The History of Parallax, Part 2

admin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:32:42 +0000

Parsec was a simple game. A traditional side-scrolling space shooter. Enemies entered the screen from the right and if you didn’t kill them before they reached the left side of the screen, they would double back and attack from behind. There were only a handful of enemies and three “mini-bosses” (called cruisers) per level. The beauty of the game was that each level was exactly the same, save for a varied background color and slightly faster gameplay, which made each level progressively more difficult. The simplicity of the game made it both easy to pick up, and extremely addictive.

In addition to enemy battle, you also were required to navigate tricky fueling tunnels riddled with stalactites and stalagmites. Powering down your ship into a lower “lift” speed would decrease the sensitivity of its vertical lift, making refueling expeditions much less dangerous.

Parsec seemed simple enough to recreate.

Figure 1. Quick Parsec-clone cell phone mockup

In 2003, I got the itch to try and develop a mobile game and a Parsec remake seemed an obvious choice. Up until this point I was only experienced in the procedural programming languages I had already learned: Pascal, PERL, JavaScript, and ActionScript. I hadn’t quite mastered the nuances of object-oriented programming. Most cell phone games, unfortunately, were programmed in J2ME (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition), an object-oriented language. So it wasn’t long before I got a little over my head and (as happens all too often) abandoned the project. Before quitting, I managed to design a quick mockup of gameplay, illustrated above.

Two years, two moves (from Colorado, to San Francisco, to Orlando) and one new job later I found myself planning another Parsec remake, but this time as an Apple desktop widget.

More later…

—Ryan

The History of Parallax, Part 1

admin — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:45:07 +0000

As I mentioned in my original post, one of the main reason I introduced this blog was to create a way to generate feedback on (and maintain motivation to complete) the various little projects I start here and there… which will hopefully motivate others to do the same. The first project I’ll discuss is Parallax, the art for which can be found in the header wrap of each page.

Many of my projects have a long history, having been kicked around for years, so I’ll regale their tales over multiple updates.

Back before there were Macs and PCs, there was Texas Instrument. The company is still around today but seems to play a less prominent role in normal techies lives (i.e., mine). TI was even common place in schools once the TI-83 calculators became standard issue. These mechanical marvels allowed way-to-fancy ways to solve mathematical equations. And at home, my friends and I had the TI-99/4A.

The TI99/4A was the definition of old school. There were no windows, you saved to cassette tapes, and the “modem” looked like a block of plastic with two cup holders. Running at a maximum of 300 baud (for the youngins, a baud is a measure of speed so slow that it is now obsolete), the acoustic modem required the user to manually dial a number and place a telephone handset inside the device’s cups in order to make a connection. Brilliant!

I can’t remember how useful the TI99/4A was for the typical work you use a computer for nowadays, but it did gaming just fine in the early 80′s. One of the games available for the system was a space shooter named Parsec. And I was addicted to this game.

More later…

—Ryan

Sinceriously » parsec

The History of Parallax, Part 2

The History of Parallax, Part 1