> After playing a few original games and spending
quite some time thinking about it,
> I'm actually considering purposedly breaking the "standard" behavior. It was set more than
> 30 years ago and as noted not always entirely user friendly and intuitive.
Why not?
> 1. Power on: Demo mode, no score display. Background music that repeats over and over.
> Wait for reset button OR fire button.
OK so you're adding the "fire button" check to enter the select mode, is it? Sounds good.
> 2. Game select: Redraw board, silence. Use fire button to select mode, start game by
> pressing a key OR move the joystick.
You should consider that *any* fire button on *any* joystick should "change mode". So it's 4 inputs total.
As for the "game start", I like the idea of allowing player to start when moving any joystick. In my opinion, both joystick should work, either if you're starting a 1-player or 2-player game.
> 3. Game start: Short chime or very short jingle to indicate the game begins. I need to
> add code to read the second joystick for two player games.
OK.
I just noticed that the most recent CreatiVision videogame, Stone Age, is the only title featuring bg-music. So I suppose that if you decide to add a bg-music to Othello, instead of ingame sound effects, would still be a "classic" choice.
Actually there's another game wich a sort of bg-music, that's Auto Chase. There's a jingle playing all along, but the jingle changes every time your car changes direction. I had an idea about this, even though I'm unsure of how the final result would be on Othello...
Idea: why not adding TWO bgmusic to the game, one playing when its player1 turn, and the other playing when it's player2 turn?
> 4. Game over: Display message, play a short jingle. Wait for fire button.
Question. Why fire button again to enter select mode? Why not making the "game over" = "select mode" and let a new game start with joystick move without having to enter a select mode again?
Aha I see, you're willing to add replay the demo mode after a game, that's the real "new addition" to your game. In fact the "classic" games never show the demo mode again, unless you turn the console off.
I like the idea, makes the game more "modern".
> The old board scrolls away (!) or at least is cleared. Now go back to 1 (not 2 as traditional
> games might have done) to get the demo mode and background music again. It means
> pressing the fire button twice to get back to game selection.
I see.
> Alternatively I might merge game over jingle with the longer music so it skips the demo
> mode and goes to game select after pressing the button.
Well that's more or less what the original games do.
I think there should not be a bgmusic after "game over" jingle.
> As you see, small differences to the known behavior but I like it better. It would also give
> me more freedom for coming games to decide how they should behave individually, e.g.
> if one has a title screen instead of a demo mode (can sometimes be hard and unneccesary
> work to program) and in the case of no different game modes to select, immediately start
> game after pressing fire or reset button.
I like your ideas.
On a side note, I noticed that the console displays (C) 1981 when your game starts. The 1981 date appears on 90% of the Creativision games, except the most recent ones, which display 1983.
Have you investigated how the date is set in the BIOS, or is there a way to change the 1981 to 2013? I always thought "198" was preset, and earlier games set a "1" in the "game boot" routine, while some others set "3".
