SQUISHING IN FULL EFFECT! New update. Still not technically playable, since you can't die, but pretty close now.
Changes:
-Player now moves at correct speed in all directions and is animated when he moves sideways.
-Only can squish enemies by actually stomping on them.
-Enemies are generated correctly (i.e., 1 blank row, 15 rows of 1st enemy, 16 rows of 2nd enemy, 1 row with bonus item, 15 rows of 3rd enemy, 1 row with suitcase, repeat).
To do:
-clean up kernel transitions, tighten
YOU GOTTA LOVE WORDS WITH CONSECUTIVE 'u's in them, even if they are made up.
Anyway, I gave it the ol' college try, but I couldn't quite get a playable version done last night.
Changes:
-Added legs-up animation when you press the button.
-Enemies can be squished! Er, just by touching them. The timing on this needs work also.
-Constrained player movement. This is now done, except for animating the little bastard and getting his left/right speed correct.
-Added some of the scori
THINGS ARE MOVING ALONG, though my self-imposed deadlines are looming and looking more and more unrealistic the closer they get!
Unsurprisingly. I'll keep plugging away, though, and we'll see what happens.
The Latest!
Big changes:
-Scrolling now works, though the kernel isn't completely tightened up yet.
-Randomly generating girders, monster colors and positions.
-Moving monsters.
-Player movement constrained. Now pressing up scrolls the screen, down does nothing.
-Matchi
AS I'VE MENTIONED a few times before, I am mainly interested in video games as far as I can play them. By this, I mean I am not especially interested in acquiring rare games unless they are fun to play. So, as I apply my limited funds towards classic video games I have been faced with a dilemma: which games are any good? You can read reviews, of course, and I do, but that has limitations. A good review should give you some objective information about the game, but all reviews are subjective
SQUISHING CONTINUES! Oh, I slay me.
Anyway. Did some more work last couple of nights.
Changes:
-Rewrote part of kernel to use actual enemy graphics (without 13 trailing zeroes)
-Animating enemy graphics. This, as I mentioned before, is amazingly easy. Even easier than I thought it would be: I just take the frame counter variable and write it to REFP0. That's it.
-Added six-digit score
-Got girder color-changes into the kernel, looks much nicer now.
-Moving the brick. I'm
RETURN OF SQUISH 'EM! I haven't forgotten or dropped this project! Here's the latest code and binary.
Where I'm at:
-Kernel is mostly there, just needs a few things here and there and some tightening up. I think I introduced a page-crossing error last night which is why the "enemy" graphics are messed up a little.
-Converted all graphics to data. Discovered something interesting in the process: all enemy/item animation is done by flipping the reflection register. Very nice! It's also
YOU, TOO, CAN MAKE your Atari talk!
Nathan wanted a ROM that he could modify/play around with that would make the AtariVox speak, so I jumped at the chance to get coding again. Here it is:
SpeechTester20070802.bin
SpeechTesterSource.zip
The ROM currently supports up to 4 different speech strings, though only one has anything in it right now: the "go fish" from the game of the same name.
Switch between speech strings with SELECT, start/restart a speech string with the trigger, a
I HAD AN UTTERLY RANDOM thought this morning, an idea for a game:
What if you took Missile Command, flipped it upside down and put it under water?
I.e., rather than protecting a city from missiles, you would be protecting a ship from torpedos/etc. You would drop depth charges (and...?).
Has this ever been done?
WHEN I SHOULD HAVE been working on my Elevators/Maids game during the past week, I was instead working on this:
RType20070329.bin
EDIT: Fixed a bug or two: RType20070329.bin
I was inspired partially by Manuel's post about the NES' lack of R-Type clones and partially by the idea of writing one for the 2K minigame competition.
I started with my Metroid code, since it conveniently had an asymmetrical playfield plus intelliflickered sprites.
I've pared it down from 32K to about 3K
I DON'T THINK I've ever shared this unfinished project.
FD20061003.bin
The concept:
You man an anti-aircraft turret located in the center of a besieged city. It is up to you to defend your city from enemy aircraft.
Very loosely inspired by Fighter Pilot.
Details/dreams:
-would use a crosshair to aim. The crosshair would be free-moving, the screen would scroll when the crosshair reached the edge of the screen
-use 24+ pixel width sprites for enemy aircraft
-changing weather/v
THIS IS COMPLETELY unrelated to Atari. Just so you know.
Last night I played in the 8th game (of 10) of the winter season of my soccer league. We play weekly, year round, and I've been playing with this team, Mayhem, for about five years.
Last season we pretty much dominated, going 7-1-2 before the debacle of the championship game (which involved a sh***y ref, a red card, and losing ).
This season, despite having mostly the same players, hasn't been so rosy. Before last night's g
AN OLDIE but a goodie? I was looking back through my super-sprite-multiplexor demos and I realized that I never shared the latest revision of the space shooter demo. So here it is:
spcinvdr.bin
It handles 12 sprites (two are used for the player) plus 2 missiles flickered for 4 bullets. It also detects collisions, both missile-to-sprite and sprite-to-sprite.
gac.v10.zipgac.v12.zipgac.v121.1.zip
EDIT: Attached source: gac.v10.zip
I'm not actively working on this right now (and I h
...AS LONG as no bugs crop up.
GoFishExtended20070221.bin
Changes:
-modified title screen
-changed eel colors to be more visible
Issues:
-Eel flashing doesn't show very well when eels are in the very top row. Oh well.
Unless any bugs show up, this is done.
AFTER ALL MY WHINING earlier, it ended up not being too difficult after all:
GoFishExtended20070220.bin
Changes:
-six digit scoring
-single, six-digit high score
-high score is saved to AVox EEPROM at a different location than the regular Go Fish! high scores
-added (previously PAL-only) fish color changes: fish are darker at bottom and lighter at the top. Thomas' suggestion; this helps the fish be more visible - he suggested it too late for the NTSC version
Issues:
-Eel
FINALLY got my post-Christmas order from AA. Thanks, Al!
Received:
Crazy Balloon
Lady Bug
Toyshop Trouble
Atari Arcade Classics (for my PC)
I was hoping to receive BLiP Football; I wasn't sure whether or not Al was going to comp me a free one. But David, you definitely promised me one (waaaaaaaay back when) so cough it up!
Anyway, had a little fun playing those, though not a lot of time. Manuel, what's the status on the Helium Heroes patches? Have they all been claimed? D
SO AFTER A LONGISH hiatus from 2600 coding I've begun to dive back in. This coincides with finishing the first new (to me) Zelda game I've played in about 4 years. Complete coincidence.
So, a few days ago I got some of the rust off by writing a buzzer program. I'll probably get back to that and add some sounds a tweak up the controls a little for Murph74, but last night I returned to Go Fish!
And boy has it been a while.
I spent about two hours last night trying to, essentially
A NEW YEAR! TIME TO MAKE plans! What...February already? Oh well, better late than never.
Anyway, my plans for the year have come into focus only recently, so I thought I'd share.
Major Projects:
1. Finish the Maids+Elevators game.
2. Port Squish 'Em to the 2600.
Minor Projects:
1. Modify Go Fish! to allow higher scores (or allow the score to "roll") for a few folks that can actually max it out.
2. Mystery project that I'm working on with Nathan Strum.
Details:
Squis
IN VARIOUS threads folks have written that such and such system has a poor library of games and it got me a bit curious.
So, using various sources (most AtariAge and Digital Press) I tried to compile a count of games for each system.
Here it is (US releases only).
First, most to least (I last updated the current consoles a week ago)
PS1 1401
PS2 1262
NES 772
SNES 722
Genesis 706
2600 653
XBox 600
GC 528
N64 298
Dreamcast 252
Saturn
SO. I had plans for 2006:
Oh-fer! I rock!
In more detail:
I came up with an idea and did maybe 15-25% of the programming. Got a little bogged down with the SC's/2600's limitations and didn't really have time last summer for much programming. I am thinking about picking this up again, but other projects have a higher priority.
Started a bunch of stuff but didn't really come close to finishing anything. Made a big push to get the Elevators+Maid game done by Christmas but my invol
OK, NOT THAT DIFFERENT. But I did free up seven bytes of RAM, which is pretty huge. I finally wrapped my mind around supercat's fractional-position replacement - it was a little tricky because, unlike his example (16 speeds between 0 and 2 lines per frame) I wanted 64 speeds between 1/2 and 2 lines per frame (LPF). I ended up going with 64 speeds between 1/2 and 2 1/2 LPF, using a counter which goes from 0 to 32 and a 128-byte table (i.e., thirty-two 32-bit entries). I realized about halfway
BACK TO STRIPED elevators, based on feedback. I thought this would give me lots of RAM back - but it wasn't to be.
I really wanted to add stairs on either side of the screen, and I just couldn't fit it into the old kernel. So I've gone back (again) to the RAM-hungry kernel that supercat suggested.
And so now RAM is an issue. Probably can make it work, though.
So new binary: still isn't playable - I was too tired last night to add the code back in that moves you up a floor and incr
LATEST 'N' NOT-SO-GREATEST version of the Elevator Repairman knockoff:
ElevRep20061025.bin
The sprites is all screwed up because I rewrote part of the kernel and didn't have time to fix the variable setup routines. The kernel works fine; the variables just aren't being setup properly. But that's no big deal.
Oh yeah, I also took out a bunch of stuff (score, 48-char display, etc.) that was using RAM - I needed the RAM and I didn't want to waste time optimizing when the kernel is s
ELEVATOR REPAIRMAN, now kinda playable. Also rethemed a bit:
ElevRep20061011.bin
Changes: I stopped trying to develop the 1K and 4K versions simultaneously and am now using a table to change the background color, rather than manipulating the line counter and plugging that into COLUBK. Also created a sprite. Also cleaned up the display a bit, tweaked the left/right boundaries.
The main changes, though: a) the score, b) the timer, and c) collisions. It's all very rough, but now all of
SO I THINK I've finally found my project: A port of Elevator Repairman.
I loved that game 20 years ago and I decided that I wanted to write a version for the 2600. My goal is to write a rock-solid 4K version of this and have it done by the end of the year. We'll see if that happens...
I also think a stripped down version is a good candidate for a 1K game; my plan is to work on that after the 4K version is done.
Here's what I've got so far:
ElevRep20061009.bin
Nothing too spec
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