******** GDR 4x4x4 Design Challenge - June 2021 ***************************** Entry By: Gered King Emojis Selected: Tomato / Thumbtack / Two Users / Grapes -------- CONCEPT ------------------------------------------------------------ "Head-to-Head Fruit Popper" Play against a friend (or the computer), squaring-off in a garden with fruit magically growing quickly and at random. Be the fastest to pop the most fruit with your magical thumb-tack within the time limit! Your thumb-tack has been magically attuned to only one of two different types of fruit, while your opponent will be seeking out the opposite type of fruit. -------- PRESENTATION ------------------------------------------------------- 2D, top-down, single-screen arena. Kind of like Bomberman without the bombs? Players represented by character sprites that they control directly to move around the arena. The arena will have different (non-hazardous?) obstacles (walls), and fruit will be randomly spawning / dropping-in / etc as the game timer counts down. 16x16 sprites/tiles. MS-DOS VGA Mode 13h. -------- CONTROLS ----------------------------------------------------------- Keyboard. Single-player: - Arrow keys for movement, 4 directional, N/S/E/W. - Spacebar to use thumb-tack. Two-player: - Player 1: - Arrow keys / Num-pad for movement. - Num-pad 0 / Num-pad Enter to use thumb-tack. - Player 2: - ASDW for movement - Spacebar to use thumb-tack. Nice extra: Allow use of game controller (e.g. Gravis Gamepad). -------- GAMEPLAY ----------------------------------------------------------- Players select their preferred fruit. Cannot be the same selection, so once one player selects a fruit, the other player is automatically assigned the other. Tomato or Grape. Once the match begins, the main objective is to pop the most fruit matching the player's fruit of choice. Popping the right fruit does not cause any penalty or other sort of effect to the other player, it simply increments the players score and the fruit vanishes. Popping the wrong fruit does not cause a penalty for the player that popped it, but the player receives no score for it. However, popping the wrong fruit causes your magically attuned thumbtack to trigger the fruit to explode, which does not harm you, but will "splash" toxic fruit juice over a 3x3 (TBD) tile area which will debuff the other player if they are within that area, causing them to move at 50% speed until the debuff wears off (2-3 seconds? TBD). Additionally, any other fruit of the same type within a 5x5 (TBD) tile area will magically vanish. So players may want to strategically pop the other players fruit to deny them score and slow them down. Players can "prick" each other with their thumbtacks. Players cannot be killed but they can use their thumbtacks to push the other player out of the way slightly, possibly also throwing them off a bit in the process. Pricking another player causes them to get pushed ahead by 1-2 tiles, but causes no other harm. Matches are timed. Once the match is over, the score is displayed, and the winner is the player who popped the most fruit. -------- EXTRAS ------------------------------------------------------------- If time allows ... - Sound effects. Use of Qbasic "SoundLab" utility to generate sound effects? - Gravis Gamepad support - Network play? Use of mTCP? Almost certainly won't have time for this ... - Random "enemies" that spawn and snatch fruit before the players can get them? Mutant-oversized fruit flys perhaps ... ? Or some kind of Locust swarm maybe?