atari2600land's Blog

Hope you're ok. As a programmer, I would like to let you know that your stuff is pretty good.

I am glad that someone like you is out there programming away. Keep it up, and don't let the bad people get you down.

 

Things happen in this Atari community. Heck, I have gone on hiatus from time to time just because of political stuff.

 

In the end, you've got to do what makes you happy here. For me, it's programming a game that I personally feel accomplished something.

Your stuff seems to be doing that, and I'm glad that you're a part of the community.

 

Be strong! You've got a lot of talent, and it's showing.

 

-John

After hearing support for the game, I'm not going to cancel it after all. I'm really sorry I went into detail about how i wish i was dead, but sometimes it is true, after all, i am taking fake prozac as well as Abilify because i need to. i tried to get off the stuff, but the suicidal thoughts increased, so i guess i really do need the stuff. I am going to take a break. It's going to be really hard, but I'll force myself NOT to work on the game for a few months, then come back and play it with a fresh mind and see what i can improve on it.

Listen man.

 

I've watched you bang around this stuff, having a great time. GOSUB! was just great. We do this because it's fun to do, and that's the baseline expectation.

 

Don't buy into this crap. Take a break, relax, then just enjoy Atari. I don't think I've seen a completed MAUS Games release, have you? We both have at least one, so that's something to put it into context. (Actually you've a crap load of interesting stuff! Game on!)

 

Edit: You are one of the firsts too. Jumped on pretty early. I remember you getting into it right after the initial flurry of get started bB activity. Lots of people whined about not having this or that feature to complete this or that (overly high expectation) project. You just went ahead and did interesting stuff.

 

So just do that. Have fun. That's what most of us are doing!

Maus's post about sucky bB games described Gingerbread Man fairly well.

Use a back story that already exists.

Check.

No fancy player sprites! Two frames, legs in, legs out, is more than enough!

All Gingerbread Man sprites use 4, but some animations may look like two frames if you aren't paying attention.

No pretty playfields! Squiggles and lines all the way, baby.

Check.

Pathetic enemy AI. They must either jiggle around randomly or move in lines.

Most enemies do move in lines, and the bee jiggles around semi-randomly. The bird is the exception.

No variety of enemies! Pick out something like a dog or a bird and go with it.

Gingerbread Man is the only game I know of with both a dog and a bird. Coincidence? The "thinly veiled" comment later on kind of suggests otherwise.

If it works well on one screen, repeat it on ten or twenty!

Gingerbread Man has exactly 20 screens, and some game mechanics are common to all of them.

There MUST be a nondescript maze of some kind with no markers or real purpose.

Some levels (i.e. cave level) is sort of maze-like, and its layout doesn't really make any sense.

Insert loud, repetitive, single-channel music wherever possible.

The first few measures of "Flight of the Bumblebee" play repeatedly when the bee makes its appearance. The intro music also plays repeatedly.

 

Conclusion: Gingerbread Man sucks.

I think you shouldn't take MausGames' comments too serious. After all he hasn't even finished a game and as i already mentioned in his "sucky bB games" thread - talk is cheap!

 

I like your games (especially Alien Greed II ) and it's also fun to watch your projects develop.

 

Take a break and relax. I hope you will feel better soon!

OK... I, too, think it's a bit pessimistic to call it "the end of everything". At least in the thread about Jack and the beanstalk, I didn't have the impression that people aren't liking your game. I think they seemd to like it very much, at least most of the people on the thread said so. And even though it's unfinished, it already gets a lot of play as you can see in this thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...=133276&hl=

 

Ultimately, I think, it depends on if it's fun FOR YOU to go on with this project. I know I'm starting several projects only to drop them a short time after since they turn out not to be as much fun as I thought they'd be... or they turn out to be much more time consuming than I thought they'd be. An example for that would be this one: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...=113751&hl= ... a project I started back in 1998, then dropped it, then continued to work on it a bit in 2007, then dropped it again. When I started on that project, I just thought it would be cool to do something like that again, but after a while I got tired of constantly debugging and testing code, so I started to do something else. But I never called the project "cancelled"... maybe it will be finished someday, but maybe it won't.

 

Anyway, about that "crappy" quality let me just say I produced many of those "crappy" games back in 1983 on my TI-99 in XBASIC. However, there weren't intended to be released to the public, so many of them just sit there unfinished, which means you can play them for a while, but if you reach a certain level, the program stops with an error message because that level isn't programmed yet. Compared to that, "Jack and the beanstalk" looks "finished" in the respect that the loop is closed... there's no unexpected ending of the game (it ends either if you've finished it or lost all your lives), and as such it's finished in a way that I'd consider each of the last 10 versions you put out "releaseable", meaning they could be released that way if you decide not to go on with the project. Hey, there may be a few bugs in there, but there are also bugs in other commercially released Atari 2600 games.

 

And about you planning to commit suicide... I also planned that about a year ago, but didn't do it in the end. I understand that you probably have got problems in your life which make you think you'd rather be dead. I also understand that many people rather don't want to go into this topic, but if you need someone to talk with about this, I'm here to help. You can write me a PM if you want, and then we can continue talk in MSN Messenger or in a different chat or something like that, or via PM's or mails.

 

With greetings from Austria

Kurt

As for Mr. Maus - I know everyone has said it a million times, already, but you have actually released completed games. He has released the same number of games as me and just about every other homebrew programmer on this website - ZERO.

 

Add to that the fact that your so-called "crappy" game happens to keep appearing on the weekly "Most Played" Atari Games list (alongside other "crappy" games like "Adventure")... well it seems to me that you should be giving us advice about game design, not the other way around.

 

Cheers,

Jarod.

Hi Chris

Your games are really great,especially Gosub and Asses of Fire.

I like your games a lot.Do not care about comments,which make your games bad.

greetings Walter

Hi Chris

And Maus shows always,how good he can make games,but he never finishes them.........

And your games are complete and really good.And if your Jack game is complete,i am sure,it will be one of the best Batari Basic games ever.

greetings Walter

Add to that the fact that your so-called "crappy" game happens to keep appearing on the weekly "Most Played" Atari Games list (alongside other "crappy" games like "Adventure")... well it seems to me that you should be giving us advice about game design, not the other way around.

Where is this list?

Add to that the fact that your so-called "crappy" game happens to keep appearing on the weekly "Most Played" Atari Games list (alongside other "crappy" games like "Adventure")... well it seems to me that you should be giving us advice about game design, not the other way around.

Where is this list?

It's here:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=133276

Hey I never said I thought all your games are shit. I'm not a big fan of the Alien Greed games at all, but I've always tried out all your demos and wip games and liked most of them. You just have a tendency to repeat what you know to extreme before you try out new techniques. I think you would should just push on and refine your skills.

 

You don't always have to be working on WIP games that use what you already know. Sometimes it helps to create a project that is just for the purpose of learning a new technique.

Hey I never said I thought all your games are shit. I'm not a big fan of the Alien Greed games at all, but I've always tried out all your demos and wip games and liked most of them. You just have a tendency to repeat what you know to extreme before you try out new techniques. I think you would should just push on and refine your skills.

 

You don't always have to be working on WIP games that use what you already know. Sometimes it helps to create a project that is just for the purpose of learning a new technique.

When I was writing that blog, i was angry, i have a tendency to exaggerate when i'm angry. Thanks for trying my demos, though, it's just that my ideas i have use everything i know. It's when i learn something new, i usually make a new wip game for it, just to see what i can do with it, it isn't really meant to be a game, and i probably shouldn't post stuff like that at all, but i do anyway. but sometimes it can lead to games, like for example, Asses of Fire was just one simple screen experimenting with the "data" command for music, but I made it into a full-fledged platformer.