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.  

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]

Damn, now I feel special.  

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.

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.  

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.  

[hulkster]

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!

yeah thats kinda cheating, but im hoping that you make the bullet travel at a high speed so its extremely difficult if not impossible to follow someone around the whole time.  and are you going to make the tanks faster than the original, because before they moved very slow, but im not sure if making it faster will be better or not.

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?

thats a really good idea.  i think 3 points is a little low though.  how bout 5 points for 3 levels.  maybe its just me, but 3 points can be over quickly if you are good.  but the multilevel thing is a great idea.

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.  

cant really help you on this though as im not a program guy and dont have any web space so im pretty much useless.    but ill be willing to follow your progress and give you my oh-so-great advice!

[Minwah]

Cool idea HC

I was never massively into Combat...although I did play a remake on my old Amstrad quite alot...

I guess the controls are stick+fire?  How about an option for twin sticks, BattleZone style - would be nice for those with the controls.

[Chris]

If you want to make this really nifty, have it read MAME controller INI files for its control setup...

Here's an interesting approach for mines: rather than having mines be random hidden hazards, allow tanks to lay mines...

[EndTwist]

I may be able to provide webspace...we should start a whole BYOAC "YAGR" site.

Ok ok, I know this will sound a bit over the top but...
If someone registers a domain like "YAGR.NET", "YAGR.ORG", or "yetanothergameremake.com" then I can host it. It would be "BYOAC's Yet Another Game Remake" site.  

Now...who wants to register the domain?

[Howard_Casto]

Summing up... webspace would be good but lets not get ahead of ourselves.  Thanks et.  

Tank laid land mines were what I was getting at.  Battlzone style controls could be an option, but for now I'll use the traditional atari 3-way joystick setup.  

I found this nifty little windows api that seems to do hit detection faster than my manual method so the test build will be delayed a few days.  It'll be worth the wait though as I've already made all of the objects skinnable and the new graphics engine I built seems to run quite smoothly.  

[JamIt]

Great idea Howard.  Good luck.  Couple of ideas that came to me:
1) Variable speed tanks and/or bullets (i.e. hi/low)
2) Warp-type barriers (go in one end, appear somewhere else on screen - maybe random)
Looking forward to trying it,
--JamIt

[Howard_Casto]

quick wip:

hit detection has been upgraded and seems to be working fine

i added the imfamous "spin and die" death sequence

i found that no matter how fast the bullet goes the "bending bullet" trick makes it too easy to use it as a homing missile so i decided to give it a time limit (only works for the first half second)

Soon i'll figure out how I want to structure the skin format and work on a level editor.

When that is done I'll make a public release.  

Afterwards I'll work on rotating the text and adding online multiplay.  

[Magnet_Eye]

Is this gonna be just like COMBAT? or have a lot of "new" stuff involved?

[hulkster]

yeah you should add 3d effects, with giant Dubak Lizards in the background.  thats a south park ref. for those of you who didnt know    

howard -
just curious, what are you coding this with?  C++?  never thought about making a game before (and dont plan on it) but i was just curious if this was like, super hard to do or something.

[JoyMonkey]

How about a couple of randomly placed 'speed-up for a few seconds' tiles on the maps?

[ErikRuud]

Unique:  

Player specifc barriers that the matching player can enter and hide while other players can't.  

Not entirely unique!  The Odyssey2 game "Invaders from HyperSpace" had something like this.  The screen had planets that floated around in a sort of orbit.  When they got shot they would change colors.  When they were the same color as your ship you could "land" on them (actually fly into them).  While you were in the planet you could not be shot.  If the planet changed colors while you were in it, you would have to wait for one of the planets to change back to your color.

The game looks cool so far, keep up the good work.

[Howard_Casto]

Is this gonna be just like COMBAT? or have a lot of "new" stuff involved?

Yes

[Howard_Casto]

This will be old school guys... no 3d effects, no crazy animated backgrounds.  The only thing "modern" I'll allow you to do is background music and skinnable sprites.   This is mostly for my benefit.  I want this thing to run on a machine with the crappiest video card on the planet. This means no hardware acceleration.  

The game will have every element in the original combat including invisible tank sprites (thus the skinnability)  fighter planes (actually all this was on the original combat was the tanks with different sprites and the throttle stuck "on") and jet planes.  

The main thing I will be adding are different modes of play and different barriers/blocks.  


I was not aware of the odyessy title, but regardless, this is still different.  With this one you can actually hide.... the sprite of the barrier is drawn on top of your tank.  So with a properly authored level, you could sneak over to the enemies camp, ect.  

Hope that answers questions.  

HAC

[hulkster]

hmmm...so no volumetric smoke effects?  aw man.

[ErikRuud]

That is why I said "not entirely unique".   Your sprite was not visible while on a planet, but the planet would flash while you were on it.

I like the idea and look forward to playing your game.

I liked Combat.  My friend had one of the earliest Sears versions of the Atari 2600.  We played Combat a lot.  There was a lot of trouble in those days with the joysticks failing, after the third trip to Sears for a replacement stik, his mother got fed up and returned the whole system.  

Shortly after that I got my Odyssey2 and we played Armored Encounter a lot.  I liked the O2 joysticks better and the graphics did not flicker like many of the Atari games did.  On the other hand there were nowhere near as many titles.