BEEN CHECKIN' OUT NES tunes a little. The title tracks for 8 Eyes and Adventure Island III are pretty good.
Anyway, over the weekend made some progress - not as much as I'd hoped - on the Four-Play tune: FourPlaySong20060820.bin
Changed: volume of some notes in bass line; also played with the drum track a little. Didn't really do enough to count as "progress" but there it is.
New deadline is end of the month; you can all watch me panic as we get closer...
EDIT: ...And in ca
INCH BY INCH - I'm getting there! I've been crazy busy the last three weeks trying to, essentially, remodel my bathroom. But I did block out some time this past weekend to work on the Four-Play tune and, though computer issues almost thwarted me - well, that and a little thing called Super Street Fighter II - I did manage to write the rest of the tune.
Now I just need to code it, write the drums, and polish it to a shine.
First, here's what my labor over the weekend produced:
An
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
WELL, WE'LL see if I'm really done.
But last night I finished the Four-Play song: FourPlaySong20060828.bin
Did:
-tweaked some of the slide-y runs (made them louder and shortened one of them)
-added some crescendos/decrescendos to the melody. Nothing real obvious, maybe too subtle, but I think it gives it a bit of shape.
-drums tweaked. Didn't mess with the 2nd drum beat (I think), but very slightly changed some of the drum breaks and added just the hi-hat back in to the part near
NOW I'M GETTING SOMEWHERE! Last night, after a relatively early soccer game, put in some more time on the Four-Play tune - and finished the evening fairly satisfied with what I'd done, unlike last time.
Latest: FourPlaySong20060824.bin
Did:
Reworked the main drum beat slightly; I think I'm pretty satisfied with it now.
Added/refined some of the drum breaks; satisfied with all of them except for the last one.
Also adjusted the volume of the 2nd bass-line, pretty happy with that no
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
WHAT COULD A 2600 FOOD FIGHT LOOK LIKE?I started thinking about this after reading a little in the 7800 forum.Here's what I came up with:Player1: CharleyPlayer0: Chefs (each freely roaming but not overlapping vertically)Thrown food: MissilesFood on floor, manholes, and ice cream cone: Ball.In a 2-line kernel, I think it would be possible to:-Draw Charley and the chefs with single-line resolution, changing color every line on Charley; chefs would be single-color.-Draw the thrown food (missiles) e
SLIGHT DIGRESSION HEREHad an idea for a SC game so I thought I'd put it up here to document it.I've thought before about making some kind of cool 4-player game, but the controllers available for 4-player games (paddles) are somewhat limiting.But then yesterday, while perusing klov.com, I saw a game (that I can no longer locate ) that inspired me.Here's a mockup:So, it's a side-scrolling space shooter. Old hat. Except! You can have four players all playing simultaneously, cooperatively! Well,
WELL, THAT was a whirlwind! Finished up Squish 'Em with just days to spare.
I posted the list of differences vs. the A8 version in the Squish 'Em thread, but I thought I'd recap here and try to collect my thoughts about my next project(s).
First, Squish 'Em - this turned out waaaay better than I thought. It was easier than I hoped (and a lot of fun ) to disassemble the A8 source, which allowed me to get the timings to match exactly and the sounds to match very very closely. I still h
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
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
ARKANOID 2600?
Next up, my flier for an Arkanoid port to the 2600.Let's see...July 18 2005 looks like the latest source I have.Here's the latest, buggy, binary: It also has a thread in the homebrew forum.Here's a screenshot:Judging from the date on the latest source I have, I last worked on it January 21st of this year.Here's a screenshot:Status of this project:Preliminary, working kernel written, with 15x16 brick playfield, two larger balls, two (flickering) enemies, and a paddle-controlled, u
THANKSGIVING MEANS ATARI at our house. Well, kinda. Anyway, thought some of you, especially Chris, might appreciate this:
The bearded one is me, the two small guys are Danny and Mikey (my boys), and my brother, Tommy (aka HeckYesIDid), is the scruffy looking guy sitting closest to the camera.This is at my folks' place on Thanksgiving.Good times.
TWO MORE TUNES today.
Also thought I'd show a little progression in the development of a tune.
Here's the 2600-ization of the title screen song from Wizards & Warriors:
2puck.zip
Tommy whipped that up for me a few weeks ago on a whim, I guess.
Here's the first draft of that: That's just the notes.
Here's the 2nd draft: 2puck.zip For this one, I made the lower notes (in the first measure, the 2nd, 4th, etc.) a little softer, I made the countermelody articulated, and I twe
YOU WANT IT? YOU GOT IT.
Several people have expressed a desire for a true arcade pong on the 2600, most recently here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=76696
Well...I decided to code it. Sort of. The kernel, anyway.Check it out.
apong.bin
APONG_source.zip
Use paddle 0 and paddle 1 to move the, uh, paddles. I probably won't take this project much further but maybe someone else will.
Anyway, that's why I attached the source.
OVER THE WEEKEND I FINISHED entering all the notes for the Battle With Gilgamesh tune.
All that's left is tweaking a few notes, adding percussion, and adding volume changes.
Here's a MIDI of the original tune, so you can hear how close (or not) we got.
You can hear that the 2600 version is a little too fast. But that's OK, I think, since then you don't have as much time to hear the odd out-of-tune note.
FOLLOWING ON THE DISCUSSION in Manuel's blog, I thought I'd try to present and, possibly, collect some ideas for a possible re-written Combat game. Like Zach said, doing for Combat what Gunfight did for Outlaw.So, my initial list of desireable/possible features for a rewritten tank game:1- or 2-playersAsymmetrical terrain/mazeScrolling terrainMultiple projectilesMultiple vehicle types (beyond tanks & airplanes)PowerupsMultiple terrain types (walls, water, etc.)Any other thoughts or comments
SO HOOKED UP MY 130XE a couple of weeks ago and I have been enjoying Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Defender.But the disks! The disks! So many games...And my 1050 sits next to the 130XE, so close but yet so far apart. I don't have an SIO cable! The ones we used to have are lost, somewhere.Can anybody help me out, and tell me where it is possible to pick these up*?*Besides ebay. Ebay is my last resort.
DID A LITTLE WORK DURING my lunch break today on The Battle of Gilgamesh. Some of the notes are wildly out of tune but either a) they aren't that out of tune or b) it's so fast - in any case, it doesn't sound so bad to me.
I'll attach the music also so you can see what I'm working from here.
EDIT: I suppose a few notes on the music are in order. First, notice that there are 16th-note triplets in there. The version of my music driver I'm using doesn't allow for triplets, so they ar
OK, ENOUGH tomfoolery with Gilgamesh.
I did a little more work on the "tune" last night. Well, to be more precise, since I last posted about the tune, I did some more work on paper laying out how the structure of the song and, last night, I started to impose that structure on the tune.
Here are the froots of my labors: tune20060710.bin
I didn't change the melody at all, I just added some drum breaks and some drums underneath the harmony part near the (current) end.
Basically,
I ACTUALLY FINISHED THE first round of categorization a week or so ago but, well, I was kinda distracted by other things. :ponder:So here is an overview:Categorized 458 2600 games:341 Action games (74%)21 Adventure games (5%)13 Driving/Racing games (3%)9 Educational games (2%)1 RPG (0%)15 Simulation games (3%)35 Sports games (8%)3 Strategy games (1%)18 Tablegame games (4%)2 ?? games (0%)The ?? games are Basic Programming and Minesweeper. Actually, I'm assuming Minesweeper is a clone of the PC g
...AND IN THIS CORNERSo...what to do, what to do? What should be my next project for the 2600?So far, I've completed Go Fish! and Go Fish! 1K. M-4 is essentially completed; mostly I am waiting for an inspired idea to fill up the almost-1K of ROM I have left.I've begun too many projects. They are, in sort of chronological order:Running Man: a horizontally-scrolling platformer. This was my first (probably too-ambitious) 2600 project - I stopped work on it for two reasons: I didn't know how to
BLOG BLOG A-BLOGGYWell, I had a blog, once. Still have it, I guess, though I've only updated it twice in the past year or so. So I resisted creating yet another blog. Yet here I am, blogging. Why?Well, I've had so much fun and learned a bunch reading others' blogs* here on AA that I thought maybe I would start one as well, mostly documenting the work I do on various 2600 projects, and maybe other people will enjoy it as well.We'll see how it goes. *Specifically, the game-development blogs o
...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.
WAS TOO LAZY AND/OR distracted to get much work done on the tune mentioned below, but I did get a little done on another 2600 tune.
This one is not for anything in particular, Tommy just asked me to code it about six months ago for fun and, while he was over Monday night, we coded the first four measures:
It is a 2600-izing of a tune called The Battle of Gilgamesh or something similar, from Final Fantasy V (I think).
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