seemo

I'll repost the video with a title in the emulator window. By the way, I am on v 1.2.4.

Here's a video of my entry, Grain https://youtu.be/mryZbnlqi0w

Nice game - having the background color randomly picked detracts from the feel of progression through the levels, imho - sometimes it is hard to read the score due to the playfield color: score should be presented below the colored playfield, over a fixed background color (e.g. black) - when the game is over, the hi-score should be displayed, alternating with the last score - I attached an alternative bitmap for the car - when the game ends because of a collision with two cars, one car disappears (this does not happen when the car that caused game over is a single car) - the nice level up sequence could benefit from a (very) short music/audio effect (silence contrasts too much with the nice visual effect, imho) - what about implementing 'Near Misses' a-la burnout ? If you can 'measure' the horizontal distance, between the player car and the enemies, whenever an overtake happens, you could add an amount of points inversely proportional to such distance. The audio effect could reflect the amount of points awarded for each overtake (risky overtake --> more points --> high pitched / safe overtake --> less points --> low pitched) Keep up the great work!

Excellent game, I especially like the way you can control the Ninja jump, just by 'adjusting' with the fire button: mastering its use is part of the addictive quality of the game The overall presentation is nice and has a distinct feel to it. Good job on the sounds, too: I really like how you didn't make the jump sound effect too obtrusive. Just a few notes: - I would try to make the game display always 262 scanlines, even when transitioning between different game states - no lava: I am not sure that the azure lines, on top of the screen, fit well with the remaining background colors (see "to the left.png") - no lava: when the ninja floats between the surfaces to the right, its sprite is oriented towards the left (see "to the left.png") - I would try to make the 'grasp' sprite a little less stiff, with a little curl (see "grasp.png") - the bonus letters are displayed too early: this makes them briefly appear on the leftmost part of the screen (see "early bonus.png") - the last drawn line before the room number is incomplete (see "incomplete line.png") - the deadly vertical beam briefly returns to the left, before moving towards the ninja (see "line jump" below) - when the deadly vertical beam starts moving towards the ninja, it would be nice to hear a sound effect (to highlight the impending menace) - something happens to the vertical beam when the game is over: once it reaches an horizontal position (see "black beam.png") it starts becoming black (see "black_beam_2.png") - it would be very nice to have the hi-score displayed somewhere (maybe alternating with the last score during the title screen or during the game over screen) - let me add a couple of labels, just because Most importantly, many thanks for sharing the game! (line jump)

Just to add that Stella 4.1.1 window does not appear if called from Programmer's Notepad (v2.3.4.2350-charles), too. Unfortunately, windows event registry does not show any error/message.

I just tried typing the same exact call that is issued from Crimson Editor inside a command window (ver. 6.1.7601) and Stella 4.1.1 starts without any problem. As about the runtimes, I had already installed them, as the execution of the downloaded file in your link (vcredist_x86) prompted me to either repair or uninstall them. Anyway I went with 'repair', to see if something needed fixing, but even after the repair procedure (which ended without errors) I still could not call Stella from Crimson Editor.

Calling Stella 4.1.1 from Crimson Editor (via the User Tools keyboard shortcut) does not show the Emulator Window... a process (named Stella.exe) is shown in the Task Manager list, but no entry appears in the Applications tab (I am on Windows 7 32bit). Calling Stella 4.1.1 from an explorer window opens up the emulator without any problem. Version 3.9.3 works without any problem in Crimson Editor.

- I removed an audio variation to make the in-game 'music' more cohesive - the playfield background color has been darkened - the joystick control routine is now more accurate, resulting in a more precise cursor movement - the cursor and the line are not shown when the game is over - I reinstated cells movement when the line runs across the playfield. To avoid skipping patterns (as shown in a previous post), whenever cells are moved I force the pattern checking routine to restart on the same column. As a side effect, this causes the line to abruptly move back to the beginning of the column - to avoid this, the line is briefly hidden when the cells are moved. - the timer has been made a little slower, to compensate for the increased difficulty due to the cells movement - the first seconds of the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g56qwIF01aA made me suspect that the 'full' colored pattern, displayed on top of the screen, induced the player to try to reproduce a 'full' pattern using 'striped' cells. So, to avoid any confusion, the pattern to compose, and the next one below, are displayed with 'striped' colors if they are made of a single color, or with both colors if they are mixed-color patterns. palomino_20140510.bin

- now the playfield has a gray background color (this made me tweak the colors... for a change ) - I have added a 'message' area, between the playfield and the score, that says 'press fire'/'get ready'/'game over'/'oh yeah' (when a pattern is cleared) peace palomino_20131007.bin

@roryjr & Nognir : thanks When I started developing this game, I had no particular reference... I just started by making a game where square patterns got picked up randomly on the screen (see http://atariage.com/forums/blog/269/entry-10077-atlas-presents-palomino/), and evolved from that concept. Anyway, it's not like you can develop a simple pattern-based puzzle game in 2013, and expect it to be completely original ... take this great Jaguar Homebrew game for example (which I recently discovered) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O0QMamDdME So yes, Palomino is a completely original game and... no, Palomino is not a completely original game - generating a random number of mixed-color patterns felt too uneven, so I reworked the code and made it possible to control the number of mixed-color patterns for each level ( 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ) - since mixed-color patterns are part of the game difficulty progression now, they are not awarded twice the points anymore - score values have been reduced - the first levels are a little faster, and the last levels are a little slower now - when bonus mode gets extended, the 'bonus mode' label gets briefly replaced by an 'extend !' label - playfield movement directions should be more evenly distributed peace palomino_20130927.bin