Best beginner game

[spenoza]

OK, so, if I were to pick up HuC, my only previous programming experience having been Java (intro and intermediate) and just a touch of Pascal, and make a game, what style game would likely be the easiest to manage as a beginning project? Platformer? Puzzle? Shooter? I find myself most worried about enemy routines/AI, but should I be? What are the hardest parts? What kind of advice can you give me before wading in and drowning?

[touko]

A pong i think ..

It's very simple, but all programming aspects are present, like background/tiles, sprites, score, AI,sound/musics etc ..
This is useless to try to make a difficult game without programming experience .

A simple game like pong will allow you to understand how to use huc functions, and how pce works,without too many headaches .

A shoot don't need an advanced AI, because enemies are made of simple waves scheme .

[spenoza]

What about a Breakout/Arkanoid clone? Let's face it, Drop Off is NOT winning any awards for anything other than suck.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Start with something that doesn't involve scrolling or a lot of moving parts.

Don't try to do parallax. Keep the background color use basic (1 palette instead of many).

Breakout wouldn't be hard.  Arkanoid would be harder because of the powerups and all of that.  There is already a game called Jamanoid for PCE.  It used to come with HuGo.



The best thing to do is pick an Atari 2600 game that seems fairly simple. Try bringing it over. 

If you start going for scrolling shooters and crap, you'll just get in over your head.

[touko]

an arcanoid clone is harder than it seems .
Mainly for tiles manipulations .

[Arkhan Asylum]

an arcanoid clone is harder than it seems .
Mainly for tiles manipulations .

yes there is alot of nonsense going on with Arkanoid.

however, if you do a straight 2600 breakout clone, you could do like 15x4 rows of sprites (60 sprites).  This is more than adequate for a breakout clone, as 15x16 pixels would nicely cover the screen and leave you room to put a border for the playfield. It's a perfect fit, really.

and then have the paddle, and a ball. That's 62 sprites.   Leaves a bit of wiggle room. Not a lot at all, but just a little

You could then make a neat looking 16 color background to figure out how backgrounds work, along with laying out all the sprites and manipulating their positions and palettes.

You wouldn't hit the line limit either since it's 15 sprites per row  

Then, you could learn all about bounding boxes, and making optimal checks.  There are a lot of opportunities with a simple breakout grid to do some shortcuts with checks and keep things optimal.

For example, if there's no possible way the ball could hit the topmost row, why even check ANY of those sprites?  

If the ball is on the left side, why check anything who's X coordinate is on the right half?

stuff like this is good to pick up on early.


I vote you do that, since you brought it up.

A simple Atari 2600 breakout clone.  No frills.  Just the basics.

[touko]

Yes vcs games are very good (and also very simple),especialy for a systemCD error overlay  

[ccovell]

Yes vcs games are very good (and also very simple),especialy for a systemCD error overlay   

Yeah, nobody here ever notices the easter eggs we pack into our games and demos, do they?  :-(

[spenoza]

Thing is, once I've made something simple, I can slowly improve/evolve it. Arkanoid was pretty cool, and Breakout is pretty simple, and there are some nice evolutionary points between them.

[esteban]

I think you have already decided, but I always thought that Atlantis would make a great candidate for a beginner game.

[spenoza]

Not familiar with Atlantis. I never played it.

[esteban]

Not familiar with Atlantis. I never played it.

ATLANTIS

Core game is exceedingly basic, but I believe it would offer incremental steps (as you revise, refine and polish the game by introducing new enemies,  new AI behavior, new stages, new cannon placement, etc.).

[Arkhan Asylum]

Atlantis is simply Missile Command, but not shitty.


it would be a fun game to make, but would also be a bit more challenging to deal with the sprite activity that occurs.

[JoshTurboTrollX]

Hey spenoza,

Have you taken a look at Roves: Crash course in HuC series on Obey brew?  It's a great way to jump in and get started making some sprites move around with backgrounds.  I too have a java background, and found his directions easy to follow. 

Even if it is in the dreaded C++ language

[touko]

Yeah, nobody here ever notices the easter eggs we pack into our games and demos, do they?  :-(

Because we are too subtle lol .

[spenoza]

Oh, I intend to take the crash course, certainly  : )

[Arkhan Asylum]

Its in C, not C++

[ParanoiaDragon]

Combat, seems like it'd be relatively easy.  Another one I'd love to see is Air Sea Battle, I always had a special love for that one.

[Mishran]

I think you have already decided, but I always thought that Atlantis would make a great candidate for a beginner game.

Perhaps I'm alone in this, but I think it would be cool to have a Cosmic Ark port on the PCE. I busted many Atari joysticks while playing that game as a kid. Wouldn't be a good programming beginner game though.

[incrediblehark]

ET for PCE

[Arkhan Asylum]

Actually, Cosmic Ark wouldn't be that bad as a beginner game.  The surface-portions aren't that complicated really.

It'd be harder than Breakout, sure.

but, still pretty simple.  Getting the slippery acceleration is the hard part.

[touko]

Good advice, take care to initialise all your variables before using them .