Gemintronic

Darn! You've seen my work so far then. I'll never get anything sold at this rate. All joking aside thanks for the tips guys

it's always a thrill to get a response from the original designers. So far I've only experienced it once. Very cool to get the inside scoop. I bet Scott just didn't have the resources to make a cart like yours. Thanks for your responses to my silly questions. I haven't the skill for assembly but I've got curiosity. Sometimes that's a first step. The data format to plot the shields.. do you think a nybble format would work? Each pixel in the shield would be represented by a nybble. So I'd start drawing the first shield pixel and then increment or decrement coordinates based off of the next value in the data table. First two bits to the right: 00 = x - 1 01 = x + 1 10 = x (stays the same) 11 = don't draw Last two bits to the right: 00 = y - 1 01 = y + 1 10 = y (stays the same) 11 = don't draw Too complicated/waste of cpu cycles?

This is here for purely my own consumption. Others may make comments and such (please!) but, really, it's all about me. People right out to-do lists to keep themselves on track. I publicly declare things in order to convince myself to: A. Make sure things happen and B. Prove that something actually happened. What's the sound of a tree falling in the forest? Without a blog nothing really happened did it? Today (Sunday) I became curious about making a Knightmare clone. Some Portuguese guy apparently started to make one but who knows where that went. So far I've created an initial player sprite and Title for the game. I think I should step up and make this my first bank-switched game. Not sure if I'm ready to leap into multi-sprite or superchip. Things to think about: * Storyline * Techniques to use (programming) * Studying original game

Thinking about the future I wanted to know how homebrew gets listed in the AtariAge store. I attempted to contact via the "Contact AtariAge" page but it's been a week or so. In the meantime I was curious what other people experience has been getting their games listed. Is it a AtariAge contacted you situation? Is ebay the way to go? Hozers?

Try GBADev. I barely understand coding for the Atari but these guys know GBA http://forum.gbadev.org/

Thanks for more ideas guys! I think RevEng and ls650 have the most practical chance of working for the newbie homebrewer. @PixelBoy: Thank you for the preemptive response! It seems you have to be semi-pro to get real boxes done. With a semi-pro stash of pocket change to boot. From the feedback so far I got away pretty easy by making a cart based off of PANIC INCs mock up boxes.

Catching cookies and shooting Reindeer is a good, simple game premise. The only things I'd recommend is: 1. Use REFP0 and REFP1 to make the Reindeer and Santa turn left and right. 2. Instead of flickering the cookie you could use 2 missiles (one slightly taller and one slightly wider) to make a "roundish" cookie without flicker. You didn't provide source so I can't figure out if you're already using the missiles to block out the middle of the score. Hmmmn.. At the time Activision may have been a little prudish for never flickering their sprites but today yer audience is gonna have LCD panels that make flickering sprites, er, flicker!

Normally double posting gets me tarred and feathered on other boards. I blame Devin for suggesting I should also post here AtariAge Entry with Binary and Source: http://www.atariage....for-atari-2600/ TIGSource "A Game by Its Cover" Entry: http://forums.tigsou...p?topic=13761.0 Basically, I needed an excuse to get creative and DO SOMETHING. The TIGSource Independent gaming forum has competitions that, although I never win, push me to accomplish. I enter competitions to compete with myself as I can't find anyone of low enough caliber to compete with The competition asked contestants to find mock up box art and create real games from them. PANIC INC. had taken a joke too far and created fictitious screenshots, advertisements and even purchasable Atari boxes for their Mac software. http://www.gamesetwa...i_2600style.php I took it upon myself to create a real CandyBar game. Batari BASIC allowed me to code an actual 2600 binary! After getting warmed up with Drunken Pooper 2600 and Uppa Creek! coding Candybar was an attainable goal. Coming from what snaggle-toothed punch card operators call a 4GL background, going back to BASICs was hard. VisualbB comes very close to a full IDE and Batari comes very close to being a solid language.. but, when they fail it's a hard, mind violating reality check. Sort of like when you trade up from a RROD Xbox 360 only to have your next one fry anyway. BASIC to assembly converters are what they are. Third party IDEs are what they are. Hacks, who blame the tools on their own shortcomings are, er, me Early on my problems were minimal such as multi-colored sprites wouldn't work and getting stuck on indentation and typo errors. The real problems came when reaching that 4k limit. I literally had to scrape off notes in the title screen music for AI code. Game variations had to be scrapped. Thanks to AtariAge and you (yes, whoever you are, thank you Dear Reader!) I found that it is possible to get a real cartridge made, manuals printed and boxes and inserts made. Okay, I lie on the last part: I scrapped a shrink-wrapped copy of Atari 7800 Jinks for its insert. One physical copy gets put in a real PANIC INC. Atari box with manual and insert - 1980s Sears discounted price tag like a cherry on top. One copy gets sent to PANIC INC. as thanks for letting me use their art and CandyBar name. The source and binary are for all to gaze at, in sheer wonderment how I stay upright and not choke on my own tongue, er, I mean, BRILLIANCE! Yes! That's the ticket! Again, thanks 'yall for your support. Batari and AtariAge were critical in enabling this project. See you next game!

I think the controls are pretty good. Variable jump is awesome. Big mazes for the win. Music is damn good for the platform.. I just wish the notes played the longest didn't sound so harsh. I wonder if they could be at a lower volume or something. The Panda sprite is nice. Animation good. The one color per line restriction is not very noticeable at all in this game. The developer has mucho artistic and logistical chops. Personally I think falling off screen = death is lame. But, nevertheless, some amount of "challenge" is squeezed out of it. *groan* Hope to see this game available for real someday

Oh man oh man oh man oh man!!! I'm going to read and reread SeaGtGruff wisdom until I start seeing Jaguar cubes! I'd like an example of that gosub technique in Batari if at all possible. THANK YOU for the info so far though! Someday I'd like to rock RevEngs title screen kernel and then switch back to a different kernel. Or, maybe swap score kernels mid game.. ooooooOOOoh, the possibilities! :!: :!:

Looks like that link for the Atari keyboard was a mock up and not the real deal. The SpectraVideo unit seems like it would be a more useful, obtainable bit of kit. Takes cassettes too! http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/compumat.html I was thinking about how to implement this Star Castle game in Batari BASIC. I think I'd try using playfield pixels for shields and a lookup table for sin values (to plot rotating lines for shields.) Is that similar (albeit in assembly) to your method solidcorp?

@grafixbmp @CyranoJ Definitely critical ideas to use! I'll try to use both as much as possible. I've decided on the A-Z & 0-5 * 8 colors for password. A further refinement for password usage is: Note 0-F 0-F means one full variable 0-F is one nybble 0-7 is 3 bits *** 8 Full Variable *** 0-F 0-F Level (0-255) 0-F Class 0-F Weapon 0-F Armor 0-F Accesory 1 0-F Misc Item 1 0-F Misc Item 2 0-F Quantity of Healing Potions (1-16) 0-F 2550 Gold in increments of 160 0-7 Home Base Level 0-7 Bank (8 Deposits of 2250 Each) 0-7 Hireling (8 Different People) 0-7 XP in increments of 32 0-F Free so far.. 0-F 0-F 8 Artifact/Quest Items

Wow. I think the flicker is less noticeable in the most recent builds. Way beyond cool! Now all we need is a sub-routine to play back an animated Atari Jaguar cube! After that we can all hang up our hats and declare RevEng the winner.

SeaGtGruff to the rescue! My eyeballs were hurting looking for the syntax error. I didn't even know about that caveat with binary values. I take it if a{1} = %1 then gosub way_sandwhich wont work?

Well, I know this version of Star Castle is a no go. But, what if the Harmony cart had that encryption capability? AtariAge could sell homebrew like the Apple apps store. We wouldn't even have this thread and solidcorp would feel safe to release.

Swapping 2600 calls for ARM calls in the Harmony might work short-term. The problem is someone is gonna search and replace those calls back to standard 2600 functions. What might work is some insidious DRM implanted in the Harmony BIOs that decrypts ROMs with a key only Batari and the game Developer knows.

Original post retracted. Appologies save2600. I haven't really seen a 2600 repo or homebrew I'd buy. I wished Adventure II was a 2600 project instead of 5200

From what I've gleaned from your posts over time you're doing FINE. It's like how a good car mechanic can think he's lacking. We know more than we think. It's just a matter of staying focused and enjoying our hobbies. Even if it's just mulling over game design while waiting at the stoplight. Keep at it!! I'm also thinking that most character variables can be set aside if I just focus on saving items and have the player grind from level 1 each game. Almost the same concept as Baroque or Azure Dreams.

I say someone take this as a challenge to create a public domain or Creative Commons version. Solidcorp has already posted some tricky code and seems pretty cool. How about "Star Cathedral" as an homage to Eric S. Raymond Oh, and, I guess Dan Iacovelli wasn't knocking bBasic or poor newbs like me. My bad

Oooh! It's the Castlevania 2600 guy! I bow to your awesome skills and determination! Yeah, really looking into Nybbles and single bit boolean values. Somehow I feared using lossless compression in that, wont there be cases where the data wont compress? I'd hate to expect 16 variables and only have storage for 10 due to compression factors. Due to your post I'll take it more seriously and do some research. I also barely know anything about parity much less how to scavenge the parity bits for data. Again, more studying for me Right now the best I can think of is A-Z & 0-5 for 32 possible characters. Instead of 8 possible combinations of lines around the character I think 8 colors would work better. I was thinking maybe I don't even need parity bits. Maybe I could get away with swapping bits within the password or somehow XOR'ing values. 32 characters * 8 colors = 256 values for a full variable in Batari. The end-user would select the character by left-right and color by up-down. Fire would move to the next place in the password. I guess that's what you call Symbolic compression. P.S. I think you should move straight to Symphony of the Night for 2600. Stuff that sucker into a Harmony cart and watch the dollars roll in. Source for image: http://www.pixelprospector.com/indev/2009/11/classicvania-harmony-of-dissonance/

I wouldn't discount bBasic because it makes development easy. If a tool makes a process easier you can focus more on the game. I'm planning a 2600 RPG and that sounds like a year long project WITH bBasic. Just because half that time wont be used making a custom kernel doesn't make the effort (or the Developer) trivial. I think any way the guy releases it they'll be piracy by default. It's a question of if you care to share the joy of Star Castle 2600 with the world or not. Keep it. Flaunt it. That's his call. Doesn't mean he wants to share and that's FINE. The world will go on. Someday another developer may have a more open viewpoint and make yet another version. Maybe this current developer will share his expertise too. Not sharing code and not helping the community are two different things. Just to be clear: I understand the Developers position. My personal route will be to release the source and ROM for my game if possible. Some distributors like Retrousb don't like that. Hopefully AtariAge is different. If I do reproduce real carts to the public I'll understand my audience. They are the ones that will pay and appreciate an actual manual, cart and box. They will be the ones I'll know are getting the most joy from my art. Pirates can go battle Ninjas for all I care. They're not my audience.

I could see where a SaveKey would work. I could probably convince CPUWIZ to make enough for me to pack it in with my game (depending on the cost). Having different levels selectable would work too.. but, maybe not for a role playing game. You could have quests that you can select but your stats and items would all be blown away after each power-off or reset. Also, I think someone would figure out you can cheat and skip quests I'm still considering both options though. I appreciate the thought spent on this! I still think a password system is possible guys! Take a look at my screenshot below. This password entry screen was done in the standard kernel with no fancy pfres boosting. 16 characters to enter for 8 full variables may be easy enough to enter and useful enough for a full RPG. I guess I'm fishing for ways to make the password system A. As information rich as possible and B. Easy to input. GroovyBee asked about what kind of data I'm trying to store. Here is a refinement of my earlier answer: 0-F 0-F Player Level (1-255) 0-F 0-F 8 Collectible items / Quest Markers (8 1-bit Item Flags) 0-F 0-F World (Seed value for World Generation) 0-F 0-F Weapon (Out of 256 Possible Items) 0-F 0-F Armor (Out of 256 Possible Items) 0-F 0-F On-Hand Item (Out of Possible 256 Items) 0-F 0-F Item In Storage (Out of 256 Possible Items) 0-F 0-F Checksum (Add variables 1-7 together for result)

Back to figuring out a good / easy password system. Maybe a nybble based system would work? You'd have 0-F so for 10 variables you'd have 20 characters to input. Something like: 12C4567B90 09E765C321 Every 2 characters would add up to a full variable (0-255), As a bonus no checksum would be needed as you could just mix up which nybble goes with what. Like this: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 01 from the first row and 01 from the second row = one (0-266) variable.

Oops.. thanks for the correction! I knew I shouldn't have taken "Look Around You" seriously! Got any ready sources for this SaveKey thingy?

Now that I think about it, 1f I have 16 (0-255) variables I could get away with a 24 character password using A-Z & 0-5 (32 values) A1C4EFGH 0JKLMN3P QR5T3DH2 Wouldn't be the worst password to enter in, I think..