Counterclockwise - a Knot in 3D remake

Description
Counterclockwise is a freeware remake of a 1983 classic game called Knot in 3D. It's made for RetroRemakes competition and the whole project took 3 months to complete.

The game was developed entirely in C++ and uses OpenGL for graphics and fmod for sound.

I took the original game idea and build upon it so the remake has a number of new features (such as destroyable trails, boost, cutoff maneuver, combos etc.) resulting in a bit richer gameplay.

Interesting thing is that the game environment is completely transformable. You start in an empty space which is gradually filling with trail blocks. You can destroy the blocks to pass through. The space is only 32x32x32 blocks in size but it is wrappable so you get the ilussion of the infinitely large environment.
Because of that the graphics engine had to be capable of handling of the potential 32x32x32x27 cubes. I used a regular octree and the performance is reasonably fast.

The original game was quite a cutting edge in it's own time. The author, Malcolm E. Ewans of the New Generation Software, managed to squeeze in a 3D solid graphics engine into a primitive 8-bit 48K machine. It also had somewhat of a cult status because not everyone could play it. You had to have pretty good spatial visualization skills to understand what's happening.

More details and free download available at the game website:
http://www.16x16.org/games/ccw

Oh my god, I was fascinated by the original game!!

Never seen it before..in the zx80 times I played jumping jack and the like.
After that we had a 386 with ufo..which still rules

Anyways..very nice and polished. Maybe I'm just too crap but I need ages to get to the next level.

Alex

Maybe I'm just too crap but I need ages to get to the next level

You are not. Check the manual
It's important to understand how the scoring works. Certain things in game (boost and combos for example) can win you a lot of score which, consequentialy, will bring you to the next stage rather fast. If you just passively fly around it could take a while. Game's core mechanics are pretty much based on that fact.

Btw, which speed you were playing on? In next release I will probably decrease the stage score marks on 'slow' and 'very slow' settings.

I LOVE THAT GAME!!! It's the only game that made me play it for more than 10 minutes (4 hours yesterday, 2 today) for the last 4 years, you sir OWN!!! My comments:

- gfx are rather simple, which is very cool
- game is very dynamic, which I also quite much like
- artificial intellect is not bad for this kind of games
- music need a bit more work or more themes
- 2 or 3 weapons more would be cool (like a nuke)
- enemies should fire on you too

Thanks for the comments Mihail. I really appreciate this kind of suggestions.

In fact graphics were initially more complex. I had more figurative, spacecraft-like chaser designs, there was a skybox, texture and reflection on trails etc... A lot of time wasted, because it just didn't felt right until I stripped the graphics down to the minimum.

AI is mostly based on two trivial rules: 1) if there is an obstacle in front of you, turn in one of the directions that don't have an immediate obstacle. 2) turn randomly in one direction after some time. To my own surprise this proved to work very well in practice. Rules parameters are tweaked for different chaser "personalities". Some of them are going forward for a long time without avoiding the obstacles, other do a lot of turns randomly etc. As you progress through stages the "personalities" get more pronounced thus more noticeable.

More musical themes are planed (and even support for custom ones). In this version we figured to use a very minimalistic, moody, non-assertive theme during the gameplay.

Hope you did noticed there is an EMP in your weapon arsenal. It's like nuke just smaller Or did you think there is a need for even more powerful blast?

I'm giving some thoughts about making a multiplayer version. Seems it could be fun.

Yep, I've noticed the EMP and even used it, but a nuke or a homming missle would also be cool to see - especially on the later stages (4,5,...). An interesting idea for a weapon I have is an electric current beam. It is used the following way: you shoot a load in a block, constructed by the enemy. The electric current begins to move in both directions of the trail with a speed, twice the movement speed of the characters. It destroys all blocks in it's way and if it eventually reach the chaser, making the track, it get's destroyed! The problem with the weapons could easily be moded though, if you plan to release the source of the game. I also noticed that a crash with a chaser can never happen. Not sure if this is right though. A multiplayer is definetely a MUST!!!

Shooting AI could also be added quite quickly I guess. It's just a matter of frustum check to see if there are any enemies in the view range of the current chaser. A question that rises is, should the enemies join forces against the player, or also try to kill each other as in TRON.

Hope that helps!

"Current beam" sure sounds juicy. I'll most definitely try to include this.

Chasers that fire back at you was an option too. I left it out. Mostly because I didn't want gameplay to be too shooter-like. In the original game there's no shooting at all. And remake, in it's initial stage, was like that too. I experimentally added some shooting abilities. Destroying blocks was so much fun that I decided to keep it. But currently, doing combos will give you much more score than killing chasers. Bottom line is - I'd like player to choose between several playing styles - shooting, flying/combos, speeding). Giving a lot of shooting options might force a deathmatch gameplay upon the player.

Second problem with firing chasers is orientation. Because you are forced to constantly move, It's relatively hard to spot who's firing at you and react on time. It might get frustrating being constantly hit from practically invisible source. But still, maybe I need to test it and see how it works in practice.

I intentionally left out the possibility to crash with a chaser. Couldn't really decide how to penalize (or award) it - to destroy chaser, to destroy player, or just treat it same as a crash into trail. In general, I was more after the fluidity of gameplay than the realistic behaviors.

Great remarks though If you have some more thoughts just let me know

Good job! I've always held that games ought to be easy to learn, but diffucult to master. Your work exhibits both characteristics and is addicting to boot.

Thanks, gaia. A considerable ammount of effort went into tweaking the gameplay. I'm gald you took a notice of it.

Online high scores are now working!

In order to use it, you need to download version 1.1 from http://www.16x16.org/games/ccw/download.php
Scores are submitted from the main menu by clicking on "Upload High Scores"

You can view scores here: http://www.16x16.org/games/ccw/scores.php

Please let me know if there are any problems with it.

I like the trail (and chaser) cutoff feature. It makes the game never too cluttered up if you're fast enough. However, I would like to ask exactly which tiles are removed? Are they only those behind a player after flying straight long enough? Are they those that you pass-by when boosting?
Thanks,
Johnny

(subscribing to the thread...)

Game looks nice - played if for like 5 minutes and I liked the graphics. I haven't read the manual (scoring system) so it wasn't that exciting. I flew around and asked myself it this is all what this game is about (tron 3d)

Anyway, it's well done!

What I like to suggest is a little technical detail: I hate it when games install with lots of individual files. That clutters up the harddisk a lot. I like to see a single .exe and a single .dat file containing all the assets. Add those 3 or 4 required .dll files and you can put that stuff into a single directory.

There is technically no real advantage of having a pack-file system except some saved space due to sector alignment, but it looks much more professional. And there is no disadvantage either... So go for it.

Nils