So over the past week or so I've started a new game in batariBasic based on Tower of Rubble! Actually not too long after starting I saw that another user had also started their own version - looking forward to seeing what can be done in 4k with someone who appears to know what they are doing!

I've been putting this together in DPC+ and its been a learning experience getting to understand some of the modest limitations of programming for the Atari 2600. One of the more interesting issues has been getting a little framework for animation. I've got a process I'd developed over time for Blitz/Monkey which worked pretty well but this is probably going to be too hard to bring over - essentially you provide all the key stuff such as frames (images), speed to animate, x & y adjustments etc and it went off and did it's thing. Referencing pointers to gfx seems to be a biggy in bateriBasic as I like to separate out each movement (ie. moving, jumping, falling etc) into it's own set but this is where it comes unstuck.

I'd like a process I can re-use around frame-strips which I found a general solution to here but unless I put everything into the data section (haven't tested the 256 byte alignments here - there are about 26 frames from memory) you have to essentially hard-code your pointer due to how it compiles thus would need to duplicate a lot of code. I want to do a 2 player survival winner take all mode eventually and wish to reuse the player movement code for both players.

Anyway after testing 8x8 tiles with a 8x8 sprite (using pfread) I wasn't happy how it all fitted on-screen, so I re-started this time creating a ram array (via DPC+) and storing the tile map here so I now have a 16x8 tiles which does fit better with the sprite size (though at the reduction of whats on-screen). I have also completed the full player movement though the animation side is very much still a WIP and is reasonably messy.

I'd also started to get things ready for 2 player requirements but I've now stripped that all out so I can get back to concentrating on actually finishing the core game up first. I have also done a brief test of dropping a block onto the map with the little lazer? guide thingy but have yet to implement this back into the new game code. I've also run out of room in Bank2 where i've currently got the main loop and player code so will need to move this (thinking of just having the main loop and branching off to the player and falling stuff in other banks). I've also got a pause mode setup but the colors are not right currently.



Anyway I've attached the current build below if anyone wants to have a go...