Wheel-Go-Splat is a game I made some years back that's based very much on an older game called Marshmallow Duel. The basic idea is to beat the other player by either knocking them of the bottom of the screen, or killing them in some other fashion. You gather various power-ups to help you acheive this goal.

I first made Wheel-Go-Splat as a final project for a programming class way back in 10th grade. I'm sad to say that I've have lost most of the files, but at the same time, I probably never would have made any newer versions had I not. Technically, I have a cruddy little 42Mb hard drive setting on a shelf that might have the files on it, but I don't have any computers that are crappy enough to actually accept the drive. (And I've got some pretty crappy ones sitting around.) There are no screenshots or anything left behind either, but that's OKay, since it really wasn't that impressive. It was all sprite based, and all graphics were made using that handy dandy old NeoPaint, which is apparently what they used for Marshmallow Duel, too. Fancy that.

Firstly, if you've downloaded this before the beginning of November, 2005, then download it again. There was an issue with Windows XP that caused the game to only run at half speed. (Less asshatish OSes work fine.) While the original was entirely sprite based, most of the graphics in this version are vector based. During normal gameplay (not the menus) the only "sprite" you'll see is the ground tile. Everything else is generated on the fly for each frame. This is partly because this version didn't start as a game. I was actually just playing around with graphical effects and wanted to see how many I could get running at once. Even with all this junk (and I admit it could still be optimized quite a bit) , I can still get well over 100fps on a P4 2.4Ghz comp. Of course, it's difficult to actually play at that speed, though. By the way, since most people don't seem to realize this, try using the -? command line parameter and you'll find that it accepts quite a few others. ^_^

It all began when I wanted to demonstrate Wheel-Go-Splat to someone. I didn't have a copy with me, so I figured I'd see if there were remnants of an old copy of my site (I didn't have it up here at the time) that contained a copy. I didn't find it, but I did find that there was a copy of it up at MarshmallowDuel.Com, where apparently people liked it (aside from it running slowly, but I fixed that now). That felt pretty cool and rekindled my interest in the project. I didn't really want to update what I had. It had been made before XP destroyed the world and had too many compatibility issues. Instead, I decided to start from scratch. I'm optimizeng the graphics even more, adding more effects (gotta melt them CPUs) and of course, adding to the gameplay. I'll be posting updates and screenshots here to show the progress as it comes.

Intended Features

Faster everything (so there's room to slow it back down ^_^) Additional effects Various choices, rather than just one way. Easier to choose (in game, rather than command line) what effects to have on.) More complicated models Rather than being a single color, I'm going for a two tone scheme this time (we'll see how that works out), perhaps allowing for control of saturation and brightness. I'm going to try to get more varied looking animation. Improvements to levels No unreachable areas. Alterable ropes. (create/destroy) The ability to swing on ropes. More items (these may not all make it in, of course) Electric Bomb(Temporarily electrifies an entire platform.) Splurge Gun (Shoots out sticky goo that slows down anyone caught in it.) Heavy Fist (Close combat, beat the crap out of 'em.) Hammer (When it strikes the ground, it sends a wave of spikes down the rest of the platform.) Minimizer (Shrinks the other player so you can squash them.) Suggest a weapon/item (I'd love to hear any new ideas!) Removal of SNES support (just use JoyToKey and you can have any kind of controller you want.) More complicated statistics Including standard deviation and such, instead of just simple averages. I'm also going to work to try and make the stats more accurate. It is kind of hard to tell whether or not you killed them by changing the floor color suddenly, or if they just wandered off a cliff by themselves, afterall. No sprites at all (unless they're a texture for a polygon)

2005.11.30 - Quick example of what the fire looks like now, as well as the perlin noise in the background. Neither of them really give the full effect unless they're in motion, of course, and the palattes are just placeholders. Since I'm pretty much rewriting all the graphics code from scratch and focusing it specifically for this project, I don't have everything ready yet. I haven't rewritten the HSB space palette routines yet, so until I do, the palettes will be simple and ugly. On the up side, I've found a way to increase the speed of my antialiased line drawing by a buttload, and make it more robust at the same time. Of course, it all comes down to assembly. ^_^ There's really not much code yet that's not assembly. That makes me a happy.

2005.11.23 - Just created this page. So far, I've got a reasonable framework in place, and a test program that incorporates the graphical effects that are in place, including a new version of the fire (completely in assembly this time, including the (now much faster) random number generation) and even some simple Perlin Noise (It doesn't look like what you see on my main programming page (Perlin Noise comes in many shapes and forms, after all), but it's still pretty nice... and fast.)