Golden Era Game of the Week 8/20/05: Armor Attack

Golden Era Game of the Week
http://www.gegotw.net/

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Golden Era Game of the Week 8/20/05: Armor Attack

Post by Weehawk »

Golden Era Game of the Week

See introduction here

The Game: Armor Attack

romname: armora

Screenshot:
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(click to see current MARP scores)


Reward: $50 (usd)

Deadline for submission to MARP: August 26, 2005 2359 hours GMT

Further Bounty: none

Same controls as Rip Off, same programmer, I thought I might do well on this game whenever I got around to applying the overlay and trying it out.

Wrong!

Some pages with info on the game:

http://www.arcade-history.com/history_d ... ail&id=113

http://www.vectrex.nl/armorreview.php

http://www.cinemarcade.com/TGTTF/gametime71.html

The programmer himself wrote this (which I can't find currently on the web...thank God for Google's cache):
Tim Skelly wrote:Armor Attack was done at a time when I felt I had worked out a few things about game design. I was just trying to do an artful update of one of the earliest video games, "Tank." Everything went smoothly.

There were only two problems.

One was that (again and again and again!) (Jim) Pierce wouldn't allow the mirror technique used in Warrior to be used here for a background. Pierce and (Papa Tom) Stroud (the owners of Cinematronics) were cheap, cheap, cheap! With every game they took away one more color from the cabinet art because each pass cost a few pennies more. Check it out. If I had done one more game the artwork would have been black on black! Like Warrior, I just didn't have the drawing time to draw the (very important!) background outlines on the screen during the game. (They can be seen by themselves in the test mode for alignment.) So, the clever solution that management came up with was to use the same kind of overlay that was used on Star Castle. The problem was that the overlay wasn't covering/coloring anything but black! That's why the playfield for the game is either black or slightly-greenish-black. Ah, well. It worked well enough I guess.

A second event occurred about the time I had just started the game. We heard through the grapevine that Atari had completed a tank game and was testing it in the Bay area. Obviously we were concerned. One of the management guys went through the phone books for the bay area and called every arcade until he found the one with the test game. (He used a cheesy hillbilly accent. It was pretty funny.) We flew up immediately. When we got there we spotted the game, which turned out to be 'Battle Zone.' Since it was 3D and mine was top-down with entirely different game play, we went ahead with our plans, despite how good we thought the Atari game was. But that's not the funny bit. While everyone else was checking out 'Battle Zone' I wandered around the arcade like I usually did, looking for games I hadn't played. I found one and really got into it. It, too, was an Atari test piece, but none of the management guys thought much of it. Funny, I really thought 'Missile Command' would make it. ;>)

At the time I was finishing the game, the (US) government decreed that every male of draft age had to register, even though there was no draft in effect. This pissed me off (old draft resistor), especially since my buddy Scott Boden was someone who had to sign up. I wanted to use morse code sounds in Armor Attack, and I knew morse, (old boy scout) so that's real morse code in the game beeping out "dontregister." I was also assuaging my own conscience, since I had heard that Atari had sold Battle Zone to the Army.
The arcade machine record of 2,009,000 by Tom Larkin set in 1982 and its quantum excess over any other score hints that he may have found something about the game that no one else did. There are sites out there that indicate "safe spots" in the Vectrex version, but I haven't seen any documentation of such in the arcade game. I did find that staying in one spot and defending myself from there worked best for me (just the opposite of Rip Off!), but I see no reason to suggest that this is not a perfectly legitimate strategy.

I note that the TG settings for the arcade machine are 3 jeeps to start, whereas for the MAME track it is listed as 5 men to start, The latter is the MAME default and, as always, that is what we will use unless otherwise noted.

Use WolfMAME .98 or .99

"On Deck" game: Zoo Keeper
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Post by Weehawk »

Sunday's bonus points to destructor.
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Post by destructor »

Game has problem with speed. On my Athlon 2,4 I get about 88%. Solution is:
(for GUI wolfmameplus) - Properties -> Advanced -> disable 'switch color depths to fit'
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Post by Weehawk »

destructor wrote:Game has problem with speed. On my Athlon 2,4 I get about 88%. Solution is:
(for GUI wolfmameplus) - Properties -> Advanced -> disable 'switch color depths to fit'
Turning off antialiasing and translucency in your vector options can help as well.

From explanation at:

http://www.emulatronia.com/arcade/readmes/retrofaq.txt
Q1-20. Why are the games that use antialiasing and translucent vectors so much
slower than the rest? Why am I getting flicker?

A. This is a very good question, and I'm glad you asked, though the answer
is very long and involved. Now would be a good time to go get a beverage
of your choice:

I want to illustrate just what the linedraw code must go through to be able
to do regular, antialiased, translucent, and translucent/antialiased lines.
I have taken a sampling of each of the linedraw code for the different modes.
What I have exceprted is the routine which does nothing more than set the
pixel and advance the pointer. If you know something about programming, you'll
understand right away. If not, then you should be able to glean how much is
required to do these modes by the sheer size of the code.

<big snip>

So when you run games with these kinds of features on your P90 and they
don't perform well or flicker, don't be disgusted that you have to disable
transluscency or antialiased vectors to get flicker free performance.
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Post by destructor »

Weehawk wrote:
destructor wrote:Game has problem with speed. On my Athlon 2,4 I get about 88%. Solution is:
(for GUI wolfmameplus) - Properties -> Advanced -> disable 'switch color depths to fit'
Turning off antialiasing and translucency in your vector options can help as well.
I tried, it not work for me. Disable color depth works as well - 100% speed.

PS. This problem with speed is when I press F11 key for show info about frames.
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Post by Weehawk »

Tuesday's bonus points to destructor also.
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Post by Koza »

Wish i had time to play... i'm preparing for my concert on friday :)
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Post by Weehawk »

Clean sweep for destructor on the bonus points.
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Post by Weehawk »

Results:
1st: destructor@HotTeam.pl 30,100
2nd: Bernard 13,420
3rd: GREYTOP1 8,530

destructor takes 1st and all 6 bonus points for 16 total

http://www.gegotw.net/news.html
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Post by destructor »

Because I don't want take to grave what I discovered then:

1. On screen can't be more than 3 enemies.
2. On stage are 8 safe spots but I think spots on left and right side are more safe than spots on up and down.
3. On begin each 'stage' you can run before 3 tanks (don't shot) and first hide yourself in self spot and next shot. If you don't shot before hiding, helicopter don't appear because on screen can't be more than 3 enemies.
4. If you shot helicopters, tanks speed-up
5. When on screen is last 'full' tank shot them 'full' very fast. Don't shot only tank-gun and next wait some time and next shot tank-body because next tanks speed-up

6. If you use my 'trap helicopter' method and you die then don't worry, you can run before next helicopters and trap them too (I don't show it in inp). First go to down, wait for helicopter until he move down and next (near walls) go to 'my' corner on left or right side.
7. Remember if you use my 'trap helicopter' method without shot helicopters you don't gain extra lives but enemies are slow and easy to kill.

Now you can beat TG record with first life! :D Good luck!!! 3 days marathon :D Remeber - be careful:
http://www.twingalaxies.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5560
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Post by TRB_MetroidTeam »

destructor wrote:Now you can beat TG record with first life! :D Good luck!!! 3 days marathon :D Remeber - be careful:
http://www.twingalaxies.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5560
Hi guys... Congratulations for DES tactic (DES = Destructor's Expert Strategy ;) ).

After, some personal info... I played that week, and I got 8740 if memory serves, but don't matter, I submited nothing :? But I will do it.

About 3 days calculation, as you know, is using exactly your method (at "+10" or "+20" stages). After GEGOTW week, I tryed DES method and if you succeed to use it at "+40" stages, your have chance of beat the World REcord in very very shorter time, however the difficulty (due to shot accidently the helicopter) is higher. I got it (+40 leeching) in one INP, and I will submit it, just to show. I will upload it as soon as possible to me.

Again, congratulations dude... I enjoyed this game like Rip Off!
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