vitoco

Note that your screen data should be aligned to memory pages. In particular, a 4K boundary should not be in the middle of a screen data. If so, you also need a special display list that points to the start of the second "half" past the boundary.

This OPEN+USR trick works with Atari DOS 2.5, as the OPEN sets some IOCB pointers and the USR disables the BASIC ROM, moves RAMTOP and other vectors, and then pass the control to the DOS's builtin binary loader. This year, the multi-platform games had a very big runtime embeded, so a 1050-enhanced density disk (130K) was not enough and I had to change to MyDOS and use a double density disk. The problem was that there were no equivalent routine in the DOS code, but a XIO command was available to load binary files in MyDOS. I needed to disable BASIC and move the vectors before the XIO, so I had to include it in assembly at the end of the USR routine. Can you see why? Then, it is not a bug, they are just different menu versions for different DOS-es. Anyway, did you try to play .XEX tenliners like "Chase Me!" from the menu in 2024's ATR? ++V

Pac-10Liner was just released:

I just released Pac-10Liner @ZeroPage Homebrew, please update your listing... It is completed, BTW.

@Albert, shouldn't this (and similar threads for other platforms) be pinned, at least during the corresponding year?

Wow! Atari games did it very well this year. BTW, contratz @The Car... Two winners!!!

I did some improvements but the I had to pause, because I didn't know if showing this could invalidate it as an entry for the BASIC Tenliners Contest. After a reply from @Bunsen allowing to show it, I can post this new video: Again, I have to re-think on how to manage the difficulty increase. Currently, a level change is by eating all dots and the pill, and the Ghost increases the speed each time. I think that it could increase the speed after every other level or more, as well as decrease the time to capture the fearful Ghost (the purple one). I'm not sure about multiply the level number to the score, like other versions of the game. Still no sound. I want to know how much space I'll have for those FX after the gameplay is completed. I don't like to add things that must be removed later in order to fit the line length for a category. It currently fits the PUR-120 category.

I tried to release an A8 BASIC tenliner proto during the show, but there were too many distractions (it was a good show). I have something that could work: Let's see how it goes... No score, no sound, no difficulty increase, yet!

I just took a capture of your game and noticed this: The ghost seems to be looking backwards even when chasing you.

Why did you cover "Atari" but not "newest"? 🤔 BTW, did Atari release/licenced any tabletop?

Atari entries raised from 8 to 13 counting demos. From those, 7 and 11 are games, respectively. Don't wait to start coding after the contest call. I do it for fun, and I want fun the whole year. I also have a bunch of half cooked prototypes, and from time to time I get back into them. Well, sometimes happens that rules change, like the year when the built-in BASIC was introduced for the PUR-80 category. I had a Turbo Basic XL game in 80 columns that I had to send as a PUR-120 entry because of that rule. ugBASIC is not able to do PUR-80. Trying to write a game that works using Atari BASIC for that category has an extra challenge. I don't know about ugBASIC syntax and available statements, but I can say that the runtime weights so much, so I think that there won't be enough RAM available to be used by games that require it for buffer and tricks. For example ACME Inc executable uses 34K, compared to 5K of Tetris, and both are EXTREM-256 entries, ugBASIC and Fastbasic respectively. Also, I don't know about the speed of both languages if compared running the same piece of code.

I had no time to analyze the entries list and post the 2024 stats earlier, but here they are!!! Total number of entries: 53 Number of entries per category: PUR-80: 20 PUR-120: 11 EXTREM-256: 15 SCHAU: 7 Number of entries per system: Atari 800 XL: 11 Commodore 64: 11 Commodore Plus/4: 6 Commodore VIC 20: 3 Enterprise 64/128: 1 Mattel Aquarius: 1 MSX: 4 Multi System (including Atari XL): 2 Sinclair ZX Spectrum: 9 Sinclair ZX81: 1 Tandy TRS-80 MC10: 2 Tandy TRS-80 Model 100: 1 Videoton TVC: 1 Number of entries per author: FeCO: 7 D. Scott Williamson: 3 Eric Carr: 3 Victor "Vitoco" Parada: 3 8 authors with 2 entries: 16 21 authors with 1 entry: 21 List of Atari entries: Entry Game Platform Author Language Category 1 Chase Me Atari 800 XL Victor "Vitoco" Parada FastBasic 4.6 EXTREM-256 12 RayTrace Movie Atari 800 XL D. Scott Williamson Atari BASIC SCHAU 14 Magic Carpet Ride Atari 800 XL Eric Carr Atari BASIC PUR-80 17 Ray Tracer GTIA Atari 800 XL D. Scott Williamson Atari BASIC SCHAU 20 Jacks or Better VIDEO POKER Atari 800 XL D. Scott Williamson Atari BASIC EXTREM-256 21 Falling Balls Multi System spotlessmind1975 ugBASIC EXTREM-256 22 Gunner Atari 800 XL Eric Carr FastBasic 4.6 PUR-120 28 Endless Road Runner Atari 800 XL Victor "Vitoco" Parada Atari BASIC PUR-80 32 ACME, Inc. Multi System Marco "spotlessmind1975" Spedaletti ugBASIC EXTREM-256 36 Bonk'em Atari 800 XL Noah Burney Atari BASIC PUR-120 38 Tetris Atari 800 XL Eric Carr FastBasic 4.6 EXTREM-256 44 Fly Hunter 10L Atari 800 XL Victor "Vitoco" Parada FastBasic 4.6 PUR-120 52 Doons Atari 800 XL Kim Slawson Turbo Basic XL EXTREM-256 All 11 game entries (SCHAU category was excluded) can be downloaded in the NOMAM2024.atr compilation disk from my tenliners page. NOTE: this ATR must be booted with BASIC enabled (without pressing OPTION key in real hardware) and a joystick is required. ++Vitoco

@ZeroPage Homebrew, Eric Carr has a username in AA: @The Car. He has other interesting projects like the FastBasic Debugger

My A8 port of this game called "Fly Hunter 10L" was submitted to the 2024 BASIC tenliners contest. The source code and the "binary" are available in my tenliners page. I also published a YouTube video of it. I know it is not as beautiful and full of animations like the original, but I think that the gameplay of my simplified version is quite good (and adictive) for a tenliner 😎

Just forget the resolution of the playfield. Use the P/M resolution everywhere. BTW, you can use any value in the range 0-255 for HPOSPx register, which means that you can even put a player outside of the playfield area. And if you want the player to be inside the playfield, you should use from 48 to (208 minus 8*width_of_Px).

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I've done a very simplistic version of your game. Just 1191 bytes of BASIC source code (less than 120 bytes per line, 10 lines in total). I programmed a simplified splash and a wavy fly of the fly, but had to remove them as well as other features in order to fit the 10 lines of code and to increase the playability. I also changed the bitmaps and the colors. I hope you like them... 😬 I'll publish the "making of" and the source code in my tenliners web page, and I'll link this thread using your nickname as the author of the concept. Please send me a PM if you want me to include your real name. That would be great!!!

I saw this game in ZPH Show and immediately thought about writing a BASIC tenliner port of it for the A8. I hope you don't mind if I preserve the look and feel, and the game name, @8bitPoet 😬

I said that because there are two identical links (actually there are three). BTW, I know I said that I updated that to 28th, but as you didn't update the "declared complete" date in the listing, I noticed that the update of my page failed the same way my previous post did, but that I could retry it and forgot to check my page. It is now updated.

Please update the date. The V2 release was just 7 hours later than the original release. I just updated my page: 2024-02-28. For the final "binary", you can link directly the disk image: ROADRUN.ATR. As it is an Atari BASIC game, the Atari computer must be powered on with BASIC ROM (without pressing OPTION key).

In my experience, the main problem was the poor quality of the diskettes I used. It took me some retries to get all diskette sectors at least once for many of them, and then merge the resulting ATRs to build a good disk copy (in some cases I just ignore a read error because it was over an empty or irrelevant file sector like DOS's). I used a 1050-2-PC cable (similar to SIO2PC) to connect the 1050 directly to a PC, and ProSystem software with log enabled to get a map of good/bad sectors and then use a script to perform the merge using those maps. I also used (a few times) a SIO2SD device to copy disks using any disk copier in my 800XL, including a BASIC one I wrote to perform the sector read retries over unstable diskettes (but it was so slow).

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Sometimes I have to decide between X and Y features, because there is room for only one of them, and I keep the one that maximizes the gamplay. Sometimes, while I'm writing the comments for the required explained source code, I find better ways to code something. Sometimes I find that two statements could be reduced to just one with a variable that changes the behavior to the corresponding one. Sometimes, when the order of the statements does not matter, I could make them fit better in the lines. And sometimes I move to the next category and include all the features that I want...

That's why I got a negative number!!! 😂 Sometimes my showers are looooong while I'm trying to solve this kind of problems... 😉

n=129:m=&"0123456789ABCDEF"+1:b=p.(m+n/16)*256+p.(m+n&15) The string actually is this sequence of chars/bytes: $00,$03,$0C,$0F,$30,$33,$3C,$3F,$C0,$C3,$CC,$CF,$F0,$F3,$FC,$FF