Kripto

My House of the Dead story involves the DreamCast version. I had just bought two new light guns which had an autofire cheat switch. A friend and I decided to try them out on full auto and soon had the screen flashing like mad as we both fired a huge number of shots per second. Within about two minutes I had a sudden feelin g of deep sickness which had me running to the bathroom to empty the contents of my stomach... Ah, foolishness...

I suspect that the Pro-Line joysticks are the direct result of EXTREME cost-cutting... I see this repulsive image in my head of some Atari exec picking it up for two seconds after being told that the cheapest sticks just weren't comfortable enough and saying "These are fine. Ship 'em."

Just got finished playing a few more rounds (On the Mac in the 'Mugrat' emulator. Runs great.). Since you've requested some suggestions for improvement- -Make the sounds more "hostile". While this is of course a matter of taste, I think the game would benefit from a more stressful type of audio environment, similar to Millipede, Robotron, etc. (My spellcheck just flagged me on 'Robotron', oh, but 'spellcheck' is a 'real' word... ) -Make it so the player can click through the intro text - The lead character looks a little 'thick' at points in his run cycle. -Robot Re-spawn. Is this needed due to limited screen space or processing restrictions or just choice? I prefer the original Berserk's method of having all enemies (except Evil Otto) on screen at the level's start. Some random ideas- Maybe a power-up which would make the player invincible for a very short time (Force-Field Suit)? He could wreak major destruction in just a few seconds and possibly be able to kill your Evil Otto-type character if timed correctly... Other comments- -Love the premise and general execution. -Creature design is top-knotch Just my 2.53 Space Cents...

Great Job! It's always good to see Human VS Killer Robot action!

Hello All, Just wanted to give an update on Adventure 2000. Had some family obligations and unexpected music/synth work come up this weekend, so a few days got lost on this project. Will soon be back on it at full speed and have finished up all the dragon models and now need to work on creature animations, AI and the primary 'manager' routine. It tracks and coordinates all the game elements and has been christened the 'MCP' (Please don't transfer yourself into my computer and try to destroy the MCP by throwing your data disc into its' 'heart', etc... I need it for this game to work correctly... Thanks ) For those curious about what will be coming from me after A2000- Here is a work-in-progress screen shot from my soon-to-be first commercial game. I'm staying with the '80s' meets new millennium graphics and game play, but this time with a traditional shooter which centers around a VERY new game play element (not visible in shot). I think it will be enjoyed.

It's the old 'posed desk' shot. I've been guilty in the past... Indicative of 'setup pride'. Wish I had one of my old Apple II setup...

"But I don't like SCAM!" "That's okay honey, I'll believe your SCAM, I love SCAM" "Scam, scam, scam, scam, scamity SCAM!"

BTW- I've decided to go with a custom vertex coloring shader I've written as that doing textures, even as an option, would have been a lot of work as that I would not have wanted to settle for a half-effort. Shadows, etc, will be provided using a light-mapping technique (similar to the quality of the shadows in the Quake 3 map above) or with vertex-baked lighting, depending on performance + file size testing. I'm also currently messing around with the code I wrote for the Magnet's attraction power, such as reversing it to create an 'anti-magnet' which could be used to push things out of your way. Quite fun. This type of item may be seen in a 'plus' version which would be selectable from an option menu.

I'm going to wait until all game elements are in place before doing beta versions, etc. Shouldn't be long and I'll post a link here.

And if you get bored while using your Atari 800, you can just change the channel on your 'monitor' and watch something else!

Loops AHOY! Is the music actually stored as loops in the game itself, which are called in series by your code, or did you assemble the loops on another machine to be played back as a long file on the ST? (I have never coded for the ST so please excuse my ignorance of technical limits, most likely RAM.)

The excellent Adventure 2 for 5200, while 2D, often calls on a kind of 'forced-perspective' in its' graphics, which brings it near to being the third person view, so that's kind of 'been done' already. I've been playing the current Adventure 2000 prototype and enjoying it quite a bit, even in its' unfinished state, so I don't think anyone should really be concerned the first person perspective ruining game play. That viewpoint, after all, is what this adaptation is all about.

In regards to the spatial irrationalities of the various mazes, etc- I have an extremely convoluted plan which would actually create 'ghost' duplicates of walls and items so as to give the player the impression that they are wrapping around the screen (where that would be appropriate) when in fact, they would be seamlessly teleported on route... I do, however, want to get something released within this millennium, so the initial world has been set up in an alternate solution that I believe players will enjoy (Sorry to be so tight-lipped. Remember the last page of every Coleco Cartridges' manual that mentioned "The Fun Of Discovery"? It's something like that. I think players will enjoy it much more if they don't know everything.) The nature of the bridge has also been fundamentally changed for the time being. I am going to keep its' new mode of operation a secret as well, for players to experiment with and explore. I contemplated setting it up so that collision detection would be off for all objects in the bridges' 'portal' and may still do this. For it to work on every wall in the game would still require something akin to the 'ghost duplicates' solution though, so that won't be seen in near-term versions of the game. Dragon and Bat animations and AI are up next.

Then I'll guess... Gold Key and Sword strategically placed with difficulty switches set to make Yorgle repelled by the sword? (One would have to be on the next screen to the right)

Wow. What's causing that? Maybe Yorgle is seizure-prone... Anybody familiar with the disassembly have an idea?

In relation to other three dimensional adaptations of Adventure. These are the ones I know of- -AA member Gregory DC created an Adventure-themed map for Quake 3. Excellent design and visuals. Unfortunately it would have had to have been an extensive MOD to actually implement the game play elements of the original Adventure, so it does not have active dragons, moving bat , working items, etc. Excellent for death-match, the thread for this map can be found HERE -AA member Gorf has done preliminary work on 'Adventure 3D' for the Jaguar system but has stated that he does not intend to release it due to intellectual property concerns. The screenshot he posted looks great and features a new design of dragon which can fly over the Adventure world. The screenshot and his comments on it can be seen HERE Does anyone know of any other 3D versions of Adventure? I know that there are several Flash implementations of the original 2D game on the web, and that Warren Robinett has the original ROM available for download from his site, so I am hoping that the current property owners will see this as the not-for-profit fan homage that it is.

// Just wanted to edit this topic and point everybody to the playable Alpha version at This web location You'll need the newest version of the Unity 3D player installed. (The page will direct you there is you don't have it). There is no sound and getting eaten by dragons is a challenge, also some objects are not fully functional. The game IS playable though, and you can win. More Info can be found towards the end of this thread- Original post follows// Greetings All, Just wanted to officially announce that I'm currently developing a 100% free, fully playable version of the 2600 game Adventure, but experienced from a full 3D, first person perspective. It's pretty far in development and will be playable on-line in your browser, in addition to as a downloadable application for both Mac, PC and possibly iPhone. It includes all of the objects and enemies from the original Adventure in their original roles with some twists. More updates, screenshots and betas/release information to follow. This shot is from a very primitive, graphics-wise, state of the game. No textures, no anti-aliasing yet, etc. Question- So do you guys think it would be better to keep the original smooth, solid colored walls, or should there be bricks, etc? Purist or no?

Actually, All kidding aside, the screenshots above are from an actual, playable version of Adventure 2000 that I am currently working on. It is however NOT a Jaguar game (Sorry everybody) but you will in fact be able to play it for free shortly on your PC or Mac (it is in progress and pretty far along). I'll be announcing it 'for real' tomorrow (using my normal persona, i.e this one) in the homebrew section of this site. The idea behind Adventure 2000 is to actually make it look and feel like what Atari should (in my opinion) have released for the Jaguar. So, for example, most shading with be done with vertex colors instead of texture maps, etc. I may release a more 'dolled-up' version in the future after I wrap up some commercial projects I have lined up. Sorry for the April Fool's deception but I hadn't really announced yet, I have a very nice "TV Screen Effect" filter in PhotoShop, and just couldn't resist... Gorf- I would be interested in seeing some additional screens of Adventure 3D if you're cool with that (You posted one a while back). How far along are you with it? Do you have a functioning bridge and magnet? Those have been fun to code...

The big two that I wanted to see are- Adventure 2000 ( ) And Major Havok From what I understand, 'Yak' was actually approached about making a version of Major Havok for the Jag. Probably would have been a 2D version? BattleZone could also have been cool.

You can take a gander HERE As a pretty much life-long New Yorker, this looks pretty cool. Ug. Must...Get...PS3...

Action Park is interesting in itself. Incredibly dangerous and a rite of passage for many a teenager during its' time... You can read more about it on Wiki. People died and it just chugged along. Every time I went there, someone in my party would get injured. Action indeed...

That joystick + trackball combo looks awesome. I might have to get one, although I wish it came in black...

It seems kind of fair that if you're going to come back from the dead, all the enemies should be able to as well. As to if this is good or bad for the player experience, that's another story... I loved this game and believe, with pretty much everyone else on the planet, that it's one of the best two or three games for Jag. The prototype for it was shown with some additional frames of animation and other improvements, but I guess they just couldn't fit it on the cart...

It was true for a long time that the timing was better (I was a Mega ST/Creator user once upon a time). A modern machine with a pro-level interface (i.e. Emagic Unitor, etc) will match and/or beat the ST, due to MIDI time stamping) As far as internal synths, forget it. Even the most high-end hardware synths from the '80s hard significant delay on note triggering, getting worse with each additional voice needed simultaneously. Current software synths are sample-accurate on playback. No more timing smear! I will say that Creator was great in that it really helped you focus on the song as that there weren't a gazillion options to tweak, etc. Full recall of all settings and zero noise make it so i could never go back though...

This is the way of the future. Games become easier for a single individual to create and often part of the dream is to create a physical, commercial product. I think we've seen a great deal more greed in relation to people finding one of a kind games and selling reproductions. That is producing money off of someone elses work, a far more morally questionable practice than creating a product from scratch for the purpose of sale. Also, there's a huge amount of psuedo-open source collaboration in the hacking scene here.