College course Lynx game recovered!

[jbserra]

I just needed to share :-)

 

I've been watching the LCD threads and multi-game carts, but I decided to give the emulator a shot on my Moto G. Turns out, the new screen is beautiful and this set me out on a mission.

 

I wrote a very small game back for my Computer Graphics course in circa 1997. I had rounded up all of my project material, including emulator, compiler, and code, and dropped them onto one of those Iomega 100MB ZIP disks. I put it into a box and forgot about it.

 

Fast forward 18 years. I'm messing with the emulator on my phone and think "How cool would it be to dust off my old code and play it on my phone?" I found the zip disk, but no longer had any zip drives. I find one on CL and pick it up. I put the disk in and? Nothing. My excitement squashed. I was very upset and disappointed. I decided to share my journey with a friend and he sends me a link for a ZIP disk recovery program. I figured, what the heck? BOOM! Finds almost everything and I get a copy of my old files to my hard drive. I'm able to fire up the copy of Handy in there and I see the C compiler and I start hunting for my program in the 1500 or so files recovered. After digging, I find a file named "Myturn.c". Apparently, I didn't name the game anything creative, but I look at the code and it sure looks the part. I figure out how to fire it up in Handy and off to the races! I can't believe I was able to recover my program!

 

I copy the .obj file to my phone and I'm able to realize my objective :-) The game runs too fast, but just seeing it on my phone made me feel good.

 

So, now to get back to playing with the old code. I'm no game programmer by any stretch, but just being able to go from code to game system is pretty fun. I think my son will be excited to see some of this as well.

 

Are there any areas where folks share code? I might like to play with something that may be a little more advanced then my pong/breakout type game :-)

 

Well, thanks for keeping the lynx alive and for anyone that took the time to read my post.

[sirlynxalot]

Cool rediscovery! The lynx programming forum here would be a good place to start if you want to discuss sharing code, or asking/giving tips.
Also these tutorials written by fellow forum member lx.net might be of interest to you.
https://atarilynxdeveloper.wordpress.com/series/atarilynxprogrammingtutorial/

Would you be interested in sharing the rom image? I'd give it a spin on handy

Edited January 2, 2015 by sirlynxalot

[jbserra]

Wow! Sending this out for a beta test! I feel like I've really developed something! I might have to worry about someone stealing my gameplay or reverse engineering my code. I better copyright it :-)

 

Ok, so the details:

With Handy, I would slow the emulation down to about 40%. Otherwise the game runs too fast. You get 3 attempts and your score is based on how many times you hit the ball back. I plan to do some tweaks to it for fun, but don't have a timeline on that just yet. This is almost a Hello World type program, so hopefully I have set your expectations at the appropriate level.

 

Or maybe you were just joking!

myturn.zip

Edited January 5, 2015 by jbserra

[sirlynxalot]

I just tested it out and there is some real potential there Nice job!

I was not joking - In fact I'm on the lookout for a lynx programmer I can convince to help realize my dreams of a top down shooter on the lynx. Breakout isn't that far from Zarlor Mercenaries, right (Example artwork can be found here http://atariage.com/forums/topic/157577-lynx-coding-contest/page-8 )

[LX.NET]

I just needed to share :-)

 

Thanks for doing that. Sorry to be late to compliment and congratulate. I was out of the loop for a little while. Really nice to see a new Lynx programmer emerge. It is not that often.

Should you need any help getting this converted to CC65 (not the one from BLL) i am happy to help out. I think it can also help you solve the timing/speed issues. Anyway, the programming forum under the Lynx forum might be a good place to get that discussion going.

Karri set up a place to share Lynx code. You can contact him for details on how to get your code there if you are willing to do so.

[GadgetUK]

Thanks for sharing your work =)

[jbserra]

Hoping to try this out on my SD cartridge which shipped out yesterday (Thanks SainT!)! First time I'll see my "work" on the real hardware. Very excited!