High Score Challenge S13 - R6 - Scramble

[KarateEd]

Stardot high score challenge
Season Thirteen: Round Six
Scramble by Tricky

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RULES
Round Two starts at 9pm on Monday the 16th of March and ends at 9pm on Monday the 30th of March
The aim is to score as many points as possible
Post scores and screenshots/photographs in this thread
The rules are here
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DISK IMAGE
http://www.bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=2904
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INSTRUCTIONS


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SCORING
Points will be awarded using the following formula.
points = (YS / BS * 50) + ((NOP - YP + 1) * (50 / NOP))
YS = Your Score
BS = Best Score
NOP = Number of Players
YP = Your Position
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HIGH SCORE TABLE



Link to Overall High Score Table...http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=18480

Thanks to Galax for the Mode 7 fonts.

If I weren't to certain, I'd say this resembled something like raiding rockets......but.....way smoother!!!... .......

[KarateEd]

Filezilla broke so will have to reinstall it to upload the graphic stuff but in the mean time, you have everything you need to start your next 'adventure'.

This one seems so smooth after the last game.

[MartinH]

Liking this a lot! Thumbs up to Tricky!

My starter for 10...

17170

I'm now going to have to try Rocket Raid again (after almost 35 years!) to see how this compares to my memories of Acornsoft's "homage" to Scramble.

[KarateEd]

Yes, I think this is more like it. You've done a great job on this one Tricky, as usual.

[KarateEd]

So something I found out when using my 2 Voltmace joysticks with this game is that one fires the straight ahead rockets as well as controls ship movement and the other fires the bombs.

Tricky, is there a fix for that?

Also at the end of the game, sometimes I get this high pitched whine. I got it on the emulator and the Master. Any ideas on that as well Tricky?

Thanks,

[KarateEd]

A bit better...... not as good at this version as Rocket Raid....yet.

...... 13,800 ......

[tricky]

I don't know about the high-pitched wine, I have not herd it.
Vic from the 10pence Arcade podcast played this last weekend and managed to crash it around 77K at the start of the saucers on loop 3 or 4, I have a possible fix, but can't get that far to check what the bug is or if I have fixed it! Sorry.
IIRC, if you only press one button, it should do fire and bomb until you press a second button and the f0=fire, f1=bomb (I think)
If this isn't the case, I can probably upload a new one as our company is now working from home and it is easier to rearrange my day.
I always play on keyboard on a beeb as I can't get past the vertical bits otherwise.

PS With that large screen shot, I can see why Arcadian thought my attempt at animation was graphics corruption on the ship

[Venger]

I don't know about the high-pitched wine, I have not herd it.
Vic from the 10pence Arcade podcast played this last weekend and managed to crash it around 77K at the start of the saucers on loop 3 or 4, I have a possible fix, but can't get that far to check what the bug is or if I have fixed it! Sorry.
IIRC, if you only press one button, it should do fire and bomb until you press a second button and the f0=fire, f1=bomb (I think)
If this isn't the case, I can probably upload a new one as our company is now working from home and it is easier to rearrange my day.
I always play on keyboard on a beeb as I can't get past the vertical bits otherwise.

PS With that large screen shot, I can see why Arcadian thought my attempt at animation was graphics corruption on the ship

Tricky, I can confirm that the game crashed for me the 3rd time around when the UFOs came around again. I had about 45K at the time and 3 lives left .

[Venger]

I died just before the UFOs the 3rd time around just to get a score up in case it crashed again.

[KarateEd]

I don't know about the high-pitched wine, I have not herd it.
Vic from the 10pence Arcade podcast played this last weekend and managed to crash it around 77K at the start of the saucers on loop 3 or 4, I have a possible fix, but can't get that far to check what the bug is or if I have fixed it! Sorry.
IIRC, if you only press one button, it should do fire and bomb until you press a second button and the f0=fire, f1=bomb (I think)
If this isn't the case, I can probably upload a new one as our company is now working from home and it is easier to rearrange my day.
I always play on keyboard on a beeb as I can't get past the vertical bits otherwise.

PS With that large screen shot, I can see why Arcadian thought my attempt at animation was graphics corruption on the ship

Yeh, for fun my grandson and I were playing with both joysticks. They are voltmace joysticks. The one moves the ship and fires the straight ahead rockets (or bullets), the 2nd joystick only fires bombs. Neither gives bombs and bullets at any time.

I've had the high pitched whine on both Beeb-Em and my Master......

[Venger]

This time it crashed by the UFOs on the 2nd time around. What I also noticed is that there seemed to be far more UFOs than normal (either that or it was like the sprite was leaving a trail). Definitely something to do with the UFOs though.

[Venger]

I don't know about the high-pitched wine, I have not herd it.
Vic from the 10pence Arcade podcast played this last weekend and managed to crash it around 77K at the start of the saucers on loop 3 or 4, I have a possible fix, but can't get that far to check what the bug is or if I have fixed it! Sorry.
IIRC, if you only press one button, it should do fire and bomb until you press a second button and the f0=fire, f1=bomb (I think)
If this isn't the case, I can probably upload a new one as our company is now working from home and it is easier to rearrange my day.
I always play on keyboard on a beeb as I can't get past the vertical bits otherwise.

PS With that large screen shot, I can see why Arcadian thought my attempt at animation was graphics corruption on the ship

Yeh, for fun my grandson and I were playing with both joysticks. They are voltmace joysticks. The one moves the ship and fires the straight ahead rockets (or bullets), the 2nd joystick only fires bombs. Neither gives bombs and bullets at any time.

I've had the high pitched whine on both Beeb-Em and my Master......

I've had the whining sound too. More like a dull whine than a high-pitched one for me though.

[JoolsH]

Another great port, nice job Tricky

I got to the saucers on loop 3 or 4 here as well - the game didn't crash, but loads of saucers were there (including inside the upper walls) and I died pretty quickly.

67,670

[tricky]

Thanks for the screenshots, I don't know where all those saucers came from, but I'll upload a new .SSDs in the morning that will cap them in the short term.
I'll also understand if you want to repick the game.
Until last weekend, I've never seen anyone get through the sauces twice.
I was playing it a bit on the master at revival, but will try again once I have unpacked it.

PS it keeps getting harder until after loop 9

[Venger]

Thanks for the screenshots, I don't know where all those saucers came from, but I'll upload a new .SSDs in the morning that will cap them in the short term.
I'll also understand if you want to repick the game.
Until last weekend, I've never seen anyone get through the sauces twice.
I was playing it a bit on the master at revival, but will try again once I have unpacked it.

PS it keeps getting harder until after loop 9

The game's great, Tricky; you've got a real talent. I've bought loads of commercial releases that aren't as good as the games you make.

I'm quite happy to keep on playing this.

[KarateEd]

There is no doubt we'll keep on playing this Tricky. Anything you can do to help us have a bug or 2 less will be much appreciated. As has been expressed, we've played many games that are so inferior to this one. You do put out quality games and we're happy if we can help you improve any particular game.

[tricky]

This is the version that I built yesterday (caps saucers and fireballs) that I hope won't crash on the 3rd loop of saucers, I'll try to find out what is causing the problem for a proper fix.

After this, I'll take another look at the combined fire and bomb, I don't know what happened to that!

The game-play should be identical.

[tricky]

Looks like the fire+bomb must not have made it into the main code base, but I did have it at one point!
I think that the Compact version on joystick should do both as that only has one button by default (I should probably try to detect a second).
I only have 8 bytes free, but will see if I can fit it in, but I don't think it will be in the next few days and I have to fix the bug first.

[KarateEd]

Looks like the fire+bomb must not have made it into the main code base, but I did have it at one point!
I think that the Compact version on joystick should do both as that only has one button by default (I should probably try to detect a second).
I only have 8 bytes free, but will see if I can fit it in, but I don't think it will be in the next few days and I have to fix the bug first.

My score will improve dramatically once that's done.....

[tricky]

48,310 got to the saucers third loop, but only survived for about a second after.
My breakpoints didn't fire and the saucers seemed to be in formation, so I may not have triggered the bug, or it may have moved due to my extra 4 bytes of belt and braces code!
Still no whine, but it is probably left over from one of the enemy sounds so it might depend on which section you die in.

Scramble48310.png (4.59 KiB) Viewed 1756 times

PS If you do get a whine, try to note exactly when it stops as this might help track down the culprit.

[KarateEd]

High Score Tables Updated......

[KarateEd]

Hi Tricky,

On Beeb-Em this morning I get the high pitched whine right after dying in the game on level 2. Now I've had this on level 1 as well. But it continues until I activate the next round of the game, for a new game. It stops after that.

The pitch is variable. I think it depends when you die as to what pitch you end up with. I just got a low pitch like Venger was talking about.

[KarateEd]

Not much of an improvement but a little. Slowly figuring out how I want to play this version of RR.

...... 15,450 ......

[Venger]

So, this happened when I was on the 4th time around. I took a screenshot just before I hit the UFOs to show my score, just in case the game crashed again (which it did) . I'm also getting the whining noise now and again but it doesn't last long (it's whining now the game has crashed too).

[tricky]

Was this with the new disc image?

The wine is probably a sound effect that hasn't got cancelled properly and the tune is reusing the channel and "fixing" it.

[Venger]

Was this with the new disc image?

The wine is probably a sound effect that hasn't got cancelled properly and the tune is reusing the channel and "fixing" it.

No, I was still using the old one. I forgot to download the new one . I'll get it done now.

[chrisn]

Yes! Another of Tricky's amazing arcade conversions.

Here's a first attempt... 19,440

[JoolsH]

Using the new disc image, got to the 4th stage, 5th time round. There were a lot of UFOs on the 2nd stage, 4th and 5th time around, but it behaved itself and there were no crashes.

I have seen it a couple of times where I hit some stray pixel that was left on the screen due to a graphical glitch and die. (Perhaps that's an alien bomb, a feature not a bug )

83,840

[Venger]

I downloaded the new disk image and just tried to play on BeebEm and I get graphics glitches all over the place .

[tricky]

More of an easter egg than a feature bug
If you can avoid it, the landscape will take care of it.

Were the saucers equally spread, or bunched?

There are eight increases in difficulty, two each of: faster fuel consumption, more saucers, more fireballs and more rockets flying at once.