A long story and a short game

[CPFace]

Hey everyone. I'm kind of new to Atari stuff. We had a 5200 when I was little, but it was eclipsed when we got an NES. It's only recently that I've gotten interested in these classics, mostly through TV games and compilation packs.

 

I've gotten interested in homebrew development recently. I've had some experience programming in assembly, but when I heard about batari Basic, I knew I had to look into it. And I just want to say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to batari and everyone else who's gotten involved in this project. It's really nice to have a stepping stone on the way to working with full-blown assembly language and to see something working with only half a page of code.

 

I threw together my first game in about two days, and I've refined it for about two more. It's pretty simple, but I think it's worth sharing as my first attempt. It's a quick little action game based on a friend's cartoon character, a fox named Jym. The object is to catch rats and butterflies and avoid tomatoes as they fly across the screen. Right now, about the only thing that really bugs me is the control; as the speed revs up, it gets very difficult to keep control of your character. Ideally, I'd like to transplant some trackball code into the game, but I'm saving that until I understand what's happening in that Missile Command game.

 

I've posted a zip file that includes the binary, source code, and brief instructions. Enjoy if you like.

 

jym.zip

[+atari2600land]

This is the first Batari game that I know of to have in-game music, and one of the few that have any music at all. Good job!

[CPFace]

Thanks, I was pretty proud of that. n_n The theme tune is a rough translation of a traditional song called "The Fox".