Tork110

I haven't used Batari BASIC in a long time, and I abandoned some crappy games I failed to make. So I'm sharing some clips of what I have. They should be good for a laugh. And here's the game I sorta got right.

I have Bounty Bob Strikes Back, Castle Hassle, and Journey to the Planet. Sadly, the Bounty Bob cartridge overheats quickly, so I have to use emulators for that game.

I apologize if this is covered somewhere, but if I were to get an Atari 2600 homebrew game, would they work on that expansion module? If not, I may have to ask my friend for that Atari VCS she's not using.

You have to compile your programs using DOS. Try looking under accessories for Command Prompt. After you find it, you need to change your directory in the command prompt so that you're in the same directory as the one you stored all the Batari stuff in. Try this: cd C:\ATARI_DRIVE if that's the directory where you have your Batari stuff in.

Dasm is included in each version of Batari. However, I think the correct url is: http://www.atari2600.org/DASM/ The webpage is case-sensitive.

The sample file for bB 0.3 works on this computer, an XP, but it doesn't work on the Windows 98 computer. It gives me this complaint: >2600bas sample.bas C:\>preprocess <sample.bas|2600basic.exe>bB.asm File not found C:\>concatenate>sample.bas.asm Cannot open bB.asm for reading C:\>dasm sample.bas.asm -f3 -osample.bas.bin DASM V2.20.10, Macro Assembler ©1988-2004 --- Unresolved Symbol List NO_ILLEGAL_OPCODES 0000 ???? (R ) scoretable 0000 ???? (R ) --- 2 Unresolved Symbols Fatal assembly error: Source is not resolvable.

I welcome it. I haven't had much luck with Batari 0.2, so hopefully the next version will allow me to do the stuff I wanted to do without my crummy programming skills defeating me. I especially welcome the ability to use more gosubs.

Seeing how I can check off Atari 2600 from the list of systems I want to make a game for (Colecovision, NES, etc.) I'll have to say yes. Plus, I was able to make the game I wanted to make when I was reading the tutorial by Andrew Davie. Too bad I've fallen so behind on my second game. Gotta put the GameCube down and get back to that gravity algorithm I need to make. I had to scrap an earlier game I had in mind, too.

Let's just say my game is finished for now. I really want to see new versions of Batari Basic before I add more stuff, like having my sprites have more colors. I guess I should add more and more stuff but right now I want to try to see what else I can do. Right now I want to see if I can make some kind of adventure game. I think it would be great if you can have stuff like a map and an inventory and solve simple puzzles. I also want to see if a Metroid style game. I don't know if either of those are possible, but I do want to see what I can do.

wait, I meant that my opening was hard to read. Instead of alternating words, I had alternating letters, and it was really hard to read. Sorry, I was criticizing myself and not you. And yeah, that's the game. I bet the planet you got stuck on was the ruby chain planet, because I think anyone who played that game got stuck there. It was an accident when I found out the solution, which was to use the stick thingie as a flying broom or rocket or something.

My original idea for a game was to take the email "Mile" and make it into a 2600 game, but I soon found out that Strong Bad head was too big, so I took all the characters and drew them using MSPaint, and Homsar seemed like a great character who could fit in 8 pixels. If you squint real hard, you can see a fully colored Homsar in my avatar. The reason why I have a missile is because I wasn't sure how well I was going to get the dropping playfield pixels effect to work, so I threw in a bouncing missile to add extra danger. I originally planned to have Strong Bad drop up to three pixels, but the game seemed okay as it was. If I update it, I might make the game faster at certain levels, or have an extra missile, but I planned it as a game of survival. I originally wanted the score to be based on how high your sprite was, but I kept getting 64 points no matter where Homsar was, so I just made it 10. All the other stuff I added was overcompensation for the main game. The intro, the intro music, the events that happen when you reach certain scores were just me trying to cover up the main game. (Originally, the intro had letters that zig zagged, which I changed after I saw the title for Solar Plexus. I realized that people will want more than a opening that was really hard to read.) I should have animated Homsar's legs, but I was still using the first version of the BASIC tool so I had to deal with the line numbers I already had. If you look at my code, it's a mess. You know what's weird? I'm proud of the fact that I added a pause feature with one line of code. I have no idea why that stands out, but I thought it was cool that I got it to work on the first try. I don't know what I'll work on next. I do want to make a Zelda-ish game, or maybe an adventure game like the obscure "Journey to the Planets" which was made for the Atari 8-bit computers. That game starred a bald guy with a gun who traveled to 7 different planets and he had to solve puzzles to get a treasure for each.

Here is a game I had in my mind several months ago when I tried to make a game in assembly. It's based on a Strong Bad email. You have to avoid the falling blocks (giant cartoon weights) and the missile (Superball of DOOM?). I put in a ton of stuff, including quick animations at 3 different point intervals, a title screen, a quick intro, a theme tune (but no sounds within the game because I figured that would be annoying.) Press fire to start the game. The fire button has no other purpose. Press the game reset button to restart a game. Press the Black and white button to pause. Move the Joystick around to move. You get 10 points for successfully avoiding a block. You have 3 lives. In case you have never seen it, you'll need to see this flash cartoon to understand the game: http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail2.html Homsar2withsource.zip

Thanks for your help from the other day. I'm getting closer to completing the game I'm working on. My game is basically running around trying to avoid getting hit by falling pf pixels and a bouncing missile. Because I feel that that may not be great by itself, I've been trying to add everything I could think of including animations for when you reach a certain score, music, and hopefully a title screen. The music is giving me the most trouble right now. I guess I should write a quick program to find out what the TIA can do.

I have a question about the kernal. Is it suppose to be for the NTSC standard? Because my sprites seems to stretch the way it would when my old attempts at Atari 2600 programming went terribly wrong, (i.e., I used too many clock cycles for a scanline and the emulator or DASM thinks that I was trying to program for PAL.) I also can't get the colors to work for the sprites. The sprites insist on being the same color as the score. Note: This program isn't finished. It's based on an idea I had when I was trying to make a 2600 program by just assembly. It was sort of a reversed Kaboom! and based on popular web characters. I guess my concerns might be moot since the next basic thing is out, but I'm still curious if I made a mistake. Game2.zip

Stupid double post.