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Yet another Game remake....HoverTank 2k4
Howard_Casto:
Endtwist inspired me to remake one of my favorites.
Inspired from the 2600 classic "Combat" I give you
Hover Tank 2004
Excuse the screenshot, the game basically does nothing atm as I'm tweaking the physics and hit detection engine.
Anyway this game will be a hybrid of various other classics having the following features:
Combat:
Head 2 Head Tank action!
The infamous bending bullet trick.
Umm the tanks and stuff.
Asteroids:
Wrap around screen.
Wrap around bullets with infinate range.
Arkanoid:
Bustable Barriers
Bustable barriers that "shrink" with each hit until gone.
Pong:
Pong barriers that make bullets bounce back.
Gorf:
The patented one shot at a time reversable shot, "quark" laser.
Unique:
Player specifc barriers that the matching player can enter and hide while other players can't.
Perhaps land mines?
If possible networking support for death matches of up to 4 players.
Cocktail, Horizontal and Vertical score display so anyone can enjoy.
Level editor and external levels allowing for an ever-growing game.
Maybe skinnbale backgrounds, tanks, and barriers for each
level.
Perhaps background music for each level?
Anyway, I'm posting this so anyone with additional ideas can post. New block/barrier ideas are welcomed.
EndTwist:
Damn, now I feel special. ;D
Lookin good though! Are you going to make it so it can run vertical? If not, maybe you could toss me the code and I could do it.
hulkster:
awesome! combat was and still is my favorite atari 2600 game. my older brother and i use to fight when we played this game. ....numbers are flashing.....ball is ping-ponging off the wall.....and.....HIT!
ah yes, the glory days.
Howard_Casto:
--- Quote from: EndTwist on July 19, 2004, 09:27:54 pm ---Damn, now I feel special. ;D
Lookin good though! Are you going to make it so it can run vertical? If not, maybe you could toss me the code and I could do it.
--- End quote ---
Of course I'm making it vertical, I said you inspired me, so why would I not. ;) I'm going with a diferent approach though. Instead of flipping text I'll use sprites for text and flip them. As next to no text will be in the game it should run fine. Also since this is one of those odd overhead games I don't actually have to flip the playing field, just the text. I think this is better anyway as it maximizes screen space.
I got the physics finished a few min ago and the break away blocks and pong blocks work great. I simply have to tweak the graphics a little so they don't flicker (using straight vb controls atm, which work suprisingly well). Now it's just a matter of including the bending bullet trick and figuring out how the heck to make this monster multiplayer over the net and still work good in a cab.
I think I will release the source on this one anyway though, because I think it's a good example of how next to no code is needed to do simple hit detection and such.
Again, comments are welcome and expect some sort of "proof of concept" test exe tomorrow night.
Howard_Casto:
Progress Update:
I got the bullet bending working. I think I will have it as an option though as purists of the original combat cart (all 3 of them) will consider the trick cheating. It's actually quite an interesting fire method now that bullets have infinate range. In theory a person with really really really good reflexes could fire a single shot and have it chase the other player until it hits them!
I am currently looking into directplay so that I can add networking support. This will take some time as I am new to this, but it looks promising. The average mmrpg sends thousands of update comands every 200 ms. I only need to send a couple dozen. So in theory at least, this game should run great even on dialup. Of course I am new to directplay, so I'll probably screw it up and it'll lag for the first few versions. ;)
The physics for all of the barriers/blocks are in place except for the personal shields, mainly because I haven't plugged in the other 3 players yet so there would be no way to test them. ;D
I will soon start working on a proper level editor and proper startup and death routines. As of now, only gameplay is implemented.
The original game had you play the same level over and over until someone got 10 points. I'm thinking that I should make it a little more fast-paced and maybe the best of 3 for 5 different levels. Any thoughts on that?
I need help on one part if anyone is interested.
I decided for online multiplay I want to do a dedicated server exe. That isn't a problem but I have no clue how to do those fancy html pages that other online games have that show all the servers out there, ect. Even if I did I probably don't have a proper place to host such a page. Can anyone give some advice in that dept?
Anyway insomnia strikes again, so I just thought I would give everyone an update. Thanks for listening.