Description

Pentuby (pen-too'-bee) is a cooperative "guide and collect" game for five joystick players. Sort of a virtual game of "Hacky Sack", where the players try to keep a ball in play. Submitted as an entry for the TELIC Arts Exchange "Games For 5 Joysticks" exhibition.

Applet

...is not yet available...it needs some modification before it's suitable for online play...eventually...

About

Each player controls the arrangement of a "tube" through which a common ball passes. By properly aligning their tubes, players guide the ball around the playing field, collecting or avoiding various bonus items and hazards. The ball is taken out of play when it fails to pass an improperly aligned tube, or when it hits certain hazards. The game is over when all balls allotted per game have been taken out of play.

From one to five persons may play. Computer-controlled players will fill in for any missing human players to keep the total number at five.

Players may adjust the difficulty of the game by selecting one of several different speeds for the ball. As ball speed increases, reaction time decreases, thus creating a more difficult playing environment. At its slowest/easiest setting, the game should be approachable by even the most novice players.

The game mechanics are such that it is relatively easy to just keep a ball in play with only minimal joystick movement - just keep pointing the joystick "towards" the ball, essentially only controlling one "end" of the tube. More active control is typically required to specifically align the tube to fully exploit scoring opportunities, handle multiple balls and avoid hazards.

Experienced players may be challenged by the faster/harder settings, and may learn certain joystick techniques that increase their reaction times and ability to handle the faster game.

Design Notes

A number of ideas were considered as potential candidates for the design. The obvious choices were simply multi-player extensions of well-known game models, such as a 5-player "Snake" or "Tron light cycles", or any number of other 1-player favorites taken to their logical multi-player extension.

But none of those ideas struck me as completely satisfactory - as if they met the word of the design requirements, but missed its spirit. So I formalized a set of additional internal requirements that eventually guided the game design. This is only to sort of explain why THIS game turned out the way it did, not to expect that any other developer or game should have to abide by similar arbitrary restrictions...

First, the design had to be such that the number 5 was "special". Thus excluded were all simple multi-player extensions where 2,3,4 or 6,7,8 players could have theoretically worked equally well. The design must be *specifically* targetted for five players.

Second, the design should not duplicate the existing "Packman" project in its controller scheme - where an essentially a 1-player game is controlled with a "sum-of-5" joysticks approach. That territory has already been explored, so let's do something else. No DigDug clone, for example.

Third, the design must allow for less than five players to be present. Since the first criteria requires a specifically 5-player game, this criteria boils down to requiring some form of computer AI players to fill the gap of available human players when necessary.

Fourth, the design had to be such that each player assumed a similar "role" in the game. Thus excluded would be a "Pac-Man" game (for example) where 1 player plays "Pac" and the other 4 play "Ghosts". Or any other sort of "Tag you're it" -based design. (This also meant that any design requiring one player to be a "button" joystick for the other four "motion" joysticks was ruled out.)

Fifth, the design was to be such that the players cooperated, rather than competed. It was felt that it would be more fun for the players to be yelling cooperative messages to each other like "I'm passing the ball your way" rather that competitive messages like "I'm coming to get you". (Pentuby doesn't PROHIBIT three or four players "abusing" the game, by locking out the other players by putting the ball into a loop for example, but the game mechanics and scoring system do tend to INHIBIT such play)

Sixth, as the game is intended for exhibition, the design had to be simple enough that new players could pick up the rules with minimal study, yet deep enough to entice multiple plays as players gained experience. (through higher difficulty levels, cascaded scoring combinations, etc)

Seventh, again as an exhibition feature, the program should be able to cycle through an "attract" mode to 1) gather the attention of potential players, and 2) serve as a sort of screen-saver to prevent burn-in of display device. Of course, I'm not sure how the exhibition would be set up, but this is sort of a convenience feature should the game just be left running continuously. (witness any arcade console)

Finally, the design had to be simple enough that a guy like me with a full-time job and responsibilities at home could complete the programming in several weekends worth of very part-time effort. A seemingly silly criteria, yet a very practical one. What good would the design be if it couldn't actually be built in time?! :-D