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billkendrick

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About billkendrick

  • Birthday 05/04/1975

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Olympia, WA
  • Interests
    BASIC, Action!, games, demoscene, history

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  1. My 11 year old just tried it out, and got up to level 14 before I sent him off to get ready for bed. Level 13 was a laugh riot.
  2. Fantastic work. I've been eager to play this since seeing some videos of it a few months back. Even my teenager was impressed by the visuals.
  3. I sat on this one for a while. Here's 0.1 beta 9, which slows the gameplay down a bit. It includes four more levels, and has a much more pleasant bonus score tally sound. Here's a video: firefighter-0.1-BETA9-2023-10-17.zip
  4. Hrm interesting! If I'm understanding it right, it sounds as though my game would only work with an SNES controller, with the the SNACK device in "enhanced" mode. Sound about right? I say this because I'd want the player to be able to press one or two of those firebuttons at once, to allow for 8-way control. The SNES has its four fire buttons in a diamond arrangement, not QUITE as 'square' as a PlayStation controller, but I'm guessing it'd work in a pinch. Alas, I don't have any SNES controllers, nor a SNACK, so I'm not sure how I could test this. Would you be interested in providing a patch? The code's on GitHub!
  5. Here's 0.1-BETA8! I've added some more documentation and history, which is included in the ZIP and can also be seen right on GitHub: Design docs (scanned & annotated, with some notes/context): https://github.com/billkendrick/firefighter/tree/main/design-docs Overview of what's in the font / character set (aka tile graphics): https://github.com/billkendrick/firefighter/tree/main/fonts Sneak peak: The main functional change is a quality-of-life one: Includes another stand-alone (non-disk) XEX version, `fireftfn.xex`, which can read/write settings and a single high score to your FujiNet device (via App Key storage)! Non-changes: It still runs "too fast" (as of the recent optimizations) No new levels firefighter-0.1-BETA8-2023-09-26.zip
  6. NOTE: Due to some optimizations (see below) the game seems to play a bit faster than before. I'll tune things as I continue working on it. 0.1-beta-7 (2023-09-21): Gameplay: Pushing joystick into a valve no longer causes it to toggle open/close quickly. Release joystick, then push into the valve again to toggle. Splash: Added a splash screen (disk version) Title screen: Pause [Select] key repeat when wrapping back to level 1 Help screen: Page breaks every horizontal rule (section break). Building: "tools/release.sh" checks Makefile version vs README.md WIP - Optimizations: (h/t https://github.com/ilmenit/CC65-Advanced-Optimizations and Irgendwer @ AtariAge) --static-locals (instead of using the stack (slower)) Replaced a bunch of int (habit!) with char Replaced enum constants with #define-ed ones Avoid multiplication when doing shape look-up and placement (shape_at() and set_shape() now use a look-up table) Replaced some "+= 2" and "-= 2" with "++" and "--" twice. Improved Display List construction (some use of memset() or static arrays) firefighter-0.1-BETA7-2023-09-21.zip
  7. And here's 0.1-beta-6 (2023-09-16): Gameplay: When a worker dies, there's a short grace period until the game will allow another worker to die. Ability to slide along obstacles when pushing diagonally. Ax indicator moved from top right to top left; using icon. Exit counter moved from top left to top right. Help screen: Help text word-wrapped at 38 chars (instead of 40); improves readability if you [C]opy "D:README.TXT,E:" from DOS with Atari OS's default left-margin of 2 Two more levels firefighter-0.1-BETA6-2023-09-16.zip
  8. I've worked on it here and there over the past few weeks, and posted a few more betas onto my website & GitHub. Sorry for not posting about them here on AtariAge! Still no new levels yet; just the four you've already seen. Here's a list of what's changed since "beta 2" (which posted in this thread a few weeks ago), and "beta 5" (attached to this post), if you're curious: Gameplay: Lose 3 workers and the game ends. Score deduction when crates are destroyed by fire, too (not just ax). Hint to player to push door to initial exit countdown Exit countdown (when pushing into door) dropped from 5 to 3 (h/t Will) Bonus tally timing made consistent (regardless of score added) Title screen: Reorganized/updated instructions on title screen (h/t @rdefabri & @Beeblebrox) Improved [Select] key repeat for level select High score: High score initials input at end of game (joystick and keyboard both supported) High score(s) recorded (top-10, saved to disk, in disk version) (TNFS server / FujiNet high score capable!) High score table screen (disk version) (access via [H] on title screen) Help screen: Ability to page backwards Added numbering & indentation to documentation Bugfixes: Score deductions (e.g., crate destruction) with a very low score (e.g., 000000) could cause score to wrap around to a crazy high value. Misc: Level data is compressed Disabled attract mode. Character set (font) improvements Aside from adding many more levels & playtesting, the only main "TODO" item I have is to add a 'grace period' between workers dying. If you have a bunch of them all near fire, you could easily lose three very quickly, causing the game to end. (It's one of those "stacking the deck" or "load the dice" tricks we do to help, or hinder, the outcome for the player. 😈) firefighter-0.1-BETA5-2023-09-13.zip
  9. Oh, hehe. When no more workers are on the screen (either rescued, or have perished), go to the door or exit sign again, and push into it with the stick. A countdown timer (my son says I should make it shorter) will appear at the top left. Once it hits zero, you exit. I did this so that you had the opportunity to put the fire out after rescuing the last worker. (Otherwise, you might just exit immediately if you hold the stick down too long while sending a worker on their way.) I suppose I could make this more obvious on the title screen's scant instructions.
  10. New beta! Gas leaks don't appear immediately, giving you some time to walk past after spraying them with water. Also, your last level played, and left/right stick swap choice are saved in the ATR version. firefighter-0.1-BETA2-2023-08-23.zip
  11. I'm curious how the dual CX-40 setup works for you; I always figured they'll be a bit mushy. How was my game with that rig? How is Robotron? I'm privileged to have a nice Edladdin "Super Twin 78" arcade-style controller. It's been great for Robotron. It's also great for 2-player games, like Mario Bros. and Joust [they're, like, the same game, maaan!], although I wish the fire buttons were on the other side. However, I've been out of town during most of this game's development, so have to admit that so far I've only had the chance to try out my game on my real Atari, with real controllers[*], before there was much of a game at all! For the past week I've been using Atari800 emulator my laptop keyboard during development. [*] And turns out I like moving with the right (arrow keys), and spraying with the left (WASD), which is why I added the option to flip controls on a real joystick setup. (Heh, though I suppose swapping cables would have worked, too, huh? 🙃)
  12. Aha yes whoops. I need to be sure to test things with a single stick, sorry! Thanks for testing!!!
  13. If you spray a gas leak, you can walk through it
  14. Over the past week, I've put together a new game for the Atari 8-bit. The graphics aren't so hot (no pun intended), but so far it's turning out pretty fun. You play as a firefighter trying to rescue people from a burning building. The main method of play is with a twin-stick setup (a la Robotron: 2084 or Smash TV) -- one stick to move, the other to shoot spray water. It can be played with a single stick -- use the fire button + direction to spray -- but you cannot move while spraying, so you'll be at a disadvantage. It's written in C (cross-compiled with CC65) and released as open source under the GPLv3 license. It runs as a stand-alone XEX, or as an ATR disk image. (The latter offers built-in help, and will eventually record a high-score table back to disk.) Learn more & download it from: http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/firefighter/ Screenshots of the title screen and first two levels are attached, as is the 0.1-beta1 release (includes source, XEX, and ATR). Tell me what you think! firefighter-0.1-BETA1-2023-08-22.zip
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