themewsh

It’s what I’m doing to stay motivated - I say do it!

Long time forum browser, recently have gotten into messing with bB, and just ordered my Harmony cart to play my little experiments on real hardware. I have to say that this rekindling of excitement is 100% attributed to the 2600+, bB, and Harmony. I have a weird hangup about treating original hardware with kids gloves, but having something new and in my mind less likely to fail / get abused in a house full of kids, the 2600+ has led directly to a Harmony purchase (even if it is a ROM dumper and can only handle one ROM at a time on the cart). Cheers to this community and the work that has gone into making what once felt impossible completely accessible for us technically enthused but less talented lifetime Atari fans!

GOT IT! Thank you again, this has been a really fun learning exercise and now that I have some of the fundamentals down I can get to work on adding little bits and bobs in! Posting functional maze with lives and objects and enemy here in case it helps anyone else. @Random Terrain @splendidnut @alfredtdk - thanks for your patience and sample code. I know its not really a full game, but cobbling bits together has been really satisfying. Maze_Sample_Collision_Items_Lives.bas

Gotcha, I had spaced them out bc I couldnt get anything to appear on screen when I had them all together. Sounds like I need to work on placement more than anything, I really appreciate your help and patience!

That worked for getting the stick to move! I put the dim in the beginning of the code, followed by an initial xy, and then the array. I called the subroutine in the main loop and put the subroutine itself right at the end of bank2. I must've done something wrong with placement or something though bc its throwing the missile/stick way outside of the coordinates in the array. Any thought on why that might be? Im going to continue poking at it. Squatchin_Around_object_movement.bas

Omg I feel really silly…thank you! Looking forward to getting back into it tomorrow, thank you again!

In the absence of an "and" statement I think I am stuck without using variables or constants, but I'm not totally clear on whether or not fixed coordinates can be used as variables or constants for missile placement. Where I'm at is that I want a missile to appear on the playfield, when it collides with the player, it moves to a different location, when touched again it returns to the original. In my mind it would look like: if collision(missile0.player0) AND missile0x = 1 : missile0y = 1 then missile0x = 2 : missile0y = 2 if collision(missile0.player0) AND missile0x = 2 : missile0y = 2 then missile0x = 1 : missile0y = 1 Obviously that isn't possible with bB (or I just havent seen it / figured it out), but I keep spinning wheels on, how do I define those fixed positions as constants? Is it better to do: const _c_M01X = 1 const _c_M01Y = 1 const _c_M02X = 2 const _c_M02Y = 2 Or is it better to do: const _c_position1 = missile0x = 1 : missile0y = 1 const _c_position2 = missile0x = 2 : missile0y = 2 Thinking that once thats ironed out it might be something like: if collision(missile0.player0) _c_position1 then _c_position2 if collision(missile0.player0) _c_position2 then _c_position1 Has anyone ever done something similar? The idea is that the player will be forced to constantly move around the map to gain points by picking up the missile.

That's a fun workaround that I hadn't considered! I am very new to this, thank you for the suggestion. Right now Im fiddling around trying to figure a way to get the object (missile in this case) to different coordinates. I can move it from an initial position to a secondary on collision easily enough, but getting it to reset back to the first spot after getting picked up at the second is giving me a hard time. Once I get that figured out, I think I'll circle back and check out your suggestion, thank you again, and Im all ears if you have any ideas on the issue Im running into moving them around the maze.

Thank you! Mystery solved!

I'm continuing to have a lot of fun on this journey of figuring out bB, and again, big thanks to the years of code here and on RT's site. I've got my guys running around in a maze, and I want to have the user (player0) pick up a "french toast stick" (because he's a sasquatch and it seems logical he'd like them), get 10 points and then another stick appears on the other side of the playfield, get that one and the cycle continues with the sticks rotating around the corners of the playfield based on collisions with the user. Every 50 points the enemy speeds up or gets more aggressive, and it just continues like that until the user runs out of lives or gets bored. If you press the fire button it makes a little boop and it messes with the enemy counter as your "weapon/deterrent". I wouldn't call it a game as much as a tech demo / tinker project, but it is really fun. My current issue (source attached) is that I have missile1 starting in the bottom corner, and if you grab that you get ten points and its moved off screen until it needs to be called again once a collision with missile0 occurs, but for the life of me I can't understand why missile0 isnt showing up on screen. No matter where I try and place it, even independent of the desired events just trying to get it to appear isnt working - am I wrong in that it should match the color of player0? The only thing I can think of is that im missing it bc I messed up on understanding how its color works and its just "hiding" somewhere on the screen. Any help is appreciated, on any of the concepts really, but specifically on using missiles as score generating items. Squatchin_Around_TEST.bas

I am such a knucklehead - I assumed like a dummy that it would default to 6 lives…I defined the number of lives at the start and got the display working! thanks again! considering this solved!

Editing for clarity. Thank you, I tried inline at the end of the last bit of code per this thread: That didnt do the trick, so I just tried it and "include" at the beginning of the last bank following your guidance and got the same result - everything compiles fine but nothing shows up on the screen. I do appreciate your helping me out, I will keep at it until it works - and I fully admit I might just be looking at it all wrong or missing something here. Squatchin_Around_TEST_counter.bas

Thank you, I really like the idea of adding extra blank tiles! I love RT's site, but I think I must be doing something wrong with the location of the 6lives.asm file because I can't get anything to display to even consider taking that next slick step. Does it need to live anywhere other than where it sits in bB/includes/6lives.asm ? Unrelated, I did add little noise for the fire button today that trips the enemy sprites timer to "confuse" its behavior on screen, so progress is happening! Thanks again, I'll keep poking this thing.

So I've been clacking bits of code together like rocks and have to admit I am too in the weeds to know what's next. Ive been trying to build a basic maze chase concept where the player loses a life if they touch the bad guy and the playfield resets...I have a long way to go, but where I am stuck now is the life counter. I want the player to have three lives, each time they touch the bad guy they lose one life. When there's no lives left, the screen color changes, things freeze, and its game over. Right now Ive got my sprites in - Ive got a color change on collision, but need to tie that to a life counter, and the issue Im having is just getting a life counter to work in general. I have read several guides online and Im just not getting it regarding the minikernels. This code right now is all standing on the shoulders of people who have been at this for much longer, and I humbly admit my contributions have been minute, but I am hoping someone here can help me understand what I need to do to get a life counter of basic little squares to display and count down, culminating in game over. Any guidance is appreciated, thank you! Squatchin_Around.bas

It was indeed on shelves in physical space able to be purchased - and even had some sales.