Frisbounce
Release type: Freeware
Release date: 1995
Levels: 2
Author: Adam Tyner
Related games: Adam's Birthday Game, The Adam's Birthday Saga Continues, Adam's B-Day 3: The Saga Continues, Adam '97, Adam 98, Adam 2000, Alan!, Alan B-Day, Alan '95, Alan '96
A shooting gallery is a valid format, and with only small fudges it seems like a genre to which Game-Maker might lend itself reasonably well. It is not, however, the most obvious of genres or one to which Game-Maker lends itself without a certain amount of convincing. As such, there are only few examples of readily abandoned attempts at a shooting gallery.
From this scant company it is difficult to draw many conclusions about best practices, though one can see some parallels and divergences in approach. Of the three known examples (at the time of writing), Frisbounce is clearly the most original concept. It also shows the most conceptual ambition; whereas Operation Killbot serves as little but a grand guignol of abuse and Doom is a cursory experiment at recapturing some of id's design in RSD's engine, with Frisbounce Adam Tyner is trying, with at least some earnestness, to adapt a real-life game of his own creation. What that game precisely involves is unclear, and the mechanics of his adaptation do little to elucidate the matter -- but the game comes from a valid place.
As the game stands, what it seems to involve is standing to the side of a trampoline and knocking out your opponents by hitting them with frisbees, while avoiding the frisbees that they throw back at you. (In real life was there a single frisbee, or were several flying around? Was the goal actually to hit the other players, or to pass the frisbee? The answers don't affect the adaptation, but the questions do arise.)
There are a few issues here, which to some extent can be traced to Game-Maker's out-of-the-box behaviors. As is well documented, monsters are only able to birth other monsters at death -- so there is no innate ability to fire projectiles. Monsters are also unable to shift to other states or animations by any means besides death, so it is difficult to conceive of a scheme where they could, for instance, catch an object then try to throw it back again. Likewise, although one could conceive of a scheme for using a meticulous monster animation to allow a character to "catch" incoming projectiles and up an action counter to permit another throw, that's not a terribly obvious use of RSD's tools -- and action counters work a little strangely, anyway.
There are also issues involving the game engine's scrolling, borders, and screen placement. Here the character sits at the very center of the play area, because that is the required placement if one is to center the screen on initial map load. As in other games, the character could be automatically moved upon load, whether though idle animation or block gravity -- but combined with all of the other issues, it's easy to see how, after a certain point, Tyner threw up his hands and moved on.
Could Frisbounce have been adapted in exactly the way that Tyner intended? Possibly -- or if not, it might have been adapted to something interesting in its own right. But, one has to measure effort versus reward. And one has to have the vocabulary to start with -- a vocabulary that, with RSD's engine, can take quite a while to build up on one's own. As it is, the game is illustrative of the path that a design often will take. You come up with a bright idea, you try to push the engine, the engine pushes back, and you move on. It's not that deep. There are other things to try. Maybe you'll get back to it one day.
Contents
Story
You play the role of Adam (whose hair you can see at the bottom of the screen). You, Alan, Matt, and Scott decided to play a game of Frisbounce (which I invented and actually played a looooong time ago). In this game, Alan is bouncing on the trampoline and you must throw Frisbees at him. You must also stop Matt and Scott from hitting you with Frisbees.
Have fun!
Instructions
To play
With joystick enabled (press F8 during the game), use Left and Right to move and Up or any button to throw a Frisbee. With the keyboard, Left and Right move and Up or ENTER throws a Frisbee.
Object of the game
Try to hit Matt and Scott (who are throwing Frisbees at you) and Alan (on the trampoline).
Press F1 for help.
Credits
FRISBOUNCE!
Created by Adam Tyner
The actual game, which this computer game is based on, was created by Adam Tyner and Alan Caudel.
You could hurt yourself trying to play Frisbounce anywhere but on your computer. We were stupid when we thought of it. Don't be like us.
Some concepts created by Alan Caudel
Availability
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Archive History
After an earlier wave of rediscoveries, on July 13 2011 Alan Caudel provided another archive of previously missing Game-Maker material, including Frisbounce alongside the following:
Links
Downloads
- Frisbounce (83 kB)
