Is Arkanoid possible on dvd?

[\AX]

My all time favorite puzzlish game is arkanoid. You know like break out but with balls and weapons, zoning, and a stage 32 boos.

Anyhow is it possible to get this to run on a dvd standalone??

Awhile back i hounded several game companies for info on how to do it...mainly the ones who create current dvd game's for titled hollywood dvd's...but got not real answer and even a clue on where to start.

So i ask here.

[easy2Bcheesy]

What DVD can do:

1. Stuff like Dragon's Lair - ie, video footage with buttons on-screen that branch to other bits of video.
2. An adventure game like Myst, using a combination of static screens, motion menus and buttons over video.
3. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire style multiple choice quiz games.

The sort of stuff you're looking at involves calculation of physics for the ball movement and the idea of having sprites on-screen. Both of which are impossible in the DVD spec.


The only problem with anything to do with 1-3 above is due to incompatibility between DVD players and different interpretations of the DVD spec. Warner produced a magnificent extras disc for Harry Potter which was like your own mini-Hogwarts adventure with tons of bonuses to open up. The problem being, they packed so much programming on, it didn't work on about 50% of players.

I read about a company called "Zoo" who are producing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire for DVD. Good luck to them! You need a random number generator to do this. The DVD spec has a random number generator, but the interpretation of it on different DVD players makes for some players producing totally predictable, non-random numbers!

[auenf]

Originally posted by easy2Bcheesy
I read about a company called "Zoo" who are producing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire for DVD. Good luck to them! You need a random number generator to do this. The DVD spec has a random number generator, but the interpretation of it on different DVD players makes for some players producing totally predictable, non-random numbers!

thats interesting, takes me back to my basic days when i forget to use 'Randomize' before requesting a random number. without it, yes i did get the exact same 'random' number sequence every time. im guessing that a lot of the cheaper or older players don't implement it?

Enf...

[mpucoder]

Reminded me of an old game of backgammon I had. After a few games I always won, then I noticed it was always the same numbers on the dice.

[\AX]

So you'd pretty much be lost in the dark on what player's are compatible that could *possibly* due it...and lost in the dark on how to even start trying. i would like to start trying though...very much. The problem i figured that would result would be what your saying...it just wouldn't confine to the spec's. but it turns out the problem i have still...is where to look/find the info on where to even begin on attempting to try. Like what can be done that is known..what might be able to be done that is known...and what can't be done that is known.

I pretty much see dvd video games to be in a motion menu style for all of them. What made me wonder is, and i know this is a internal feature but, the GPX2000 has 2 built in games, Othello and Tetris. This is like i said internal but it has made me wonder because whatever is internal that is making this possible...is working. Im sure not all player's have built in game's and im sure not all player's have the same desing as the gpx2000...but some must.

JACKET_P

Im sure you have read DVD Demystified...like in chapter 2 or 3 on page, roughly, 150 it mentions this as a feature that is built into the dvd specfication for picture's and game's. It can be use for other thing's i imagine aswell. After i read that in his book emailed him about it, he never got back to me.

What would have to be random for Arkanoid is only 5 things,

1. ball
2. brick weapons
3. score
4. life count
5. paddle movement

I was, or what is in my head was just to test this would be long, but i was thinking of replacing the code for the random numebering with seamless branching. Like making alot of picuture's that just branch to each other over and over again. Like .gif's...but not :/.

Ok that idea is pretty much stupid and very time...but i think it could be done.


anyhow with all this aside i would still have to find where to start and know what is possible...and that...is DVD Mystified.

[rubic42]

It might be possible to create a rudimentary looking version of Arkanoid or Breakout, but it won't be very fun to play.

Your limitations will be in storing enough combinations of screen states, ie. ball location, which bricks are left, paddle position, any other falling objects, power-ups, etc. There are limitations to how many unique screen states would addressable within the DVD spec. There are only so many angles, subtitle tracks, cells, programs, PGCs, titles, etc. that you can use to express different screen states. You have so many elements on the screen that are independent of each other that the number of different combinations you need to express is just mind-boggling. At least using subtitle tracks would help some. If you can get everything into seamless branching, I'd be very impressed.

Game play will be pretty horrid, if you have to use the DVD remote. It might be better with a mouse on a software DVD player.

It would be a nightmare, in complexity and in developing carpal tunnel from all the RSI, to do this on any other authoring programm besides something like Scenarist, which can accept text file scripts as input in building the disc. Learn a scripting language.

Good luck, but don't expect much.

[easy2Bcheesy]

You cannot do Arkanoid/Breakout on a DVD player. You'd need sprites for the bat and ball, and the DVD spec doesn't have sprites. It's that simple. DVD can play back pre-recorded streams and you can jump between them. That's it. You can play around with menus and subtitles, but you'll never see an arcade game of this sort on your DVD player, trust me.

The kind of games you CAN do I outline in my previous post. You can stick whatever you want in the JACKET folder, overlaid sprites and physics engines are not going to happen!

[rubic42]

You can fake sprites by having predetermined positions for nearly everything... It won't look good, but it will probably work.

The paddle can be buttons, all one has to do is create different buttons along the bottom of the screen.

For the ball you could assume it can only move in diagonals, exactly NW, NE, SW, SE cardinal directions on the screen, and prerecord video of the ball bouncing around in different positions at a constant speed. Using that set speed you could know when the ball was about to hit the wall with a GPRM timer, and send the DVD player to some PGC that makes a decision based on how much of the wall was left, whether or not to jump to the ball video stream going in the bounced direction or keep going.

This would make game play really choppy, as it switches between PGCs and video streams, but I think it could be made to work. But like I've been saying it won't be a good game, it'll be really ugly, and it probably wouldn't be worth doing.

[easy2Bcheesy]

Yeah it will be extremely choppy, jumping between the various video streams. Every time you move left or right, the video will freeze as you jump between streams.

The thing is, you can't anticipate every single combination of bricks and ball movement. We're talking thousands of different videos to anticipate which bricks have gone, which are remaining and which way the ball is going.