O-Thrust

[Nox]

a somewhat boring screen (well, it's from the first level):



and here it is, two months of my life, compressed into 35 kb...
othrust.tap (V1.2, Bugfix)

Instructions:

Your mission is, as some of you might have guessed, to find and attach the klystron pod (sphere) and bring it into orbit.
To save the galaxy from The Big Nameless Evil you have to do that on 9 planets.

Keys: (now configurable)

- X,C rotate (always possible)
- M thrust (needs fuel)
- K tractor beam (needs equipment)
- L fire (needs equipment)

Hints:

- the tractor beam has only one purpose: to get the klystron pod
- remember that the tractor beam is pure energy (so collision is not a problem)
- unlike in Thrust, if you want to take up fuel (and other items) you have to land on them
- the power-plant cannot be destroyed. really. (use the cannon to open the door)
- the shield only protects you from radiation, not from physical objects
- if you are stranded on a base with no fuel left, the level will be restarted after a few seconds (if no key is pressed)
- each level has different start-conditions, so take a moment and look at your fuel/max.fuel/shield-values and items at the top.
- explore the levels... you don't want to be the only forum member not able to find the three hidden bonus-levels, do you?

Known Bugs:

- the keyboard-routine works only 99,9%...
- if you have the sphere attached and fly left or right to another screen (possible on the surface) sometimes you get destroyed.
be careful (you don't have to fly sideways with a sphere attached to complete the game).
- some other things I hope no one will notice.
- and yes, there is no sound...

have fun!

[Dbug]

Whaou, that's smooth and fast!
And super difficult

Is it running in TEXT mode, or in HIRES?

[Antiriad2097]

Great conversion, but so fast its very twitchy. Maybe it just needs practice, but I guess adding sound would automatically slow things down a little.

Impressive work so far though. Definitely one I'll be mentioning on Retro Gamer forum (if you've not already done so). Always good to show the Oric can hold its own against the other 8 bits.

[Symoon]

Fantastic ! Altough pretty hard right after level 1
Very impressive work.

[Chema]

Hey that *is* very nice!!!

I just played 5 minutes, and could not finish the first level... it is indeed tricky

Really smooth movement. Congratulations on this!!!!

[Symoon]

Bug report (sorry : under Euphoric, there's a diplay problem in text zones.
Doesn't seem to occur with Oricutron.

[Twilighte]

Damn you Nox, you've been busy!

I wonder if you'd consider changing the scoreboard to the one i did many moons ago and that is more close to the C64 classic?



I also include the title i also did a few years back.



Please hack and slash what you want, i can always hack myself to include those other stats like planet, etc.

Under Euphoric when entering the game it asks to enter the Planet code. I entered START but it repeated the same question.

As for game, i had a quick play and it just runs too fast for me. Far faster than Thrust on any other format afair (i kept crashing into either the walls or the floor).
I think one problem is the key layout, not sure why you chose XCMKL, personally i would have chosen Cursor keys and Space Bar for Fire.
I had thought the reason you'd chosen these keys was using the same trick i used in ZipnZap to avoid having to set the Column register but C is on the same row as M so it wasn't that.
Even under the real Oric the cursor keys would have proved much more beneficial IMHO.
The flip screen method seems very fast and possibly better to avoid action slowdown, but i'm not sure why you chose square walls rather than the classic diagonals.. perhaps easier to draw under TEXT mode.

It also seems to be in TEXT mode hence the square walls.
You could still place the suggested scoreboard as a HIRES inlay at the top of the screen.

All in all a tough little game to play, unfortunately for all my tries i couldn't get beyond the first level. Slow it down by adding some sound effects (i can help here if you want), add a frontend more than just the commander prompt (music, eyecandy gfx) and it could be oh so much more. As it stands it is a very cool game but please don't let it stop here.

[Dbug]

If he decided to use your Thrust picture, I would suggest re-organizing it so the metal ball appears on the left of the Thrust logo, so it would look like "O-Thrust"

About the speed issue, I would say an easy way to fix the speed would be to scroll the screen in real time, since it's in TEXT mode it's probably doable - not easy but doable -.

For the keys, agreed, possibly not the most practical set of keys

[Antiriad2097]

I like they key layout, its a logical 'directions on left/actions on right' arrangement that matches many a Spectrum game and is comparable to joypad configurations.

I guess the obvious tweak would be to allow customisation of controls to keep everyone happy.

I'm not concerned as much with the square walls or the flick screen scrolling. Its not a direct port of Thrust, more a reinterpretation. It does run so fast its near unplayable, but it is a WIP and I can get past the first level at least.

[Nox]

Thanks for all the comments!

It's a little bit surprising for me that you all find it to difficult.
Of course I'm used to faster Thrust-versions for years...

I also implemented just my favourite keyboard-layout.
Of course it would be better to make that customizable. Would be a shame
if no one is able to see the more interesting later levels just because
of unfamiliar controls...

So I will think about it.
a) Customizable controls, or at least an alternative version with cursor-keys
b) An alternative speed setting (reduced gravity and thrust).

I don't think I will change/improve the in-game graphics, that's one thing among others
that's easier to do in another/new game...
For the top part of the screen, yes, that could be made much nicer (without much coding)...
Nice pictures Twilighte! How many bytes takes that title-screen (compressed)?

About scrolling the screen:
The routine that generates a new screen is really complex.
The landscape is "multi-tiled", than there are different kind of "objects" overlaying that landscape,
and half of the characters are used in more than one way, so there are character-definitions to copy...
I don't know if I could do all that in real time, and more important, it would be much more difficult
to design the levels (making sure that there are at no time two objects visible sharing the same characters...)

Strange that some of you have problems with the game using Euphoric, I used it while developing (and playing)
and all works, and there is not much a user could do "wrong" (in an unforeseen way), at least I think so.
My version says (F1) "Euphoric-1 (Build 1007)", maybe there's a newer one?

[Symoon]

Well, here's the result with Euphoric 1.009:


Tested it with Euphoric 0.99n and didn't have this problem...

Here are Euphoric's notes for 1.008 and 1.009 releases:
Build 1009 changes
------------------
- I had inadvertantly broken the pravetz disk interface soon after adding it. It is back again : add line "DiskController=Apple" to euphoric.ini, and don't forget to provide the disk interface eprom with line "AppleInterfaceEprom=eprom8d.rom", and also use pravetzt.rom or pravetzd.rom as the internal oric rom. If you use the pravetzt rom, it won't automatically boot the floppy, you will have to issue a CALL#320.
- also I only have partial information on the Apple interface hardware used by the Pravetz, so writing to disk didn't work. I have modified the value returned by a register, it seems it works now...

Build 1008 changes
------------------
- modified the 6502 emulator in order to be able to detect a timer countdown before an interrupt is raised. Thanks to Simon for having spotted a bug in M.A.R.C that exploits this "feature"... Also, quite heavily changed the 6502 emulator at the same time to simplify it, and found that some undocumented opcodes are bogged... (not fixed yet)

EDIT: I took a look at what's displayed, it seems the value of the strings have been shifted by #20, don't know if it can give a hint on what's happening.

[ibisum]

This is beautiful. Yet another amazing reason to keep the Oric alive! Well done mate!

[Nox]

I've updated the tap-file (linked in the first post)

the good news:
- you can now configure the keys (A-Z, Cursor, Space, Return are possible)

the bad news:
- I now use Euphoric Build 1009 (on WinXP), and still don't see these graphic-bugs...

[Symoon]

the bad news:
- I now use Euphoric Build 1009 (on WinXP), and still don't see these graphic-bugs...

That's very strange! I tried changing the ROM, loading the file by double-click or by typing CLOAD, I always get this problem. I re-downloaded the file: same problem. Anyone else?

Oh BTW, tested it on a real Atmos, works like a charm

[Symoon]

BTW, tested on another computer, with Euphoric 1.008 and had the problem too... Am I the only one ? Nobody else using Euphoric ? Am I normal ?