Retro Release: Comet Busters

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Pac-Man
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Retro Release: Comet Busters

Post by Pac-Man »

Many maps old and new don't reach the amount of play they deserve because they aren't fun without enough people, a tendency that permeates as generations of players come and go but mostly go. For this reason I have been playing around with the idea of maps that are fun without players and perhaps more fun with players. Comet Busters was created as such an experiment.

Please try it out at bzbattleground.com:4268 and give feedback.

Maybe a quarter of the visitors ask what the point of the map is. It is stated in the intro message:
Protip: shoot the comets until they die.
It is modeled on this game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvb6mEcjnwI
The current demo is a lot easier than the original game where you'd be doing well to go through Simple 1 to Simple 7 on just 3 lives. Note that you can only have 4 bullets at a time and the shots are affected by your lag.

At the time I had ideas such as having a communal high score board where you could enter arcade mode with limited lives as a soloist, duo or arbitrary groups.
And of course, I could have added the iconic special abilities in the original game: Hyperspace (teleport to safety), Cloaking (invisibility to hide from the UFO and cronies [smiley faces that chase you in the higher levels], Disrupter (a field that repels objects strongly corresponding to how close they are to you), Shield (protects from a collision, smashing the other object - impulse still applies).
Also to configure your abilities, such as put extra weighting on shot speed, ship speed, strength of special ability, rotation speed, etc.

Other than not having these features, the map graphics is also pretty bad of course. I tried using a skydome with high resolution textures but I'm not sure it's worth the download time. Finally I've decided to get it hosted as is and I don't intend to make any improvements as I predict there will be very little interest in this map.
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optic delusion
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Re: Retro Release: Comet Busters

Post by optic delusion »

Awesome Idea. Well Implemented. Nice little diversion.

More Protips: Try to stay in the center as much as possible. You've got both forward and reverse thrust.
Attack one asteroid at a time, and destroy all it's children before starting on another big asteroid.
Look where the asteroids are before you spawn, don't spawn into a no-win situation.
Don't even look up, play the radar only.
Take a look at my Defender game mode concept.

Thinking is not an automatic process. A man can choose to think or to let his mind stagnate, or he can choose actively to turn against his intelligence, to evade his knowledge, to subvert his reason. If he refuses to think, he courts disaster: he cannot with impunity reject his means of perceiving reality.
Pac-Man
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Re: Retro Release: Comet Busters

Post by Pac-Man »

I thought I'd make a souvenir. Youtube video of Comet Busters game.
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optic delusion
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Re: Retro Release: Comet Busters

Post by optic delusion »

At the 32 second mark, i think i see a hemispherical asteroid.
A Hemi-Roid
Take a look at my Defender game mode concept.

Thinking is not an automatic process. A man can choose to think or to let his mind stagnate, or he can choose actively to turn against his intelligence, to evade his knowledge, to subvert his reason. If he refuses to think, he courts disaster: he cannot with impunity reject his means of perceiving reality.
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