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[Dayv]

Hi everyone,

I've enjoyed the competitions in the past, so I thought it's time to join and enter my own effort.  Some games are a result of the technology that is available at the time, whereas some come along way after the technical possibilities are available.  Tetris is a good example of this.  The current tower defense phenomenon is another example.  They could have easily been about in the 8 bit era.

Anyway my plan is to not demake anything specific but to demake something of a genre as if it was on the earliest feasible hardware.  IE I'm making a simulation of a tower defense game as if it was on a ZX-81.  Appologies to anyone too young or in the wrong part of the world to know what I'm talking about.

The ZX-81 (TS 1000 in North America) didn't actually have true graphics but mimiced them with a 128 character characterset.  I've got a long wat to go yet but I've written a characterset renderer and I've managed to produce a couple of screenshots.

BTW I love this site, why should game making just be left to the big companies.  I've done a lot of programming but this will be my first game.  Good luck to everyone contributing.

cheers

Dayv

[increpare]

The screenshots are of in-game graphics?  Cool   Looks like it might work really well dude.

[Moon Goon]

Those screenshots bring me back to my Junior High days working on the Commodore PET instead of studying

I didn't understand the "Tower Defense" reference so I went to the Wiki to find out about the genre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense

I guess the only such type of game I've played is Atari Rampart.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I'm not so sure older systems could handle tower defense games -- for one reason: the sheer number of sprites on screen at once. It was very difficult to create so many sprites on earlier technology, because of limited CPU cycles. Even creating Lemmings on the NES was a technical achievement (normally so many sprites would cause flickering and slowdown).

If you include all the towers and all their shots, the typical tower defense game can have about three to five hundred sprites on screen at any given time -- my own tower defense game Immortal Defense was in about that range (and in some levels reached up to a thousand sprites on screen at once). Old technology couldn't really handle hundreds of sprites at once, let alone a thousand.

I suppose you could get around this by limiting the number of creatures and towers to a dozen or so each, and eliminating bullets (and just having the bullets instantaneously hit the target, without a separate sprite to illustrate the bullet's travel time)... or you could ignore this restriction (although it might feel weird).

[moi]

Well the zx-81 didn't even have sprite, everything was textmode, so this problem is solved.
It would have been able to handle everything has characters, although that rules out projectiles for the most part.
It wold probably be very slow with more than a dozen ennemies on screen, although the ZX was capable of moving shit around, as seen in this video:



But enemy AI would have slowed everything to a crawl.

[Cymon]

I could so see how to implement this (having done a lot of text mode myself). First of all my only experience with tower defense games really is Bloons Tower Defense (finished with help) and Immortal Tower Defense (which I didn't like after the first level), but bear with me:

• Enemies move around the track at a specific pace. Overlapping is okay. Just keep their distance along the track in an array (I'd say by float because you can)
• Your towers sit wherever you put them.
• When your tower fires it blinks and the enemy that gets hit blinks with a little splash (asterisk).
• Make sure the asterisks take drawing priority over anything else.

Done and done.

man, the ZX81 pushed text mode to the limit didn't it?

[Dayv]

Thanks for the comments.  I have to admit that what I'm planning will probably go beyond that capabilities of what would be realistic on a ZX-81.  I hope you'll indulge me on that.  I'm more interested in making the game fun than totally realistic.  What you see on the screen is what would be possible on a real ZX-81 but the performance won't necessarily be realistic.

I think I've figured out how to keep bullets on top.  I've got several layers, one for background, one for creeps, one for bullets, one for explosions.  That's definitely not a luxury you'd have on a ZX-81.  While 8-bit systems wouldn't be capable of doing TD games to current standards I still reckon they'd be able to do a passable game.  They certainly managed to do decent shoot-em-ups with lots of enemies and bullets.

Just tried out immortal defense.  Nice game.  I might play it a bit more after August

[muku]

Enemies move around the track at a specific pace. Overlapping is okay. Just keep their distance along the track in an array (I'd say by float because you can)

Actually, it would look even more retro if the enemies advanced in discrete steps, as if they were placed on a grid. Just an idea. Might suck gameplay-wise.

[PenguinHat]

Enemies move around the track at a specific pace. Overlapping is okay. Just keep their distance along the track in an array (I'd say by float because you can)

Actually, it would look even more retro if the enemies advanced in discrete steps, as if they were placed on a grid. Just an idea. Might suck gameplay-wise.

It would work pretty much the same either way, but it would look more retro to have it be/appear to be grid based.

[wormfood]

Hi its Pete, Coming on well i see. Im making "Noiseless mound" now as house of the dead was taken, although theres a nes version of SilentHill2 now, but ive done to much to change again. See you at the Pub.