Atari Tempest, anyone?

[madscijr]

Has anyone ever attempted this in QB64PE, QB64, or even QB? 

Here's a fascinating article on the making of one of the coolest games ever:

https://arcadeblogger.com/2018/01/19/ata...sterpiece/

[TerryRitchie]

Has anyone ever attempted this in QB64PE, QB64, or even QB? 

Here's a fascinating article on the making of one of the coolest games ever:

https://arcadeblogger.com/2018/01/19/ata...sterpiece/

I may give it a go at some point. The vector engine I created for WideScreen Asteroids could probably be modified to handle the wire frame graphics used in Tempest. The most difficult part in my opinion would be implementing the movement of the player's ship. Tempest used a spinner wheel for user input to rotate the ship around the playing field. I envision that mouse left/right movement with some sort of acceleration would need to be used to approximate the spinner wheel's input.

[madscijr]

Has anyone ever attempted this in QB64PE, QB64, or even QB? 

Here's a fascinating article on the making of one of the coolest games ever:

https://arcadeblogger.com/2018/01/19/ata...sterpiece/

I may give it a go at some point. The vector engine I created for WideScreen Asteroids could probably be modified to handle the wire frame graphics used in Tempest. The most difficult part in my opinion would be implementing the movement of the player's ship. Tempest used a spinner wheel for user input to rotate the ship around the playing field. I envision that mouse left/right movement with some sort of acceleration would need to be used to approximate the spinner wheel's input.

If you did Tempest anywhere near as good as your others, I would be as happy as a pig in the mud!

(One other game to consider: Williams' Stargate!! Like Defender but even cooler! Just saying! And if after that, Gravitar, I'd be as happy as 3 pigs in the mud! ?)

I think the positioning of the ship could be easy, since it's only ever in one of a fixed number of lanes. So each level would just store the x/y position and the angle to draw it? Maybe there's more to it, but that part seems doable.

As for the controls, have you tried Tempest in MAME, or the Microsoft Arcade version that came out in the 90s? It wasn't too bad just using the keyboard (left/right arrows to move clockwise/counterclockwise), certainly much more playable than Pong/Breakout games using a keyboard. I tried using the mouse in MAME and it was kind of awkward, but the game was surprisingly intuitive and easy to control with just the 2 arrow keys.

But I can understand if you want a more faithful experience with the game controls. For the spinner control, I built a one with a standard wired optical mouse, a broomstick/dowel, a pool noodle, small wood or cardboard box, and some duct tape. I made it to use for Atari Sprint & Super Sprint in MAME, and it works like a charm! The one I made had a 7 or 8 inch plastic wheel to hold onto like a steering wheel, but you could just as easily attach a knob (like from an old Atari 2600 paddle) for a traditional spinner. And by attaching some weight onto the other end of the dowel/shaft, you can get it to have momentum when it spins, so it feels like the spinner in the real arcade game. It's ludicrously simple, way simpler than the DIY spinners people used to make by taking apart an old hard drive. Then you're just reading the mouse. If I get a chance over the weekend I'll post pictures of the one I made.

[madscijr]

Has anyone ever attempted this in QB64PE, QB64, or even QB? 

Here's a fascinating article on the making of one of the coolest games ever:

https://arcadeblogger.com/2018/01/19/ata...sterpiece/

I may give it a go at some point. The vector engine I created for WideScreen Asteroids could probably be modified to handle the wire frame graphics used in Tempest. The most difficult part in my opinion would be implementing the movement of the player's ship. Tempest used a spinner wheel for user input to rotate the ship around the playing field. I envision that mouse left/right movement with some sort of acceleration would need to be used to approximate the spinner wheel's input.

Here's another simple method of improvising a spinner with a mouse.
You can jump ahead to 4 min 40 seconds to see it in action:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gWtsminHhi8

[TerryRitchie]

Here's another simple method of improvising a spinner with a mouse.
You can jump ahead to 4 min 40 seconds to see it in action:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gWtsminHhi8

Very ingenious!

[madscijr]

Here's another simple method of improvising a spinner with a mouse.
You can jump ahead to 4 min 40 seconds to see it in action:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gWtsminHhi8

Very ingenious!

Isn't it amazing what folks come up with? Your standard optical mouse is nice and easy to work with - minimal moving parts and it just works off light! And they're cheap and plentiful. 
(It's even possible to plug in more than one and use QB64 to read separate input, although we haven't quite figured out how to get QB64PE to output graphics to the same screen that the API code reads the mice input from. If that gets figured out, then we could just plug in as many mice as there are players and use them for multiplayer games like pong, steering for driving games, aiming a gun, etc.) But I digress... One day I'll figure that out!)

I still plan on adding a weight to the shaft to see if I can get the feel of the spinner to match the Tempest knob, just haven't gotten to it.