R- T H E T A -->update<--, "Innovative" "This, my friend, is art" Options

[thetagames]

R-THETA

Download:

Download from Host-A

Here is a mirror:
Download from 4Shared

Here is another mirror; a direct link to my site. R-THETA is the third link on the page:
Theta Games Home Page

Specifications:

Title: R-THETA
Genre: Original, Retrostyled Arcade Game
Download Size: 0.9 MB
Winzip Directory Includes: Stand-alone executable file, plus README.txt
Resolution: Sets to 320 x 240 (In order to minimize interpolation!)
Version: 1.2
Written In: Registered

Overview:

R-THETA is an original game concept, made in the style of the old Atari console games of the late 1970's. The gameplay is simple: you must prevent your rotating radar-scope line from hitting enemies. To do this, you control a shooter on the radar-scope that can move toward and from the centre of the radar scope, and shoot the enemies. As you shoot more enemies, your radar-scope line rotates faster, making the game increase in difficulty.

Because this game is based in polar coordinates, (rather than an x-y grid) your shots do not fire in a straight line. Instead, they maintain a constant distance from the centre and circle around. Also, the movement controls do not move the shooter left, right, up or down, but instead control its distance from the centre.

Though this might sound confusing, the game is very easy to get used to, and it becomes almost second nature.

Controls:

<UP ARROW>: Increase shooter's radius amount (move it away from the centre of the radar-scope)
<DOWN ARROW>: Decrease shooter's radius amount (move it toward the centre of the radar-scope)
<SPACE>: Fire a shot
<SHIFT>: Invert controls. (This might be useful for some players when the radar-scope line is 'upside down,' although I do not personally use it)
<ENTER>: Pause the game.

There are a variety of other controls options described in the README, to fit many playing styles. (I personally prefer moving with <W> and <S> and shooting with <CTRL>)

History:

While my XP was incapacitated, I decided to work on Game Maker 6 on my Windows 98. I wanted to make a simple, original, and artistic game that would fit onto a floppy disk. Thus, R-THETA was born.

Screenshot:



Notes:

-Because of the small resolution of the game, it is not recommended that you interpolate pixels.

-There are no set colours for this game. The game generates a random RGB value for drawing the various shapes. There is no saturation, so all the colours are bright and fully visible.

-There is also no set music for the game. I generated sine wave tones to fit scales that would sound good when the individual notes are played at random. This does not generate a "song," but instead a musical idea.

Updates: (7/15/07)

- A major graphics problem with this game was the interpolation (i.e. the 'blurring' of close-together pixels) that many newer machines perform. Ultimately, the game should look exactly like the screenshot, with no blurry pixels, as it does on my Windows 98. To attempt to get close to this, I decided to make it set the resolution to 320 x 240, as it is the smallest I could manage. If anyone knows how to set it smaller than that, please let me know. I couldn't even with code. To all who for some reason hate resolution setting games: I'm sorry, but it looks better now because there is less interpolation.

To all:

Please let me know what you think of this concept. Again, the controls take only a short time to get used to, but this only adds to the unique gaming experience.

Also, please post your high scores, as it helps a lot with setting the game's difficulty and "learning curve." Thanks a lot!

This post has been edited by thetagames: Jan 26 2008, 11:13 PM

[cactus]

Not bad, but the gameplay is repetitive and not very challenging. The concept and graphics are pretty cool, though, and I haven't seen any other games that play quite like this. I liked the sound effects, but the "music" was a bit off.

This games could definitely be developed a bit to make it more varied and interesting to play.

[pedrosorio]

This, my friend, is art...

(I'm also a fan of polar coordinates myself... )

[thetagames]

To cactus:

Not bad, but the gameplay is repetitive and not very challenging. The concept and graphics are pretty cool, though, and I haven't seen any other games that play quite like this. I liked the sound effects, but the "music" was a bit off.

This games could definitely be developed a bit to make it more varied and interesting to play.

Thanks for your reply. The game progressively gets faster, so the beginning should be easy. Do you think that it progresses too slowly? Something like that would be easy to adjust; I just need feedback.

About the "music": I wouldn't consider it music, more of just atmospheric background sound effects. I could write a melody with the sine waves, and play it through a timeline, but I didn't really think it was necessary for the type of game (none of the old Atari games had complex music playing in the background). Besides, I think the random whole-tone notes add a sort of Charles Ives-like musical atmosphere in the game.

I am always open to suggestions, though.

To pedrosorio:

This, my friend, is art...

(I'm also a fan of polar coordinates myself... )

I'm glad you like it, and I thank you for the compliment. I always had thought that incorporating polar coordinates into a 2D game would add a new facet to it.


Thanks for your replies!
~ thetagames

EDIT:
P.S. (to all testers) Be sure to post your high scores!

This post has been edited by thetagames: May 22 2007, 01:27 AM

[10nitro]

ohh... fun. A ability to get out of fullscreen would be nice, no matter what you tell it, my screen interpolates, so it looks bad. I like the beeps, but not the sound it makes when you shoot, it sounds "scratchy" and the rest sounds "shiny metallic" Also, I don't like it that your shot go faster the farther out you are, I get that you just add a constant number to the theta value, but that value should change to make it go a constant speed.

[Kapser]

I cannot say this is art or that fun, but the gameplay mechanics are pretty original and the bullets were kinda fun to throw. Graphics and sounds are bit annoying but suits well.

Cool little game.

[thetagames]

to 10nitro:

ohh... fun.  A ability to get out of fullscreen would be nice, no matter what you tell it, my screen interpolates, so it looks bad.  I like the beeps, but not the sound it makes when you shoot, it sounds "scratchy" and the rest sounds "shiny metallic"  Also, I don't like it that your shot go faster the farther out you are, I get that you just add a constant number to the theta value, but that value should change to make it go a constant speed.

Thanks for your suggestions. This was somewhat of a side-project; as soon as I get my XP fixed, I'll work on Flatland again. About the windowed mode: The game is in 120 x 120 resolution, so the window would be about an inch wide. I might make a set ratio, so that the computer does not interpolate too much. However, I think it is inavoidable on machines that do it.

As for the beeps and other sound effects: all were generated through Audacity, so I was limited to sine, saw, and square waveforms, and white noise. The square waveforms make it sound "metallic," and the "scratchy" sounds are the white noise. What would you suggest doing to make the sound effects better?

In order to preserve the "rotational velocity" nature of the game, I think it is necessary to keep the varying speeds. It kind of makes it look like you're playing it on an LP record.

to Kapser:

I cannot say this is art or that fun, but the gameplay mechanics are pretty original and the bullets were kinda fun to throw. Graphics and sounds are bit annoying but suits well.

Cool little game.

Thank you for your reply. The graphics of this game are intentionally retrostyled. However, what would you suggest that I do to change the sounds?


Thanks for all your replies!

~thetagames

[RPGillespie]

Ha, another connoisseur of mathematics on the forum! Very innovative concept, and very smooth gameplay. It might be neat to see a version of that game in smooth non-retro graphics with particles and the like, but what you have certainly blends nicely with the theme.

Well Done, I look forward to trying out some of your other games,
RPGillespie

[Shade_Games]

This is actually really fun! The game forces you to think in a different way, which is a good thing. It's an innovative concept, to be sure.

The may problem is that it's pretty repetitive (which makes sense, I guess, since it's based on a circle). But the project was clearly just intended as a minigame, so that's okay.

[thetagames]

to RP Gillespie:

Ha, another connoisseur of mathematics on the forum!  Very innovative concept, and very smooth gameplay. It might be neat to see a version of that game in smooth non-retro graphics with particles and the like, but what you have certainly blends nicely with the theme.

Well Done, I look forward to trying out some of your other games,
RPGillespie

Yes, I liked your Mathroid' game. Thank you for your suggestions. Perhaps I'll make a different "skin" for the game, including particles and whatnot. I'll keep the retro graphics, but the player could switch between "skins." Do you think that would fit well?

to Shade_Games:

This is actually really fun! The game forces you to think in a different way, which is a good thing. It's an innovative concept, to be sure.

The may problem is that it's pretty repetitive (which makes sense, I guess, since it's based on a circle). But the project was clearly just intended as a minigame, so that's okay.

Thanks for your reply. This is what I intended to do: to make an innovative arcade-style minigame that forces you to think differently. I'm glad you liked it, and I thank you for the compliments.


Thanks to everyone!

~ thetagames

[thetagames]

NEW UPDATE!!!!!!

Many reviewers noted the slow-paced nature of this game during the first couple minutes of gameplay. I decided to speed up the "learning curve," thus making the game more fast-paced in the beginning. Please let me know what you all think.

Any other suggestions are certainly welcome!

Thanks a lot!

~ thetagames

[Aertcz]

Nice fun little game. It was quite innovative and I loved the originality. Great work and keep it up

[Fungames]

Very creative.The game reminds so much of Intellivision.The resolution is so small that the pixals are blured.

4/5

[Mrpete]

This type of game is meant to be this way. All games of this genre even arcade had few levels if not just one and relied on the players skill to progress(same screen different color = new level). Wasn't until the later hardware in the consoles and arcades that these type of games opened up in levels and detail.

Good going... It's definetly classic gamming.

-Mrpete

[thetagames]

Thank you all for your replies!

Nice fun little game. It was quite innovative and I loved the originality. Great work and keep it up

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it!

Very creative.The game reminds so much of Intellivision.The resolution is so small that the pixals are blured.

Yes, the resolution is 120 x 120. I'm not sure what Intellivision's was, but it probably was around that. The pixels are blurred because your machine interpolates. I personally hate interpolation, and try to shut it off whenever I can. It's fine for larger resolution games, but when you are going for the old Atari look, interpolation just doesn't work.

This type of game is meant to be this way. All games of this genre even arcade had few levels if not just one and relied on the players skill to progress(same screen different color = new level). Wasn't until the later hardware in the consoles and arcades that these type of games opened up in levels and detail. 

Good going... It's definetly classic gamming.

-Mrpete

This is exactly what I was going for: A completely new game idea built in the style of classic games of old. Thanks!


To all: Please post your high scores. I'm still trying to gauge the game's difficulty.

Thanks again!

~ thetagames

This post has been edited by thetagames: May 30 2007, 08:56 PM

[Sulfuric]

Though this game looks cool, it extremely easy. Make it spin faster a lot... faster.

Score=I don't know. I got bored so I quit... Sorry

[thetagames]

to STARFOXROX:

Though this game looks cool, it extremely easy. Make it spin faster a lot... faster.

Do you think that I should make the original speed faster, or perhaps change the speed at which the speed of the radar-scope line increases? Because as you shoot more and more enemies, the game gets continually faster. The difficulty of the game increases with time, as any good game should.


Thanks for your reply,

~ thetagames

[10nitro]

so the window would be about an inch wide

That'd be nice, I sometimes like having a little game running in the corner while whatever loads.

What would you suggest doing to make the sound effects better?

I don't know, it just doesn't fit...

Yes, the resolution is 120 x 120. I'm not sure what Intellivision's was, but it probably was around that

160x196...multiples of 32, I would have guessed 128x128 (exponents of 2).

I for one thought it was hard... I'm not so good at playing games.

[erthgy]

i myself liked this game, perhaps you should add another twist to the gameplay to make it mroe challenging.

[thetagames]

That'd be nice, I sometimes like having a little game running in the corner while whatever loads.

I can make it switch between full-screen and windowed modes with F4. The default, though, will still be full-screen.

160x196...multiples of 32, I would have guessed 128x128 (exponents of 2).

Oops, that was a typo. The game is not 120 by 120, neither is it 128 by 128. (120 by 120 is the resolution of another game I've been working on) It's actually (and this explains a lot of the interpolation) 48 by 48, because the radius of the radar-scope line is always 24.

i myself liked this game, perhaps you should add another twist to the gameplay to make it mroe challenging.

Although I would consider this to be a minigame, I am always open to gameplay suggestions that would fit the style.


Thanks for the replies,

~ thetagames

This post has been edited by thetagames: Jun 4 2007, 01:06 PM