View Full Version : If I were playing a new puzzle game for the Atari 5200...
icbrkr
10-20-2002, 12:12 PM
I'm about 30% done with a game for the Atari 5200 based sorta on the arcade game Ataxx (screenshots found at http://www.particles.org). I've hit a sort of programming wall ... due to limitations of the 5200 (most importantly, a 32K cart limit). In order to figure out where to go from here, I'm wondering what features someone would want to see at the expense of other ones..
Brian
icbrkr
10-20-2002, 03:08 PM
When I mean "fair" AI, I mean one that isn't that great, and limited sound = close to none :)
But I still see that so far the 1 player option is winning.
Brian
scooterb23
10-20-2002, 08:39 PM
Good luck with this...Attax was one of my favorite arcade games...I liked playing against the computer...it got tough on higher levels...
icbrkr
10-20-2002, 09:48 PM
That's sort of the problem.. I can't do much of a computer AI with the limited space that's left, however, I can compensate by making the levels harder (ie, less spaces to move, etc). If the AI is so pathetic, I'm thinking of just replacing it with a good music soundtrack :)
Aswald
10-21-2002, 01:25 PM
Ataxx was one of the only early 1990s games I liked. If you can program a good version for the Atari 5200, then by all means do!
Cafeman
10-21-2002, 02:11 PM
Programming a 1990 game onto an early 80's system, there's got to be major compromises. Think about it, classic 80's games usually offered very little in the way of smart AI, instead the enemies had programmed patterns that the play had to learn & outwit. Pattern-based gameplay, but it got harder & harder as the levels progressed.
I'm not familiar with this game called Ataxx. I'm not surprised that you're running out of space, since even 32K doesn't go too far.
My opinion on the game is definitely include a 1-player mode, with the best AI you can muster given the space. AI routines shouldn't take up as many bytes as a long song would though; I'd think that you could have both couldn't you?
Well, whatever the result, it'd be great to have another 5200 game. Good luck.
icbrkr
10-21-2002, 07:23 PM
It's weird how you come up with stuff as you're falling asleep at night. I came up with the solution to the AI routine, and it shouldn't take too many lines of code to add it in. I'm hoping that this will leave me some space for music, and some animation. Hopefully I'll have it working somewhat by next weekend.
Thanks for the help everyone!
Brian