Hi Dark, Yeah, I do see your point. A lot of the arcade games we have were simplified for practical reasons. With Montezuma's Revenge, for example, I did simplify things for very practical reasons. The one big one being its hard to actually convey certain information through an audio only medium.
For instance, the skulls. In my version the skulls only moved left right, and you had to jump over them. There were certainly that kind of skull in the original, but I totally left out the bouncing skulls. I.E. the ones that were bouncing up and down. Those were trickier because you had to run underneath them without them landing on you and killing you instantly. I could never figure out a logical way to tell you when a skull was up in the air and when it would be safe to run under it before it landed. Yeah, yeah, people will say use pitch changes etc, but then the skulls sounded really weird and the speed was so fast even with pitch changes you couldn't keep up. Trust me, I tried it and I could never figure out a way to identify how and when to run under a bouncing skull so left it out. I think that other games lack features of the original mainstream concepts for similar reasons. Its difficult, if not impossible, to convey everything to a blind user through audio. Therefore we end up with a sort of half-way game that is maybe 80% like the original idea, but lacks a few advanced or more complex game play elements here and there. However, as far as Asteroids goes I don't think that type of game would have to be converted to a 2d platformer at all. If anything else now that I have Genesis 3D and Philip has BGT it should be relatively easy to create a 3d Asteroids game with asteroids in true 3d space. I.E. AAsteroids above and below the player as well as left, right, and behind you. Now, that would be something worth playing. As an arcade game it could get pretty advanced in navigation, math, and Physics and might double as a type of flight simulator as well as an arcade game. Cheers! On 5/20/11, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote: > Hi Tom. > > Your knolidge of the early arcade games is probably better than mine, sinse > the sort of games I grew up playing in the arcades were things like double > dragon, ninja turtles, mortal combat and street fighter 2. > One issue I have noticed though, is when adapting an arcade game, some > developers sacrifice gameplay complexities that differenciate the game from > others for reasons of audio. > > Take Liams duckhunt game. > > the original duckhunt had objects moving at not only faster speed, but any > angle, and you had to targit not just left and right, but up and down as > well. > > because though Liam missed completely the vertical dimention sinse that's > harder to show in audio, the game plays much like space invaders, where as > originally it wouldn't. > > Actually I do rather wish Liam had inserted some vertical targiting, even if > this meant altering the nes sfx of the ducks or inserting some extra sound > such as wind to show vertical position, simply because this would've made > the game less like the usual left/right targiting affair. > > Pipe is another one. > > In the graphical version, it's not just a matter of physically scrolling > through a number of pipes one of which will fit, but actually logically > working out amount of space available vs the pipes you have in a very quick > manner, but once again, this concept was removed from the audio version. > > I think that is my real objection to the arcade genre, that sinse the amount > of information possible to show in audio is less than in a graphical game, > games have been simplified down to something of a baseline. > > Take something like asteroids. > > Yes, it may be possible to show rocks blowing up into smaller rocks and your > spaceship avoiding them in audio, but in no sense could you easily show a > huge screen with your ship in the center with a 360 degree field of fire all > around you and asteroids coming from all angles. > > I would be reasonably willing to bet that were a developer to create an > audio asteroids, one of the first design changes they'd make would be to > reduce the game to only a left/right field of fire to save on audio. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
