[FAQ]Would there be interest for....

I was thinking about easy games to make or rather simple games. would it be an idea to have a list of games, maybe in the FAQ or even as a seperate sticky (mind I don't want too many stickys). This would be a list of types of games people could have a go at when they have nothign to do and we could show case all the ones people have done.

The kinda things I'm talking about are "The Worm Game", "Pacman", That game where you have split off areas and keep doing it till you have 80% or something, there are little things flying round that kill you if they touch your trail while slitting off areas.
Theres even one I've seen which is called "Five Stones" its basically O's & X's apart from you have a really big grid and you keep going until you get 5 in a row.

What are poeple views on us making a thread like this?

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Originally Posted by Electroman

I was thinking about easy games to make or rather simple games. would it be an idea to have a list of games, maybe in the FAQ or even as a seperate sticky (mind I don't want too many stickys). This would be a list of types of games people could have a go at when they have nothign to do and we could show case all the ones people have done.

The kinda things I'm talking about are "The Worm Game", "Pacman", That game where you have split off areas and keep doing it till you have 80% or something, there are little things flying round that kill you if they touch your trail while slitting off areas.
Theres even one I've seen which is called "Five Stones" its basically O's & X's apart from you have a really big grid and you keep going until you get 5 in a row.

What are poeple views on us making a thread like this?

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Great idea :) i'd try to take part :)

What about just making a new post with it in the FAQ, then add a new word to the title like you have all ready done?


Ohhh and remember "Snake"...:D

All of those games except pacman can probably be programmed in a variation of in a few hours....I love it!

Not only should you make a thread for it but you should push people to develop on the same ideas and see who's is best.

But you may wish to point out that recreating snake for the 1,000,000,000 time is pointless....Remake snake and instead add a twist -- any twist -- and its original.

Snake, with obstacles, bonus rounds, moving things you have to eat, random things you eat which make your tail smaller, items which pop up and make you go SUPER fast or SUPER slow...A tongue maybe so you can eat at a distance.

I've been playing games since the 80's, I know all about the 'easy/simple' games.

All the feedback so far is really good, I'll make the post for the FAQ in the next couple of days but in the mean time if we can use this thread to make a list of games we should put on the list.

BTW I can remove the "Notice: Please Read" thread if people want this to be a seperate thread otherwise I'm happy to add it to the end of the FAQ. Personally I thinkt he notice still has purpose to newer members :).

As for the Snake game I had thought to say that in my first post but went against it cos the ChitChat version of it ;);) :lol:.....Anyone know what the game is called that I tried to describe by dividing off areas?

I didn't even take time to think about...now I got the picture in my head but the name eludes me.
I keep thinking dig dug but thats not it...it is only distracting me.

For those who can't be sure what game I'm talking about heres a picture of what its like.

The map would start blue in this case and your the little purple ship. You split off areas, as shown by the green line. Once you complete one it turns red, if your green line is hit then you die, or basically its bad.
You win by getting a certain percentage of the screen red :).

How can the green line be hit? By you?

I loved that game, but can't for the life of me remember what it was. :(

Asteroids is a must and how about pong, could be multiplayer to give people the chance to experiment with making a simple multiplayer game.

By enemies that fly around in the blue stuff, I forgot to draw them, soz.

P.S. I saw a version were you had three type, one type could only stay on the red bit, one only on the blue and one that ignored the border and went everywhere. Also they all don't have AI they just bounce around on the borders ;).

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Originally Posted by SLH

I loved that game, but can't for the life of me remember what it was. :(

Asteroids is a must and how about pong, could be multiplayer to give people the chance to experiment with making a simple multiplayer game.

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Nice one, can't believe I forgot about Astroids.

Here's a short list of what we got so far:

1. Astroids
2. Pong
3. The Worm Game
4. Snake
5. Pacman
6 .Five Stones
7. The Unkown Game

I thought you were talking about Jezzball first, but after have seen the image it isn't that game...

Well, you could add Breakout, classic ^^, and hmm tetris maybe?(Or anything with falling blocks)? I don't know that fits into easy games, and bust a move maybe?(no that's probably to hard)... ... ... :wave:

BTW, What's the difference between Snake and the worm game?

you cant tell me your going to miss lemmings out, Also i think we should have at least one platform game in there (i aint talking to the standards of mario, more like manic miner)......


anyway i would love to take part in this, but you can expext my first few games to be a biut slow, just learning dx. so will probibly use bitblt for the first few games.

whens the first one starting?

Rob

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Originally Posted by makster246

you cant tell me your going to miss lemmings out, Also i think we should have at least one platform game in there (i aint talking to the standards of mario, more like manic miner)......


anyway i would love to take part in this, but you can expext my first few games to be a biut slow, just learning dx. so will probibly use bitblt for the first few games.

whens the first one starting?

Rob

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Rather than like the Contests this would just be in your own time kinda thing and as you complete them just PM me and I'd add your games to the list of completed ones.
The main aim for this is just cos when I have some spare tiem and want to make a simple game I can never think of something good so I thought if we made a list then you would have ago at things you might not have thought of before. :).

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Originally Posted by Electroman

For those who can't be sure what game I'm talking about heres a picture of what its like.

The map would start blue in this case and your the little purple ship. You split off areas, as shown by the green line. Once you complete one it turns red, if your green line is hit then you die, or basically its bad.
You win by getting a certain percentage of the screen red :).

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That game is Qix or Qubix :)

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Originally Posted by si_the_geek

That game is Qix or Qubix :)

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Nope :(, this is Qubix:
http://www.pdatreasures.com/products...bix-screen.gif

Mind I think I'll add that to the list :).

Just checked Qix and thats it :D:D:D. Thanx :D.

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Originally Posted by Electroman

Just checked Qix and thats it :D:D:D. Thanx :D.

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no worries :)

I had a "blast from the past" urge to play a few weeks back and thought it was called Qix, but couldnt find it for Pocket PC, in the end I found a version called Qubix so I thought that was the proper name. Now I'm all confused again!

I remember that as being QBERT.

I'd like to see TETRIS. I just tried to run my DOS version from 1988, and it won't run anymore. The one that I downloaded runs like ****. I'm sure that it wasn't designed well.

List so far:
1. Astroids
2. Pong
3. The Worm Game
4. Snake
5. Pacman
6 .Five Stones
7. Qix
8. Qubix/QBert
9. Breakout
10. manic miner
11. Lemmings :unsure: Pretty big game.
12. Tetris

If I've missed any out sorry I just had a quick look through this thread but think I've got them all.



P.S. The Worm game is where you use the mouse button to go up and down. If its pressed you go up and if its not you go down: http://www.liquidcode.org/worm.html

just thought i would add gradius to the list..


:)

rob

(Lunar) Lander?

Yep I'll add that one on.

BTW I'll try to get roudn to getting this thing done Next week, I've been really pushed for time recently but hopefully I'll get a little slack next week, if not the week after I'll definitly have enough free time :).


EDIT: And SLH's Lunar/Lander too, thats was a cool game too :).

how could i forget lunar lander, that was an amazing game, although i was that useless i never won..


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dont worry about not getting it done next week...we are all very patient and very happy yoru doing it at all, we dont mind waiting

Lunar/Lander was actually the very first game I made. Even though I followed the tutorial on VBWorld :).

There are loads of games you can add.

1. Astroids
2. Pong
3. The Worm Game
4. Snake
5. Pacman
6. Five Stones
7. Qix
8. Qubix/QBert
9. Breakout
10. manic miner
11. Lemmings :unsure: Pretty big game.
12. Tetris

Other than the orginals as above.

What about card games, puzzles or space invaders or is that same as Astroids? :thumb:

Space Invaders is where you have a little dude on the bottom who can shot vertically and there is little invaders going side to side getting lower.
Astroids is where your a little ship and there are astroids flying around, you have to blow them all up before they hit you :).

Will add Space Invaders though. :)

did I already say TETRIS?

When I was young I played a computer game that had battling monkeys like King Kong. You typed in coordinates to throw banannas at each other. I have no idea what it was called though. Maybe someone here can remember.

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Originally Posted by aewarnick

When I was young I played a computer game that had battling monkeys like King Kong. You typed in coordinates to throw banannas at each other. I have no idea what it was called though. Maybe someone here can remember.

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Yeah, that game was great. First time I tried it was on an Atari. I had a PC version a few years back with canons in stead of monkeys. Think I still have that game lying around here somewhere, but I can't remember the name of the originale game..:(

I made a VB version of that game too once...never finished it though...

My last phone had that game on it, it called it "Bannanas". It had a little stick pointing out the moneky which went up and down (this was the direction to throw), and when you pressed the button it stopped and started growing and shrinking (this was for the strength to throw it). It also had a little flag in the middle to show the wind :).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aewarnick

When I was young I played a computer game that had battling monkeys like King Kong. You typed in coordinates to throw banannas at each other. I have no idea what it was called though. Maybe someone here can remember.

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I believe you are refering to the QBasic program named: Gorilla.bas

http://telcontar.net/Misc/Gorillas/pics/gamestart.png

That's it!!

how about missile command.....lets defend the earth again

Rob

About your new thread:


Should we make that a post in the FAQ? Or have a link to it in the FAQ, or something like that`

I've stickied it for the moment, see how it goes, will probably eventually merge it with the FAQ making it just a post in it. Or I am considering putting it as a Announcment which would allow me to use HTML in it.

Probably best to just stick it first. So everyone know about it. Then we can merge it afterwards.


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Would Chess also qualify as an Easy-To-Make game?

I guess that depends on if you leave out the AI or not. The AI can be made in pretty many ways.

But it is not as easy as the other games even if you leave out the AI. The testing for "chess" or "chess mate" and so on, can be hard enough for a person that havn't been programming too much.


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chess might be ok if you are only able to play user vs user, there are only a few things you need to do, check for legal moves and check for winning condition. If you add AI then you need to understand and implement more advanced concept like search trees and alpha beta pruning.

I agree it could be added if AI wasn't included so i'll add it. Anyone have suggestions on where it should be? On the difficultly. I'd say its still quite a bit more complex then a lot of them. Bout mid-range would be my choice.

I would have said advnced because of the "where you are allowed to move" and "if you did hit an oponent player" thingy and so on.



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In reference to the gorilla game, I believe the original is called Scorthed Earth or Tank Wars.

Another is SPECTRE. It came out shortly after Asteroids. It was a wireframe game (all lines), with only white I believe for colors...but you drove a tank around with a 3rd person camera and shot at other tanks.
Very impressive for late 70s.

Lemmings / Worms would be a good challenge but very difficult to code. Just imagine all the animation! Nightmare. It amazes me that Lemmings II (Tribes) had about 100 lemming skills and over 120 levels and it all stil fitted on a single 720kb Atari floppy. That's what I call coding.

What was lemmings originally coded in?

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Originally Posted by Venom555

What was lemmings originally coded in?

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I would think the majority of it is C code with hardware specific optimisations in ASM at strategic points. It was ported to many platforms with many different instruction sets. Must have been well written.

Lemmings on Atari???
I think you are very mistaken.

The first lemmings was on the SNES, then PC, Lemmings 2 SNES then PC.
Never once have I heard of it on the Atari...and if it was on the atari then it was nothing compared to the mass of the SNES versions.

Lemmings on SNES had I think 5 difficulties with 50 levels each (maybe less). then if you beat the last difficulty you got a hidden one called Hero I think...something like that. 10 levels of the hardest puzzles ever, I have yet to beat Hero.

Lemmings 2 on the SNES truly had WAY more skillz than the first but about the same ammount of levels, it just had the appearance of more levels. I never did well at Lemmings 2, it was a toughy.

Atari, I think not.
A classic, ez to program... Each level was tile based in a sense, thus allowing extremely small files to generate the full levels. In fact if you look at the dump of the snes lemmings rom you can find level files to be always less than 100bytes I believe..

Still, atari...impossible.

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Originally Posted by Halsafar

The first lemmings was on the SNES, then PC, Lemmings 2 SNES then PC.
Never once have I heard of it on the Atari...and if it was on the atari then it was nothing compared to the mass of the SNES versions.

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Sure about that? I am pretty sure SNES wasn't out first time I played Lemmings on my first PC a 2x86.




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I remember playing Lemmings on my old GameGear :D :D.

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Originally Posted by Halsafar

Lemmings on Atari???
I think you are very mistaken.

The first lemmings was on the SNES, then PC, Lemmings 2 SNES then PC.
Never once have I heard of it on the Atari...and if it was on the atari then it was nothing compared to the mass of the SNES versions.

Lemmings on SNES had I think 5 difficulties with 50 levels each (maybe less). then if you beat the last difficulty you got a hidden one called Hero I think...something like that. 10 levels of the hardest puzzles ever, I have yet to beat Hero.

Lemmings 2 on the SNES truly had WAY more skillz than the first but about the same ammount of levels, it just had the appearance of more levels. I never did well at Lemmings 2, it was a toughy.

Atari, I think not.
A classic, ez to program... Each level was tile based in a sense, thus allowing extremely small files to generate the full levels. In fact if you look at the dump of the snes lemmings rom you can find level files to be always less than 100bytes I believe..

Still, atari...impossible.

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I think you are mistaken Halsafar. Lemmings 1 & 2 first appeared on the Amiga back in the late 80's (Before the SNES and before PC's supported more than 16 colors.) Psygnosis was a major contributor to Amiga games back in the 80's and early 90's and made games such as Shadow of the Beast, Menace, Blood Money, Lemmings 1 & 2, etc

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Originally Posted by Halsafar

Lemmings on Atari???
I think you are very mistaken.
...
Atari, I think not.
...
Still, atari...impossible.

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Lol, I have the boxes and the discs on my bedroom shelf. "Lemmings 1", "Oh No More Lemmings" and "Lemmings 2: Tribes" all for the Atari ST. Lemmings 2 did require a RAM upgrade (to a whopping 1 megabyte!) but it ran beautifully.

I am not mistaken. :rolleyes:

I know this is a long time coming but i just found your thread and thought i would post the name of the game. The one where you block off 80% of the screen. I play it all the time.

it can be found at www.freearcade.com/ and its called FillIt

The direct link is http://ww12.freearcade.com/Fillit.jav/Fillit.html

I didn't read all the posts, so I don't know if anyone already mentioned this type of game.
Stone cutter, where you should flip stones to match the colors, and when the colors match, the stone disapperars... Hard to describe. Dowload it and try... It's fun.

Hey Electroman or NoteMe. I think I have another good idea for a game that'll seem to be easy to make. How about a Dance Dance Revolution clone? I'm currently making one right now, but others can try it as well. If you want, you can add Dance Dance Revolution to the list. I say it'll be medium for difficulty on creating one.

"Dance Dance Revolution"? Is that the thing with the dance mat and 4 pads? Wouldn't think people would make them without the actual mat for input, guess you can use the cursor keys but doesn't really have the same effect :afrog:

Actually, using cursor keys or a PC dance pad for the DDR clones have become quite popular. Look at these sites:

http://www.stepmania.com - Probably the most popular DDR clone out there. And its free and open source.

http://www.bemanistyle.com - A site that contains Sim files with the mp3 it goes to created by DDR fans.

There are other links to other DDR programs in them too. What you do for Stepmania, for example, is in the song folder, you create a main folder, such as "Music Downloads". Next, in that folder, you have a folder of the song you are gonna use in mp3 format, with the .sm or .dwi files (known as sim files) provided with them, which is the step pattern info, bpm, artist and song info, etc. I'm trying to parse it right now, but I'm not done yet. ;)

I can see your point JR. But I think this game is in a bit different category then the rest of the games. The others are small arcade games or board games, and they are in general easy to make. If you want to add a game pad or what ever to your game it suddenly becomes a bit more difficult. Don't you think so too? Would you have started off with this kind of game if you where new to programming?


- ØØ -

Yes I probably would. It seems easy to make.

How about Frogger?

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Originally Posted by NoteMe

I would have said advnced because of the "where you are allowed to move" and "if you did hit an oponent player" thingy and so on.



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I love how he gets so technical all the time :p

PS: Way to dig up old threads :eek:

chem