Re: Tempest Gameplay Question

Jonathan,

>Are the green levels truly faster than the black ones?

Yes, they are slightly faster and seem to have a slightly higher density of
enemies. As you say, the greens do feel easier overall because you can see
the shapes again.

>I always wondered why the designers didn't save the black figures for last
>since they are the hardest (and also the coolest looking:)).

My guess is that since the last color was to be the last color played
forever, the designer wanted those levels to reflect the "truest" playing
experience. The black levels are cool and novel, but they have a decidedly
different feel from the rest of the game.

>Hey, someday I'll have to come by and challenge you (or if you're ever in
>the San Francisco area, feel free to stop by:))...

Sounds like fun. Playing doubles in the upper greens is always a blast (as
Noel can attest <g>).

>And another reason that Tempest is VERY difficult to have a marathon game
>on is that in some situations, no matter your skill level, you will
>die. I most hate it when you are going along just fine on the black or
>green levels and then all of a sudden, a pulsar will just appear randomly
>in your lane already it the "pulsed" state. Thus, you die instantly with
>essentially no chance of getting out of it (Eric, is there a way out of
>this situation that you know of?)

Yes, but it is *very* subtle. Watch the swarm of dots (red ones in the case
of the green levels) in the center of the shape. Each enemy to be faced
during the level is represented by a dot. Before an enemy appears in a
lane, its dot will first stop at the entrance to the far end of the lane.
They appear to be queuing up and waiting their turn to attack. Since there
is a maximum number of enemies visible at one time (which varies by level
and difficulty level), they will sit there until some other enemy is
killed. Then they will appear at the bottom of the lane. If you watch
carefully, you can see which lanes have enemies queued up and which ones do
not. As long as there are loose pulsars in the lanes attacking you, the
odds of another one appearing are pretty low (the game seems to want to
balance the enemy types and will sometimes even morph them or sent tankers
with mixed cargo at you). If you are low on pulsars, the odds are high that
it will throw one at you. In those situations, scan the bottom of the lanes
for one *without* a red dot attached and sit there for a moment until it is
"safe" again. Even with that knowledge, they will still get you every once
in awhile when you aren't looking. ;-)

>And Eric forgot to mention another added difficulty here...when you get
>real close, you not only have to be VERY careful not to overshoot 999,999,
>but if your score is on an even number at that point, the only way to
>change it to an odd number (to allow for 999,999) is to shoot a spike all
>the way down. Each "piece" of a spike is worth 2 points with the
>exception of the final "piece" which is worth 1 point.

Very good point. I have ended a lot of games at 999,998 (or 0 <g>) in my
time. ;-) When I was in high school, I was a real bastard when it came to
"owning" Tempest machines. I traveled around to almost every arcade in a 50
mile radius and left my signature "999,999 ELC" in the top three places on
every Tempest machine I could find. I can remember going to the Time Out
arcade at the Springfield Mall in northern Virginia one time and spending
all day playing their *four* Tempests up to green and leaving my mark.
:-) I had no greater joy than going toe to toe with the local Tempest
champ (every arcade had one of those, right? <g>) and wiping their scores
off the board.

>I second his request to Clay for a fix...I know what my all time high
>score is, but I want to be able to have evidence of it on my game to show
>the rest of the world...:).

No kidding. If it were possible to do that, we should petition Twin
Galaxies to use that ROM revision for any new record attempts. It used to
really piss me off when I would see the game magazines listing high scores
for Tempest in the 9-11 million range (which is basically impossible
without cheating or lying). The best that I ever did was a three hour, 2.2
million game starting from level 81 (with standard settings). I could see
someone possibly getting 3-5 million which would take approximately 5-10
hours of uninterrupted, flawless play. Beyond that, and I don't see how it
would be humanly possible.

Of course, if we could somehow "fix" the five max life limitation, you
could turn Tempest into a real marathon game. I once had the game glitch on
me and show *six* men lined up across the top and have spent years trying
to replicate that scenario.

My ultimate Tempest revision would have the following mods:

1) Seven digits of scoring (or maybe eight, if some of the other mods are
in effect)
2) No limitation on the number of lives that you could build up (up to 255
I suppose)
3) Open level select (already implemented by the Tempest Code Project) so
that you could start on green anytime you wanted.
4) Have the high score display also record the last level played. In the
case of level 99, count how many times it has been played.

Any others?

-Eric

VAPS: http://www.vaps.org/members/ma/clayberg@smalltalksystems.com.html
Arcade: http://www.smalltalksystems.com/clayberg/arcade/arcade.htm

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Received on Wed Oct 11 13:55:47 2000