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[pspeed]

I found an article on the making of Asteroids, if you're interested.

http://www.rawbw.com/~delman/pdf/making_of_Asteroids.pdf


Turns out you're working on a remake of a remake, so to speak. xD

Just checking... but you do know that I already implemented a full asteroids clone example some time ago called "Asteroid Panic" right?

Retro-style graphics, some theme music, and everything:  
http://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/t/zay-es-full-example-asteroid-panic/26880

Edit: note that the pace is very different than what I'm going for now.

[Rayblon]

I made gratuitous additions to the second post, all too late, I'm afraid. xD

I'm just going to post them here.

"It also seems that one of the biggest challenges the original developers faced creating Asteroids was the balance between ship inertia and and friction. Too much inertia and you have no control, too much friction and the game is too easy.

ALSO, I checked out an online port of the game here, and I've noted some interesting mechanics:
1. You get penalized for not shooting things. If you don't destroy meteors, you get faced with more and more alien ships.
2. Your projectiles influence the direction in which the fragments of an asteroid you hit will travel. If you hit an asteroid from the bottom, the chunks will head upwards, for instance. Likewise, an asteroid moving to the left, but shot from the the lower left will have almost stationary fragments. This principle would prove quite interesting to use in combat.
3. Every round increases the number of asteroids by 1. Gradually increasing asteroid density would be a good way to keep rounds short. If the players don't kill eachother, let the asteroids do it for them."
4. Asteroids ignore eachother, but are broken if they collide with ships.

P.S. I checked out asteroid panic and... It's kind of floaty, and the inertia is pretty low when I want to accelerate... and the turning speed is just a little frustrating. The shots are powerful, but it seems like they're almost too powerful. That's after playing the original Asteroids, but I digress. It's well made, just not calibrated for the same experience as the traditional Asteroids. I guess that's what you meant by different pace?

[pspeed]

The asteroids that I remember playing in the arcade was such that flying around wasn't something you did much.  Much of my version has what you were talking about re: asteroid directions and stuff.  But yeah, that's kind of what I meant by pacing.

As I said, my memories of the original are that you mostly stay in one place.  You don't hunt anything you wait until you have a shot to line up and shoot... more placing yourself in the right places at the right time.

The new one is all about flying around... since you can't even see the whole field of battle at any given time.  That means that ultimately the flight controls need to be more responsive, though I will still leave out friction (except of the gravitational variety).  In fact, part of the power down strategy would be that you could float in a particular direction indefinitely.  As long as you had no reason to move or shield up then you don't leave any energy trails.

Also, I want gravitational pull between objects which will lead to some interesting flight, I think.  In the center of the arena there will be a gravity well of some kind, likely shaped like a small planet... but even the asteroids will exert some amount of pull (on you and each other) depending on their size.  It will take lots of tweaking to get all of that feeling right. 

But in the end, floating aimlessly should feel more dangerous than powering through.

(Note: the planet will have a deflective shield so that you cannot 'land' on it, you will just bounce... and asteroids will bounce harmlessly off of it... you might be able to 'land' on the asteroids, though, with some care.)

If you can find a copy of Star Control, that might be a better example of the pacing I'm going for... though with less variation in the ships, of course.  That's a completely different game.

[Rayblon]

Hmm... What if the center mass was an artificial sun?  Then light becomes a strategic element alongside the power signatures and the like. As an energy source, it would become a hunger games cornucopia.  Let's not forget that it'd be cool as hell.

I always had trouble surviving in one place with asteroids, personally... But I've made it to wave 12 before. I guess in waves 1-4 you might be able to get by with being stationary, though. That's my experience, at least.

[pspeed]

I may have to see if my MAME cabinet has Asteroids or not... I forget.

...I also think I need to resurrect my Sega Genesis to play some Star Control.

[pspeed]

Hmm... What if the center mass was an artificial sun?  Then light becomes a strategic element alongside the power signatures and the like. As an energy source, it would become a hunger games cornucopia.  Let's not forget that it'd be cool as hell.

I'm not opposed to this being an option in the full game... as I may convert to actual 3D models in that case where light source will matter.  Otherwise, without directional shading I think it would lack impact.

While we're messing up the scale of celestial bodies, perhaps there could also be a slowly spinning quasar that completely blinds the screen every time its jet passes up.  The periodic total/near blindness could be interesting.

[pspeed]

P.S.: I played a little with dyn4j tonight... I even found an app (for pay, boo...but only $20) that makes it pretty easy to create collision shapes from sprites.  Going to do a little more experimenting to see if I can easily convert.  It will save me tons of time/effort if so... and be a better test for the networking API (when I can't just morph the physics engine to fit it).  Guaranteed clean separation in that case.

[Rayblon]

Hmm... What if the center mass was an artificial sun?  Then light becomes a strategic element alongside the power signatures and the like. As an energy source, it would become a hunger games cornucopia.  Let's not forget that it'd be cool as hell.

I'm not opposed to this being an option in the full game... as I may convert to actual 3D models in that case where light source will matter.  Otherwise, without directional shading I think it would lack impact.

While we're messing up the scale of celestial bodies, perhaps there could also be a slowly spinning quasar that completely blinds the screen every time its jet passes up.  The periodic total/near blindness could be interesting.

... 3D Asteroids would be incredible. A really cool game that you may want to check out if you want to do some serious gravity and orbital stuff is "Osmos". It's a game where you're a sphere trying to eat other spheres, but it has antimatter, attractors, repulsors, and a bunch of other stuff... Like spheres that try to eat you. Perhaps you could draw inspiration from it. It made me think about things I never expected to think about in physics.

In fact, it gave me a few ideas. The one I'm most interested in is hunter drones(Think manhacks, but much more capable of destroying your ship). They could be how the "Ethereal Space" game hosts force their participants to cause havoc... or they could be a means to punish you for it.

As for the quasar thing... That may be best as a special round or something. It's really cool, but I can see that getting old fast if it happened every round. The quasar would probably camoflage your energy signature and perhaps make your battery charge even faster. Actually, it'd probably fry every circuit in the ship... but sci-fi!

Here's an online copy of Star Control. The copyright holder went out of business and doesn't enforce against distribution of the first game. I take it that ergonomics don't matter in a strategy game, because... whooo. The control scheme is scary to me.

[pspeed]

We almost never played the strategy part... just the melee combat where you each get the 7 ships or whatever and can choose which one you go into battle with until you win or run out of ships.  I always played the Urquan (sp?).  I could mess some stuff up.

[pspeed]

Here's an online copy of Star Control. The copyright holder went out of business and doesn't enforce against distribution of the first game. I take it that ergonomics don't matter in a strategy game, because... whooo. The control scheme is scary to me.

Man... thanks for that... what a completely enjoyable waste of time.

[Rayblon]

Man... thanks for that... what a completely enjoyable waste of time.

I'm glad you enjoy(ed) it!


Also, for now I've pretty much tapped out all of my ideas for this. It was a good chat though.

[Rayblon]

I've been thinking about some stuff... Namely, gameplay customization. Would servers be able to adjust things like ship speed, friction, projectile speed, etc? It'd be kind of cool seeing how servers tweak these mechanics to create 'gamemodes' of their own.

I know friction isn't supposed to be a thing, but space dust slows you down. Some people may want an experience closer to the classic, you see. Others more may simply like the challenge of being forced to use energy to move constantly.

... I'm interested to see how well you model energy trails, btw.

[Rayblon]

Do you know what the logo will look like yet? lol


If not, just use the Croft head. It's just like hypnotoad.


Play Paul's new asteroids game when it comes out.

[pspeed]

I've been thinking about some stuff... Namely, gameplay customization. Would servers be able to adjust things like ship speed, friction, projectile speed, etc? It'd be kind of cool seeing how servers tweak these mechanics to create 'gamemodes' of their own.

I know friction isn't supposed to be a thing, but space dust slows you down. Some people may want an experience closer to the classic, you see. Others more may simply like the challenge of being forced to use energy to move constantly.

... I'm interested to see how well you model energy trails, btw.

In Star Control, some ships are really powerful only if they can slingshot around the planet and use that endless momentum (until they hit something) to wait patiently for the opportunity to strike without worrying about getting hit.  (I think this tactic was even well known to the designers because one of the ships can manage to shoot itself in this configuration if it isn't careful... and would otherwise be nearly invincible.)

Yeah, the stuff will be tweakable and I'll include groovy scripting just like I always do now.

[pspeed]

I might as well leave this here, too.

Playing with dyn4j physics library and my nifty sprite collision shapes from an app called PhysicsEditor.

https://youtu.be/IyB07Jl7ISo