Tag

The theme for this week was ‘tag’, which immediately brought to mind the playground game. One of my favourite games of the late 2000s was Canabalt, so I just thought I would build that in TIC-80 - I also wanted to try out 3D rendering. So here’s the game. It’s basically just an endless runner. I added a few power ups to spice it up slightly. Platforms procedurally generate in front of you as you progress through the level, and you regain a little time for every platform you pass. High score is based on the number of platforms you’ve passed. Originally I was going to do a chase-type game (maybe like Crash Bandicoot running away from the boulder) but I decided a timer was enough. I had planned to have a rearview mirror or something, but once i started down the path of a randomly generated path it didn’t have much of a point. Besides, a timer where you get time back for movement is pretty similar to a game where you get caught if you stand still too long.

I’m actually quite pleased with this! If I had more time this week I think there are a lot of relatively simple additions that could make the game more fun (different powerups, nicer-feeling movement, some music and other assets…)

Assets generally are going to be a problem if I make more 3D games. You really start to need textures, which then means you need to think about filtering, lighting, shading… also I must say it’s not massively performant! Probably no realtime 3D games on the horizon. Maybe something like Mode7 is more likely.

I might spend some time next week making some kind of sprite creator. TIC-80 has a tool for this but I’d rather have Claude Code for Sprites…

Getting the rendering right was quite an interesting challenge, which really brough me back to my 3D Graphics courses in college. Surface normals, backface culling, view frustums! Also, because TIC-80 doesn’t have the capability to capture the mouse, first-person controls are pretty awkward.

Controls

• W/S to move forward/backward in the view direction
• A/D to strafe
• Arrow keys to point the camera
• Space to jump

All these games are incomplete and broken. Caveat emptor