Let there be life

Posted by SpiceWare, in Space Rocks 25 April 2012 · 398 views

used a variation of Paul Slocum's No Flicker 13 Char + 2 Text kernel to show 6 digit score + 1 digit reserve lives
lives is now implemented
respawn routine waits for the ship's start area to be clear. This might cause problems if the area never clears
updated motion tables with Eric Ball's 12:7 pixel aspect ratio information.
saucer can now be shot for points
saucer now appears, moves across the display, and randomly shoots

ROM

spacerocks20120425.bin (32K)
downloads: 34

Source

spacerocks20120425.zip (403.47K)
downloads: 18

atari2600land
Apr 26 2012 12:55 AM

Very interesting. Noticed a few things, though.
#1. the triangle ship refused to surface after I died even though the area was clear a few times.
#2. the UFO appears way too often. Hope you'll fix that.

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accousticguitar
Apr 26 2012 5:21 AM

I hope you will eventually have a game variation that does nothing when you push the joystick down, because I keep hyperspacing by accident!

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SpiceWare
Apr 26 2012 7:38 AM

#1 - The respawn clear zone is currently defined as 32 pixels left/right and 34 above/below the ship. There's also a 2 second delay before respawn occurs. Is it possible the area was clear during those 2 seconds, but not after? When I woke up this morning I realized I can just shrink the respawn clear zone based on how long it's been since you died and eventually the ship would show up.

#2 - It takes time to get all the fine-tuning done, if I waited until it was perfect to put up it would never get posted. Plus it was bed time, so nothing else was going to get done for the night

Yes, there will be a menu option for what joystick down does.

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accousticguitar
Apr 26 2012 3:21 PM

This game is so cool! I can't wait for sound. This is sure turning out to be a good year for new Atari games.

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SpiceWare
Apr 26 2012 5:17 PM

I've got three 2600 games in the pipeline, the trick will be to actually finish them

Yeah, was playing a few games last night and the game was fun, but in serious need of sound. As such, my plan is for the next update to have preliminary sound effects, as well as a way to control what joystick down does (using the Left Difficulty and TV Type gives me 4 abilities. Options will be hyperspace, shields, 180 and do-nothing.

Then I want to get a few more things polished up, like saucer appearance times, after which I'll start to post periodic builds in the homebrew forum.

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Kurt_Woloch
Apr 28 2012 2:19 AM

Very nice!

Would it be possible to implement more possible angles which the player ship can face and fire into?

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SpiceWare
Apr 28 2012 7:53 AM

Kurt_Woloch, on Sat Apr 28, 2012 2:19 AM, said:

Very nice!Would it be possible to implement more possible angles which the player ship can face and fire into?

Thanks! My comment in He shoots, he scores, along with Nathan's reply and his updated To-doing entry should answer that for you

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flammingcowz
Apr 28 2012 9:02 AM

It seems too easy to accidentally hyperspace. Not sure if that's fixable

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SpiceWare
Apr 28 2012 10:16 AM

Sure, use a Starplex Video Game Controller

I picked that up NIB at CGE back in 2010.

I've already changed it so you get to select from Hyperspace, Shields, Flip 180 or do-nothing for joystick down. That'll be in the next update.

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SpiceWare
May 2 2012 8:25 AM

atari2600land, on Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:55 AM, said:

#1. the triangle ship refused to surface after I died even though the area was clear a few times.

Did some playtesting last night and while waiting for the ship to respawn, an asteroid broke into 2 pieces in the center of the screen. That's when I realized that the same 4.2 seconds invisible bug existed for respawning the ship. I suspect you experienced that bug. It's fixed now. I'll explain what was going on when I post the next update.