Yatba - (VCS/2600)

[chavert]

This game is about some guy who is lost on a planet with a lot of monsters. They have already send him a space ship to rescue him, but he don't know when it is going to land, nor where it is going to land. Maybe the space ship has already landed? Maybe it is already gone?

 

He need to find the space ship on time before the crew think he is lost forever. He hears the time tick in his head...

 

But he has also to defend himself from the different monsters that this land is rich. And the land is so large, just finding the space ship is already going to be already a challenge! Has it landed in the forest, in the mountains, at the ruins of the ancient civilisation or near the endless ocean?

 

 

 

 

 

author of this game : Yvar de Goffau : https://github.com/Yvar-deGoffau

 

 

Two versions of the game can be downloaded here (NTSC / PAL): https://github.com/Yvar-deGoffau/Yatba-VCS/tree/master/bin

[StanJr]

Visually this game is very impressive. This is exactly what I would expect a Legend of Zelda games to want to look like on the VCS. I love all the backgrounds and landscapes. Fantastic.

 

The game play is a little flat. With no apparent power-ups, the game becomes a process of "avoid the enemy and find the win." I'm not sure if the button does anything. It seems like I just run into the enemy until one of us dies. I've yet to find the ship to escape, but I've roamed a lot of map. I am hoping the location is random. It just seems a shame to have such a lush and fantastic world and have it only populated by you, the enemy, and the ship, but maybe that's the charm.

 

I'll keep playing and see if I can find the ship.

[chavert]

Picture of the space ship :

 

[+nanochess]

I'm supposed to be working on something but I couldn't resist to suggest you an optimization on your initialization code:

 

 ldy #$00					
 ldx #$FF
clrmem
 eor $00,x
 sty $00,x
 dey
 bne clrmem
 ldx #$FF					;initialise the stack at $FF
 txs						;store it into the stack pointer
 and #$7F					;make it <128
 sta seed					;and store it in the seed

This saves several bytes because there is no need to save anything at $ff, the accumulator keeps your seed thru the loop.

 

Also the $00,x generates a shorter instruction than $00,y (I've inverted the register usage for X and Y)

[s0c7]

It's an interesting idea and I like the setup. I only tried the NTSC 2 and 4k versions. Both have scanline issues. Jumps over 262 sometimes. I also played one game where I walked to the right from the first screen and the spaceship was there. You might want to tweak the placement routine so that sort of thing won't happen. I've never been a big fan of putting a timer on this sort of thing, but I understand the reasoning due to the plot. You might want to make a variation (difficulty switch or whatever) where the timer doesn't count down and you can take as long as you want. Good job so far. Keep it up!

[StanJr]

Finally found the ship! I think this is a good start to what could be a really nice game, it just seems a little empty right now.

[Yvar de Goffau]

Oh help, that is the game I made in one winter holiday and totally forgot about!

Anyway, thank you all for reminding me about it.

 

Indeed the game could use quite a bit more gameplay, and there are scanline bugs all over the place. In fact, the kernel is so bad I decided in the end it needed a complete rewrite.

I did spend quite some time pushing out the last cycle out of the system, and what I finished with was 10 times better. But then I became bored and didn't want to get back for writing new game logic.

 

So if anyone would like to build some nice zelda-like RPG for Atari, feel free to use my code!

 

quickboy.zip