   

Asteroids is pretty simple if you keep it 2D. A couple dozen lines of code total for the rock controls, a gameobject and pool of them for the player shots. They'd only need a few lines of code total. One for the player. One for each of the "bad guy" ships -- although I think the original AI for them was the same, only the speed changed, so it'd really be two meshes and one set of code.

Four player Asteroids rendered fully in 3D with dynamic lighting, particle system explosions, a larger-than-screen playfield with dynamic camera is a good bit more work.

As someone who has 35 years of software development experience, written quite a few games back in the 80's when you had to work in 8k ROM and code in 6502 assembly, and written quite a bit in Unity, I'd say anyone who thought they *couldn't* is delusional, but that's not really true. They're just inexperienced. Nothing wrong with that, though.

If you want to get a sense of how little work it'd be, just grab screen shots of the four game states from Google Images. Load them into a layer, and trace over them in Illustrator or using paths in Photoshop. You can "high-rez" them *very* quickly. There's only a few different tiles for the grid bugs, get a shot with a couple dozen on screen and you'll definitely have all of them. The game logo itself people have redone high-rez for cabinet art, grab that. The background of the light cycles is just a fade with a grid over it, it'd take you maybe a half hour to replicate it looking very nice. The tank maze is just built up of a few tiles, they'll be quick, too.

Create a Unity 2D project. You don't need any physics, so its just a matter of creating a few game objects, tossing the textures onto them and starting to code it up.

In fact the more I think through it, I think you could get two people in a game jam and replicate it in a couple hours. One doing art, one doing the coding. The start screens would probably be the most work, using NGui or something, but if you were willing to use a different typeface and could find a pre-baked asset (one of the SciFi GUI ones in the asset store) with something close enough, they wouldn't be too bad.

Its four game play types, but much like Journey and other games with multiple game types, they're each very simplistic.

In fact, if you look at the video, the player and enemy sprites actually don't look updated anyway. I think he just used the original art over new backgrounds, and added some effects on top like the explosions, which would take even more work off it.



pbj:

Less forum navel gazing, more game coding kthx.

 :cheers:

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