The game slows down as the player gains 50-100 lives, due to a programming error in that there is no limit for the permitted number of lives. Machine "turns over" at 99,990 points, which is the maximum high score that can be achieved.Īsteroids contains several bugs. When the player loses all their lives, the game ends. The player starts with 3-5 lives upon game start and gains an extra life per 10,000 points. The game gets harder as the number of asteroids increases until after the score reaches a range between 40,000 and 60,000. Once the screen has been cleared of all asteroids and flying saucers, a new set of large asteroids appears, thus starting the next level. As the player's score increases, the angle range of the shots from the small saucer diminishes until the saucer fires extremely accurately. After reaching a score of 40,000, only the small saucer appears. Two flying saucers appear periodically on the screen the "big saucer" shoots randomly and poorly, while the "small saucer" fires frequently at the ship. Smaller asteroids are also worth more points. As the player shoots asteroids, they break into smaller asteroids that move faster and are more difficult to hit. Objects wrap around screen edges – for instance, an asteroid that drifts off the top edge of the screen reappears at the bottom and continues moving in the same direction. The player can also send the ship into hyperspace, causing it to disappear and reappear in a random location on the screen, at the risk of self-destructing or appearing on top of an asteroid.Įach level starts with a few large asteroids drifting in various directions on the screen. The ship eventually comes to a stop when not thrusting. Once the ship begins moving in a direction, it will continue in that direction for a time without player intervention unless the player applies thrust in a different direction. The player controls a triangular ship that can rotate left and right, fire shots straight forward, and thrust forward. The objective of Asteroids is to destroy asteroids and saucers. The game is rendered on a vector display in a two-dimensional view that wraps around in both screen axes. Based on an unfinished game titled Cosmos and inspired by Spacewar!, Computer Space, and Space Invaders, Asteroids' physics model, control scheme and gameplay theme were derived from these earlier games and refined through trial and error. Asteroids was widely imitated and directly influenced Defender, Gravitar, and many other video games.Īsteroids was conceived during a meeting between Logg and Rains and used hardware developed by Howard Delman previously used for Lunar Lander. It has since been ported to multiple platforms. The game sold over 70,000 arcade cabinets and proved both popular with players and influential with developers. The game becomes harder as the number of asteroids increases.Īsteroids was one of the first major hits of the golden age of arcade games. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy asteroids and saucers while not colliding with either or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire. The player controls a spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. and designed by Lyle Rains, Ed Logg, and Dominic Walsh. Now that the boundaries in the scene are in place, I can see that will be *relatively* easy to implement.Asteroids is an arcade space shooter released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc. It was a panic button of sorts that would teleport you randomly on the screen. I just remembered last night about the teleport button in Asteroids. No Sinistar for me quite yet until I get a firm grasp on things first. I know this game has been emulated to death, but it's a great learning experience and pays tribute to one of the best games ever produced. A lot to think about for a "simple" game indeed. The only thing is, I believe that the Boid Controller code is in C# and that would toss my webplayer version out the window unless it was ported to UnityScript.and I'm not sure that is even possible really. I was also checking out the Boids and thought they would make an excellent late-game type of foe that would swarm the player and probably validate the need for heavy weaponry upgrades. I have one player craft done and working (there will be more in the upgrade shop to purchase later) and about 3 enemies thus far and one extremely ugly asteroid that is screaming for ZBrush or something for help. I was thinking the Health/Shields/PowerUps combo would be what I wanted to implement and lots of surprises along the way. I wanted to keep the simplicity, mechanics and fun factor of the original while adding newer generation features to the mix. Click to expand.Yes, that was actually my goal when I started on this game ten days ago.
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