Atarius Maximus

I was a BBS sysop back in the day but I never ran a dopewars door. I only knew of it as a standalone game. The link in my original post mentions it's past popularity as a door back in the 90's, I'm surprised I didn't run across it. My most popular door was Legend of the Red Dragon.

I loved it too, and I also played it in my University days, late 80's/early 90's. I've now made two remakes. I think I'm done now.

Staying up late to do a little more play testing. This is why I don't test on real hardware very often.

For those that don't frequent the Atari 7800 programming forum I thought I'd make another post here. I've created a new homebrew 7800 game called Death Merchant. It's mostly written in 7800basic. You can view details & instructions for the game in the original thread here. Future revisions and updates will be made on that thread, as of course it's possible some bugs may be found and tweaks may be made. Enjoy, and let me know what you think! Steve DeathMerchant_1.0.a78 DeathMerchant_1.0.bin

Welcome to the Apocalypse. Death Merchant is a new 7800 game that was inspired by an old favorite of mine, Dopewars, which can be downloaded here. Dopewars is a DOS based text-only drug dealing simulation game and I used it's gameplay in this re-imagining of the original, along with some graphics and gameplay additions to give it a bit more of an RPG-like feel. It’s a 48K game written almost entirely in 7800basic, there are some assembly subroutines for the 24-bit math calculations. For the curious, I also wrote a Win9x version of Dopewars back in the 1990's, it was closer to a clone of the original. It won't run well (if at all) on Windows 7+, but fee free to check it out and download it on my home page here. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world, and the object of the game is to survive for 31 days and earn as much money as you can in the process by buying and selling survival gear. You set out with a $5000 loan for a month in the abyss, looking to earn as much money as you can while surviving your journey. You’ll have to deal with random events that occur when travelling that can help or hinder your progress. When the game starts, you’re presented with a main menu of options at the bottom of the screen: Buy, Sell, Bank, Stats, Travel, Doctor, Train, Fight, Lender, and Rest. On the top half of the screen you’ll see your current stats, your cash, and your current location on the left side, and on the right side you’ll see all of the items available for trade, the current prices, and the quantity of each that you currently own. Progressing in the game requires that you travel, that's what triggers the start of the next day. Certain options are only available in certain cities so you'll need to travel to specific destinations based on your current needs in the game. While the game has been tested and seems to work fine, this is not likely to be the final release and there may still be some undiscovered bugs. I may make revisions and post updates in the coming weeks (months?) as I make tweaks to the game. Certain stats may be adjusted as I play more to try and improve the balance of the game. There’s a lot going on, and I’m still working on making sure the game isn’t too easy or too difficult. Feedback about game play balance or any other suggestions would be appreciated. Major changes would be impossible at this point as the ROM is 99.9% full - notable changes would require removing existing features or functionality. It is possible to roll your score if you exceed $999,999, although I did attempt to make it impossible (or very difficult) to actually do that. This game does not feature any AtariVox speech nor does it offer high score saving, and I’m aware that in-game sounds are somewhat limited. In that regard this game stays true to the spirit of the original. I’m limiting myself to 48k with this game (mostly because I’d need almost a complete re-write at this point to use bankswitching), and adding those features isn’t possible due to space constraints. Below is a description of all the player stats and menu options to get you started. For emulation I highly recommend Mame over ProSystem, the colors look bad in ProSystem with this game. Mame is much more accurate. I haven't taken the time to test this on real hardware yet, but I am providing the .bin for anyone who'd like to try it out that way. Enjoy, and let me know what you think! Statistics and Consumable Items Knives Knives are needed when you get attacked when travelling or when you start a fight. If you don’t have any knives, you will not be able to continue fighting or initiate a fight. Knives can be acquired by purchasing them from the Merchant or by randomly finding them when you travel. You may break or drop a knife when fighting. You start the game with 25 and and carry up to 99. Health (HP) Your health, or hit points, must remain positive or the game will end. You can lose health in two ways: by travelling when your Stamina has reached zero (-2 per day), or when you are attacked and hit by an enemy (-1 per hit). The only method to increase your health is to visit the Doctor in the city of New Vegas. You will be charged a random fee for your visit. You start the game with 99 health points, and the max value is 99. Backpack Your backpack is an extremely important item in the game, managing the amount of space you have is critical to success. You start out with a small backpack with enough space to hold 50 tradeable items. Your knives and food have their own inventory limitations and do not affect the amount of backpack space you have. When travelling, you may have an encounter with the Merchant, who will sell you a larger backpack that increases your usable space from 50 to 99. You may only buy the larger backpack one time per game, 99 is the maximum number of items you’ll ever be able to carry at once. As the ability to store items is key to success in this game, it’s recommended to upgrade your backpack at the first opportunity. Food Food is necessary to maintain your Stamina level. Food can be acquired by either Resting at the safe house in Bedford, purchasing it from the Merchant (who appears randomly when you’re travelling), or by randomly receiving rations when travelling. If your food supply falls to zero, you have an additional daily stamina drop of -1 in addition to the normal drop of -3. Stamina Stamina reflects your overall energy level. It affects your ability to fight, and also your health when it reaches zero. You cannot start or continue to fight if it reaches zero. You will lose 2 stamina for every day that you travel. The only way to replenish your Stamina is to rest in the safe house for one day, which is located in the city of Bedford. Charisma Charisma has two main effects in the game. Making purchases from the Merchant is what increases your Charisma. Once your Charisma reaches a certain level, you will receive more and more free items from the Merchant with every purchase you make from him. Higher Charisma levels will also start reducing the interest payments you make on your debt. Dexterity The higher your dexterity, the more likely you are to win a fight. You start out with a Dexterity value of 10, and will earn 1 bonus point for every criminal gang you defeat, and 5 bonus points every time you purchase professional training. Menu Options Fight Fighting is random or manually chosen. You may be attacked when you’re travelling to a new city, or you can manually start a fight from the main menu at any time and in any city that you’re currently in. When entering a fight, you will encounter a random number of criminals in a gang. During the fight, additional criminals may enter the fight, prolonging the battle, and in some cases you may not be able to escape and must complete the fight until you’ve exhausted your Stamina or knives, your Health is depleted, or you kill all of the gang members. Hits and misses are determined randomly, however the more often you fight the more likely you are to win (as your Dexterity stat increases). When you defeat an entire gang of criminals, you will gain a dexterity bonus as well as some cash and extra knives. Travel Travelling is a requirement in the game in order to progress. Travelling to a new city offers fluctuations in the price of goods, allowing you to make some big profits if you’re lucky. It will also result in many different random events occurring. Random price events may occur on some goods, resulting in dramatic price increases or price drops, you may find some money, food or knives, you may be attacked by a gang, or you may be stopped by the Merchant. Lender The Lender is the antagonist of the game, you start off owing him the amount of money that you start the game with. You Start with $5000 in debt and immediately have that much available to you. It’s a one time loan, you cannot borrow any more money during the game, you can only pay him off. Interest is charged daily, but the amount of interest he charges is modified by your Charisma and the number of days remaining in the game. Once Debt is paid down to zero, no additional interest is accrued and you are done with the lender for the remainder of the game. Bank Money can be deposited to prevent it being taken from you in a robbery when travelling, and also to accrue interest. Any deposits into the bank will result in a $500 per day interest payment, which increases to $1000 a day once you have more than $10,000 in your account. You cannot spend money that's in the bank, it must be withdrawn first and you may only visit the bank when in the city of Lost Angeles. There is no fee for Bank transactions. Rest Resting in the safe house in the city of Bedford is the only way to replenish your Stamina, and is also a way to increase the amount your food rations. Resting is free, but it does cost you one day of game time. Train Training is offered in the city of New Salem. For a fee, an expert will instruct you in the ways of knife fighting, which results in a +5 Dexterity bonus every time you train. Training costs a random amount of credits. You can train as many times as you want up to your Dexterity limit, at which point the trainer is no longer available. Stats The stats screen is informational and does not affect the outcome of the game. It will display some additional in-game statistics: the number of times you've trained, your total Dexterity bonus, your total Charisma Bonus, the number of gangs you’ve killed, the number of days you’ve rested, and the number of bank transactions you’ve completed. You can freely go back and forth from this screen with no penalty, and it can be accessed when in any city. The stats screen is also the "Game Over" screen when you die or run out of days, which you can use to track your scores and stats to try and do better the next time around. Doctor The doctor can only be visited in the city of New Vegas and is the only way you can replenish your health. The doctor charges a random fee, and will restore your health to the full amount (99). The doctor is only available if your health is below 99 and you have enough credits to pay him. Buy/Sell You can select items to buy or sell only one item at a time. Move the joystick up and down to select the item you’re interest in, then move the joystick left and right to change the quantity of the item you’d like to buy or sell. You will not be allowed to buy more of an item than you can afford, and you will not be able to sell more of an item than you posess. The space available in your backpack is also verified, you will not be able to purchase more items than you can carry. After an item has been bought or sold, you are taken back to the main screen. The Buy and Sell screens can of course be accessed from any city in the game. Merchant The Merchant randomly appears throughout the game, generally around 0-3 times, but it's random. The items he offers are the same every time, and the prices are static throughout the game. The Merchant is the only way to purchase a bigger backpack, and the only way to purchase Knives and food. You gain Charisma with every purchase you make from the merchant. As your Charisma increases, the Merchant will give you more free items with every purchase. As your Charisma increases, the amount of interest you pay on your debt to the Lender decreases. DeathMerchant_1.0.a78 DeathMerchant_1.0.asm DeathMerchant_1.0.bas DeathMerchant_1.0.bin DeathMerchant_1.0_Graphics.zip

Cool. I've only played the game for about 10 minutes at this point, but I really like it. The overall polish and originality of this game is impressive.

I'm just now seeing this, and just played a few rounds. It's really, really good. Fantastic Work. Regarding cart options, besides asking Albert here at AA, you can also purchase your own batch of carts from AA user CPUWIZ and sell them as a limited run yourself. He can also create labels for the carts if you have the artwork. I did that with my "Gate Racer 2" game a few years back with him.

It's been a while since I've worked with bB, but I'll try and help a little bit. Anyone who knows better please correct me if I'm wrong. 1) Do all bin's have to be 32K when say, I am only using two banks? Whenever I try to set the kernel to something else it doesn't compile. Yes, all are 32K. 2) Do all 10 of my sprites now have to be multi-color? COLUP[n] registers are not read? Is there any easy way of setting a sprite that is all the same color instead of adding the playcolor block of all the same value to each line of the sprite? Sprites do not have to be multi-color. If I remember correctly, I always just set each line of color to the same value. 3) Kind of related to the above, the score is ONLY multi-colored? (I do like the faded look though). You are not required to make the score multi-colored. 4) When using pfscore, the last blocks of pfscore1 are lopped off... am I doing something wrong? There seems to be enough space before the score starts. A code example would help assist you with this. I am running into all sorts of questions while programming, can I use the thread to ask questions as I go along? Yes. Here are a few notes I took about DPC back when I first tried to use it in 2013. Search the forums and download other people's code, looking at samples will probably help answer many of your questions. I also recommend reading Random Terrain's excellent documentation on his website here: http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html. The DPC+ kernel is hardware assisted and only works with melody/harmony cartridges. There is support for pfpixel, pfvline and pfhline, but no playfield scrolling and no pfclear. a-z are the only variables available, however: You can "push" variables to the stack and reuse them, then "pull" them back off. There are 256 bytes in it that can be used in a program. I don't have any examples of how to do this. player1 only wraps because values larger than 165 cannot be supported, so to prevent crashes, DPC+ wraps automatically. It is up to the programmer to wrap player0, and the missiles and ball. To fix issues with the harmony cart, put temp1=temp1 right after each bank declaration vblank needs to go in bank 1 Collisions: The virtual sprites are all player1 so you can't use collision() to detect collisions between them, and when a virtual sprite collides with the playfield you won't know exactly which one did it without coordinate checking. Each sprite allows its REFPx and NUSIZx to be set independently I couldn't get player1 to reflect, but player2 thru player9 reflect with their NUSIZx Example: reflect player 3 NUSIZ3{3} = 1 The 3 in curly brackets is bit 3. Also, bits 6 and 7 control smooth entry, I think it is called masking, of a player {bit 7} to the screen from the left or right side {bit 6} but was never shown in an example. It is a subtle effect, but useful if you don't want a player sprite wrapping from the left/right sides of the screen. (On both sides of the screen at the same time.) You want the sprite to move off screen to the left without it sliding in on the right. Bit 7 of NUSIZx turns the masking on: NUSIZ2{7} = 1 Bit 6 of NUSIZx sets Left or Right masking (L/R): NUSIZ2{6} = 0 will let the sprite disappear off the left side of the screen. Once it is moved off screen you should set its location, because if you keep subtracting its position it will appear on the right side and continue right to left. NUSIZ2{6} = 1 will let the sprite disappear off the right side of the screen. If you want to disable a sprite, do not set its Y value to zero but to around 200 so it is off-screen. Zero won't work right as it is on-screen. Using 'set kernel_options collision(player1,playfield)' will return the y-coordinate where the first such collision occurs, so you can later figure out what sprite it was. Value is returned in temp4 after a drawscreen. The 1.1d version of the DPCplus_kernel has a timing error if you don't use this option, always include it for now. Put this at the beginning of your code: set kernel DPC+ Games must start in bank 2. Put a "goto" statement in bank 1 to a label in bank 2. Sets Playfield Resolution: Horizontal resolution is 32 across, Vertical can be set up to 255. DF commands must be placed in the main loop before/with the drawscreen. DF0FRACINC=<x> DF1FRACINC=<x> DF2FRACINC=<x> DF3FRACINC=<x> Here is a chart of working vertical resolutions. A "*" in the resolution column means that the bottom row isn't full height. The original chart from batari is here: http://www.atariage....00#entry2253460 Lines Res DF(0-3) DF4 1 176 255 - 2 88 128 255 3 59 * 86 - 4 44 64 128 5 36 * 52 - 6 30 * 43 86 7 26 * 37 - 8 22 32 64 9 20 * 29 - 10 18 * 26 52 11 16 24 - 12 15 * 22 44 13 14 * 20 - 14 13 * 19 38 15 12 * 18 - 16 11 16 32 18 10 * 15 30 19 10 * 14 - 20 9 * 13 26 22 8 12 24 24 8 * 11 22 26 7 * 10 20 29 7 * 9 - 32 6 * 8 16 37 5 * 7 - 44 4 6 12 52 4 * 5 10 64 3 * 4 8 86 3 * 3 6 128 2 * 2 4 176 1 1 or 0 1 or 0 Assymetrical Playfield color: DF4FRACINC Changes the asymetrical playfield color. You would think you could set a color for each scan line, but the playfield blocks only change every other line, so you only need half the data. DF4FRACINC = 255 DF6FRACINC Will let you pick a color for each scan line on the background. DF6FRACINC = 0 bkcolors: $45 end The above code will make the background all red. Setting DF6FRACINC to 0 will give you one background color, setting DF4FRACINC to 0 will give you one playfield color. DF commands must be placed in the main loop before/with the drawscreen. Sets Scorecolors (multi-line): scorecolors: <x> end Missiles: Each missile must share its color with its player on every scanline. This is a hardware limitation. If a missile is on a scanline where its player is not present, you can control the color. Sets Missile Colors: COLUM1=<x> COLUM0=<x> Sets Heights for missiles and ball (You must set these before they appear): missile0height=<x> missile1height=<x> ballheight=<x> Sets Background Color (multi-line): bkcolors: <x> end Sets Playfield Color (multi-line): pfcolors: <x> end Sets Player Colors (players 0-9, multi-line): player0color: <x> end Set Playfield (no pfclear): Playfield: ................................ end

Trade-n-games is a cool place, I'm in St. Louis too. I looked at the ad and it's in Fairview Heights, IL, which is about a 45 min trip for me. It wouldn't be able to make the trip anytime soon based on my schedule and it's nowhere near any place I normally drive to.

Yep, I'm still around, real life has just prevented me from being as active as I'd like to be. Thanks for the compliment! ...Steve

I just renewed. Now I can receive PM's again.

I didn't know about that. I'm going to send him a message on eBay and formally ask him to not sell any reproduction carts of my games in the future.

Ooops, looks like I let my AA subscription lapse. That's probably why you can't send me a PM right now, my inbox was already pretty full. Don't worry about sending the $20. I'm glad you're enjoying the game.

Thanks for the compliments and suggestions, glad you like it. I may work on adding to it in the future but I don't have plans to do that anytime soon. My new job leaves me little time for any personal projects... I can't even look at AA during the day anymore. I thought it was interesting that you found a cart on eBay, so I did a quick search and found one here. I don't really care I guess, but no one asked me for permission to do that and re-sell them for a profit.

Nice job. I've always preferred games like this that you can sit down and finish a game within a minute or two and just try and get a high score. My best so far is 26. Getting a higher score really just requires some patience - I'd let the screen roll pretty often until I saw an obvious gap that I knew I'd be able to make. It's still pretty easy to make a mistake sometimes, though.

Thanks. Changing the strength or size is a good idea. The game is pretty simplistic as it is now, I know that. I could also add a fuel gauge and a random powerup to get more fuel that also goes through the asteroid field. In order to avoid any flicker, I can't have more than one cargo ship on the screen at once, and any kind of powerup option would have to use the same player sprite as the cargo ship, so they couldn't be on screen at the same time. I know it's just a limitation of the standard kernel, I could make this game much more interesting with DPC+.

Based on Mountain King's suggestions I updated this version so the player's ship sprite changes to an angled view when you're moving through the asteroid field, along with a sound effect to go with it. escape2.txt escape2.txt.bin

Thanks for the compliments. I can play around with the star field speed, but the star field is more convincing at higher speeds. The slower it goes the more it just looks like blinking dots on the screen. Still, it's something I can mess with. This game would be much more visually appealing if I made it with the DPC kernel or on the 7800, but honestly I was just trying to keep it simple. I did think of using pfheights to vary the size, however pfheights seems to be incompatible with pfres, and I am using pfres to reduce the number of playfield lines to gain some extra RAM. I needed the extra 16 variables. I did a little research on the forums and others have also reported problems using pfheights and pfres at the same time. Making a change visually or audibly when you're in "ramming mode" shouldn't be too hard, I can take a look. Glad you enjoyed playing. Your high score is better than mine at the moment. Steve

I spent some time writing a simple 4k game using the standard kernel. I was getting the itch to write a program, it's been over a year now. It could use a bit of polish as there is no level or difficulty progression at the moment. Beyond that it is a complete and playable game. The screenshots don't show everything. I used both players missiles to create a scrolling starfield effect. You're caught in an endless asteroid belt and it's your mission to ram and destroy the escaping cargo ship without crashing into an asteroid yourself. Your fighter ship is specially designed to take out the cargo ship by ramming it. You gain a point each time you destoy the ship. If you're destroyed, the game is over. There's only one life. You fly on the outskirts of the asteroid belt, either just above or below it. Push up or down to enter the asteroid belt to try and take out the escaping Cargo ship. Your momentum requires an angled 45 degree attack, push up or down on the joystick to move to the other side of the asteroid belt. When on the outskirts, you can thrust forward or backward by pushing left or right. You can also turn on the afterburners by pushing down when you're on the bottom, and up when you're on top to fly faster. The game will continue as long as you can survive. Enjoy! Comments and suggestions are welcomed. I may make some further changes and enhancements, although I'd likely have to bump up the rom size. Steve escape1.txt escape1.txt.bin

Dennis Debro recently posted a commented disassembly of Grand Prix so I thought I'd play around with it a little bit. This hack changes the background to black and grey, increases the top speed of your car, changes the car sprites to be a little smaller to make it easier to weave around traffic, changes the oil slicks & finish line to be multicolored (the original black doesn't work on the newly black background), and the finish line is now actually a line rather than crossed flags. Nothing major here, just having some fun. The smaller car size does make it possible to get some better times over the original. Night_Grand_Prix.bin

I can't help with modifying Crystal Castles, but I'll repeat what was already mentioned about potentially using a custom message cart instead. I helped someone out with that a few years ago. I have two samples that both display "I love you Jill! Will you marry me?" and scroll it across the screen. I didn't write the code, these are old demos from Eckhard Stohlberg and Alex Hebert that I modified. I'm Attaching the binary files as well as DASM compatible source and they are easily modifiable. If you want to change the text, search the code for the text "marry me jill" to change it to what you want, then run "dasm marrymejill.txt -f3 -omarrymejill.bin" to compile it. marrymejill.bin marrymejill.txt marrymejill2.bin marrymejill2.txt

It's one of my all time favorite homebrews. Manuel Rotschkar did an amazing job. When I saw the possibility to earn a new patch just like the old days with Activision, I bought a copy immediately and didn't stop playing until I earned one. I can't even estimate how many hours I played it. I just came across the envelope with the letter & patch that Al sent me, dated January 4th, 2004.

Ha. I really don't completely remember what my expectations were. I do know I played it quite a bit, at least at first. When all was said and done, I think I ended up owning around 15 games before the crash and me getting my C64 in '84 (which put the 2600 in the closet for the remainder of the 80's). I remember my favorites of the games I owned being Adventure, Asteroids, Demon Attack, Pitfall, Keystone Kapers, Missile Command, and Space Invaders.

I had a whole lot of LCD arcade games too, as well as all the old Mattel handheld sports games. I just thought it was cool to have any type of video game to play at home. I remember temporarily trading games with friends too, and the excitement of going to a friends house when they just got a new game. I remember my good friend (a neighbor) got Decathlon and Defender... we stayed up all night playing. It all came to a screeching halt around 1984 (my first year of high school) when we both got our Commodore 64's, the Atari was put in the closet until I got the nostalgia bug in college in 1990 or so. I used my C64 as my primary computer until my first PC clone in 1991!