the secret government waffle project

[+atari2600land]

I solved this by myself. As it turns out the wafflewaitseconds variable wasn't being reset so of course it didn't stop. But now I have a new problem. Is there a way to make the waffles go behind the machine? I want the appearance of the machine is spitting them out.

[+atari2600land]

I tried the +MB_A_PRIO thing and it looked like little orange lines.

Edit: As it turned out, the screen was printing white S's when I didn't tell it to. I had to erase them by telling it to print blank lines and everything works well for now.

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by atari2600land

[+atari2600land]

OK, it's technically a game now. I added the guy in and he must dodge the waffles otherwise the game ends. But it isn't a very interesting game. So I have to work some more on it later today (after I sleep.) Stuff left to do:

+ add powerups

+ add game over screen

+ add in-game music? (would people want this? If so, will there be enough room?)

 

To start the game, press 1 for fixed waffle y positions or 2 for random waffle y positions.

 

secret.rom

[+atari2600land]

Power ups added in.

I found that if you eat a waffle with the fork powerup on it automatically added 3 to the score even though I put in #score=#score+1 in the code. So to fix this, I had to put in a few frames of it not adding 1 (called "digesting" in the code). The digesting process takes 3 frames to do, then adds three (or whatever) to the score. Seems kind of silly to do this even though it adds three to the score anyway, but I did it. The jam disappearing does something slmilar: it adds 2 instead of the 1 I tell it to do. I just left it like it is. The bacon, oddly, adds what it's supposed to: 15. Thought of something I could add: Sound effects. Would sfx mess up the in-game music if I put it in? Another note about power ups is, the guy's shirt changes to green, and then to red to warn you the powerup value is about to expire, and finally back to blue. And I fixed it so the guy faces left when you pressed left and then let go of left. I also made the guy faster. Some feedback would be nice.

secret.rom

[+atari2600land]

I got bored, so I decided to make an overlay for the game.

 

[+atari2600land]

New title screen:

[+atari2600land]

Even newer title screen.

[mthompson]

The green folder is nice, but the waffle doesn't look right. I thought you had it nailed in the previous post.

[+atari2600land]

OK, I'll go back to that one then.

[+atari2600land]

I can't figure out how to stop this from happening. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by atari2600land

[mmarrero]

Around line 96, you're not re-initializing some waffle variables when the game restarts. I saw that many of your game variables are initialized before the title screen, which only happens once.

for c=0 to 4
	wafflex(c)=146 : wafflespeed(c)=1
	wafflewaitseconds(c)=0
	waffletimer(c)=0
next c

There's another bug where #score gets trashed... Ok, now I know. When you die, you're exiting the Procedure ispower4 using Goto, which causes the stack to grow and overwrite data. You need to do that if/goto at the main loop.

 

I recommend using Option Explicit, define constants, and please, add more comments. (only 2 in almost 1000 lines of code...).

 

The title screen (red one) looks great. Game is showing promise again. I'd recommend adding lives, an objective, then divide the game in rounds. Things should change after a new round (for example, bouncing waffles). You can get ideas from other games, for example, on the 2600 I remember Journey Escape and Fast Food.

 

 

 

[+atari2600land]

That explains why the score was displaying weird numbers and letters. I'll make some changes. How can I get rid of the waffle wall, though?

[+atari2600land]

I think I got rid of the waffle wall, but now 99% of the time, the second waffle from the top follows the topmost waffle by about an inch or so. Is there any way to have it not do this?

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by atari2600land

[+atari2600land]

OK, I think I made it random enough. I want to know why the object getting sound is scratchy. It probably is something I'm doing wrong, but what I don't know.

Edited July 23, 2017 by atari2600land

[+atari2600land]

The title screen (red one) looks great. Game is showing promise again. I'd recommend adding lives, an objective, then divide the game in rounds. Things should change after a new round (for example, bouncing waffles). You can get ideas from other games, for example, on the 2600 I remember Journey Escape and Fast Food.

OK, I've started work on rounds, in this game called waves. Why call them waves? So they can be waffle waves. Alliteration is good. A little tune will play indicating a new wave will start. Right now it's set to start every 300 points, but I can change that. Right now, the different waves don't do anything, but wave 2 will feature diagonal-moving waffles. I'm not too keen on the lives idea, though, but perhaps I'll add it in anyway sometime in the future if there's room. The objective is not to hit the waffles. I changed the sfx so they're not as scratchy, I tried the envelope sample program, and it looks like #1 (the piano notes) is scratchy.

Edited July 23, 2017 by atari2600land

[+atari2600land]

I thought the game as it was, while fun, was a bit too easy. So I shortened the screen width and added more data to the left side. What do you think? Or should I go back to how it was? The reason I did this is because there was a "safe spot" you could go on the wave where the waffles went diagonally. One of the datum is "lives." That doesn't work yet. I'll hold back on releasing this ROM because I've been releasing too many now. Here's a picture of the current version.

[+atari2600land]

I decided against it and instead stretched out the x position of the diagonal waffles' movements to fill up most of the screen. I also made it so the waffles are not at a fixed y position. This also means you press fire to start.

[+atari2600land]

The diagonal waffles have now been implemented. So they stretch out the entire screen, the waffles are more like a 22.5 degree angle rather than a 45 degree one. Makes one wonder why we didn't just stick to the square TV sets we started out with. When you get past the second wave, it just repeats itself since I haven't come up with an idea for a third wave. I need some wave ideas. By the way, the ROM is just an amazing 12.06k, the version I had earlier was 13 k! Next, I'm going to be working on a game over screen.

Edit: Discovered and fixed a bug pertaining to wave 2 movement. I also have the Game Over screen in place, so you get to see it.

secret.rom

Edited July 19, 2017 by atari2600land

[carlsson]

Sinus curves might be fun, if you first have straight, then diagonal waffles. Perhaps you can also make waffles form circles where the waffles move in the pattern, but also move the entire circle towards you?

[+atari2600land]

Decided not to have the waffles speed up at 300 points in wave 2, they were going way too fast. Added the sinus curves in. I had to look up what one was. It should be a lot like a bouncy waffle mmarrero suggested.

[+atari2600land]

Added in the "circular" waffles. For testing purposes, press 1 to start on wave 1, 2 for wave 2, 3 for wave 3, and 4 for wave 4. This won't be in the final version. Almost at that 16k limit and need for bankswitching stuff.

Edited July 23, 2017 by atari2600land

[mmarrero]

I like the diagonal waffles of yesterday's rom, I haven't seen today's rom. I have many crazy ideas for new levels. I agree with sine curves, waffle wall (think of Zaxxon, or Dolphin/2600, both use hints unlike the unplayable Flappy Bird), accelerating waffles, one very slow waffle that follows you, warn and split the screen in 2, etc. A death animation, or blink, is also a good idea. I also recommend intermission screens, you can just print something funny or display pictures at each wave.

My last game was 61 KBytes, mostly code, because enemy source is repeated 6 times - avoiding IntyBasic arrays (they can be slow). I did program an utility to generate the extra copies.

 

You don't need to bankswitch, check "contrib/42k.bas" to see how to use other ROM segments. IntyBasic/assembler won't tell you if your code exceeds any segment, you'll start getting weird crashes. One trick I used in the past was something like ASM ORG $($FFFF - size): when code exceeds size, the assembler will error out. On my last game, I created a memory map, by declared label/data at the end of each segment.The last segment is tricky: it ends with IntyBasic_epilogue.asm and not your code - you'll need assembly to get the address of its last label (if game has music, use "_music_vol3").

[+atari2600land]

Since there wouldn't be anything very useful for the overlay, I added back in my original concept. Which is completed and in the game. You press 1 at the title screen to get to it. For the zanier version with waves you press 2. I also moved all the data to $D000 which works well for now. The data ends at about $E100. I didn't know I had that much data in the game! The game ends at $5FE4, so I have about $6100-$6fff left to complete the game. Unless I don't get too extravagant with the game, I should be able to fit it in a manageable way.

[+atari2600land]

The Secret Government Waffle Project's website is now updating again. Visit it to get the latest ROM file. Like this one, where I added a lives counter and changed the way the waffles go in wave 4.

http://www.atari2600land.com/sgwp/

[+Tarzilla]

"...and your goal is to get the waffle machine under control"

 

Make that possible. Add a special item that is a key or keycard. Collect enough and it stops the machine. Then have something(robot)/someone(evil waffle chef) come out as an intermission and restart the machine. Then throw out square waffles. Keep track of the number of times the machine has been stopped as well as score. Alternate between round and square waffles.