Game Developers Refuge

******** GDR 4x4x4 Design Challenge - June 2021 *****************************

Emojis Selected: Tomato / Thumbtack / Two Users / Grapes

-------- CONCEPT ------------------------------------------------------------
"Head-to-Head Fruit Popper"

Play against a friend (or the computer), squaring-off in a garden with fruit
magically growing quickly and at random. Be the fastest to pop the most fruit
with your magical thumb-tack within the time limit! Your thumb-tack has been
magically attuned to only one of two different types of fruit, while your
opponent will be seeking out the opposite type of fruit.


-------- PRESENTATION -------------------------------------------------------
2D, top-down, single-screen arena. Kind of like Bomberman without the bombs?
Players represented by character sprites that they control directly to move
around the arena. The arena will have different (non-hazardous?) obstacles
(walls), and fruit will be randomly spawning / dropping-in / etc as the game
timer counts down.

16x16 sprites/tiles.
MS-DOS VGA Mode 13h.


-------- CONTROLS -----------------------------------------------------------

Keyboard.

Single-player:
  - Arrow keys for movement, 4 directional, N/S/E/W.
  - Spacebar to use thumb-tack.

Two-player:
  - Player 1:
    - Arrow keys / Num-pad for movement.
    - Num-pad 0 / Num-pad Enter to use thumb-tack.

  - Player 2:
    - ASDW for movement
    - Spacebar to use thumb-tack.

Nice extra: Allow use of game controller (e.g. Gravis Gamepad).


-------- GAMEPLAY -----------------------------------------------------------

Players select their preferred fruit. Cannot be the same selection, so once
one player selects a fruit, the other player is automatically assigned the
other. Tomato or Grape.

Once the match begins, the main objective is to pop the most fruit matching
the player's fruit of choice.

Popping the right fruit does not cause any penalty or other sort of effect
to the other player, it simply increments the players score and the fruit
vanishes.

Popping the wrong fruit does not cause a penalty for the player that popped
it, but the player receives no score for it.

However, popping the wrong fruit causes your magically attuned thumbtack to
trigger the fruit to explode, which does not harm you, but will "splash"
toxic fruit juice over a 3x3 (TBD) tile area which will debuff the other
player if they are within that area, causing them to move at 50% speed until
the debuff wears off (2-3 seconds? TBD). Additionally, any other fruit of the
same type within a 5x5 (TBD) tile area will magically vanish. So players may
want to strategically pop the other players fruit to deny them score and slow
them down.

Players can "prick" each other with their thumbtacks. Players cannot be killed
but they can use their thumbtacks to push the other player out of the way
slightly, possibly also throwing them off a bit in the process. Pricking
another player causes them to get pushed ahead by 1-2 tiles, but causes no
other harm.

Matches are timed. Once the match is over, the score is displayed, and the
winner is the player who popped the most fruit.


-------- EXTRAS -------------------------------------------------------------

If time allows ...

- Sound effects. Use of Qbasic "SoundLab" utility to generate sound effects?
- Gravis Gamepad support
- Network play? Use of mTCP? Almost certainly won't have time for this ...
- Random "enemies" that spawn and snatch fruit before the players can get
  them? Mutant-oversized fruit flys perhaps ... ? Or some kind of Locust
  swarm maybe?

• 80486 DX2 @ 66MHz, 16MB RAM, S3 VLB Graphics, SB16 (and also a GUS card, and Roland SC, but will almost certainly not utilize either of those .. maybe next time)
• MS-DOS 6.22
• Borland Turbo Pascal v7.0
• Deluxe Paint II Enhanced v2.3

Gered wrote: ↑Sun Jun 06, 2021 5:53 pm I will be using my 486 DOS PC for this and will be restricting myself to "period-appropriate" tooling because it is fun to do so. My battlestation is ready.

• 80486 DX2 @ 66MHz, 16MB RAM, S3 VLB Graphics, SB16 (and also a GUS card, and Roland SC, but will almost certainly not utilize either of those .. maybe next time)
• MS-DOS 6.22
• Borland Turbo Pascal v7.0
• Deluxe Paint II Enhanced v2.3

Sirocco wrote: ↑Fri Jun 18, 2021 4:27 pm CRT flicker! Greater than 60Hz refresh rate! Curved screen!

Tomorrow - fruit popping will be added!

• Players each have their own preferred / attuned fruit (indicated by their character and thumb-tack's colour). That is nothing new.
• When a player pops a fruit matching their preferred fruit type, they get +1 score for it. Nothing new there either.
• When a player pops a fruit that is NOT of their preferred fruit type, they get splashed by the fruit juice and it affects them negatively. I'm thinking right now, this debuff will just make them move slowly for some period of time. Probably 5 seconds or so. So, why would a player want to pop fruit of the other type ... ? They'll always want to avoid it right?
• Fruit will obstruct the player's movement. So player's may want/need to pop some unwanted fruit to get to large clusters of their preferred fruit.
• If a player pops their preferred fruit type nearby their opponent, then the other player could (if they are close enough) get splashed by the fruit juice and get slowed down by the same debuff mentioned above. So, it could be a good idea for players to try to aggressively pop their fruit nearby their opponent ... but could also backfire on them.
• Fruit spawns in as a little plant randomly, and only on dirt tiles. Some maps (like my current test map) is almost all dirt tiles. But some others, will feature much less. After a random-ish period of time, the plant will grow into either a tomato or grape.
• I am thinking that different maps will probably also feature an internal cap on the maximum number of fruit entities allowed to be present.
• There is a low chance for a "super" fruit type to grow from a plant. I am thinking right now I will indicate this "super" variant of fruit by just a simple colour swap to gold/yellow. When a super fruit is popped, all other fruit on screen matching that same fruit type will also pop and the player will be awarded the appropriate score for all the popped fruit. This also could be a nice way to get a debuff on the other player from a distance if timed right of course ...
• Players can "prick" each other with their thumb-tack. I am thinking that this will just push the other player backwards a bit. So just kind of a silly thing without much benefit at all. Perhaps it should have some other debuff associated with it, but I don't want players to focus on poking each other with their thumb tacks too much ...
• Not sure on this one yet, but also am thinking that hitting a plant with your thumb tack will destroy the plant and no fruit will spawn from it. It's kind of "weird" in that I think it would be quite difficult to cut down a plant of any sort with a thumb tack. But I like the idea that a player should not just mindlessly spam stab with their thumb tack everywhere.

This is now aaaallllmost at the basic game loop that I guess I was aiming for. And it does feel overly simple to me. But that is good ... I guess ..