Missile Command

[Jonboy]

Just out of interest Steve, have you thought about touch controls. I was thinking about the mechanic. one finger held on a base then another to target. It might be quite slick. The touch function is dead easy as it just returns a list of touch point locations (up to ten). If the length of touch() is zero then no touches.

The Help example shows it off perfectly:

list = []
loop
    clear()
    printAt( 0, 0, "Touch the screen" )
    list = touch()
    count = len( list )
    if count > 0 then
        printAt( 0, 1, "count = ", count, " x0 = ", list[0].x, " y0 = ", list[0].y )
        for i = 0 to count loop     
            circle( list[i].x, list[i].y, 75, 100, red, 0 )      
        repeat
    endIf
    update()
repeat 

[Jonboy]

i only suggest this as joysticks are not great replacements for trackballs so it is hard to get a similar feel to the original. It is another one I used to play a lot of!

[SteveZX81]

Nope, I'd not thought about it (to be totally honest I forgot the Switch had a touch screen as its something I never use myself)
but yeah, a touch option would be pretty neat, perhaps it would be better to use just one missile silo in that version (like the 2600 version) so you just touch where you want the missiles to head to.

Thanks for that Jon, great idea!

[Jonboy]

I was more thinking you could use one hand (finger) to hold down on a missile base then use the other hand (finger) to target. So that you fire from whichever is being held at the time. That way you keep three bases and the strategies it represents. It might be a bit fiddly though.

[Martin]

@SteveZX81 said in Missile Command:

perhaps it would be better to use just one missile silo in that version (like the 2600 version) so you just touch where you want the missiles to head to.

What about a compromised middle ground? A single touch control but with 3 missle silos and shoot the missile from the closest silo that isn't empty? I'm sure there's a calculation for distance that you could use easy enough to work out which silo is closest to the users touch input?

[SteveZX81]

That sounds ideal in theory Martin but remember, it's dumbarse me who's attempting this. So we can't get carried away with fancy ideas ;)

[Martin]

You know where to come for help!

[SteveZX81]

Something I didn't notice before, I always assumed the silo missile firing order was top to bottom like figure one, but it didn't look right and upon close examination of the real game it seems they do it mostly in reverse bottom to top, but with a strange order in the bottom row like figure 2.

Mostly boring and pointless to 99.9% of people but I found it interesting and I'm now changing my game to use the correct firing order.

[pianofire]

@SteveZX81 I had never noticed that before

[SteveZX81]

Little sneaky peek video showing the bases firing. (yes, I've not done the missile explosions yet)

Edit: sorry, the video quality is garbage. its hard to make out the lines.

[Dave]

@SteveZX81 Steve you absolute legend. Look at that! Looks fantastic dude, you should be very proud.

[pugmartin]

Steve your stuff is excellent man, that’s brilliant

[Bl4ckM4ch1n3]

Keep up the good work @SteveZX81, it looks amazing :D

[SteveZX81]

Been working on the game a bit and last night I started on an attempt to do the logo, it's a million miles away from an exact copy, but it's okay.

[Martin]

Very nice! Exact copies are overrated in my book. Emulation has been around for years now. I'm more in to seeing people reimplement (simulate maybe?) than create exact copies.

[spikey]

Cool! Did you draw it small with 10px each letter and then just upsized it in your code, or did you draw it at the final size?

[SteveZX81]

Nope I'm too dumb to think of an easy way to do it, lol. I created it at the full size (which took me quite some time)

[waldron]

@SteveZX81 how do you load a title screen before your game like that i can only
do simple text with button press ?
loving your classic reworks btw

[spikey]

@SteveZX81 this is pragmatic and allows full control. I just asked because I am intrested in all kinds of custom fonts for our game projects.

[lawyerlounge]

@waldron you could make a function called titleScreen() at the beginning of your main loop and within that function create a loop that continues while you haven't hit "a".

loop
      titleScreen()
      // your main game code here
repeat

function titleScreen()
      c = controls(0)
      while !c.a loop
            printAt("To continue press A ...")
            // enter all of your code for your title screen here!
      repeat
return void