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Covoids!

resman

resman

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2014
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606
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Lake Tahoe
Ok, this may be pushing good taste a little, but I wanted to do something with the DeskPro 286 I just built. So I whipped this up in a couple of days. Tried to make it timely, but it's really just a cheap version of Asteroids.

COVOIDS!

Kill the COVID virus using the left, right, and up arrow keys to direct your
ship and firing with the spacebar.

Command line switches to adjust the visual quality and performance:

-n disable dithering
-m monochrome monitor
-s disable background sound
-d4 use EGA mode on VGA
-d2 use CGA mode on EGA & VGA

Enjoy while you're sheltering at home!

Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9xj3fqafnk76ofq/COVOIDS.zip?dl=1

Run on real hardware under DOS or DOSBox. Everything from an original PC to a 80386. CGA, EGA, and VGA supported. Anything slower than a fast 80286 may take require adjusting the quality to run acceptably.

COVOIDS-1.png

COVOIDS-2.png
 
Tried it on a 7.16mhz V20 with CGA, definitely starts getting a little pokey once you get five or so baddies on the screen.

How hard would it be to modify the CGA “dithering” into composite color graphics? ;)
 
I like your interpretation of that game type.

I wonder how well that would run on a Corona Data Systems PC? :)
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Tried it on a 7.16mhz V20 with CGA, definitely starts getting a little pokey once you get five or so baddies on the screen.

How hard would it be to modify the CGA “dithering” into composite color graphics? ;)
Click to expand...

Due to the nature of the graphics library, CGA colors kind of got the shaft. I tried to pick the "least common denominator" resolution across all the hardware which was 320x200. So CGA got a pseudo B&W dithering treatment.

And the performance on a low end CPU is pretty poor: the graphics library is really only for line drawings. Bitmaps were a hack so I could easily get text on the screen (I'm lazy) by scan converting a 1BPP bitmap into horizontal line spans. Certainly not the fastest approach, and definitely not for games.

But hey, it was a couple of days worth of effort. Targeting a low-end CPU and CGA would, I think, deserve the 160x100 16 color mode treatment with a real biblt implementation. Depending on how long we're stuck at home...
 
And a quick update (1.01) to fix the viruses from getting suck between the left/right and top/bottom edges. Same link as above. I had to fire my beta testers.
 
resman said:
But hey, it was a couple of days worth of effort. Targeting a low-end CPU and CGA would, I think, deserve the 160x100 16 color mode treatment with a real biblt implementation. Depending on how long we're stuck at home...
Click to expand...

I was actually testing on a Tandy 1000, so you totally need to make support for the Tandy/PCjr 160x200x16 mode a priority.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
I was actually testing on a Tandy 1000, so you totally need to make support for the Tandy/PCjr 160x200x16 mode a priority.
Click to expand...

Those are two I don't have, so probably won't be getting that mode working any time soon. I do see a lot of fringe projects being (re)visited over the next few weeks, though. Who knows?

I did upload a new version that runs without dithering as the default (-n turns dithering on now). Arguably looks better on EGA and lets those slower machines run s few more levels before slowing to a crawl.
 
Well, here we are on Thanksgiving 2020, and we're still dealing with the pandemic. So, here is version 1.05, (Still) Sheltering at Home Edition. In this version, I added better artwork for the COVOIDS and added a little more dynamic colors. The COVOIDS also move somewhat better. I tried made an attempt to keep gameplay consistent even when the frame rate slows down. And it now goes to 16! Levels, that is. Just to make it a little harder (I've only won once, but I suck at games).

Now, you really want a 286+ to play this. A turbo PC will get you to about level 12 before getting too jerky. A regular PC, about level 8. Runs great under DOSBox, though. Remember to use the command line options to improve frame rate for those lower end machines.

It can still be downloaded at the original link in post #1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9xj3fqafnk76ofq/COVOIDS.zip?dl=1

I'll get around to cleaning up the source and posting it on GitHub in a few days.

Enjoy while sitting at home wishing you were somewhere else.
 
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