some crazy ideas

[Lucifer]

The movie's less than 30 years old...

But yeah, I think Philippe's right. The movie was a dramatic presentation of a game that had never been played, and couldn't be played in any fashion the movie could make.

Look at it a bit deeper and you'll see where we can't stick with the movie.

In the movie, the depiction the players see is just pixel-width lines, and when they show a line right next to another one, there's clearly no space between them. Yet, when they show the cycles in the grid, there's lots of space between them.

What you see when you play armagetron is the same game, only with a 21st Century display. What is depicted in the movie is the same game, only with a 1970s display (or was it 80s? I forget). We see what the User sees, not what the Program sees. Inside the grid, there is still a program being thrown in to gladiatorial fights and so forth, and who knows? Maybe his cycle has width, but our display doesn't show it.

And the old rip bug really was the program breaking through, fighting with the MCP and crashing, er, liberating the system. But we'll never know, we're just users.

[Lyx]

about the "grid" topic: Grids restrict heavily movement.
...
When I played glTron some years ago, I had a strong feeling that my actions where limited to some grid on the floor. That wasn't the thing for me. Might I suggest that you check out the latest version (or maybe some old ones) of glTron and see if that relates to the feeling your looking for?

Current GLTron does not use grid-based movement, and as far as i remember didn't use it in the previous 3 years.

However, GLTron as well as some others in the past did do something else different than armagetron, and i think this is what felt "limiting" to you as well as to me: When turning, then the turning-point would be right behind your cycle, not in front of it.

I doubt that grid-based movement - when the tiles are small - would "heavily restrict movement". But i guess one could only know by implementing a hack to test the idea.

Concerning wall-acceleration: i completely agree that it is fun and part of the game - the kind of "grinding" which i meant and dislike was the "4 walls fit in just 10 pixels"-thingie.

Why do i dislike it? Three reasons:

- it lowers the chance of labyrinths happening which imho are alot of fun
- it looks stupid and "not fitting in"
- it adds an unnecessary high priority on player-reaction-skills..... IMHO tactics and reaction-skills should be evenly weighted - this is currently not the case. Grid-based movement would take out the "bleeding edge" in terms of reaction-skills..... thus, a player with incredible reaction would only have a minor advantage over a player with "very good" reaction-skills - thus, basically putting a cap on "how much advantage one can gain via reaction-skills".

- Lyx

[Jonathan]

"4 walls fit in just 10 pixels"

How much is that?

[Lucifer]

Yeah, you know, 10 pixels on my laptop isn't a lot of space (1280x800), but 10 pixels on my desktop is a lot of space (640x480).

[Lyx]

Bah, you guys know what i mean ;-)

BTW: one of my first thoughts after playing GLtron after about a year was "man, this game visually definatelly catches the tron-feeling much better than armagetron - but turning is still boring in it... it lacks something which armagetron has... dunno what that is"

[Jonathan]

10 pixels is 10 pixels and also ten pixels, but how am I supposed to know how much it is on the grid?

And in case anyone is wondering, 10 pixels is about 2.5 mm on my screen.

[Lucifer]

Some of us enjoy making tunnels and then going back in over and over until we can't fit in it anymore. That's kind of a pastime around here.....

[Lyx]

10 pixels is 10 pixels and also ten pixels, but how am I supposed to know how much it is on the grid?

And in case anyone is wondering, 10 pixels is about 2.5 mm on my screen.

Okay, then let me describe it this way: what i mean is having multiple walls next to each other with each of them almost touching the neighbouring wall.

[Jonathan]

I know, but I got tired of useless pixels, even though it's not too relevant here.

[Washington]

I just wanted to take the topic back to mines for a moment. I've read on this topic that some don't like the idea of mines, where the original trail of the cycle is much like a mine.

I know from tron 2.0 that they had floor spaces where if you drove over them they had an affect upon your cycle such as speed enhancement, but this rout is not really required.

Though many of you have probably already read this, do you think it would be possible to develop trail mines instead, meaning if an opponent grinds against your wall (or a portion of your wall) that a negative affect happens uppon their speed and rubber (since defalt dumping might be a little cheap.)

As the game seems grind friendly I would think that weapons using the trail would only be suiting.

[Phytotron]

Random thoughts that might be somewhat redundant:

The reason the center bike crashed in the movie is because the cycles actually have width and mass. The two outer cycles made an avenue too narrow for the cycle to fit through. In AA, the cycle serves no actual purpose, other than aesthetic. This is why you can use any sort of cycle model and still squeeze between ridiculously narrow passages. The body just overlaps/goes through the tails. Use the StarFox model and you'll see the wings poking out on either side. This is where GLTron is more "authentic." The cycle is an actual object in the arena. It cannot squeeze through anything.

Also, someone was talking about the seemingly imprecise turns and crashing, or something to that effect, in GLTron. While it does sometimes seem that GLTron's equivalent of the cycle_turn_delay (whatever it is) is a bit arbitrary, I think the thing you're really noticing here is that GLTron doesn't use rubber. You so much as nick a tail and you explode; you have no leeway or cushion. Again, this is more "authentic." However, it may additionally be that the turn delay is just greater in GLTron. It's almost like playing AA with 3 fps. Of course, this kind of dulls down the game because it limits your maneuverability. Ironically, strategy winds up being somewhat similar to that of mbc or sp or wherever: Make a big square box around opponents. You just don't need to do twelve 180-grinds in order to close it.

As for acceleration and boosts, GLTron actually behaves similarly to AA (except, in GLTron you don't get any acceleration from your own tail, which is kinda cool). As I think Lucifer mentioned, in either game if you have two cycles running parallel for awhile, you'll get that same effect of one pulling ahead and then falling back. This is just a virtue of the wall acceleration. Cycle A will start behind Cycle B and will accelerate from B's tail. But then it gathers enough speed to pull ahead of B where it will no longer be alongside a tail, so it stops accelerating. Meanwhile, B has fallen back and is now getting acceleration from A's tail. It's just a matter of trading off.

On the graphics thing, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm impressed with GLTron. The way they do it is vury pretty. The rim walls are made up of two levels of images (as, I think, is the floor), which allows you to have a front image with transparent bits through which you can see the back image, and as you move the distance between the two creates a neat perspective offset. Just like when you're looking out your car window: The telephone poles move past more quickly than the buildings behind them. And on top of this, for whatever reason I get a much better framerate playing GLTron with a detailed artpack than when playing AA with the moviepack off and all graphics off/all the way down. I know that more than graphics affect framerate, however.

Still, I don't think it would be a bad idea for some of youse AA developers to get in contact with the GLTron developers and perhaps team up in some ways, graphically and otherwise (that is, if any are still involved). I mean, shit, you're both open-source, you're both obviously interested in a Tron-ish lightcycle game, and there's no reason for any kind of stupid, infantile crap about them being "worthless opposition." The gameplay is different, but they obviously know/knew what they're doing. Plus, GLTron has a lot of fans. (Of course, they get whooped when they make their initial transition to AA, because of reasons mentioned above, but hey.)

And, uh, lastly, I simply refer back to my previous post in this topic when it comes to all these proposed "feature" additions.

Oh, I've also had some idears about expanding the single-player game, but I'll save those for a new topic I'll start sometime later.

[Lyx]

As I think Lucifer mentioned, in either game if you have two cycles running parallel for awhile, you'll get that same effect of one pulling ahead and then falling back. This is just a virtue of the wall acceleration. Cycle A will start behind Cycle B and will accelerate from B's tail. But then it gathers enough speed to pull ahead of B where it will no longer be alongside a tail, so it stops accelerating. Meanwhile, B has fallen back and is now getting acceleration from A's tail. It's just a matter of trading off.

That part of your post got me thinking, and the result were two thougths:

- while the rate of wall-acceleration is okay for normal gameplay, when two cycles get head-to-head, then the effect which you describe is too weak - or in other words, the effect which you describe works too slow in close combat to make much of a difference or even being "obviously noticable".

- related to my dislike of ultra-tight wall-grinding: i can think of 3 reasons why one would drive really close to a wall:
1. Theres no other way
2. to "box" an area
3. to gain more wall-acceleration
There is a quite easy way to not "promote" number 3... set a cap on maximum acceleration.... i.e. one gets the same amount of acceleration no matter if you drive ultra close or just close. Or more simply: at some point getting more near the wall will no longer result in higher acceleration.

I dont consider the above to be a solution to the "problem" (which to some probably not even is a problem, because its also a matter of taste). But it may be a part of the puzzle how to achieve it.

[Jonathan]

The distance differences are insignificant, and when you turn you lose 5% of your speed. It's that you have a wall on both sides when you go back.

[Lyx]

Sorry, i guess i worded myself a bit unclear. What i meant was the following:
1. you drive towards a wall
2. you turn to drive alongside it (picking up wall-acceleration)

The turn happens anyways... the question is just how close to get before turning. Like many other things, this is a risk/gain-tradeoff. If the gain(amount of wall-acceleration) is capped at one point, then there is no use in investing more risk. Or more simply: if you wont accelerate faster by driving closer before turning, then you can as well turn earlier to lower the risk.

Thats what i meant with "promoting": Currently, it's worth to drive ultra-close to a wall, because the acceleration will be higher.

[Lucifer]

I'm interested in a speed cap, actually, but for different reasons.