Entry Thread - Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Sbock

No, that's not a type on the title...I changed the 5th character to avoid any potential legal issues.

Anyway, here's my second submission. Programmed, beginning to end, in one week. I only spent a few hours on the music...which can be changed, if it makes it onto the multicart.

Controls: Left: Rock
Up: Paper
Right: Scissors
B: Lizard
A: Sbock
Start: Begin the Round

Options: 1 or 2 player
Classic Rock Paper Scissors or...
Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Sbock

Also note. The computer AI is not exactly random. I thought it would be boring if there were literally no way to guess the computer's next move. I don't want to give too much away, but I can guess the computer's next move occasionally...maybe 25% of the time.

(ROM removed, see next page for latest)

Some screen shots...

It seems to be susceptible to my "always bet on Lizard" strategy.

Lizard. Ha. I get it.

The AI isn't smart. It's very dumb. I didn't have time to put much into it.

Incidentally. On Big Bang Theory... everyone always started by playing 'Spock'. Also, Bart Simpson always plays 'Rock'. "Good old Rock. Nothing beats it."

A long defunct click adventure work in progress had you face a rock paper scissors guardbot you had to beat a number of times in a row to gain entry. It used a rotary sequence. If you figured out the length of the sequence, you could 'cheat' (that was really the intended solution), but it also had a trick up its sleeve the next time you would face it: if you had won all rounds up until the last, it would also 'cheat' by resetting its sequence to frame 0.

Oh yeah!!
An "olympic" sport with an added bonus!!
Power to you!!

Maybe you can try what was done for Henny from a 2001 RPS bot compo, which basically is "randomly choose a past opponent move and play to beat it, unless it's the first move then choose random". It's dumb, but not dumb enough to fall for the "always play X" strategies.

For the Lizard Sbock variant you might try "Randomly choose 2 past opponent moves, and play to beat both".

I was going to rewrite the AI...but after coming in next to last...I'm thinking it it probably needs a total redo... or more likely (with my schedule), sweep it under the rug and move on with my life.

Agreed?

Ok, well, there was a week left in the competition, and I wanted to do 2 entries. For some reason, I thought it would give me an advantage if I did a second entry. Of the 10 ideas I had, only this and a mini-piano simulator could be done in a week, and I thought this would be more fun.

So, you get how Rock Paper Scissors works. Right? You try to guess what your opponent will choose and you choose the option that will defeat that move...but, people who play this game competitively tend to follow set patterns. Guessing those patterns is fairly easy, making the game tend to have lots of 'ties'...thus, not so fun. (according to someone, about 60-70% of each throw ended in a tie)

By adding 2 more choices, only 20% of the throws end in a tie, and with 5 choices, it is much more difficult to guess what you opponent will choose next. Making it more interesting.

Anyway, I thought people might have fun trying to guess what the computer was going to do next. There are hidden patterns.

It was also featured in 'Big Bang Theory'...and I thought, would appeal to fans of that show. I see about a dozen 40 apps in the app store of this game, so...it seemed like people were interested.

The fun of rock paper scissors can come from the natural tendency of humans to repeat patterns and the ease of seeing such patterns on opponent's behaviour. A typical human-vs-human rock paper scissor rapidly make you think "I know that he will want to go paper next, I should play scissors, but he's possibly aware of that I may play paper or rock to be sure ..." And that's good, for some lecture: David Sirlin theorized a lot on that.

With more options patterns become harder to see and control, we tend to just throw guesses as "random" without thinking too much. This explain the low numbers of ties, but it rapidly becomes as fun as rolling a dice. It could still be fun against an human based of emotions/reactions, but is rapidly boring against a computer that we naturally suspect to be completely random. Against that suspicion of random, maybe a difficulty level could be something great with easiest using super simple patterns, hardest being practically random.

An other point that can help your game is another background. That's personal, but the full black all the time do not help me not to sleep.

Anyway, for the good points, the game enjoyed me from the begining: seeing the title made me smile (I was not aware that the game existed prior to that.) And I loved the descriptions of action shown at the bottom "paper disproves Sbock" was excellent!

I noticed you left A560-BFFF,C860-FFF9 unused. Would it be hard to rebuild the ROM as NROM-128 so that another game can fill the other 16K in the bank?

That one took me 5 minutes. NROM 128. (note, I might make changes, if time allows).

EDIT: also, I wouldn't be offended if you left this one off the cart, as it apparently was unpopular, and I only spent a week on it.

(ROM removed, see next page for latest)

I spent an hour trying to write a new theme song...this is what I ended up with. Is there any talented Famitracker musician here who can make this not so 'dark', maybe more 'fun'.

I wouldn't dare to call myself "talented", but a few things that might help:

- Rewrite in major (or lydian or mixolydian) instead of minor
- Retime into some other time signature other than 4/4
- Make it a little faster
- Swing the 8th notes
- Add grace notes
- Outline chords instead of using arpeggios
- Consider more use of pizzicato; don't be afraid to have brief moments of silence

If you always do spock you will get even more dramatic wins every time.

This is the latest build. Shouldn't have any CHR-RAM corruption (no writes to PPU 0-1fff).

Opinions please. Better, or worse ?

I'm liking the new art style.

Something else you could do during the countdown is show small icons in the bottom half, reminding the player of which button does each move. Then once both players have entered their move, remove the icons.

Here's what I did in GIMP:

1. Crop icon to 64x64 pixels
2. Select the white background, grow 1, and fill with black in a new layer
3. Select the white background, shrink 1 not from edges, and fill with white
4. Flatten Image
5. Shrink to 24x24 pixels
6. Convert to original palette

Good idea. I'm actually nearly out of usable tiles for NROM size game. But will consider.

Then simplify the digits in the countdown to use fewer tiles, such as the "2" seen here.

I think I could remove unused Alphabet characters, might give me 5-10 more tiles.

The new art style is MUCH better, IMO.

After cutting unused Alpha and comma and &, I have 11 unused tiles.

Big numbers use about 45 tiles. I suppose I could redesign, and make a 16x16 pixel version of each character...4 tiles x 5 characters = 20 tiles. That's doable.

24x24 pixel = 3x3 = 9 tiles x 5 characters = 45 tiles...possible, but less likely.

I like it a lot. It has a whole lot of charm. Did you hand draw these?

I also support the idea of having some kind of visual representation of the button mapping during game play.

Also, perhaps some color and geometric shapes could help the rest of the screen, something like the attached, perhaps (or with black text for something less extreme.)

Yes, I hand drew these. The Sbock image looks a lot like a cartoon I used to draw in college.

I think the title screen was influenced by a T-shirt design, but I can't find an image/link.

I completely dig the new art. I think it is much better and pleasant to the eye than the original. I say go for it!

Better !

I think it might be done. I didn't change the actual game play, just the graphics and music.

I kind of ripped off M_Tee's idea. And tepples. Thanks.

It's not a rip-off if I offered it. I'm glad to have been of help. I also like the intro screens that show the controller screen and rules. I think the antialiasing on the larger numbers might look better as the medium blue used in the background instead if grey though (considering that it's used to transition to the light blue background and not white).

Anti-alias with blue, not gray. OK, done.

Seems late to be asking, but for some reason it didn't really occur to me until now: was the choice of a Rock-Paper-Scissors derived game directly inspired by Cheril the Goddess?

No.