Dogg Hunt released!

[Howard_Casto]

Update:  

Dogg Hunt is now ready.  Please go www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/ to download!




I am on the virge of completing my first remake.  Duck Hunt....  You hate the dog?  Of course you do.  Now the dog is the target in Dogg Hunt.  Before you say "But it's been done."  Well yes, if you count those crapy flash remakes in which the dog pops up in the center and you shoot him, but this is a full-fledged remake.  It stays as true to the spirit of the arcade version of duck hunt as possible.

The game also features:

Random level generator. (To avoid the repeativeness of the original game).

Semi intelligent ai.  

Works in any resolution.  

Screen rotation (hopefully).  

Click here for a screenshot


I guestimate this game will be done by next weekend.  

In the meantime:

[shameless begging]

You'll notice I have a link for a signature now.  I'm trying to get a free ipod through referrals.  No this offer is not a scam, you just have to be careful with how you sign up.  This site has been featured on the screensavers, cnn and cnet amoung others.  I assure you it is legit.  

Most coders ask for paypal donations on small projects.  I never have in all these years.  In lue of this, I ask that this one time 5 of you support my work by using the exact link below and signing up for a free offer.  PM me and I'll even walk you though the most painless of the offers (infone) so you won't have any troubles.    

And remember, after you help me out, you can get 5 friends to sign up under you links and recieve your own free ipod, so it's a win-win situation.  

[/shameless plug]

Although donations (referrals) are not required, this game may see several "delays" until I get enough yellow lights under my account.  I hope I don't come off being a jerk here, just think of it as myself offering the community a cool new arcade game in exchange for a few minutes of their time.  

thanks and expect updates as they arrive.  

HAC

[Howard_Casto]

Update:

Although the game graphics are gdi rendered (so hopefully everyone can enjoy)  I upgraded the sound engine to use directshow, which seems to have evened out the sound system.  

All that remains at this point are to clean up a couple of sprites, make some "game over" sequences, and to make the coin, escape and reset keys remappable.  

The game is fully playable at this point.  

I still need more referrals.  

[ErikRuud]

What happened to Combat?

[Howard_Casto]

Combat has been put on the shelf atm because it needs a little more attention as you can make your own levels, it needs computer ai, it'll support network play ect.....

I wanted to attempt something simplier before i finished it.

[Minwah]

Looks great Howard

[ErikRuud]

I noticed this the other day at CompUSA.

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=313378&pfp=SEARCH

As far as I can tell, it is basically a port of the Atari game.

They have a few other titles as well.

[Howard_Casto]

Interesting Erik.....


For the life of me though, I can't find a screenshot, nor a demo of the game anywhere.  It must either really suck or be really old.  Somebody out there find us more info.

[ErikRuud]

Howard,

I found this description: http://www.sepharus.com/snap-combat.html

So I guess it isn't a straight port of the original.


I also found a customer review on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001WDF40/103-3229127-1108637?v=glance

[SirPoonga]

I have the Atari Combat remake.

[Howard_Casto]

Enough said.... I'll ask you about it later:

Update:

The "service menu" of Dogg Hunt is now complete.  With the default keys, Dogg Hunt operates just like a real arcade game would if you were running it from mame. In other words F3 resets, F2 enters the service menu and 5 and 6 are coin inputs... ect.  Also of note is the fact that this is the only service menu I know of that's lightgun friendly.   You fire at settings to change them so no additional service buttons are required for navigation.  All button remappings and game options can be set within the service menu.  This is the most cabinet friendly homebrew game ever.  

All that remains is the pesky gameover screens, which shouldn't take long, I just need to decide what I want them to look like.  

Personal Note:

Thanks to everyone for the referrals. Some completed referrals wuld be nice though.  

[Howard_Casto]

Opps! forgot that changing a post doesn't count as a new one so read above for release info.

[Space Fractal]

Great little game, but why not use ogg (using bass.dll from un4seen) and png files? This game take lots of hd-space because these big bmp files.

[SirPeale]

Buggy.  *Really* buggy.  I'll aim at the dog, and it'll just disappear and reappear on another part of the screen.

More than once the dog won't appear at all, just sound effects.

[Howard_Casto]

I appreaciate the feedback peale, but those aren't bugs....... when the dog goes into "hide" mode it'll randomly appear somewhere else.  If it didn't do this the game would be far too easy.  When the dog makes noises and you don't see him he is either off screen or in hiding. He taunts you so you will get angry, that is the point.  We hate the dog therefore we shoot the dog.    Also the levels are randomly generated.... sometimes the dog doesn't "want" to come out based on his surroundings... that's just the luck of the draw I'm afraid. In theory he comes out at least once per round, you just might only get literally one shot though. I suppose I could put an easy mode in for you though.  

spacefractal.... this game takes up a "whopping" 3 megs.  Pngs and ogg files may be smaller, but they take time to decode and therefore would slow the game down slightly.  Now I could decompress all of the textures and sounds on startup, but that would require 3megs of space plus the size of  the compressed files.  So actually, it requires less harddrive space this way.  Strange but true.

Thank you for the suggestions....

HAC

[SirPeale]

I appreaciate the feedback peale, but those aren't bugs....... when the dog goes into "hide" mode it'll randomly appear somewhere else.  If it didn't do this the game would be far too easy.  

No, I mean literally the dog will be in plain view, disappear, and reappear on the other side of the screen.

Other times I'll be dead on the dog, fire, and nothing will happen.  Other times same situation, fire and the dog doesn't die.

I just played right now and right in the middle of the game it went back to the title screen, then to game over.  I'd just started!

Like I said, bugs.

And I noted that I have to have 640x480 resolution to get decent action.  800x600 and it's really jerky.  I've got an Athlon XP 2400+

[Howard_Casto]

Sounds like a performance issue then, although with that processor you shouldn't be getting any.... what about your video card?

[Space Fractal]

spacefractal.... this game takes up a "whopping" 3 megs.  Pngs and ogg files may be smaller, but they take time to decode and therefore would slow the game down slightly.  Now I could decompress all of the textures and sounds on startup, but that would require 3megs of space plus the size of  the compressed files.  So actually, it requires less harddrive space this way.  Strange but true.

Thank you for the suggestions....

HAC

It took about 80mb of space on my hd wich that version I got for 2 days ago. Png files should be decoded on startup, wich only take some second to start up. Maybe, you can make compressed images in a dat files, and then unpack them.

This is why I used PNG files on my own Jukebox program.

[SirPeale]

Sounds like a performance issue then, although with that processor you shouldn't be getting any.... what about your video card?

It's a TNT2 card.  Which, for what this game is doing, should be plenty.

[Howard_Casto]

Actually no... it's too old and busted.  This game doesn't use any hardware acceleration so all of the textures are in video memory.  Your card simply doesn't have the memory requirements to store all the textures and display them quickly.  Sorry... next version I plan to shrink the textures down to native duckhunt resolution, which may help..... I doubt it though.

[Buddabing]

Heh, pretty funny, makes me want to hook up the old NES and play the original.

Spacefractal has a valid point, though. 86,000,000 bytes is a lot. Povray takes only 15 meg or so. Codename Gordon takes 40 meg.

You can save a big chunk of space by not having an entire screen for each letter of the title. Just save each letter that is different as a separate file and load it when the letter changes color.

so, instead of:
1) display title01.bmp
2) display title02.bmp
3) display title03.bmp
...
28) display title28.bmp

you would have
1) display title.bmp
2) display tan 'D' on top.
3) display title.bmp
4) display tan 'O' on top.

etc.

Speed would not be an issue displaying the title. You probably have a delay loop between letters anyway.

[Howard_Casto]

yes, but that requires more coding..... this is a quick fun project and i'm not willing to spend a great deal of time on it.  

Wrote the whole thing in about a week tops.  

[Lilwolf]

Agreed...  For a fun project, it probably isnt' all that fun to optimize it for an outdated system when you could be playing it.

Sure, lots of people use TnT2's because they work great with mame...  

Maybe if someone buys Howard one of those cute Countertop top arcades with a fanless EPIA board... Those are slow enough that he might have to optimize his code to run on a TnT2 and a 500mhz pc...

[SirPeale]

Sure, lots of people use TnT2's because they work great with mame...  

I use the TNT2 because it works, period.  I don't do much 3D gaming anymore (I actually can't remember the last time I did play one, and it was Half Life).  The only PC game I really want to play these days is Doom III, and since I'd need to shell out a *lot* of money to get it to look the way I want, I'll wait a few years.

[Wizard of DelRay]

The only PC game I really want to play these days is Doom III, and since I'd need to shell out a *lot* of money to get it to look the way I want, I'll wait a few years.

I purchased Doom III about a week or two after it was released and while I think it's a good game, it's not as great as people make it out to be.  I think I last played it about a month ago.  It just seems a little monotonous.

Now Hitman Contracts, that's a different story.  

[Hoagie_one]

doom3 is all pie, no filler

pretty but lacks great content

[Howard_Casto]

Agreed...  For a fun project, it probably isnt' all that fun to optimize it for an outdated system when you could be playing it.

Sure, lots of people use TnT2's because they work great with mame...  

Maybe if someone buys Howard one of those cute Countertop top arcades with a fanless EPIA board... Those are slow enough that he might have to optimize his code to run on a TnT2 and a 500mhz pc...

My point exactly.  :-)  Actually this game is more of a testing grounds for the upcoming hovertank release.  It'll probably be directx-based, but again, that's going to leave some people out as I'll use the Dk engine I've wrote, which as we all know doesn't agree well with anything lower than a radeon.  I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a professional game programmer and a custom software renderer for direct x is beyond my capabilities (which is what it would take to get these lesser video cards to run in a dx8 environment without choking).

Dogg Hunt was made in pure gdi, mainly to see how well that'd work across the board.  Apparently not so well on the lesser systems.  As I said, right now the graphics are overly bloated and eventually I'll shrink them down to native duck hunt resolution, but that's probably the extent of my optimizations.  


After that I'm looking into modding your favorite fps games into remakes of classic shooters such as smash tv and contra.  They'll be old school side/top scrollers with the added graphical benefit of 3d graphics and modern particle effects.  


And for the record, Doom 3 is awesome.  I don't think people get that it's a remake of doom 1, not a new sequel.  It's supposed to be super old school and not have anything particularly new.  It is retro gaming at it's finest.  Anyone who hasn't enjoyed the game must have not played it long enough is all I can say.

[DaemonCollector]

I played DOOM 3 and I have to say that it was very enjoyable, but not much replay...I have since uninstalled it and sold my copy to a friend. Good game nonetheless. And on Dogg Hunt, i'd say good start, but keep it goin.

[Howard_Casto]

And on Dogg Hunt, i'd say good start, but keep it goin.

Try good finish.  As I've said twice already, this was just a fun project.  Gameplay wise, it does exactly what it's supposed to on my own system so I'm happy with it as-is.  At the most I'll clean up a couple of audio bugs and shrink the graphics as I've mentioned before.  Not supposed to be advanced or innovative.  

It's supposed to play like duck hunt, which it does, and eliminate the boredom of the original duck hunt, which the random level generator definately helps with.  

I do appreciate all of the feedback though.