The Celery Game (2600)

[+atari2600land]

So I am almost calling this game completed. Right now I am asking for feedback on what I could do to make the game better. In this game (in case you don't know), the idea is to get the highest score. You guide the incinerator (the blue box) with either a joystick or a paddle. The small celery should be avoided by the incinerator, while you make the evil vegetarians enter and get burned to a crisp. I would like to keep it at 2k and I have a little less than 100 bytes left for changes.

celery20160206v2.zip

[StanJr]

While the giant celery stalk cracks me up, I wonder if only using 2/3 of the screen for the game action is the best choice? I like the tiny celery chunks and vegetarians (I wonder what made them so evil?), and I think the character rendering on all them is great. The game play is really simple (as expected for 2K). The one-and-done makes the game unforgiving and the dramatic speed ramp guarantees a quick demise if you aren't careful. Not really sure if there is much to do to improve. I'd like maybe a power-up or something that could prolong the game, doesn't have to be an extra life, but maybe invincibility or a miss-a-vegetarian forgiveness. Not sure if that is possible with 2K.

[+atari2600land]

I asked for help in the other thread for making a lives number.

[+atari2600land]

THERE. After almost a days' worth of almost continuous programming (I slept for 5 hours last night.) I finally got a lives counter in the game. The lives are dots and not a number, though, but it's better than nothing. Or at least I think so.

celery20170210.zip

[StanJr]

The extra lives are great! Thank you. High scores ahead!

 

This would be a great game on a multi-cart with a couple of other food themed games!

[+atari2600land]

Fixed a few bugs. In order to get it all to fit in 2k, I had to change the song a little bit. No high scores though, I have 1 byte left!

celery20160210v2.zip

[neotokeo2001]

Fixed a few bugs. In order to get it all to fit in 2k, I had to change the song a little bit. No high scores though, I have 1 byte left!

 

Unzipped files:

 

BIN:celery45.bin

 

Source File:celery45.asm

 

Shared with the Atari 2600 Homebrew group on FaceBook

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Atari2600homebrew/

Edited February 11, 2017 by neotokeo2001

[neotokeo2001]

Updated: Works properly after adding the game back on so may have been just a fluke.

 

*** Possible Harmony cartridge warning *** A member on FaceBook had the following issue, "Gave it a try on harmony and got a initializing screen and couldn't get any further. Deleted file and my harmony was back to normal." Anybody have this problem?

Edited February 11, 2017 by neotokeo2001

[+SpiceWare]

*** Possible Harmony cartridge warning *** A member on FaceBook had the following issue, "Gave it a try on harmony and got a initializing screen and couldn't get any further. Deleted file and my harmony was back to normal." Anybody have this problem?

 

 

Works fine here:

 

As does the build where I revised the lives indicator:

 

It uses the standard CLEAN_START macro to initialize the system.

[neotokeo2001]

 

 

Works fine here:

IMG_8363.jpg

 

As does the build where I revised the lives indicator:

IMG_8364.jpg

 

It uses the standard CLEAN_START macro to initialize the system.

 

Works properly after adding the game back on so may have been just a fluke.

[+atari2600land]

Spiceware was using his latest changes version where he changed the dots into numbers. I went ahead and built upon that version to change a few things and the result is version 46, which is here:

 

celery46.bin

celery46.asm

[+SpiceWare]

Spiceware was using his latest changes version where he changed the dots into numbers. I went ahead and built upon that version to change a few things and the result is version 46, which is here:

 

 

 

I did test your latest build as well I'm glad the new lives indicator worked out for you!

[+atari2600land]

Thank you so much for doing that for me, I think it really improves the game.

[StanJr]

I'm going to be the only one who actually likes the blocks representing the extra lives instead of numbers. But that's impossibly minor and I'm in the minority of one on that one.

 

I guess my only gripe at this point is difficulty, or lack thereof. Whereas I was losing immediately with only 1 life, I'm now playing indefinitely with 3 lives. Maybe if the celery or humans all came at max speed after 100 pts or something it would make the game harder. As it is, since the difficulty is maxed at the start, once you get in rhythm, the game presents little challenge. Is it possible to ramp the speeds as the score increases? Or have more than one celery/human on the screen at the same time (a la Fast Food)? I realize you are working with 2K, so options are limited. Just thoughts. Could there be an endurance variation with only 1 life and then a regular variation with 3? Maybe that would do it?

[+SpiceWare]

I realize you are working with 2K, so options are limited.

He's at the point where it's time to do a round of optimizations. I took a quick look and was able to free up 14 bytes in less than a minute.

 

Agree on the difficulty ramp. Another thing I'd look at is when the celery/human hits the top/bottom have them [sometimes as opposed to always] change direction instead of losing their vertical movement.

 

He doesn't have vertical zones like Fast Food, that makes multiple objects much easier to do. Perhaps use 30 Hz flicker once the player gets past 100 points or so. That would let you have 2 objects instead of one - same as how Dodge 'Em uses flicker for 2 enemy cars in the later levels. Logic for 2 objects at 100 points would be very easy:

  lda Score    ; check value in the thousandths and hundreths position of the score
  beq OnlyOneObject ; if its zero then only show one object
  ;2 object logic here
OnlyOneObject:

[+atari2600land]

I freed up some room by getting rid of the black and white/color switch information. I now have 105 bytes to play with. I would have absolutely zero idea about how to make two items appear at once, but I did make the game faster once you reach 100 points. Also, I want to avoid flicker.

celery20170211v2.zip

Edited February 11, 2017 by atari2600land

[+Cafeman]

It's pretty fast, at least playing with keyboard controls. I didn't read the description, was confused why I was collecting humans and not little celeries. Now I get it.

 

Clear music, funny concept, fun and each game doesn't seem to last too long (for me). I got 15 points.

[+atari2600land]

 

Another thing I'd look at is when the celery/human hits the top/bottom have them [sometimes as opposed to always] change direction instead of losing their vertical movement.

 

 

I successfully did this. As it turned out, I had put the getting a random number function for the Bouncing variable in the wrong place. I didn't know there was a wrong place to put something like that, but oh well.

celery20170213.zip

[+atari2600land]

Added back in the ability to play in black and white.

It took a while since the color palettes or something screwed up the timer of the incinerator entrance in b&w mode, so I had to figure that out and fix it. Let me know if you encounter any bugs.

celery20170213v2.zip

[Arenafoot]

Added back in the ability to play in black and white.

It took a while since the color palettes or something screwed up the timer of the incinerator entrance in b&w mode, so I had to figure that out and fix it. Let me know if you encounter any bugs.

Looks good to me! Nice to have a black and white or color game for a change, as most Atari games do not do much when you hit the b/w-color switch

[+atari2600land]

After doing a little testing, found out the scanline counter jumps to 263 once in a while. I don't know if this fixes it or not, let's test together. Open in Stella, and open the debugger, and type in

breakif {_scan>#262}

That way, if the scanline jumps to 263 (or higher), you would know about it because it would halt the game and go back to the debugger.

celery20170214.zip