Progress Report: 04/18/06
Our group met today during the peer review session in class. This was essentially the first meeting we had to work on the Atari 2600 project. We spent most of the allotted time discussing ideas and brainstorming for feasible games. One idea that came to mind that I had was a play on the helicopter game where as the game progressed the cave would get smaller and obstacles would become more difficult to avoid. In my idea you would be driving a car on a pothole infested street. You had to dodge these potholes and as you progressed either the car would gain speed or there would be more potholes to lookout for. Either way, hitting a pothole would mean a flat tire, scratched rims and a game over.
Rohan brought up the idea of a game based off of a simple volleyball game. However, there would be a radical twist in that instead of a volleyball, each player would have the ability to shoot a missile or other projectile at a 45 degree angle either up or down. It would be a two-player game and it would be strategy oriented as players would have to figure out what distance works properly to hit the other opponent and get used to the arch of the missiles fired. Mike was trying to think of a game that would make the best use of the Atari 2600's hardware limitations.
Progress Report: 04/21/06
We met again after classes in the CM lab in Skiles on Friday. After looking at the options for going about this project - ad-hoc or role-oriented - we unanimously opted for roles. Rohan was determined to be the programmer, I would pick up the producer role and Mike became the designer. Upon getting that out of the way we went back to brainstorming for ideas to select the one we deemed best use of the Atari platform and made of innovative gameplay. Mike came up with an idea for a two-player game in which each play has the ability to fire a homing missile at the other player. The gameplay gets interesting when varying missile speed gets thrown into the mix. If a player is not moving upon firing a homing missile, the missile travels slower than if the player had been moving. Therefore the player would have to think about whether to move and fire a faster missile and potentially run into the opponent's missile coming towards them or stay still to shoot a slower missile but avoid the opponent's missile. Points are scored if the opposing player gets struck by your missile prior to you getting shot by their missile.
Rohan and I instantly knew that this was the game idea we wanted to build upon. It had more interactive gameplay than the previous ideas and actually got the players thinking. A player that is able to think quickly would do better than one not used to such an activity.
Progress Report: 04/24/06
After we had all gotten some work done on our own, me with the progress reports, Mike with his design document and Rohan with some initial coding, we met to see how everything was going. It was mentioned that we need to start thinking of a name for this game. Mike let us know that he finished up most of the design document and outlined the specifics of gameplay, the concept as well as some questions that might progress advancement of the game. Rohan told us that he was able to get two players to appear on the screen. Each player had the ability to move and fire missiles at each other. He still needs to find out how to get each missile to vary speed dependent upon the players' movement. In addition, a scoring system needs to be implemented. We have yet to decide what constitutes a won game - perhaps first player to 10 points wins.
Progress Report: 04/25/06
Today Rohan informed us that he lost part of his recent work on the Atari game as his Windows installation crashed. However, he had emailed us what he had the night before so it was not too big a deal. We were trying to decide how to implement a playfield on the screen. After playing with a few beta versions, it became obvious that without some sort of barrier between the first player and the second player, the game would be too hard. Without a barrier each player could immediately shoot a missile at the beginning of the game, effectively spawn killing both players. To add some skill to the game we decided to put a small wall between the players. This way, the players would have to move to the top or bottom to fire their first shots. However we still had the problem of getting collision detection to work. Currently, the missiles progress through the wall and hit the other player as if there was no barrier whatsoever.
Progress Report: 04/27/06
We had our group presentation in class today. Everything seem to go alright, but it was brought to our attention that the dark blue missile was hard to see and the playfield presented a low-contrast scenario. We have narrowed down the title of the game to something relating to Space Cowboys based on what the stick figures and playfield looked like. Space Cowboys shooting homing missiles at each other seemed like a reasonable title. The game still lacks collision detection and the missile's do not yet have the characteristic of going faster when the player is moving. John Swisshelm mentioned something to Rohan about possibly getting this feature to work in code so hopefully we will get this working soon. If time permits, we would like to see some space sounds incorporated into the game, although at this point in time it will be cutting it close.
Progress Report: 04/28/06
It's all coming together now. Mike has finished his design document. Rohan is just about done with the Space Cowboys game. He altered the game play a bit so that if the player is moving and shoots, the missile goes regular speed but if the the player is stopped the missile moves twice as fast. After testing the game, it seems as though this method makes gameplay more enjoyable. Collision detection has been introduced as well as scoring. Rohan changed the colors of the game for more contrast so the playfield, players and missiles can easily be seen. To conform with the Space Cowboys name better, each player was given a cowboy hat. The game is over when 10 points have been reached and the background color changes to the color of the winner. Pressing F2 resets the game. Sounds have been implemented for occurrences when a player gets hit or runs into a wall. The completed Space Cowboys game can be found on Rohan's project 8 page.