Astroids remake Q and A...

[Spacemanchuck]

Hey all.

Check it out. I got a gig working on a remake of Astroids. I'm going be doing all the concept art and in-game graphics for this remake. I'm pretty amped about it. But I need some ideas for making it new and fresh. And I thought hey lets see what the boys(and girls) at CA think, so I came up with a list of questions for you guys. So here we go!

1. List off all the astroid remakes you guys can think of. If you have any links to where we could download them post'em.

2.Tell me why you think Astroids is fun! What is it about astroids that really makes it this timeless classic.

3. Ideas! Have you ever thought hey it would be really cool if I could this right now? What sort of gameplay mechanics would you want to see in a new version of astroids?

4. We are playing with the Ideas of not having it in space at all. No ship, but instead of a ship it may be a bird... And instead of astroids that blow up into smaller and smaller chunks, maybe it's an egg... Just an example, you get the picture. What do you think about this change up? Any ideas for an alternate astroids world?

This is just sort of to help me jump start the brainstorming process. Lets see what you guys come up with!!!

Thanks,
Chuck

[Prometheus|ANJ]

I've done a few myself, they're very easy to code. I almost managed to code one in an hour last time I tried.

Personally I prefer bouncing off the edges rather than looping, although some probably think that's blasphemous to the whole concept.

I've got an old one I made here (http://web.telia.com/~u48508900/games/). I made a few enemies with toggle shields, different movement patterns, mine deployers etc. I also had a store where you could buy weapons and engines from gold you collected. To add replay value, I had some linear quest modes and then some different survivial modes.

[Spacemanchuck]

Hey Prom thanks for the input. It helps alot just to hear other takes... I've been thinking about away to include a store of sorts as well. I really think it would add to the over all game play and give the player a reason to play. I was also thinking of incuding somewhat of a story line. As the player progresses through the levels there might be afew images that pop up telling a story regarding the origons of the space ship and pilot. Yada yada. Maybe throw in some nice paintings of ships and other painterly images to spice it up...

ANyways, really thanks abunch for listening. If you can think of anything else let me here it. Oh yea I'd like to play a make of your astroids Prom if you have it around... I couldnt find it on your link.

Bye

[Prometheus|ANJ]

I'm afraid it doesn't work anymore. I wrote it in BlitzBasic and now I'm using BlitzMax. It's 2340 lines, most of them incompatible with the new compiler. I wrote the entire thing using just gosubs too! It was my first 'large' game project.
Now I use OOP. I could probably get it down to 1000 lines, but it would still be a lot of work.

I can remember the following modes:

Classic - just asteroids, more and more
Campaign - asteroids and enemies, unique setups for every level. Never got around to do the bosses.
Skirmish - Random difficult setup and some starting gold.
Blob attack - just a specific type of fast enemy, and lots of them. Got difficult real fast.

I had some 8-9 weapons mapped to num keys so you could toggle. Next time I'm gonna try and do a Quake style control with mouse + arrowkey strafing, and use 2 different keys for favourite weapon priority lists (like ranged and close combat).