Atarius Maximus

I'm jealous that you live in Texas and can attend! I wish I could go. The game won't be ready for sale on cart by then, unfortunately.

First, thanks to everyone for the kind words. To classicvidgamer - thanks for the feedback. While no game is ever perfect, we spent a long time working on balancing all of the gameplay elements to make it challenging and fun without being overly difficult, from the timing of when powerups appear, how long they stay on screen, the speed of the player, enemies, and arrows, and countless other things as well. The skeleton warrior with the shield that you are referring to actually is coded to be more likely to take a path toward the player when an intersection in the dungeon is reached. It's subtle of course, but he is a little bit more aggressive. Changing him to relentlessly pursue you would upset the gameplay balance at this point and make it exceedingly difficult, in my opinion. Thanks again for the suggestion, though, it's always appreciated! Steve

It pretty much just means we're finished with the game but may make further updates before the final release if bugs are found.

Thanks! No need to get on a list, it will be eventually be released on cartridge here at AtariAge sometime later this year.

After many weeks of hard work and testing it's time to share the 1st release candidate for Dungeon Stalker, which is now the 232nd(!) revision of the code. Many thanks to everyone who has posted in this thread with suggestions as all were carefully considered and reviewed, and many were implemented. Special thanks of course to RevEng and Trebor for their incredible contributions and support for this project. Trebor has spent a great deal of time with gameplay testing and providing excellent gameplay videos. He'll have a new one coming soon that also features all of the new AtariVox speech. Thanks also to PacManPlus for an important code contribution in recent days. Here's the long list of the changes which are all from memory. There may be a few things I'm forgetting as there have been so many changes, but this should cover the major updates. 1. Colors changed. The background color was changed to black and the dungeon maze color changes with each level up rather than the background. It really makes the sprites pop and makes everything in the game clearer and easier to see. Several other color changes were made to accommodate the background color change. The bats were changed to grey instead of black, and as an added bonus, the black background makes it much easier to see the arrows. 2. Wizard Mode enhancements. The wizard now has a special warp move as he moves around the screen (along with a new warp sound and warp animation), explodes when you kill him rather than just disappearing, has a unique background sound, and his behavior has been tweaked since the last version so he's more difficult in later levels. There were also numerous bug fixes relating to wizard mode. The wizard will also no longer spawn directly on top of you, which was a possibility in the previous release. 3. Scoring changes. After hours of gameplay testing some scoring updates were made and it's detailed in the new instruction manual. This was done to help balance out the gameplay and the pace of leveling up. 4. Ranking changes. The level needed to achieve the final rankings were updated, again it's detailed in the new instruction manual. 5. Updated AtariVox speech. More speech was added and existing speech was tweaked to make it sound better. 6. Demo/Attract mode updates. Sound was added to demo mode and some was customized just for that mode. Collisions were also enabled for this mode so it more resembles playing the game. 7. Menu sounds changed. The menu movement sounds were too loud and they were updated to be shorter and softer. Other audio tweaks were also made in other areas of the game. 8. Damaged Bunker changed. The bunker will now be damaged and will not protect you from enemy shots from the top after you reach 37,500 points (and is always damaged in Expert mode). Speech was also updated when the bunker enters the damaged state. 9. AtariVox code updates. The last version I posted (v190) had many AtariVox speech issues. This has been thoroughly tested and everything is now working perfectly. Many thanks to RevEng for helping with this, as he provided many 7800basic code updates to help resolve the issues. 10. New Instruction Manual. The manual was completely re-done and is best experienced with the pdf version rather than the text-only version as it includes graphics. David Exton is helping out with an awesome new manual for the final printed release which should be done in the next 2 or 3 months. Many thanks to him for the label he already created, it's amazing. 11. Minor audio change. You will now hear an audible 'beep' if you try to fire an arrow with an empty quiver. 12. Arrow firing fixes. It was evident in the earlier releases that the bullet appeared to travel through the edge of the dungeon walls when fired horizontally. It's been corrected. 13. Code optimization. RevEng has made many optimizations to 7800basic as well as many optimizations to this game to minimize slowdown and other issues on real hardware. This game really pushes the limits of the 7800 with the number of dynamic on-screen sprites. 14. Bug Fixes! Countless bugs were discovered and fixed since the last revision, too many to remember and mention individually. This has taken the most amount of time by far. While this is a beta release, after the huge amount of testing that's been done it seems to be a very solid release. It's been tested on real hardware with both the MCP devcart and the Cuttle Cart 2 (including the AtariVox) with great success. While I'm anxious to call this game complete, I'm very open to suggestions and bug reports to improve the game. I love feedback! I'm going to attach the latest build and the latest version of the manual here tonight, but will still need to go back and update attachments and the instruction manual text in my earlier posts later to keep everything current. That will likely happen sometime in the next few days. The final source code will eventually be released and will be extremely well commented but it's not quite ready to share yet, and I'd also rather wait until the game is officially completed at this point. Thanks to everyone, and thanks for playing! Steve DungeonStalker_1.232.a78 DungeonStalker_1.232.bin DungeonStalker_LabelArt.zip DungeonStalkerManual_1.232b.pdf

Hit ALT+L while you're playing the game in Stella and it will show you your scanline count. If you go over 262 at any point it will cause screen rolls on real hardware. You're using too many CPU cycles in your main loop and some optimization would need to be done to correct it. That's vague I know, but I can't look at the moment to give you any more specific suggestions. The game looks great, it's a very good start! Edit: I just noticed that you didn't post your source code. That'd be helpful if you'd like further suggestions.

There are 15 patterns for the defenders in the game before it starts to repeat. The best way to avoid the one defender that chases you all the time is to immediately move to the left or right side of the screen staying as far back in the end zone as possible, pause for a second or two, then move to the opposite side of the screen and race up the sideline dodging the defenders that simply move left & right. Which direction you move at the beginning of the round is key to getting a higher score based on the pattern of the defenders, and it takes a bit of memorization to get a high score. Below is a list of the best way to start off to get up to a score of 42. To score 7 - start moving to the left to score 14 - start moving to the left to score 21 - start moving to the right to score 28 - start moving to the left to score 35 - start moving to the left to score 42 - start moving to the right

He's ok. I did receive a refund and a reply from him through the paypal dispute resolution claim I made. I think at this point I'd rather find another source for a spare 7800 power supply though.

I couldn't find my most recent version that I ultimately made into a game demo, but here's a many years old code example I made of a scrolling space background with stars that will move when you move the joystick in any direction. Short and simple. startest3.txt startest3.txt.bin

My comments were made specifically to the limitations inherent with batari Basic and DPC+. There are many tricks that skilled assembly programmers can pull off with a custom kernel. That's likely the case with the M-Network game. To your other question regarding AI, well, put simply, yes it's hard.

I love it Papa, and it's a great start! I had to laugh a bit about your comment about people being more appreciative back then. bB was still in it's infancy when I made Turbo and it was one of very few games that used the multisprite kernel at the time, most games used the standard kernel with only 2 sprites. It was much more impressive in 2007 than now with the pure awesomeness of the DPC+ kernel. I love driving games and look forward to more updates!

It's not a RAM issue. Sprites flicker when multiple sprites occupy the same horizontal plane, you'll notice that the flickering in this game occurs when you move your player up toward the goal, the players will flicker when they are on the same horizontal plane. There isn't any way to get around it unless you design a game that makes the sprites move only left and right horizontally and never cross paths vertically.

Ballblazer is a hall of fame game for me. As many have already mentioned, it really shines with two people. With great music, graphics, controls, and gameplay, it's probably my favorite original game for the 7800. I haven't played Desert Falcon much, honestly. The few times I tried it I absolutely hated it (a solid "meh"), but that was pretty much just a first impression. I'd need to give it a more thorough play for a solid review.

It's been another week and no response from him via the eBay message I sent. I opened a dispute claim with paypal to hopefully get a refund.

Just so everyone is aware, after further testing tonight on real hardware with an AtariVox plugged in I've noticed a few glitches may appear with speech. It's on the to-do list to fix for the next release in the near future.

There has been no response to my eBay message after 3 days. I'll give him a bit more time as paypal gives you 180 days to dispute a payment and it's only been about 3 weeks.

RevEng and I have gotten to the point where we have another solid WIP build to share with everyone. There are a lot of changes in this version and a whole lot of bug fixes and code optimization. I updated the original instructions in the first post and put it all into a pdf file. I highly recommend reviewing the instructions, if you don't you're likely to miss some key elements of the game. The AtariVox does not currently work with this build on the MCP DevCart (the game will not load if it's plugged in) but it works fine on the Cuttle Cart 2. RevEng is investigating that issue. Below is a very brief list of the new features, which are explained in much greater detail in the the attached instruction manual. An expanded dungeon. The dungeon has an additional horizontal corridor at the bottom of the screen. New speech. A whole lot more AtariVox speech was added to the game. There's over three dozen unique speech phrases now. The Wizard. The newly added wizard appears in the transition between each level. Color changing. The background color selection was removed and the game now changes background colors with each level up instead. Small spider webs. The spider randomly lays small spider webs that slow you down and must be shot to clear (based on skill setting). A new spider sprite. The redesigned spider sprite looks much more like a spider. I wanted to thank everyone for their suggestions, posts, and most importantly for playing the game. Special thanks to Defender_2600 (Marco) for the new spider sprite, it looks great. Thanks to classicvidgamer for the idea of changing the background color as you level up. Thanks to Tarzilla for the idea of having the spider create small webs that you need to shoot to clear. It goes without saying, but many thanks also to RevEng for all his hard work on this game and Trebor for the many hours he's put in with gameplay testing and suggestions. I certainly couldn't have done all this by myself! Edit: The downloads and the manual for v1.190 were removed from t his post, as many bugs, features and enhancements were made to the most current version. Please refer to the first post in this thread for the most current version of the game and the manual. While I don't recommend playing them, I did include my previous versions in a zip archive. It's also in the first post.

To be fair, everything I learned about irony was from Alanis Morissette. Is that a coincidence?

I used the stand alone web page. Attempting contact through eBay is a good idea.

Ironically I also ordered a 7800 power supply on that exact same day and also haven't received it yet.

RevEng and I aren't quite ready yet to post the latest version as there are still a few more changes that need to be made. In the meantime, David Exton has finished up on the label art and after getting his approval I wanted to share it with everyone. He did an amazing job!

You do some amazing work, CPUWIZ, don't sell yourself short. I checked out the link you shared and I agree... what Kevin has done is incredible!

No worries. As you said, it's a simple mistake.

Keatah, this game won't run in Stella as it's only for 2600 games and this is a 7800 game. I'd recommend downloading the latest version of MESS, it is the best and most accurate 7800 emulator available right now. You can get it from mamedev.org, and I have instructions on my website on how to set up the command line version of MESS in windows to run 7800 games. Edit: The .bin file in the zip is for running it on real hardware with an MCP devcart or the Cuttle Cart 2, the .a78 file is for running it in an emulator.