Watch out for that Wall!
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It's my unavoidable Tron Lightcycle game. I always write one of those to get the feel for a new language or environment. Most of the time, they don't get finished, other times, they get a bit out of hand... this one seems to have landed in between.
Share code: 5PY23MND51 (outdated:
NXKLK1NB51)I'd say it's mostly finished, I'm certainly not planning to do any further major changes. Please report any crashes you encounter. The only one I know of, which can't be fixed on my end, is an out of memory error when creating the shadow light. It should not hit often, I usually just keep the one light around.
A minor change I'm contemplating: Currently, there is no way to quit a running game and return to the menu, having one would be quicker than using + and restart. Do we have a semi-standard for that? Like pressing both shoulder buttons and triggers at the same time?
As in any Lightcycle game, you control a bike that leaves a deadly trail behind it, cannot be stopped and usually can only make 90 degree turns. In this one, you can accelerate a bit by going close to walls.
There are two basic modes. Sumo is the local multiplayer mode, where the players and optional bots are battling it out on a shrinking circle. Last survivor wins the round and gains a point, first to five points wins. You can use the full controlers or individual joycon for that mode, turns are done with left and right buttons or the left thumbstick (if you dare). the camera is fixed in a shared screen setup.
Gauntlet mode is single player only. You fight enemies of different types with different strategies that come in waves, fastest times are recorded in a highscore table that I pretend was always meant to go to place 11. In that mode, control uses the full controller. The right stick can turn the camera.
Feedback on the difficulty would be apreciated; on one hand, I have played it way too much myself, on the other, I generally suck, so hopefully these two cancel each other out :) -
Project not found, so I guess it’s still pending…
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Holy crap that looks way better than my unavoidable twin-stick shooter! I don’t suppose you have vids showing your previous lightcycle games..? I’d especially like to see the ropier earlier ones...
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@vinicity Hmm, It was accepted before, but I had pushed a small update.. not sure how that affects the state. I think I typed the code correctly.
@toxibunny
Most of the previous ones were from the times when computer videos weren't a thing and the code is probably lost... I'll try to give a list, sorted by creation date. They're mostly just called "Tron", so I'll leave the names out :)-
Amiga Basic. Of course, 2D only, using PutPixel to draw trails and GetPixel to query the game state, in 320x256. It was a bit slow, maybe 15 frames/pixels per second? IIRC, it had two player support and definitely very stupid bot enemies.
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Amiga Assember. Same principle, but faster. I should probably look for the two Amiga ones, I still have a ton of disks from back then and a working system...
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PC, same principle, but with 16 color VGA graphics at 640x400 pixels. I think this one was on Turbo Pascal. It had a huge selection of arenas, you could play it with 8 or so players on the same keyboard. It was rather popular with my mates back at school, it was easier to hide from the teachers than the LucasArts adventures we'd otherwise play.
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This is the one that got waaaay out of hand: Armagetron on Windows/Linux and sometimes Mac, it's what I used to learn C++ and 3D graphics using OpenGL, and networking. For some reason, people still play it, albeit not many. It's here: http://www.armagetronad.org/
here is a video (using modded graphics and music that is not in the game):
Last year we put it on steam to give all those people stuck at home something more to do.
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Another 2D version for the PSION PDA, which was sort of a tiny laptop with keyboard and all, very cute system, in its BASIC dialect. It... was worse than the very first one :)
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This one didn't get far, it was going to be in 3D as well, called GridPods on Microsoft's XNA platform that also supported the XBox 360. That platform had the terrible flaw on the 360 that it had a garbage collector that, if active, would block everything else for a bit... so if you wanted your game to not drop frames, you had to choose: either NEVER allocate memory during gameplay so the GC did not activate, or have a very low memory footprint that the GC could finish in time. And it wasn't exactly pleasant to get content in and transfer your game to the XBox and debug it. And it was married to Games for Windows Live on the PC side... So I stopped that. I would probably still have the source for that. My data management strategy is that if I run out of space, I buy a new hard drive, kick out the smallest drive after copying its contents into a folder named 'old' of the new biggest drive :) So it's bound to lie in D:\Old\Old\Old\Documents\GridPods.
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Well, this thing here :) I uploaded the small gameplay video to YouTube, hoping the forums don't eat the link:
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It’s live now and I managed to download it!
It’s amazingly polished and fun to play. Loved just about everything with your game. The custom 3D models look awesome, and the title sequence really sets the tone for the game. Tried both the Gauntlet and the Sumo Bot Match, and it’s very fun and addictive. Will likely play this a lot to improve my score!
I’ll try to play the multiplayer mode with the kids shortly; I’m sure that will be a blast too…
You should really submit this to the Showcase Gallery, and I will very much look forward to whatever you come up with next!
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Also, I learned a lot by googling some of the names in the high score tables! While I had heard of Lise Meitner (who shamefully never got the Nobel Prize), Axman13 was a new acquaintance…
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Great job on your game, @Z-Mann !
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Thanks!
The original Lightcycle famously is mostly a bunch of primitive shapes thrown together, and here our best means of making custom models is throwing primitive shapes together... so that was a no-brainer :)
Yeah, a Showcase submission was always the plan, I just wanted to let it marinate a bit in user feedback before.
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Thanks for the history, z-mann :)
It seems like when I’m close up side by side with a bot, they’re always faster. Is there something I’m doing wrong?
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Sorry for the late reply, I'm lousy with keeping up to date on forums...
Cycles accelerate a bit when they drive close to walls, and lose a bit of speed on every turn. And the bots do love to drive close to walls, so they benefit from that. Also, in Gauntlet mode, different enemies have different base speeds and are faster at higher difficulties; all but the grey ones should be as fast as you at normal difficulty and faster at the higher difficulties. If my head math is right :)
New share code: 5PY23MND51
I had to unshare the old code, somehow I ended up with two share entries and no means to check which of the two would be the right one with the update... weird.
Update: for this one, labeled v1.1: You can now abort games without quitting the game entirely, all active players need to hold down all available L and R keys for a second (so in single player mode, just hold both L and R).Edit: Huh, claiming the game on the catalogue must have reset its share status from "public" to "submitted/pending". Patience, please.
Edit2: It's public again, catalog link. -
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