Smorgazbord

Jam Hot

WELL, what with one thing and another I seldom get much time to myself these days. And even if I do get much time to myself, I’m seldom in the mood to do much with it (the joy of doing nothing being the most indulgent use of time).

I do miss messing around with stupid ideas, particularly in written or game form. So last week I made an effort to take part in the fourth Dundee Jam. I managed to get involved in the first one, admittedly indirectly, an hour a night over the course of a week to end up with Crumble, which was satisfying enough. But I just had to scratch that itch again.

I like the idea of sticking to the theme and taking no longer than a working day. The latest theme was “Mashup” and there are so many possibilities I wasn’t sure what to mash up, so I decided to let fate decide. I started with the usual arcade suspects…

• Space Invaders
• Asteroids
• Galaxian
• Head On
• Berzerk
• Missile Command
• Pac-Man
• Rip Off
• Frogger
• Qix
• Amidar
• Super Breakout
• Scramble
• Mappy
• Mr. Do!
• Nibbler
• Pengo
• Q*Bert

…then I picked two at random: Super Breakout and Asteroids, which isn’t massively inspiring but at least that combination feels doable. I was thinking of mashing up more than two games but I don’t feel encouraged to add any more ingredients to this mix.

My weapons of choice are Multimedia Fusion 2 for ‘code’ and visuals and SFXR for audio effects. I’m not going to plan anything - just get on with it and see what happens.

The arcade version of Super Breakout features a surprisingly small bat and a surprisingly fast ball, which makes it ROCK-hard to play. Asteroids on the other hand is a comparatively slow-paced affair. No, really.

What to mash up and how? Something at a high level with crude substitutions of features in either game? Something at a lower, more conceptual level? Which toys to use? Which playscape? Which rules?

I want to stick to the teeny bat and speedy ball but I’m going to use the rough proportions of the asteroids for the bricks. I also want to use the monochrome wireframe quality of Asteroids for visual style, but with sprites instead. Asteroids and Super Breakout don’t animate so this mashup won’t either. Audio in both games is similar enough so no decisions required there.

I start with the proportions of the Super Breakout playscape and use Super Breakout rules for the bat and ball, ie: constrained by the playscape boundaries (although the ball is lost if it leaves the bottom of the playscape) and Asteroids rules for the bricks (they wrap around when they leave the playscape).

It’s not working. The bricks colliding with the bat to destroy it (like in Asteroids) isn’t fair - the bat isn’t maneouvrable enough and it operates in one dimension while the bricks operate in two.

Time to rethink…

The bat shape needs to change. A wide bat in a square playscape is at a disadvantage because it’s not symetrical enough for the space. The bat can’t be too large because it needs to be able to dodge bricks. The bat doesn’t stand out enough looking like a medium-sized brick so it needs a second outline for reinforcement.

The ball obeying Asteroids rules (wrapping around) feels… not so good. So instead the ball will bounce off the sides of the playscape, like in Super Breakout.

One ball doesn’t seem like enough when there’s nothing but little bricks floating around - it’s so hard to hit them. So the balls are brought into play like bullets in Asteroids (with a maximum of four in play at once). Perhaps the ball needs to decay (shrink) with every hit, a little like the asteroids in Asteroids?

This isn’t working. It’s turning into shooting rather than batting - too much like Asteroids. Some of the bricks could have balls in them (like the accessories released in Arkanoid) or perhaps the saucers should instead. But what rules do they follow? Why do the saucers appear? I think it’s based on the number of shots in Asteroids, so every 20 ball bounces off the sides of the playscape will do.

There’s not enough sense of control over play. Moving targets are frustrating when you have so little control over the balls. Being able to direct the balls might help… A little, but the collision on such a small ball isn’t entirely accurate. Pfft.

Time to finish up. Some audio-visual effects… A few particles… Some noises… A basic game structure… Some text… Finally, three hours later: all done. Super Breakeroids is GO!

Ah. Hold on. A shitty bug. Oh, joy, there goes another 90 minutes…