Trouble at 2a03

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team_disposable
Posts: 129
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2016 8:52 am

Trouble at 2a03

Post by team_disposable »

After attempting and failing to submit in both 2016 and 2017 I thought it best to be quiet this time until I had actually submitted something.

It is with great relief that I can inform that yesterday I successfully managed to submit Trouble at 2a03 in to the competition!

The Game
trouble in 2a03 title
trouble in 2a03 title
main_000.png (3.58 KiB) Viewed 5160 times
Trouble at 2a03 is a top down action adventure shooter.

The Future. Mankind manufactures its products in factories in the skies.

One such factory is 2a03 which makes a multi use semi intelligent metal called metal organics.

No one has heard from 2a03 in several hours. Your team have been sent in to investigate. When landing something happens to your ship and it crashes. You black out. When you recover, the factory is overrun with hostile metal organics. What happens next is up to you. Use your upgradable Electron Gun to battle the rogue metal organics in this top down action adventure!

This compo build contains the first section of the game, Central Zone.

✜ Move
Ⓐ Shoot/Interact
Ⓑ Strafe
Select: Change Weapon

rom:
trouble_in_2a03-nesdev-submission-build.nes
trouble in 2a03 Nesdev 2021 compo build
(64.02 KiB) Downloaded 245 times
Itch.io page here


Any bugs, comments, etc let me know, all criticism gratefully received. No spoilers please for the relatively slight story there is, please, but feel free to pm me if there is something of that nature you wish to discuss.


Thanks to the nesdev community and also all the authors of the excellent tooling and libraries used to make this game.
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main-2021-02-28-04_001.png (3.79 KiB) Viewed 5160 times
main-2021-02-28-04_007.png
main-2021-02-28-04_007.png (5.14 KiB) Viewed 5160 times
trouble_in_2a03-nesdev-submission-build_000.png
trouble_in_2a03-nesdev-submission-build_000.png (3.04 KiB) Viewed 5160 times

note: as evidenced by the first screenshot, the game is called trouble at 2a03, not trouble in 2a03 as originally posted! :D
Fiskbit
Posts: 891
Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:15 pm

Re: Trouble at 2a03

Post by Fiskbit »

Haven't played much of this one yet, but a few thoughts:

1. I noticed that the gun gives you 1 pixel of pushback, and this can actually be used to push yourself past room transitions and go out-of-bounds. I was doing it intentionally first, but ended up triggering it later by accident and softlocked.
2. It would be nice to be able to skip past dialogue screens with the start button, particularly helpful when starting the game or accidentally triggering dialogue.
3. This one's probably just personal preference, but the buttons feel a little backward to me, since B is often shoot in NES games. Still very playable as-is, but I think I'd prefer the opposite.

Seems like a fun game so far and I look forward to giving it a full playthrough soon.
team_disposable
Posts: 129
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2016 8:52 am

Re: Trouble at 2a03

Post by team_disposable »

Hey, that's awesome, thanks for playing!

1. Huh, I guess you mean through open pathways? Or do you mean through walls?? I did collision checking on the stagger but I don't think I ever considered the use case of people using it to scoot around, that's hysterical. I will check what's going on.

2. I did this the day after the compo, so it's in post compo builds! There's quite a few other bits and fixes though so I wasn't going to release them after judging but I'll release one with skip text in soon. You can make the text go faster in the current build with the a or b button though!

3. The buttons are laid out so you can hold down the strafe button and press shoot in the same button grip as the common hold run and press jump. I noticed the streamer who played it wasn't strafing, do you remember if you did?
Fiskbit
Posts: 891
Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:15 pm

Re: Trouble at 2a03

Post by Fiskbit »

1. It doesn't push you through walls, no, just through the room transition checks. You can end up getting stuck in walls when changing to new rooms from these out-of-bounds areas, though.

2. Great, glad that change is in there. It's not a big deal for a first playthrough, but I really wanted it to skip the intro story when having to reset after softlocking from point #1, and there were times I didn't mean to talk to people and wanted to bail out. I did notice you can speed up the text, which definitely helps.

3. I have used strafing, yes. I had guessed maybe you were thinking of holding strafe as being analogous to holding run, which makes sense, but when I think shoot, I default to B because it's so commonly on that button (e.g. holding A to jump and mashing B to shoot in Mega Man). That may very well just be because of the kinds of games I tend to play, though. This is definitely a minor point and I don't think either option is clearly wrong.

Compared to SMB, where the jumps are individually pretty deliberate and aren't usually done in very quick succession, here you're doing more of a mash to shoot quickly, and I wonder which combo is more natural to execute when it comes to how you have to rock your thumb when holding the other button. Maybe I'll try hacking the ROM to swap the controls and see which hold+mash combo feels better to do on a real controller.
tepples
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Re: Trouble at 2a03

Post by tepples »

team_disposable wrote: Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:27 am 3. The buttons are laid out so you can hold down the strafe button and press shoot in the same button grip as the common hold run and press jump. I noticed the streamer who played it wasn't strafing, do you remember if you did?
Compare the two modes of Smash TV. In the arcade, it was a twin-stick shooter, and its NES port's two-controller mode replicates this. The controllers are rotated 90 degrees to the right (like Crazy Climber or the Wii Remote), where the Control Pad on controller 1 controls movement, and the Control Pad on controller 2 controls firing direction. In single-controller mode, holding A shoots in the last direction you pressed (that is, moving forward), and holding B shoots in the last direction you shot. So its B is sort of the same as your B+A.

Another post-compo control option is support for Super NES or Virtual Boy controllers. The ports of Robotron and Smash TV simulate twin-stick by mapping A, B, X, and Y to firing directions.
team_disposable
Posts: 129
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2016 8:52 am

Re: Trouble at 2a03

Post by team_disposable »

Hi Tepples!

Thanks,I thought about the continuous fire option for holding direction, but later in the game (much less so in this version of it although some are there) you get different weapons with limited ammo, so just holding fire wasn't really something I was after. I've also recently been playing quite a bit of the two Wolf Team games Granada and Final Zone on Megadrive, and I think Granada is definitely better for its separate hold to strafe control scheme, so kind of wanted to replicate that*.

I considered it for quite a bit as having the b button could definitely be useful from a game mechanics perspective, but if people are playing it and think that might be better, let me know, I can re-consider or at least make it an option. I actually hadn't considers SNES or virtual boy controllers at all, I'll look in to that.

Fiskbit, thanks this is all really good constructive criticism! If you do get back to playing it again let me know what you find!

*I think it's actually configurable in Granada, but when it is hold separate button to strafe, I feel it plays better
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