Battlezone !! - need Beta testing please !

WIP games, tools & toy projects
#1

Hi all,

  • green see-through tanks
  • mountains you could never reach
  • being shot from behind without even seeing it coming
  • abstract polyhedra littering the landscape

Yes, I’m nearly completed my entry for this year’s RetroRemakes.com competition, it’s the 1980 arcade game Battlezone.

More about the competition here:

and about the game here:
http://www.retroremakes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=11869

Would love it if you could play the game, and let me know any suggestions, bugs, criticism, revulsion, elation, etc etc

You can download it from here:
http://www.stupey.com/Battlezone/Battlezone.zip

Doesn’t need any installing, just unzip it all into one place, and double-click on ‘bz fullscreen.bat’ to start it. Keys are A and Z for left track back and forward, K and M for right track, and space to fire. If fullscreen doesn’t work for you, try ‘bz windowed.bat’

It has a lot of other features, all detailed in the attached readme.txt, including:

  • advanced accessibility options for children and young adults who through disability are unable to play conventional PC games - the game has an eyetracker mode and optional switch mode (you can simulate it with a mouse, it’s still very playable that way)

  • a large number of new tank shapes, some with normal tank AI and some with SuperTank AI

  • an evil bastard helicopter (every 10th enemy)

  • 3D CinemaScope !! pressing ‘3’ toggles this on and off - you’ll need some 3D specs to see it, red filter for left eye, blue for right

  • much improved radar functionality

  • magnification controls

  • blah blah, read the readme

Cheers,

Stu

#2

hehe fun retro one,

some results for a first test:

  • keys sucks on my keyboard (AZERTY) maybe keyboards arrows too ??
  • there is some lags happening
  • fullscreen is windowed

I really like the end when you are hitted and the screen break, it is really old looking, very nice, sounds and graphics are good too and very retro like.

ps: i think you will get more results if you provide a jnlp or an applet

#3

thanks for the good feedback

  • was wondering about non-English keyboards - I think I got the German keyboard covered (Y<->Z), presume yours is a French keyboard ? What keys do you have at the left and right ends of the bottom two rows ? Can amend that easily.

  • lags will depend on the video card used. The game actually monitors its own frame rate and will adjust firstly the delay in each loop, then will drop anti-aliasing, then the glow effect, then drop frames (hopefuilly not all of these !) until it has a stable frame-rate. The game may be slow or jumpy for the first few frames of the attract mode and then should stabilise, is that what you’re seeing ?

  • re the fullscreen, that’s strange, are you able to play other games in fullscreen mode ? What are the details of your video card and your video settings ?
    Snapshot of the code that determines this is as follows:

		if(!defaultScreenDevice.isFullScreenSupported())isWindowed=true;
		if(!isWindowed){
			try{
                		mode=findRequestedMode();
			}catch(Exception e){mode=null;}
		}
		if(mode==null)isWindowed=true;
		if(!isWindowed){
			initFullScreen(mode);
		}else{
			initWindowedScreen();
		}

I’m working on an applet for it, but I have problems getting it to work in the same framework, so am going to have to do a separate build of it (the competition asks for an executable). Wanted to get some feedback on the game first before I do a separate applet build, so I don’t have to amend two builds for the same amendments.

Thanks for the other comments, glad you like it ;D

Stu

#4

yup you assume well, but keyboard arrows are always a good fallback (enabling both wsad and arrows is good)

exacly this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZERTY

[quote]The game may be slow or jumpy for the first few frames of the attract mode and then should stabilise, is that what you’re seeing ?
[/quote]
game run smooth but sometime lags (seems that more while zooming)

my CG is ATI RADEOM X800 SR: 102476832, I usually not have any problem running game in fullscreen.

[quote] I don’t have to amend two builds for the same amendments.
[/quote]
if you bring an applet out you are able to turn it in an application using an appletviewer that you can even write in java, I made a java appletviewer a cupple of monthes ago (his is only few lines) that I could give to you but I cant find it anymore… I will if I can find it…

#5

Very cool - vector graphics are awesome. ;D

Never played the original but it looks very accurate from what I can tell. It’s a bit awkward to control but I guess that’s part of the game. Sounds are nice and retro as well.

#6

  • will put the extra keys on to make the AZERTY work as well - looks like I’m in luck, no overlap with the keys currently used. What’s the character below the J and K keys, is that a comma or period ? I can’t see it well.

  • not sure why fullscreen shouldn’t work here then, will look into it - do you happen to know your refresh rate ?

Thanks for the comments, Orangy - yep the controls are, I think, supposed to be awkward - the original arcade machine had two vertical-travel joysticks with a firebutton on top of one of them. I did have a dev version working with the arrow keys, but that’s a different control mechanism, and loses the ‘tanky-ness’ of the thing.

Thanks for the comments guys, keep them coming !

#7

Fixed the keyboard thing, so:

English keyboards are A+Z left track, K+M right track

AZERTY Keybords are Q+W left track, K+’,’ right track

German keyboards are A+Y left track and K+M right track

No configuration needed, since fortunately none of those key combinations conflict.

#8

OMG! Battlezone! I loved it.

Plays perfectly on my 2.2Ghz Windows Vista box with Java 6u10. Any chance of a Webstart version? You’re using bat files to launch it so I think it shouldn’t be too much hassle to create a couple of JNLP files to pass the command line args to the game. Make sure at least one of the JNLP files opens it up as an undecorated window. Not to worry if you can’t be bothered. JNLP syntax is a hassle.

Bu-uut, loved it, loved it, loved it… can’t think of a single thing you’d need to change, the game play is perfect. NOw, if you’ll excuse me, I would like the helicopter to meet my fingerz.

–Mario

#9

haha, thanks very much, I’m blushing.

Not played around with JNLP before, but I’ll give it a shot when I get a chance. I have a couple of previous games as applets (see sig), so not sure why I’m struggling with this one, but anyway, I’ll get something sussed soon.

#10

Pretty fun, but I suck! ;D

#11

here’s a webstart link:

http://www.stupey.com/Battlezone/launch.jnlp

#12

Nicely done!

Man, it’s tough, though - FPSes have made me forget what games are like without being able to strafe!

#13

Thanks for creating a web start link ;D

I remember playing a similar game as a kid! Can you play the game in a double joystick configuration?

#14

Cool game, worked well.

Sometimes it was hard to see that a bullet was coming my way because you can see through it.

The graphics style is cool, fits well.

Nice work

#15

Thanks for the great comments, chaps !!

Absolutely you could, the key layouts are supposed to emulate that, but… ermm… I don’t have two joysticks to program it with !

#16

Finally got it working in an applet, here:

http://www.stupey.com/Battlezone/

The webstart and download links are on there too, plus links to my other games.

The Hi-Score table shared by the applet and webstart is a global one, so your scores will be saved for the rest of the world to try to beat - get on there quick before someone spanks it out of sight.

(The download app doesn’t access the global hiscore, since it’s a competition build, and rules say a) executable and b) no internet connectivity)

Enjoy