Scramble (arcade game remake)

[madscijr]

Zaxxon would be an interesting one

A spot-on Zaxxon remake would be cool, but I'll tell you what would be awesome (and not just Zaxxon, but a lot of the old Atari and arcade games) - a version where the graphics look like the art on the packaging / flyers / arcade cabinet. How cool would it be if Zaxxon actually looked like the picture in the flyer? Rather than a bit of nostalgia, it becomes a breathtaking work of art...



It would be a challenge preparing the graphics in Photoshop or Paint.net, and might even need the help of an actual artist, but it's something I always wanted to see, one of those things I thought we'd get in "the future" but hasn't really surfaced yet (at least that I've seen so far).

[RokCoder]

a version where the graphics look like the art on the packaging / flyers / arcade cabinet.

Totally in the realms of needing an artist or at least someone with time and some artistic flair. There's a reason I tend to use the original sprite sheets

[madscijr]

a version where the graphics look like the art on the packaging / flyers / arcade cabinet.

Totally in the realms of needing an artist or at least someone with time and some artistic flair. There's a reason I tend to use the original sprite sheets

Yup! 
I would so love to see games that look like that though... Maybe if you ever make the game with the original graphics, I'll try my hand at updating the graphics files... Meanwhile I can try my hand at tweaking Scramble.

[madscijr]

The ZIP file contains scramble.bas along with a subfolder called assets which contains all the sound effects, graphics, etc. 

For Scramble, I started playing with decomposing "sprite-sheet.png", breaking it out into layers in paint.net, to change some colors. 
As fun as Scramble can be, I was never a big fan of the colors - like those ugly purple and green explosions - yuck! LoL. 

Looking at the sprite sheet, I have a question:



Have a great weekend!

[mnrvovrfc]

For Scramble, I started playing with decomposing "sprite-sheet.png", breaking it out into layers in paint.net, to change some colors. 
As fun as Scramble can be, I was never a big fan of the colors - like those ugly purple and green explosions - yuck! LoL. 

I don't know if you've played Phoenix. After playing Galaga on machine, the Phoenix one was a bit sad to me... only buttons to move the spaceship left and right. I thought that was the only thing bad. The sound effects were the ones that yucked! Especially when trying to take down the "mother ship", couldn't stand it. Otherwise I think that Phoenix was quite a good one for its time. There was even a television ad about it, LOL featured a guy trying to eat a turkey sandwich during off time at a construction site.

[madscijr]

For Scramble, I started playing with decomposing "sprite-sheet.png", breaking it out into layers in paint.net, to change some colors. 
As fun as Scramble can be, I was never a big fan of the colors - like those ugly purple and green explosions - yuck! LoL. 

I don't know if you've played Phoenix. After playing Galaga on machine, the Phoenix one was a bit sad to me... only buttons to move the spaceship left and right. I thought that was the only thing bad. The sound effects were the ones that yucked! Especially when trying to take down the "mother ship", couldn't stand it. Otherwise I think that Phoenix was quite a good one for its time. There was even a television ad about it, LOL featured a guy trying to eat a turkey sandwich during off time at a construction site.

I grew up in the 80s, I had an Atari, so OF COURSE i know Phoenix. 

I remember that TV ad well! "For every chicken sandwich! The birds are back, and they're fighting mad!"
I haven't seen that ad since Reagan was in the White House, and I can still quote it! 

That was for the Atari 2600 version - which was a decent game for the Atari VCS back in 1983, I played it many times. 

But it's the original arcade version from 1980 that you want to play! Download MAME and grab the game ROM and enjoy. 

Yes, you can only move side to side, but that was the case for all those Space Invaders type games (including Galaga, which people still play even today). I think Gorf may have allowed you to move vertically, that was an unusual game, where each level was a different mini-game.

I think Phoenix may have the distinction of being the first game where you have to destroy a "boss" at the end of each level - in this case a mother ship that you have to shoot through to get the alien pilot. 

I guess you had to be alive back then to appreciate the simpler games, they are definitely primitive compared to what we have today, but back then it they were all we had, and were quite exciting! :-D

These days, I don't have the time, $, or the extra cycles to spend on modern video games. I'm not even interested, it's too much work. Give me something simple I can sit down with for a few minutes and forget about my problems while I zap some aliens or run through a maze, and I'll be happy. 

That's one of the great things about QB64/PE - it makes it easy to create your own little adventures on the computer to share with your friends. I would rather spend time making games than playing them, but I have always been interested in that kind of thing.

What other games would you like to see done in QB64?

[grymmjack]

This is incredibly well done. Also, the code is very easy to read.

You sir, have skills.

Thank you for sharing. Scramble was one of my favorites in the arcade.

[grymmjack]

This is a shining example of how to program something that is easy to understand, easy to learn from, etc. 

Rok: would you mind if I made a YouTube video for my It's More Fun to Compute Series, to give you props that reviewed your program, explained what I like about it, and showed it off?
*edit* Rok agreed -


Thanks for making this. I'm really impressed with how readable and elegant your code is. Please let me know. I will not do this unless you give me permission.

Also, do you have other games that you've ported  ?

GREAT WORK

[RokCoder]

The ZIP file contains scramble.bas along with a subfolder called assets which contains all the sound effects, graphics, etc. 

For Scramble, I started playing with decomposing "sprite-sheet.png", breaking it out into layers in paint.net, to change some colors. 
As fun as Scramble can be, I was never a big fan of the colors - like those ugly purple and green explosions - yuck! LoL. 

Looking at the sprite sheet, I have a question:



Have a great weekend!

The game uses a palettised screen mode so that I could use simple palette switching in a similar way to how I assume the original arcade game did. All the grey sprites in the sprite sheet are the ones that are affected by the palette switching - landscapes, certain enemies, etc. SUB ExtractPalettes pulls the colours from that small area of palettes.

Code: (Select All)

SUB ExtractPalettes
    DIM i%, x%, y%
    _SOURCE spriteSheet&
    i% = 0
    FOR y% = 1 TO 4
        FOR x% = 0 TO 7
            pal&(INT(i% / 4), i% MOD 4) = _PALETTECOLOR(POINT(127 + x% * 4, 97 + y% * 4), spriteSheet&)
            i% = i% + 1
        NEXT x%
    NEXT y%
    i% = 0
    FOR x% = 0 TO 3
        gPal%(i%) = POINT(127 + x% * 4, 97)
        i% = i% + 1
    NEXT x%
END SUB

Essentially, the pal& array is filled with the target colour indexess for eight different palette types (with there being four dynamically set palette entries for each). The gPal& array is simply the source palette index entries that are modified.

You should be able to make the entire game more pleasing to your eye simply by tweaking those target colours in the sprite sheet!

[RokCoder]

For Scramble, I started playing with decomposing "sprite-sheet.png", breaking it out into layers in paint.net, to change some colors. 
As fun as Scramble can be, I was never a big fan of the colors - like those ugly purple and green explosions - yuck! LoL. 

I don't know if you've played Phoenix. After playing Galaga on machine, the Phoenix one was a bit sad to me... only buttons to move the spaceship left and right. I thought that was the only thing bad. The sound effects were the ones that yucked! Especially when trying to take down the "mother ship", couldn't stand it. Otherwise I think that Phoenix was quite a good one for its time. There was even a television ad about it, LOL featured a guy trying to eat a turkey sandwich during off time at a construction site.

I remember this game both from the arcade and from the BBC Micro. It certainly had a unique feel to it!

For Scramble, I started playing with decomposing "sprite-sheet.png", breaking it out into layers in paint.net, to change some colors. 
As fun as Scramble can be, I was never a big fan of the colors - like those ugly purple and green explosions - yuck! LoL. 

I don't know if you've played Phoenix. After playing Galaga on machine, the Phoenix one was a bit sad to me... only buttons to move the spaceship left and right. I thought that was the only thing bad. The sound effects were the ones that yucked! Especially when trying to take down the "mother ship", couldn't stand it. Otherwise I think that Phoenix was quite a good one for its time. There was even a television ad about it, LOL featured a guy trying to eat a turkey sandwich during off time at a construction site.

I grew up in the 80s, I had an Atari, so OF COURSE i know Phoenix. 

I remember that TV ad well! "For every chicken sandwich! The birds are back, and they're fighting mad!"
I haven't seen that ad since Reagan was in the White House, and I can still quote it! 

That was for the Atari 2600 version - which was a decent game for the Atari VCS back in 1983, I played it many times. 

But it's the original arcade version from 1980 that you want to play! Download MAME and grab the game ROM and enjoy. 

Yes, you can only move side to side, but that was the case for all those Space Invaders type games (including Galaga, which people still play even today). I think Gorf may have allowed you to move vertically, that was an unusual game, where each level was a different mini-game.

I think Phoenix may have the distinction of being the first game where you have to destroy a "boss" at the end of each level - in this case a mother ship that you have to shoot through to get the alien pilot. 

I guess you had to be alive back then to appreciate the simpler games, they are definitely primitive compared to what we have today, but back then it they were all we had, and were quite exciting! :-D

These days, I don't have the time, $, or the extra cycles to spend on modern video games. I'm not even interested, it's too much work. Give me something simple I can sit down with for a few minutes and forget about my problems while I zap some aliens or run through a maze, and I'll be happy. 

That's one of the great things about QB64/PE - it makes it easy to create your own little adventures on the computer to share with your friends. I would rather spend time making games than playing them, but I have always been interested in that kind of thing.

What other games would you like to see done in QB64?

I loved Gorf back in the day! I'm always surprised at the lack of repros the game inspired on basically any platform! Absolutely loved the voice synthesis, arcade cabinet, super-sized joystick and the whole feel of the game.

If I ever get time I'll probably consider bringing New Rally X to QB64pe. Maybe also the recently requested Zaxxon. I might even bring my BBC Micro Emulator or Z-Code interpreter across (for Zork, etc). Like you, I'm more interested in programming these things than playing them so I'm not sure what else I'd like to see brought across. Whatever else is brought across, though, I'll certainly enjoy having a look at!