Mountain King

Stay safe Cpuwiz.

I'm a little concerned that this job just completely dropped off the face of the Earth.

I got my stuff yesterday. Thank you so much.

That's okay for now. I'm using the score as a position counter. Thank you for checking.

Update 29: The ground gnats are dead, but the project isn't 1. Rearranged the code to be more stable and does not seem to crash on real hardware, at least on my 7800. 2. Ground gnats have been removed. They seemed to be the cause of some stability issues. 3. If there is a tree trunk on the screen when the blood finch spawns. It stays under the tree. 4. The portal disappears when the blood finch spawn. 5. The Moum Moum sings correctly again. "Tu ra lu ra lu, tu ra lu ra lu" 6. Some new tree designs added. 7. The trees are now procedurally ordered. They will appear in the same order when you move forward or backwards. There are still some issues, but this is a step forward. Gizzle Blizzard29.bas.bin

Graywest, would you mind sharing how you varied the enemy sprites? I'd like to try to apply a way to make my trees look more random. Your technique might work for me. Thanks.

Count me in again. Oh crap I missed the deadline. Nevermind.

Bogox, How would you handle 3 moving objects? Player moves a cursor, first object moves to that cursor when activated. Second object follows and tries to catch the first object.

Version 88 was used in the official release. I'm curious has anyone finished the game or found any secrets?

I'm glad you liked Gizzle Wap. The great Blizzard of Firn was really a concept game and sadly it crashes a lot on real hardware. I put this project on hold at the moment. I do want to jump back on The Toxic Isles after I finish some personal projects. The bird concept came out well in Blizzard so I was thinking of incorporating something similar in Toxic Isles.

Speaking of the 7800, have you tried, or could you try the pause button if you get a chance? I think it will work on the 7800, but I don't have the hardware to test it. Hit pause to pause, and press fire to unpause. I was able to sneak in a couple of games between programs for work. The pause feature does work. I've never seen a 2600 game that used this. Nice job. You'll have to show me how you did it. I did find another bug. On level 2 the bats stop moving if you move all the way to the right and you are in a position where they cant hit you. This doesn't seem to happen on the other levels, just level 2.

I just spent about 2 hours playing your game on Stella and on my 7800 and I will give you my honest opinion. Game play: The Good 1. This game is a lot of fun. Classic shooter. 2. Variety. I am a huge fan of enemy types with different characteristics. Some are a bit subtle, especially in the early levels. But I think you hit the nail on the head. I really enjoy seeing a new enemy each level. You know you did a good job with this when the player starts naming each enemy and starts to dread certain ones. 3. Power ups. Again a great variety. Each is distinctively from the other. I like how you implemented the timer bar and I like the Icons you used. Specifically I like the double ship and the wide shots and being able to take out multiple enemies. 4. Transitional stages. These are awesome. I enjoyed both the asteroid field and the worm hole. They break up the game play nicely. 5. The Bosses. I've only fought the first boss. But it also breaks up the game play. The not so good 1. The game is a bit on the difficult side. I could not get past level 4 and I consider myself a pretty good player. Be careful not to fall into the expert player trap and gear the game to your level of play. The majority of Atari players are more casual than expert. Stay Frosty 2 fell into this trap. 2. Power ups. I love the variety, but I found myself only liking 2 of them. The x2 and the Wide shot. I avoid all the others. I don't even like the faster ship speed. Suggestions. 1. If you get a chance, actually watch how other people play your game. Are they playing as you expect are they getting frustrated at certain points? 2. This was mentioned before. Increase the frequency of power ups allow they player to "switch" more often. 3. You also might consider adding more benefits to the power ups. For example the Slow power up might give you a more powerful shot. Or the Wide ship will allow you to take multiple hits. 4. This is minor and I know you are doing a lot on the screen already and you probably want to avoid flicker. But I'd love to see more than one type of enemy on the screen at a time. 5. The Level 4 helicopter can only be hit when standing still. You might give more of a visual sign of their weakness, for those who don't read the manual. 6. You might consider making the levels a little shorter if you don't want to ramp down enemy difficulty. Sights, Sound and Background The Good 1. Great Title screen.The font you used is simple yet reminiscent of other space games and movies. 2. Great music The opening has a bit of and ominous feel to it. The other bits of music are well placed at key times, new stage, game over, transitional stage. 3. Spites are distinctive and animated. I love the first boss. 4. I enjoyed your background story. 5. Nice choice in score font and I like how it changes color when you lose points. 6. Great use of the starfield effect. I know you can't use it during game play, but you use it as much as you can. 7. No jitter, Nice Job. The not so good. 1. You have a great variety in sprites but not death animation and sound. Player death is the same as enemy death. Player death needs to be distinctive in some way. Remember Pac-Man? 2. Your game Title is pretty generic. This is fine if you are Star Wars. 3. There are a couple of enemies that may look fine in emulation but are too dark on real hardware. The Bat and the enemy on level 3 are a little dark. Their shots are especially hard to see. Suggestions 1. Add a memorable player death,like a huge explosion or something traumatic like the ship melting. 2. Make your title simple but make it as interesting as your back story. 3. Check your color pallet. Try not to use colors that are too dark. Bugs. 1. The game crashes on restart occasionally. I've only crashed it in emulation and not on actual hardware, so it might just be the emulator. 2. When hitting multiple enemies the explosion occasionally occurs away from the group. 3. When using the x2 power up, sometimes when one ship gets hit, the other ship blows up. Overall you have made a fantastic game that really separates itself from other shooters.

Same thing happened to me. I also picked up Atari Video Cube and Gremlins at the same Kaybee.

Nothing. I'm just a fan of catchy titles. On a side note how do you get past the pits? They seem too open and close too fast. Never mind, version 1.20 slows down the pits.

Great job Thomas! Will you call this Pitfall! Plus or Pitfall The Unexplored Jungle or Super Duper Pitfall! the Pits will Kill you.

I've been really trying to motivate myself finish the game. I was just talking with my friend about over the weekend. I want to reduce the amount of islands add more creatures and fix a lot of the bugs.

I just picked up mine today.

Any news on this project?

This is going to be a fantastic release!

If you have cord like this you can connect the flashback to a modern TV. I happened to have one from an old camera.

They used to have a store near where I live, but sadly they closed.

Star Trek falls into that category slightly.

Are you returning to the same bank or a different bank? You might try using: return thisbank or return otherbank depending on which condition you are using.

I had a similar problem with Gizzle Wap and Great Blizzard. It is also DPC+ kernal. My game would crash while the Gizzle wap was searching for food. I spent the last couple of days taking the code apart and found that the game has issues with the 5th bank. I was able to fix the code by jamming everything into the 3rd bank and being more careful where and how the code jumped around.

Update 27:Finding the Blood Finch 1. Moved some back ground sprites to eliminate some flicker. Changed the speed as well. 2. When you have rescued enough victims and the star appears in the sky. The next victim will be a Belanis soldier. When rescued he will drop a map. 3. An arrow will appear telling you which direction to go to find the boss. Follow the arrow until it turns into an "x" You will also notice a thin flashing "portal" Dig at the portal and it will spawn the boss. 4. The Blood Finch, sworn enemy of the Moum Moum will swoop in and attack the Moum Moum and Gizzle Wap. Disrupt his attack by digging a hole and let him fly into it. Defeat the Blood finch and he will explode and catch on fire. The Gizzle Wap and Moum Moum will heal and the falling snow will flash. Press the fire button and the next level will start. (There still is no true level progression, the game will just start over) 5. Fixed a bug where there the fraze branch spawns out of reach making it impossible to continue. There are still numerous bugs I still need to fix. I'm working on it. Gizzle Blizzard27.bas.bin