Bill and George (WIP)

[+atari2600land]

I've always wanted to make a Mario-type game for the Odyssey 2. I tried a few years ago with a failed attempt at a game called Super Giuseppe. People didn't like the Italian name Giuseppe. (besides, the game flickered horribly.) So I decided to try again. Bill and George are off to get a giant piece of cheese that was captured by the evil Mr. Mayonnaise and it's held in the Mr.'s castle.

 

I've just begun here. I actually began this second attempt a few months ago, but just got back to working on it again today. When I'm done, I hope to have an 8k game with 4 levels. This is Bill in the first level here. George will appear in level 2 and again in level 4, while Bill has duties in levels 1 and 3. After the flying ostrich are just infinite coins because I haven't gotten far enough to design the level 1 pattern.

 

All is working well on a real Odyssey 2. Let's hope that continues to be the case.

 

 

g4.bin

[+atari2600land]

After trying and trying and trying I think I got level 1 working good. If you defeat level 1, you'll just go back to the title screen that I added. This is because there's no level 2 yet. I could add more stuff in since I have about 800 bytes free, but it won't let me, so I'll have to be content with that.

g6.bin

[Iwantgames:)]

Is there a good emulator available to try this? I don't have any way to play on my real O2 :/

[+atari2600land]

There is an Odyssey 2 emulator called O2EM. It's what I use for testing before I put a game onto real hardware and test that way.

[+atari2600land]

I got Bill walking from left to right on the title screen. Not much of an update, so I'm just going to post a picture of it.

 

[+atari2600land]

Worked a whole bunch last night trying to make George swim. Swimming is the same as in Super Mario Bros., where pressing action makes George go up otherwise he'll sink. Pressing left or right will make him go left or right, even though there's no way to tell if he's actually moving. I'll be adding a marker though.

2level1.bin

Edited September 1, 2017 by atari2600land

[+atari2600land]

Added a boat and the lives/coin counter.

g8level2.bin

[majestyx]

Level 1 is definitely much improved over Super Giuseppe. I actually liked that name, but then again, I also like the song Shaddap You Face by Joe Dolce... so sue me.

 

Anyway, my guess is trying to fit a meaningful map into the limits of an 8K cartridge will likely be the toughest part of programming this. The latest iteration of the swimming routine looks pretty good for what is possible on this platform. Super Mario Bros. was never one of my go-to games, but for something similar on the Odyssey² would be pretty impressive.