Elimination Test Version #1

[Hot_Dog]

For those of you who would like to test Elimination to see if it's too easy or too hard, you can download this Beta version below.  

The purpose of this release of Elimination is for you as the players to test the first five "easy" levels.  I want you to pretend you are a beginner and see if these 5 levels are too easy or too hard for beginners.  If a level is too easy or too hard, please post suggestions here.  This does not apply to secrets, I don't think that secrets should be "easy" to find

If you want to read the "readme / important information", you can click on this spoiler.  However, I know that you all know everything and don't need a readme  

EDIT3: New version, saves Calibration.  Also with more ammunition

Spoiler for Hidden:

* Read the bottom of this spoiler for the keys to use.
* You start with all weapons except for the chaingun, which you have to pick up in level 3.  (Read below for weapon descriptions)  However, you do need to find ammunition
* Remember, you are testing for difficulty.  You don't need to try to break things and test for bugs.  However, if you come across a bug, please feel free to let me know.
* This game does not yet work on the Nspire.  Don't try it.
* When you reach the level five boss, don't try to get back to the locked door with the "III" on it, the one that you enter to get to the boss.  I forgot to have that area sealed off, and that's something I need to fix, but I feel that there will be bugs with other enemies if you "run away" to the main area.
* Please DO NOT report these bugs that I know about:
--Chaingun displaying an incorrect message when you pick it up
--Enemies and dead bodies appear in incorrect locations when a saved game is loaded.  This bug does not hamper gameplay, but if I were to try to fix it, saved games would be much too large
--Text in the menu appears gibberish.  I know that I have to fix this, but just remember that the first item is "New Game," and the last item is "Quit."
--Enemies in a line die to the same shot.  This requires too much effort to fix, so in the manual I'll use the excuse that the player has "piercing" weapons.  Besides, it adds more strategy
--Menu cursor displays black boxes when it moves up/down, and the text "Results" appears at the bottom
--Scoreboard at the end of a level appears over the game instead of a clean screen

Controls
-------------------------------

2nd / Mode -- Fire, Select Option from Main Menu
Alpha / XTThetaN -- Walk sideways
GRAPH -- Finish Calibrating
Enter -- Button you use to skip most screens
DEL -- Open a door or flip a switch on
APPS -- Bring up the lightsaber.  The lightsaber does 10 damage, and needs no ammo.  You must be close to an enemy to use it.
Y = -- Use the handgun.  The handgun does 3 damage.  It's semiautomatic, but it will fire as fast as you push the 2nd or mode buttons.  It does very little, if any, splash damage.
WINDOW -- Use the shotgun.  The shotgun does 12 damage with splash.  It needs time to reload.
ZOOM -- Use the chaingun.  Every time you hold the trigger, the chaingun requires time to warm up, so the first 8 bullets do only 2 damage each.  After that, bullets will do 3 damage each until the trigger is released.  The chaingun does some splash damage.
TRACE -- Use the rocket launcher.  Rockets do 40 damage with splash.  If you're too close to a wall, an object or an enemy, you'll get hurt, up to a maximum of 20 damage.
GRAPH (In Game)-- Use the Annihilator, the plasma gun.  Plasma cells do 1 damage each, but they will damage anything you can see on screen, and sometimes enemies right on the edge of the screen.
MATH -- Toggle the map on/off.  You can move while the map is on.
X^-1 -- Toggle the HUD on/off.
+ -- Skip a level.  With this button, it will take about 2 seconds before the game is ready to move to the next level.  You MUST have the HUD on for this to work (a bug that will be fixed later)
1 -- Save your game.  Make sure you don't run applications that could erase page 3, such as Crabcake games or thepenguin77's chess game
4 -- Load your game.  You must be in-game to load a game.  If you exit after saving, select "New Game", then press 4 to load your previous game

[DJ Omnimaga]

Wow I think I'm gonna try to test ASAP. Happy to see a version out because it seemed really great. First, Starcraft II is calling, though <.<

[Darl181]

First time I ran it, it froze in-game (as in, it started by not responding to keypresses then the grayscale froze )
Also walking right (XTΘn) doesn't work for me, however walking left does.
Mode brings up a map, and fires when you press it again to hide the map (and that fire consumes 2 ammunition), and 2nd toggles the HUD whilst firing.
Pressing apps brings up the light saber as it's supposed to, but only after displaying the map.
Also I'm not sure if it's supposed to be this way but initially only the handgun is accessible.  As in, pressing other top-row keys don't appear to switch weapons like in the screenies.

Btw how do you unpause, or is there a way?

Edit: if it matters, 84pbe, full 128k ram, 21k ram free when ran.

[Hot_Dog]

First time I ran it, it froze in-game (as in, it started by not responding to keypresses then the grayscale froze )
Also walking right (XTΘn) doesn't work for me, however walking left does.
Mode brings up a map, and fires when you press it again to hide the map (and that fire consumes 2 ammunition), and 2nd toggles the HUD whilst firing.
Pressing apps brings up the light saber as it's supposed to, but only after displaying the map.
Also I'm not sure if it's supposed to be this way but initially only the handgun is accessible.  As in, pressing other top-row keys don't appear to switch weapons like in the screenies.

Btw how do you unpause, or is there a way?

Edit: if it matters, 84pbe, full 128k ram, 21k ram free when ran.

The calculator does matter, because none of this happened on my Ti-83+ SE. I'm sorry about that, and I'll see if I can find out what's wrong.

By the way, yes, at the beginning, you can only use the handgun.  The other weapons are empty of any ammunition, so you have to find ammunition.

EDIT: Maybe it has to do with Classic mode?  Just a thought

[DJ Omnimaga]

Btw is it compatible with the regular 83+ too?

EDIT: Anyway I tried on my 84+ and could play the game fine, also it was pretty great so far. My suggestions, however, would be to:

-Change calibration confirm key to 2nd or Enter. Hadn't I not read the spoiler, I would have pulled a battery, thinking my calc is stuck there.
-Be more consistent with Enter and 2nd. Only use one of them, preferably 2nd, which is the standard in calc gaming. I noticed we have to constantly alternate between Enter and 2nd
-The ability to view a 15x15 minimap on the side of the screen while seeing the game normally. However maybe that would slow the game down too much.
-Slow down both gun and sword animations, else we barely see them on-calc
-Maybe change the enemy bars at the top of the screen to arrows or actual health bars. If they are meant to be health bars, in my test they were not working, although maybe that wasn't added yet
-The rest of the controls are pretty fine.
-make it so when you get hit, the entire screen (except the HUD) gets XOR'ed during 0.25 seconds then goes back to normal, so it's easier to notice. Another alternative could be to XOR the HUD for a few moments.
-Make the HUD visible by default.
-There's a glitch with the main menu arrow. It leaves a black trail behind it.

Difficulty-wise, I would say maybe have more ammos in the first level, but make enemies do a bit more damage. I ran out of ammo extremely fast, but enemies weren't very dangerous. I didn't test the other levels yet, though, since I couldn't figure out how to save and choosing resume after quitting caused a RAM clear on my 84+ (I have OS 2.55MP btw).

In general, however, the difficulty was quite good so far. Nice job so far on the game.

[Hot_Dog]

Darl181, try the new version found at the top of the page.  I added more delay between key presses, something I forgot to do

DJ_O, thanks for the feedback!

-Change calibration confirm key to 2nd or Enter. Hadn't I not read the spoiler, I would have pulled a battery, thinking my calc is stuck there.
-Be more consistent with Enter and 2nd. Only use one of them, preferably 2nd, which is the standard in calc gaming. I noticed we have to constantly alternate between Enter and 2nd

You're right on both of those.  There's a good reason I'm not doing it right now (and sorry for the trouble it adds), but in the next build I plan to make BOTH 2nd and Enter valid on any menu.

-The ability to view a 15x15 minimap on the side of the screen while seeing the game normally. However maybe that would slow the game down too much.

That's actually a very good idea.  It's low priority, however, one of those things I'll add if there's time.

-Slow down both gun and sword animations, else we barely see them on-calc

I can do that

-Maybe change the enemy bars at the top of the screen to arrows or actual health bars. If they are meant to be health bars, in my test they were not working, although maybe that wasn't added yet

They're like health bars in RTS games: Health bars with less fill in the middle are enemies with low hit points.  As you play levels 2-5 you'll see enemies with more hitpoints, and then you'll really see the health bars in action

make it so when you get hit, the entire screen (except the HUD) gets XOR'ed during 0.25 seconds then goes back to normal, so it's easier to notice. Another alternative could be to XOR the HUD for a few moments.

XORing the HUD will be faster, and I will do that.  If the HUD is off, I'll blacken the bottom of the screen.

-Make the HUD visible by default.

Good idea

-There's a glitch with the main menu arrow. It leaves a black trail behind it.

You're right about that, and that's a bug I'm aware of.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Ah I see about the enter/2nd alternating. I guess having both as confirm keys would be a good idea too in future versions

As for the health bars, I guess I was just missing the enemy then. I thought even if I hit them the bar didn't decrease and that it was a bug.

-Actually now comes another suggestion: When hitting the enemy, have a different frame show up for a while or some sort of blood splash (or if it's already done and the animation was just too fast, slow down that animation too). Another idea is to make it XOR'ed, but like the extra frame that would require an extra sprite per enemy.

[Darl181]

Ok,I'll try the new version.
I've never really played any FPSes before, unless wolfenstein on the 9860 counts...
Anyway I kept running out of ammunition, and stuck with the light saber.
(also when I pressed Apps to bring up the light saber one time, it brought up the pause menu..)

Forgot to say, but I'm using OS 2.43: no mathprint.
Tho I do have zstart installed...?

Edit: ok I uninstalled zStart and it acted like the first time I ran it-fine through the menus then unresponsive at game-time.  Second run it acts the same, with keys swapped and etc
Now sending the new version.

Edit1: New version has same problems as the old version
Tried in wabbit (wabbit version from 12/22) and wabbit froze completely.  I can't get any of my old 83pse roms working so I can't check if it works for that.

[Hot_Dog]

-Actually now comes another suggestion: When hitting the enemy, have a different frame show up for a while or some sort of blood splash (or if it's already done and the animation was just too fast, slow down that animation too). Another idea is to make it XOR'ed, but like the extra frame that would require an extra sprite per enemy.

Another good suggestion, and that one won't be hard to add.

Anyway I kept running out of ammunition, and stuck with the light saber.

I will add more ammunition.  DJ had the same problem, and of course since you've never played FPSes before, you're a perfect one to tell me if these are too hard

Edit1: New version has same problems as the old version

Ugh...Last time I waited 8 T-States for the keyport, and in this version I waited 21 T-States.  If that's not the what's causing the problem, I don't know what is, but I don't have access to an 83+ BE to find out what's wrong.  Let's see what other responses come in, because now I have no clue what to do.

By the way, when I ran this through my Ti-83+ SE, I also had a problem with no response time.  But I can't yet duplicate the error consistently, so I don't know where to look for the problem.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Actually, I think Duke Nukem 3D had the same ammunition problem, now that I think about it.

[ben_g]

I tried it in easy difficulty, and it isn't to difficould nor to easy. And I think I found a bug: when you're standing in front of a  closed door, the robots can go through the closed door when they walk around you, and they can still shoot at you through the closed door.

[Hot_Dog]

Ben_g, which calculator are you using?  I still have to fix the bug with enemies walking into doors, but I thought I had fixed the problem of them shooting through doors.  I'll have to look into that

Also, I forgot to tell everyone: When shooting at a monster, the monster should be in the center of your screen for the weapon to aim properly.  All weapons shoot at the center of the screen.

I can't get any of my old 83pse roms working so I can't check if it works for that.

You can download TI Flash Debugger, and just change the file Ti83ps.clc into Ti83ps.rom by chaning the name.  It will work with Wabbitemu.  If this causes Elimination to work, I'll know it's a Ti-84+ problem

[Darl181]

The game itself runs great, it's just those keys :\

I can't get any of my old 83pse roms working so I can't check if it works for that.

You can [hidden =P].  It will work with Wabbitemu.  If this causes Elimination to work, I'll know it's a Ti-84+ problem

I think that's what I did but then again that was a year or so ago.  Think original ti-boy

* Darl181 wonders if he could find the old flash drive again...

[Hot_Dog]

Ok Darl, I'm going to be daring and insane.  Try this one--for keypresses, not for freezing problems.

[ben_g]

Ben_g, which calculator are you using?

I'm emulating a normal 84+ with wabbitemu with OS 2.55MP and boot code 1.02 (rom comes from a real calculator).