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I'm working on a racing game. I think I can set it up to keep track of time, points, etc., but I need some help with grahpics. For one thing, does anyone know how I keep two raciers from hitting each other? Also, any general graphics help would be appreciated. E-mail me @ attackmongoose85@yahoo.com

racing games are overated

If you send me the code I'll see what I can do.

Many of you may already know that I am releasing a BASIC remake of the NES classic, Contra. The graphics are unreal for a BASIC game and It really does push the limits. The speed is amazing, and the gameplay rocks. So far there are 3 Different Kinds of enemies, 2 levels each with 9 frames, A boss for each level, Landmines, Weapon Upgrades, water, and realistic terrain. The game is going to show everyone the power of BASIC. To check up on this project goto the Contra Forum at http//www.unitedti.org/forums, Or visit the Outer Limit Software website at http://www.olsoft.tk.
Enjoy!

-Bryan Thomas

Oh, sweet! Contra is the coolest game. I have a video of some guy beating the whole game in 11 Minutes! It's kick ass. Anywho, make it good, and tell me when you upload it. I want to try it!

Is there anybody out there?

I am. People say something, I respond, and they never say anything back. But I'm here.
Yo Soy. Yo soy Aquill.

GOD I HATE YOU PEOPLE!!!

Same

Hi everyone! I want to get feedback about games I am planning on making. My most popular games are Rushon2 and Power Pixel. Also, there are a few games I have made but have yet to make readme's or screenshots for. They are: Dino Eggs, Dino Eggs 2, and Fast Track. What's funny is that ticalc is forcing me to limit the size of my posts to prevent the abuse of the boards, so I will break my post up into many short segments! (much less abusive, right?)

I'm working right now on a Power Pixel upgrade, where the enemy chases you and stops when it hits something going sideways, and kills you only by hitting you sideways. Right now I made it leave a dot where the enemy dies like in the first powerpix, but sideways, of course. I'm also going to add instructions and stuff. I would appreciate help testing it, and any suggestions.

I also am thinking of making a BASIC Fire Track game based on the z80 game, which I didn't like, but it might be cool for a BASIC game. To extend the graphics capabilities of BASIC, I am going to make graphics that combine text characters by exchanging them rapidly. They look cooler that way. I would use Disp " to scroll the bullets up since in fire track you constantly fire. If you think this is a good game idea, or have suggestions for how enemies behave, powerups, etc., reply to this post. Please?

I thought of another shooter game idea where it's like Galaxian but you control the fleet of enemy ships rather than the super ship on the bottom. It's kind of a joke, like most of my game ideas, though I take them seriously. (I had another idea of a really stupid arcade game where you are a dumb kid picking your nose and eating frosting at the same time, and you have to keep choosing a finger that doesn't have a booger on it, or else you die when you eat boogered frosting, since you randomly pick your nose and boogers fall off after a while.) But anyway, you would move the whole formation (The Fleet) with the arrow keys to dodge the enemy rapid fire (moved with display, of course, and the formation would be a string for fast display), and each frame one ship would fire randomly (Or maybe just every time a bullet goes off the screen). So every so often reinforcements would come, like in Galaxian, and you would get better ships over time (maybe). To win you would have to kill all eight or so lives of the enemy. This is just an idea, so I would appreciate any suggestions for controls, gameplay, AI, etc. (Oh, and feel free to make that stupid booger game yourself, if you want to. Make it online in Java or something.)

Dino Eggs is based on dino puzzle. It is on the homescreen, but the graphics closely resemble the graphics of dino puzzle, with plant, mushroom, snake and bird. And eggs. The game doesn't have eggshells, instead eggs are the only things that give you points (in the first one). Here are the features of both games: 6x14 playing field, good graphics, display of the next two blocks (where they will fall from!), pressing left puts the two blocks all the way down, relatively fast switching, high score, one saved game slot, in-game instructions, and of course fast gameplay. It is much faster than JAKAS's switchet, with a lot more features. He suggested that I make the speed adjustable, and so now they start slow and get faster with the score. Personally, I prefer to play without any delay in the game, since I find it boring. It is really not very challenging when it's slow; what's the point of a score if you never lose? The only problem with the speed is that if I allow the player to move more than once for each time the blocks move, the keys don't react well at all and it is even worse. In the first dino eggs, the blocks disappear when two in a row hit, and only eggs give you points. In the second, you have to get three in a row, but the eggs hatch to match whatever block is to the left when they hit it and every elimination gives you a point. Both games are equal in terms of funness, but the second gives you scores about twice as high at least. I might want to change that. If you want to be a tester of the games, just email me.

The game Fast Track is simpler, it is just a very fast tunnel game where it generates a track beforehand. The tracks loop, so one track is a lap (which took a LOT of debugging). It saves one track at a time, with a high score that goes with the track, so you can try to get better at one track. There are three difficulty levels (based on the minimum track width allowed), and I like the hardest best, which requires me to learn the layout of the track and have fast reflexes. So email me if you want to test that one. The gameplay is pretty simple, so I can't think of anything much to improve, hopefully you will. I think that's enough for now, though I am working on another called Acid Rain. You could test that too if you want.

Hi again, I have thought of some ideas (mostly graphics) of games to make, but I have not finished designing them or made them yet. So I just want to see what people think and help me design the games. Okay, so I'll start by explaining this one turn-based strategy game I called civ0, but I will change the name. I have all the rules designed, and the graphics, and a few routines, like map generation and displaying unit stats and moving around the map. There will be three units (it's supposed to be simple, but it's actually pretty complex), Footmen, Archers, and Knights. There are castles where you build units and farms, and farms are like units that give you food each turn to build units. There are plains and forests, and units move differently and have different defense stats on the terrain (cavalry=fast on plains, slow on forests). Enemy units can't be seen on forests unless you attack them. Units can be grouped together up to 8 to add their stats together, or build castles, in the case of footmen. Unit selection moves from one unit to the next, and they can move by the arrow keys (or attack). An archer will attack two spaces away, whichever enemy is closest in the direction you choose (even concealed by forest). It will have two teams, and hopefully AI, but that will be last to do I think. Tell me what you think of this idea. It will be possible for me to do, it's just that it will take a while to program.

Another (turn-based, most likely) strategy game will be Shroomcraft, so named because it has three races like starcraft, and the inspiration for the game was a map generator featuring a tree that looks like a mushroom. The races are (the four-letter versions, low resolution puts a lot of emphasis on interface design!) the Goth, Maya, and Hive, roughly equivalent to the Protoss (powerful), Terran (special), and Zerg (swarmish). All the graphics are really cool and what is especially about them is that I just designed the unit graphics and the rest came from various combinations (of the pxl-change sprites!) on different terrain to produce, very artistic, good-looking buildings (better than I could design). It would be too complicated to explain exactly here, but it's just so neat how it turned out! (Notice the evenness of word size:) The terrain: Grass (units), Trees (energy), and Rocks (build). The units: Army, Ship, Plant, Tower, Rift/Yard(?), and Fort/City(?). The unit roles are all just guesses; I welcome your suggestions. Army - moves on grass (numpad), fights, and builds. Ship - faster (more powerful?), moves on grass, fights, (and builds?). Plant - built on trees, provides energy each turn to adjacent towers, rifts or forts. Tower - take energy from plants or towers, beams it two spaces away to other towers, rifts or forts. Rift - build ships with energy from plants (can you think of a better 4-letter name for something that builds and looks like a river/crack in the ground/random waste pile?). Fort - builds armies with energy from plants (looks too military to be a city). It would be less messy if rifts built armies and forts built ships (with different names, of course, like camp and city), but the fort looks more like a big fortress than a shipyard or an airport. What do you think?

Shroomcraft graphics (only 6 7x7 sprites! grass, trees, rocks, goth, maya, and hive): Grass + Goth = Goth Army. Grass + Maya = Maya Army. Grass + Hive = Hive Army. Grass + Goth + Maya = Goth Ship. Grass + Maya + Hive = Maya Ship. Grass + Hive + Goth = Hive Ship. Grass + Goth + Maya + Hive = (Goth) Super Army. Trees + Goth = Goth Plant. Trees + Maya = Maya Plant. Trees + Hive = Hive Plant. Trees + Goth + Maya = Goth Tower. Trees + Maya + Hive = Maya Tower. Trees + Hive + Goth = Hive Tower. Trees + Goth + Maya + Hive = (Hive) Super Plant. Rocks + Goth = Goth Rift. Rocks + Maya = Maya Rift. Rocks + Hive = Hive Rift. Rocks + Goth + Maya = Goth Fort. Rocks + Maya + Hive = Maya Fort. Rocks + Hive + Goth = Hive Fort. Rocks + Goth + Maya + Hive = (Maya) Super Rift. Whew! The pattern is really simple, but I decided to write it all out anyway. Goths are like spiky dark industrial gremlins, the Mayas are like magical nature gnomes, and the Hives are like futuristic social insects. Want a map editor to see the graphics? Just email me.

I know there's a Pxl-Test( command, but is there a Point-Test( command anywhere for the TI-83+ BASIC?

I can't find one, but if anyone knows a way to "trick" the system so that I could "make" one or something, that would be great.

All you people always ask this question. I've answered this question three times at least. Anyway, NO. There are, however, a few different ways to work around it. One is to set the window to 0-94 on the X axis and 0-62 for the Y axis. So let's say you put a point on value (X,Y). you then "pt-test" using the pxl-test(62-Y,X). That'll do it. The other way is just to do things with pxl-on rather than pt-on. That's just the way it is.

This is my second time posting this since I can't seem to find the original.

I want a way on the TI-83+ to see if a point is turned on or off. What I mean is, you know how the pxl-Test( command works? I want something where I can be like, point-Test(2,2) to see if the pixel, representing point (2,2) is turned on or off.

actually I prob make an asm routine to do this
as there is no wat to do it w/ basic (and be considered fast enough)

Well, you can do it if you know the screen dimensions. If you know the dimmensions, then you can just do a pxl-test with a simple equation representing the X,Y variables. I've posted a couple of times, I think once on Page 8, what the equation kinda looks like.