I have a habit of checking out the 2600 programming forums every week or so, and two weeks ago I started commenting on the topic Advanced sound techniques: how do they work? My interest in this topic was mostly in sample playback. I've been messing with digital sound samples since 1990, and I was very impressed when I found out a couple years ago that the 2600 was capable of playing back decent quality sound samples. My only exposure to this was the Berzerk Voice-Enhanced, which is a thing of
The visuals are similar, so no screenshot.colecovision_price_liet.zipNew Features:- Joystick fire button support.- 2 mutli-frame player shots, using Missle 0. Currently only shoots to the right.- Shot delay counter to prevent player shots from appearing right on top of each other.Todo:- Support for firing in all directions.- 16-bit engine for player shots.- 16 animation postions for player ship.- More sound FX.- Score and re-enforcements (extra ships) display.Development Note: I don't like but
After spending a couple days researching Elite, I'm convinced this game could be ported to the Atari 2600 and still retain most of its original look and feel. Here's what the original Elite looked like on the Commodore 64:
And here's a prototype screenshot on the Atari 2600 (this is from an emulator, not a mockup):
The Bitmap
The first challenge of the port is implementing a high-resolution bitmap. This can be achieved by using the 30Hz text display from Stellar Track. The 12
Given Al's recent overhaul of the AtariAge website, this seemed like a good time to post the facelift I did for Stellar Overlord.
The new look
so95.zip
New Features:
- Completely redid the font graphics from scratch. Wider is better.
- Shrunk the planets in the Galactic Display to make them look more like round planets, and less like footballs. (besides,
)- There is a new sound effect for the victory at the end of the game. It's based on an idea posted by thegoldenband.
Back in 2004 I wrote a game called Master of Arcturus for the 2004 minicomp. It was never productized to the point that I could release it on cartridge.
Exploring the Galaxy
so90.zip
Known Bugs to Fix:
- If you are pressing left when the game should end, the victory conditions are not registered correctly.
- Streamline the combining of fleets when attacking a world. Two groups of 120 should combine seamlessly into a fleet of 240 ships that attack simultaneously.
- If the game end
LEHMANBROS01.BIN
Overview
In this game, you control the CEO of a distressed investment firm. The game takes place at the firm's headquarters. Your objective is to collect as much cash as possible for your severance package before the company collapses. As you are collecting money, a variety of opponents will hinder your efforts.
The Federal Regulator (turtle) - Slow and easily avoided. But be careful. If a Federal Regulator catches you, your CEO's severance package is capped and he mu
Entitlement.
sf23.zip
New Features:
sf22.asm 3/2/08
- Added preliminary title music.
- Reorganized bank data. All kernels will now live in bank 2. Bank 1 contains the VBlank and Overscan.
sf23.asm 5/24/08
- Changed cannon graphics. Uses lower vertical resolution. Cannon is larger. Now has 16 rotational animation positions instead of 8.
- Added Title Screen mode. Press the fire button to begin the game.
- Added Title graphics.
To Do:
- Rewrite the kernel to squeeze out m
If I had infinite free time, I would write the game Nort.exe for the 2600.
In Nort.exe, you are a computer program, trying to survive deep in the bowels of the Vista Operating System. The game would consist of 4 phases:
Phase one: DRM
Due to an errant MD5 checksum calculation, Vista's DRM has incorrectly matched your program file with "Britney_Spears_-_Baby_One_More_Time.mp3". Your program file is now targeted for deletion. Use your tank process to destroy the DRM subprocesses and es
Death awaits you all, with nasty sharp pointy teeth!
Features:
htw08.asm 08/05/06
- Added Death by Wumpus cut scene.
- Added death detection (walking into rooms with pits or the Wumpus.)
To Do:
- Expand Wumpus clues so they appear in all rooms that are within 1 or 2 rooms of the Wumpus.
- Add death detection (walking into room with Wumpus or Pit)
- Add the ability to shoot your arrow at the Wumpus, so you can actually win the game.
- Add death music and victory music.
- Add cu
I see you.
Features:
htw09.asm 08/08/06
- Added ominous death sound.
- Start player in a safe cavern with no clue.
htw10.asm 08/11/06
- Added title screen mode.
- Dropping title effect.
- Glaring, blinking red eyes randomly move around the title screen.
htw11.asm 08/12/06
- Added preliminary title music. (Funeral March of a Marionette by Charles Francois Gounod)
To Do:
- Expand Wumpus clues so they appear in all rooms that are within 1 or 2 rooms of the Wumpus.
- Add t
This is the first Atari game I ever worked on. The project was started back in October of 2003. This was far too ambitious for a first project, but now that I've gotten more kernel coding experience, I revisited the idea, rewriting the entire program from scratch.
Hunt the Wumpus is one of those games that absolutely belongs in the Atari 2600 catalog of games, and I'm amazed that it's never been implemented. The tough part is displaying the clues, which in this implementation will require
Ack. Has it really been 2 months since I've posted?
I got a chance to do some coding the last couple days, and I've come up with something that I've always wanted to implement: a 24 character display for the Atari 2600. Behold, the wannabe Atari 2600 home computer!
tesoro_bas.zip
Features:
- Displays 24 characters per line, and a max of around 18 lines per screen.
- Character set can contain 52 unique characters. More, if byte sharing is used.
- Only uses 26 bytes of RAM.
-
I'm finally doing enough development to warrant a blog. This is the first time I've ever done a blog. Hopefully things will go smoothly...First, a little bit about me. I'm 34 years old, male, and I live in Chandler AZ, USA. I took 4 assembly language courses in college at Arizona State University in the early 90s. Most of the coursework covered the 6800, which is very similar to the 6502 in the Atari. I never used any of my assembly programming skills until I began working on the Atari.I s
I was getting concerned that I didn't have enough half-finished Atari projects, so I started another one. Just to be safe.
Vista Operating System has chosen you to serve on the game grid.
positron08.zip
Features:
- High-resolution light trace display with pseudo 3D effect, synchronized with the player's cycle.
- Fluid cycle motion, one pixel per frame.
- Uses standard 128 bytes of RAM.
- 8LK displays 2 sprites anywhere in the game grid with no skipped scanlines.
- Two songs e
Are you up to the challenge of level 4?
cc2_cd_zip.zip
Features:
htw18.asm 09/27/06
- Added level display and selection on the title screen.
- Implemented 4 difficulty levels. The level defines the ratio of rooms to tunnels:
Level 1: 40 rooms, 24 tunnels
Level 2: 32 rooms, 32 tunnels
Level 3: 24 rooms, 40 tunnels
Level 4: 20 rooms, 44 tunnels
To Do:
- Expand Wumpus clues so they appear in all rooms that are within 1 or 2 rooms of the Wumpus.
- Add cut scenes for Wumpus death,
I'm an avid fan of robotic technologies. Over the past several years I've been following the progress of advances in robotics, including mechanical dexterity, sensor implementation, and software AI. I'd like to share these advances with the AA community and discuss their implications. I think the robotic industry is on the verge of a profoundly significant break through, where robots will start to become ubiquitous in our lives. (As I am typing this post, there are two robots cleaning my kit
I smell a Wumpus.
Features:
htw06.asm 07/29/06
- Switched to 4LK, freeing up even more cycles in the kernel.
- Optimized ball display decoder.
- Integrated maze buffer preloader to prevent black line artifacts.
- Added clue display in GPR0, GPR1, M0, and M1.
htw07.asm 08/03/06
- Improved player-to-playfield collision handling to act more like "Adventure". Rather than always moving you back to your original position, you can slide along a surface using diagonal movement, which m
My main laptop died last month. It was a Dell Vostro 1400, and I was very happy with it up until the video card fried. Its best feature was the Nvidia Geforce 8400GS video card, which had its own dedicated video memory. Regrettably, that feature was its undoing.
The system died a couple months after the 1 year warranty expired. I did some research on the problem, and found that graphic card failures due to overheating were a common problem for this particular laptop model, common enough
Features:
tbom14.asm
- Added Akagi aircraft carrier. The left difficulty switch determines which ship is displayed. A=Yamato B=Akagi. Press reset to see the selected ship.
- Fixed bomb loop error. When the bomb is droped, an offset is added to the X position. On the right side of the screen, this can result in a value larger than 160. I was checking for X=160 to wrap. Now I'm checking for X>=160.
- Multiplexed machinegun fire in with explosion sounds.
- Added shorter and higher pi
I always have extra free time around Christmas, and this inevitably leads to more Atari development. In a renewed effort to actually get another game completed, I've gone back to working on Stellar Fortress.
The rings are more, um, ring-like.
sf19.zip
New Features:
sf18.asm 12/28/07
- Optimized ROM usage. Opened up another 1k of free space.
- Fixed bug in ship-to-shield collision detection. Detection code was only running once every 4 frames. Changed to every frame.
- Fixed
This is the first release of the game that is minimally playable. You can actually sink the ships now.
Mission Accomplished
tbom21.zip
New Features:
tbom18.asm 8/3/08
- Removed HMOVE artifact from title screen using cycle 73 HMOVE.
- Time-based high-res physics engine for Zero.
- AI to control Zero flight patterns. (preliminary)
- Crash animation and sound Fx for Zero.
- Multiple vectors for AA fire.
- Detects a hole in the ship, and when the ship has been sunk.
- Added preli
To placate my critics, here is another update for Stellar Fortress, as promised.
I'm hit! I'm hit!
sf20.zip
New Features:
sf20.asm 1/10/08
- Major improvements to shield collision detection. Now uses a combination of coordinate checking and collision registers. Allows player to fly closer to the cannon, making the game feel less claustrophobic.
- Added 16-bit trig table for linear shots. This is now used for the Plasma ball. It imitates 16-bit motion with proper trig ratios, w
I was sitting down to do some more development on Stellar Fortress tonight and decided is was time that I check the current ROM and RAM usage. Not good. ROM only had one page left (256 bytes), and RAM only had 16 bytes left, and that's including the space reserved for the stack.
So I was forced to postpone development and instead start code optimization. A quick check of the code showed that 50% of the ROM is currently used for logic, and the other half is data tables. Fortunately I made
Features:
htw02.asm 07/22/06
- Added random number generator.
- Mazes are randomly created. Hold down the reset switch to generate a new maze.
- Unexplored caverns are concealed.
htw03.asm 07/23/06
- Added screen wrapping so all 64 cells are displayed across 4 screens.
htw04.asm 07/24/06
- Switched to 2LK, freeing up many cycles in the kernel.
- Added delay to joystick read to slow down player.
htw05.asm 07/27/06
- Added compensation for playfield mirroring so displayed tunn
Hi all,I haven't posted in a while, but I've been busy coding. I spent about 12 hours over the past week tweaking the hell out of the kernel. Version .09 was a sanity revision that still needed cleanup. Version .10 is a cleaned up demo of the new kernel.lynxflyer199112html.zipNew Features:- The kernel is now 2-scanlines per pass. But it can still do high-resolution (single scanline) graphics for both player sprites, plus it handles both player missles, the asymetric playfield shield, and a v
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord