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Work in Progress / Acoders Compo Entry : A Time to Warp

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Toby Quan
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Posted: 31st Jul 2004 10:23
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Hello, everybody. It is time to break out the details of my 2004 Acoders Competiion Entry.

My game is a simple car driving game where you shoot boxes. As you get different colored items, you will warp through time... You will actually be warping through Video Game History!

Warp to 1982 - Graphics are slow, low-resolution 2D. Similar to the Atari 2600.


Warp to 1992 - Graphics are low-poly non-textured 3D models. Similar to the Super Nintendo.


If you warp to later, the graphics will be high-poly 3D textured models with light and fog effects.

If you warp back to the 1970's, it will be a text game!

You see, it'll be the same driving game, just displayed at different times in video game history. So, my game is kind of like 5 mini-games.

My wife graciously took the kids to her parents for the weekend, so I have the whole weekend to get crazy like a kid and do some coding!

As the weekend progresses, I will post more pictures, and eventually a demo!

TobyQuan Out
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Zero Blitzt
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Posted: 31st Jul 2004 10:40
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Thats really cool. Creative.


Rush owns--> www.Rush.com ---> I'm going to see them Aug. 7
Come to #coding. We promise we wont kick you!
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 31st Jul 2004 14:26
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Friday Night Update

What it is, yo.

Tonight I was working on the 1987 time warp. I want this one to be similar to Pole Position:



I wrote a separate program to create the 4 images that I use for the background scrolling. I didn't want to have to draw all of the different colored grass and white lines by myself. Here is the end result:



Each of the 4 images of the scrolling background took 3.7 hours to generate! But it was worth it.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and finish the 1987 mode, and begin work on the 1977 time warp, which is totally text-based.

Good night!
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walaber
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Posted: 31st Jul 2004 15:18
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that is a fantastic idea!! most game players I think will really appreciate the different feel of each "era"

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!

Athlon XP 2400+ || DDR-SDRAM 1GB || Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP 8x 128MB
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MiR
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Posted: 1st Aug 2004 00:56
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That´s the best idea I´ve seen for the Acoders compo. One question though. Where does the timeline go up to? 2004 with project gotham racing stlye graphics?


Jam on mother f**ker.
Libera tu mente y te liberaras.
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Mitchell
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Posted: 1st Aug 2004 01:12
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NOOOOO! This idea beats the crap outa mine! GREAT idea..

"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever"
- Shigeru Miyamoto
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 1st Aug 2004 04:08
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Wow - thanks for all of your kind words and support!

@MIR

No, I'm not planning to go all the way to 2004. Here is my plan now:

1977 - Text Based
1982 - Atari 2600
1987 - Commodore 64
1992 - Super Nintendo
1997 - N64

My time spans are all 5 years apart, and they stop at 1997. Here are two screen shots of the last era, 1997.

Fog effects, spinning tires


Nightime Scene - Headlights


I will post some more screenshots at the end of the day!
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 1st Aug 2004 13:45 Edited at: 1st Aug 2004 13:46
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Saturday Night Update

Hello, everybody.

Today I finished the "Pole Position" Time Warp (1987). Here are some screen shots:



Here is after our poor character crashed and exploded.


I'll tell you, this time warp was the hardest to make. Doing 3D is relatively easy, and straight 2D is relatively easy, but this game a 2D game that tries to look like a 3D game - it was a lot more challenging than all of the others.

Tommorow I plan to work on the text version (Time Warp 1977).

Good night all!
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Bishop
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Posted: 1st Aug 2004 17:08
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hey dude, this is an awsome idea!! very creavtive and intereseting.....i think everybody will be able to appreciate this

Bishop

"When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live so when you die, the world cries and you rejoice."
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Mitchell
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Posted: 1st Aug 2004 23:06
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Can't wait to see what you make of the 2004 one. That's gotte have some sick gfx etc..

"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever"
- Shigeru Miyamoto
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MiR
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Posted: 2nd Aug 2004 00:24
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Ummm
Quote: "No, I'm not planning to go all the way to 2004. Here is my plan now:

1977 - Text Based
1982 - Atari 2600
1987 - Commodore 64
1992 - Super Nintendo
1997 - N64
"



Jam on mother f**ker.
Libera tu mente y te liberaras.
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Mitchell
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Posted: 2nd Aug 2004 01:39
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oh. I missed the "not"

"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever"
- Shigeru Miyamoto
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 2nd Aug 2004 04:16 Edited at: 2nd Aug 2004 04:17
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Sunday Afternoon Update

Whew, I finally have my first draft of the 1977 text game ready to show:



If you can't tell, the picture is supposed to be a car. I am wondering, however, if I am showing too much color. Did computers have color in 1977?
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Mitchell
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Posted: 2nd Aug 2004 07:21
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looks good anyway! this is great stuff

"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever"
- Shigeru Miyamoto
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Sir Spaghetti Code
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Posted: 2nd Aug 2004 08:02
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No, most, if not all did not. Most, at that time, where bright lime-green on black background. Ahhh, the good old days! Whenever I can choose the color of my code, I always set it to lime-green to take my self back a ways! lol

P.S.-Cool looking project, I want it when you are done!

Fraggles where quite the scary lot...
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 2nd Aug 2004 11:13 Edited at: 8th Aug 2004 11:25
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@Sir Spaghetti Code

Just like you, I like to color my code! At work, I honestly have it set to a black background, with green letters in a Courier New font, to make it look like the mainframe!

Sunday Night Update

All right - it took me 8 hours to start and finish my text version of the game.



I decided to use the colors that were available in 1977 on the Apple II. Those include orange, blue, green, white, grey and purple.

However, in my game, you hunt down colored cubes. Since I couldn't use RED or YELLOW (because they weren't available on the original Apple II), I had to improvise. For instance, instead of showing red, I showed a black sphere with a white border.



Demo Available

You can check out what I have done so far on the 1977 and 1982 versions of my game.

http://www.scotttown.com/games/acoders2004/

All you can do right now is drive forward and shoot. I haven't finished the programming that will allow you to crash - so right now you can go through the boxes. All you do is drive and shoot the boxes to get certain colors. In this beta version, it doesn't matter what colors you get.

To quit the program, just hit the ESC key on your keyboard.

Secret Code

On the 1982 game, you can press the "T" key to turn the trees on. I thought they were too distracting, so I turned them off!
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Manticore Night
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Posted: 2nd Aug 2004 23:01
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In the N64 one, they don't really look like the N64, they need more elaborate textures.

It's amazing how much TV has raised us. (Bart Simpson)
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 3rd Aug 2004 12:01 Edited at: 3rd Aug 2004 12:01
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@Manticore Night

You're right - the textures aren't too elaborate in my picture. I was thinking more of a Mario 64 game or something like that - something just to show textures. I'm not going to make it too elaborate.

I want to run all of my games in a "Easy" or "Hard" mode, just like you could do on the Atari 2600. I was trying to think about what I could do for "Hard" mode of the text game, and this what I came up with:

Oh no! You couldn't afford a color monitor! In hard mode, you play the game on a green screen!
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 4th Aug 2004 14:37
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Tuesday Night Update

Well, there's 4 days left. Tonight I began trying to tie the 5 separate games together into one program.

Previously, I wanted to keep the 5 programs as separate files, but that didn't work for two reasons:

1 - The only way to that in DBC is to make the entire programs "Functions", and DBC wouldn't let my functions read data from other declared labels using the "RESTORE" command.
2 - If they were all separate files, they would have to load and unload all of their graphics every time they are called. If I keep them together in 1 file, all the graphics will be loaded once in the beginning, and switching between the games will be faster.

Here is how many lines of code each game is so far:

1977 - 658 Lines of code
1982 - 297 Lines of code
1987 - 584 Lines of code
1992 - 251 Lines of code
1997 - 364 Lines of code

Remember, it's all the same game - just displayed differently! It's amazing how different each one has become.

Game #1 is so long because all of the graphics are not stored as external bitmap files, but rather as hard-coded in-memory data.

I'll post more tomorrow! Good night.
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 5th Aug 2004 15:35 Edited at: 8th Aug 2004 11:25
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Wednesday Night Update

Tonight I made a lot of progress! I have now combined the first 3 games into one program. And, I have put it all together in a playable demo for you try out.

Updated Playable Demo is available!!!

http://www.scotttown.com/games/acoders2004/

Basic Gameplay Rules
You need to get 6 colors in order. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple. There is a panel on the bottom right hand side of the screen that will show you what colors you need to get. If you get them out of order, you must start over.

As you get colors or crash, you will warp through time.

Right now, if you win the game, nothing happens. I still have 3 days left to:

Add the 4th and 5th game to the application
Add music
Fine tune it to DEATH!!!

Feel free to play it and tell me what you think so far!
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 7th Aug 2004 17:33 Edited at: 7th Aug 2004 18:05
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Friday Night Update

The deadline is upon us...

Tonight I have been working on the Warp screens that you see when you pass through time.



In other news, I found some spectacular VIC-20 music on an 80's computer music website (http://www.8bitpeoples.com/). I received permission to use some of the songs in my game - that will help it feel very authentic!

http://www.vimster.demon.co.uk

I spent some adding better textures to the 1997 version of the game:



It's getting there. All I need now is a sky and some realistic trees.
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Mitchell
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Posted: 7th Aug 2004 18:54
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no much time left dude, hurry up

"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever"
- Shigeru Miyamoto
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Pricey
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Posted: 7th Aug 2004 20:40 Edited at: 7th Aug 2004 20:41
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cool idea i like that a lot as i am a big retro freak

http://johnsgames.dbspot.com
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 8th Aug 2004 03:05 Edited at: 8th Aug 2004 11:24
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NEW BETA READY TO GO!!!

The game is finally truly playable! Please download it now and try it out and tell me what you think. There is only 8 hours left until the deadline!

http://www.scotttown.com/games/acoders2004/

The game isn't 100% finished yet. Right now, when you win, nothing happens! And the title screen is bare bones. But I still have 8 hours to go!!!

Today I finished the "Hard" mode of 1997. It takes place at night, and it has light-poles instead of trees. The streetligts light up the street!

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Manticore Night
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Posted: 8th Aug 2004 03:24
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very nice! Love the music.

It's amazing how much TV has raised us. (Bart Simpson)
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robo cat
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Posted: 8th Aug 2004 07:30
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Great game!
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Toby Quan
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Posted: 8th Aug 2004 11:23
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IT IS FINISHED!!!

http://www.scotttown.com/games/acoders2004/

Talk about cutting it close!!!

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Mitchell
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Posted: 8th Aug 2004 11:40
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hehe.. Nice job..

"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever"
- Shigeru Miyamoto
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