Perfecting a Tron Game 63
Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a review of an old but entertaining freeware Tron game called Armagetron . The author heaps praise on the game for its "beautiful simplicity" and its exciting multiplayer options. More screenshots and a wiki are available on the game's website. Quoting:
"It's all about speed, really. You might think driving in clever geometric patterns would win you the game, but speed is the real the alpha and the omega of Armagetron. See, if you can drive parallel to old enemy trails for long enough to get your speed up to two times, three times or even four times more than your starting speed then you become a hunter of men. It becomes within your power to dart off towards other players, overtake them, and take a couple of quick turns that mean your trail boxes them into a tiny space."
Re:editors.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I know that editing a news site is a difficult job, but you might have wanted to start by looking up "news" in a dictionary.
I just did [reference.com] and it looks like this is valid.
a person, thing, or event considered as a choice subject for journalistic treatment; newsworthy material.
After all, the article on the Tron game was posted just 24 hours ago, which is standard reporting.
Having said that, Slashdot's slogan is hardly something one must follow as anally as you do. After all, we have Ask Slashdot and other pieces that don't count as news.
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The answer. (Score:1)
Make player 1 red and player 2 blue.
Excellent game (Score:5, Informative)
I discovered Armagetron during college. We used to play it over the LAN. Single player was fun, too. I tried it again not too long ago, and they must have revamped the AI because I got _destroyed_.
The camera options added a lot to the game, too. You had chase, fix, smart, and in-car which is the most exciting and quite usable once you get used to it.
END OF LINE
Re:Excellent game (Score:4, Informative)
Aside from being very addictive -- and it included splitscreen on a PC, which is occasionally a very good idea -- it was also, for many years, the open source game with which to test your video card.
More recently, I use Nexuiz, but that's still what I remember it as. If you could run Armagetron fullscreen with decent settings, at least you know your video card is working. If you couldn't, chances are, you'd misconfigured something and thrown yourself into software mode.
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glxgears is such a simple scene (no textures, for one thing) that even software rendering is not slow. Way back in the day on a P200MMX, maybe HW 3D was needed for a fast glxgears...
These days a core2 can run glxgears _really_ fast. e.g. 3GHz Harpertown gets > 500fps, IIRC.
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I always used tux racer for the GLX test myself.
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I've used ppracer since they closed the source, but the maps seem freaky and inconsistent
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In fact, that's probably part of the reason why, at one point, glxgears required the commandline switch:
--I-acknowledge-that-this-is-not-a-benchmark
to enable the FPS display.
Now, I believe it's changed proportionately. You claim 3ghz gives you 500fps -- I just got over 8000 fps, and for years, multiple thousands has been the norm for me, when accelerated. So you can get a rough idea.
The point is, since you're not going to notice anything over 100fps -- realistically, anything over 60 -- there's no point in
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yeah, I don't think I'm remembering the 500fps correctly. I get 550fps with mesa 7.2 on a C2D E6600 (dual core 2.4GHz), Ubuntu pre-Intrepid AMD64. Tested in a Xephyr X server. I get 1170fps on my g965, which is in the same ballpark as software.
> I imagine a card could be built such that it would never run more than a few hundred FPS, but would render massive scenes at a comfortable 60 (vsync'd).
glxgears speeds are all about driver overhead, locking/unlocking and stuff like that. So yeah, not
Re:Excellent game (Score:4, Interesting)
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Tried Tron 2.0?
Tron 2.0? (Score:2)
--
So who it hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?
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just a idea, probably has been tried and failed, but anyhow:
I know a lot about how path prediction works through delta timing, but for a game that relies on timing as heavily as Tron wouldn't it be possible to build the reverse of that and instead of predicting where the player is, don't allow them to move until they've registered where the other player is at that time. With a lot of lag though this would definitly make the game unplayable however.
Just out of curiosity, is there any way that anyone can thin
Re:Tron 2.0? (Score:4, Interesting)
It used to be fine for me online unless I was trying to have a Skype conversation at the same time (it was still slightly playable even then though). That was just on 1Mb ADSL a couple of years ago.
I think the summary is wrong personally, speed of your vehicle isn't always the most important factor - at least for online play. I've seen people do some amazing stuff (and done a small amount myself) with the lag buffer thingy: when you run into a wall you don't die immediately - you die after a certain amount of time that is defined by the server. If you are clever about it you can go between 2 trails that seem to be right next to each other, and you can keep turning to face the wall and face away again, creating teeeeeny tiny little walls for your opponents to run into if they try running up the side of your trail, etc. It's great fun, very tactical and skillful all rolled up. I enjoyed the teamplay games the best, with the maps rotating every 10-20 minutes or so into different challenges (some maps were incredibly tiny but with a large time buffer before dying, some maps you could go in 6 directions instead of 4, etc). Standard deathmatch was always fun too of course, and was the best way to hone your skills.
Unfortunately for me the linux version's inputs seemed to be quite laggy compared to the Windows one. Maybe it was just my keyboard driver or something though.
The graphics are excellent IMO! For me this game is mostly about that sound and the great gameplay. What more do you want out of a game that is based on CGI from an 80s movie?
Tron!? This aint no dangblammed Tron! (Score:5, Informative)
Back in my days we called this game Snafu! We played it on an Intellivision that had a disc for a joystick... except you didn't spin the disc (even though you could)... you pushed on it like a regular joystick.
And it sucked, but that was the way it was and we liked it that way! (2nded only to the abominable Atari 5200 stick)
Dagburned Disney steals another idea because they couldn't come up with an original concept and you kiddos call it "Tron" now!
Now where's my teef...
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Poppycock! Colecovision kicked its butt! Not only did it have overlays but its stubby mushroom stick was far superior!
Now the Sears Super Video Arcade! Now THERE was a system...
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Re:Tron!? This aint no dangblammed Tron! (Score:4, Funny)
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Much love to the Intellivision.
I miss Sewer Sam, Stampede, and Donkey Kong on there.
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In my day, the Intellivision was the "rich man's" atari. We all played the Atari 2600, the rich kids got the Intellivision, the poor kids got pong or Sears TeleGames, the weird kids got Odyssey and the Cool kids got Colecovision.
LK
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I remember some strange orange console from when I was really young (probably about 3), can't even remember what games it had. Could have been something like this [old-computers.com].
The first console I remember probably was our Commodore 100 when I was 3 or 4, I used to type in programs from the manual to draw circles and triangles..
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The movie Tron [wikipedia.org] came out in 1982. The Intellivision [wikipedia.org] came out in 1980. Snafu [wikipedia.org] came out in 1981. Seeing how long it takes from script to movie release, I seriously doubt Tron was a ripoff of Snafu.
Especially considering that Tron was a Disney movie and SNAFU stands for "situation normal, all fucked up". Of course, Disney did miss the drug references in Tron, too, but I seriously doubt it was more than a coincidence.
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Now get off my lawn.
Oh no you don't (Score:2)
The 2600 had "Surround" first and IT was the inspiration for the Lightcycles. So Meh.
http://www.thelogbook.com/phosphor/atari26/q1-05/s.htm [thelogbook.com]
!freeware (Score:5, Insightful)
Armagetron is not freeware. It's free software that happens to be distributed for zero dollars.
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This [gnu.org] is the definition the parent is referring to:
The term "freeware" has no clear accepted definition, but it is commonly used for packages which permit redistribution but not modification (and their source code is not available). These packages are not free software, so please don't use "freeware" to refer to free software.
On a technically oriented computer website like this, the free software and freeware distinction is important. Mixing them up is just confusing.
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Too bad it's in deep hibernation. Although the author has a ton of slightly unfinished modifications sitting on his harddrive, they haven't made it into CVS (at sourceforge) / subversion (at berlios) yet. Blame marriage, two kids, a new job (math teacher), and possible a bit of WoW for it.
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armacycles-ad maintainer, Fedora.
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GL Tron, even at its highly unfinished stage, still feels infinitely better than Armagetron and always has. I really just wish that GL Tron would have seen some LAN capabilities before retreating into the land of dead software.
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Armagetron is not freeware. It's free software that happens to be distributed for zero dollars.
That's a mouthful. Here, let me paraphrase:
Armagetron is not freeware. It's free software.
Still too long. How about:
Not freeware, it's free software.
Nice, but not concise enough. We want to get the message through to the kids, and you know what their attention spans are like. I know!
Not freeware, free warez!
Nah, too cheesy, better just stick with:
Not freeware, free 'ware.
Now, stop being silly.
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The common definition does not place free software inside the freeware category. In fact, they are disjoint sets (no software fits in both categories). Also, the "free" in both names are two completely different words. This [gnu.org] is the definition the parent is referring to:
The term "freeware" has no clear accepted definition, but it is commonly used for packages which permit redistribution but not modification (and their source code is not available). These packages are not free software, so please don't use "freeware" to refer to free software.
On a technically oriented computer website like this, the free software and freeware distinction is important. Mixing them up is just confusing.
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It is released under the GPL version 2, which last time I checked is pretty much the definition of "free software". It is a free as in speech, free as in beer, and free as in free software free.
Clicking on the "About" or "Download" pages on http://www.armagetronad.net/ [armagetronad.net] will clearly show you that it is free.
Free! Free I say!
Tron Arcade Game (Score:3, Interesting)
Everybody seems to do Light Cycles. There are 3 other games in the arcade game - Grid Bugs, Tanks and MCP Cone. Anybody doing an update of those?
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It has tanks and a most Tron-like vibe to the entire game: Tank Universal. Available through Valve's growing Steam empire for the low low price of $9.99, it has virtual world civilizations, politics, factions, and hot tank-on-tank action. Don't be turned off by the dated animations depicting meatspace or the rather lame first few missions. It gets much better.
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Tron 2.0 (Score:2)
Seriously, I think I got that game for Christmas 2004. First modern FPS I'd ever played, and goddamn if I didn't play it for 20 hours straight. There were obviously some corny aspects, but for a tron nerd it was an eye-candy feast and a wonder to behold.
Now I just need to get myself digitized and synthesize new voices for everyone. Really, the one thing that really intruded on my suspension of disbelief in that game was the voice acting. They must have made last-minute changes or something,
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Really? I thought the voice acting in Tron 2.0 was rather decent. Also, Bruce Boxleitner (Alan Bradley/Alan One) is featured throughout the game. His voice, that is. He's in much more of the game than just a cameo at the end.
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I particularly remember the scene after escaping the Kernel's lightcycle grid when Jet and Mercury were planning what to do next. I think the other big one was "I'm inside a data transfer node... where are you?" when they're hijacking a transport out of the Kernel's domain.
S'been too long. I
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Seconded. I enjoyed it a lot. I did NOT like the scavenger hunt for more version points (experience), but ... meh. Still good. Reading snippets of e-mail which gave backstory was neat. I especially liked that they seemed to get the "feel" of it right. Sure, computers don't work that way, but for someone willing to suspend disbelief, it was pretty damned marvelous.
The first time through, I tried to use the guns and stuff a lot early on. I learned that the disc really DOES reward skill, and once I got th
Tron? (Score:4, Funny)
Wasn't the movie about more than just riding lightbikes?
My first thought about a Tron game: if I want to fight my CPU, I'll just install Windows.
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Keyboard Macros, the dirty little secret... (Score:2)
I used to really be into Armagetron, until I realized that... speed or not... the people who were winning all the time were doing it with keyboard macros to make those tight boxing turns repeatedly.
Nice (Score:1)
Tron: Deadly Discs (Score:1)
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I remember the arcade "Disks of TRON" which was my all time favorite.
You were in the Disk arena against one opponent. A joystick would control your character, and a spinner thing would control where on the wall, and elevation you would throw your disk.
It was moderately challenging and after about a week of playing I could get about 1-2 hours of play off a single quarter. I think that may have been it's downfall in the arcades.
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Yes I do. I have the Atari 2600 port myself. If you do torrents, pm me on racketboy.com and I can get you hooked up. /. could use a PM feature.