Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

e1will

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    364

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by e1will

  1. Posted

    Since the cloud is always above the rain, you could use the same sprite for both. A player sprite would probably give you better results for the cloud than a missile sprite.

     

    If you had to share a color between the targets and another object, which other object would you prefer to share the color with? The sunbeam? The rain? That decision will likely drive which sprites you'll want to use for the targets.

     

    Your job would also be easier if the targets were all on separate vertical lines... can you do that or would that affect the gameplay you have in mind?

     

    (Something like this:)

         *
*
           *
   *
        *

    (instead of this:)

         *
*         *
  *   *

     

    --Will

  5. Posted

    EDIT: Might I also ask how rotation works, out of curiousity? Does it have to be an animation (diagonals could always get awkward) or does it work off of a specific instruction, such as a mirror or reversal?

     

    You can flip a sprite horizontally by using REFP0/REFP1, but anything else you'll need to draw and store your own sprites. Take a look at the Combat disassembly for examples of how each different direction is represented by a different set of sprites:

     

    http://www.atariage.com/2600/archives/combat_asm/index.html

     

    --Will

  8. Posted

    Does it still count as a hack if it's your own game you're hacking? I dunno. But here is an all-green version of Duck Attack! in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

     

    An "all-green" version is always generated when I compile it so that I can verify that all parts of the code are referencing colors indirectly via palette table macros (so that both NTSC and PAL palettes are used correctly) rather than raw hex colors. So it's technically more of a compilation side effect than a hack, I guess.

     

    The gameplay is identical to the normal version, but it's much more challenging since you can't rely on the color of the eggs to tell you which door to go to next. I did change one thing in this version: I replaced the green "1 UP" balloon with a shamrock. (OK, not technically a shamrock since it has four leaves instead of three...)

     

    With all those caveats out of the way, here it is, in NTSC and PAL formats! Enjoy.

     

    --Will

    post-23222-12679130608_thumb.png

    post-23222-126791307496_thumb.png

    post-23222-126791308759_thumb.png

    DUCKGR60.BIN

    DUCKGR50.BIN

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    Is there any way to disable the TIA keys in Stella. I keep getting Palette changes and Console restarts when I play two player games. Since Control-F and Control-R happen when using the standard MAME keymapping I need to disable this. How do I do it? Thanks so much.

     

    As a workaround you could remap the buttons that currently map to the F and R keys (and any other keys that have unwanted interactions with the control key.)

     

    --Will

  16. Posted

    Now that the Duck Attack! development work is done, I figured this would be a good time to announce my second official 2600 homebrew project: Facebook Hero.

     

    You're familiar with Guitar Hero? Well, this would be pretty much like that, or Rock Band, except instead of notes scrolling up the screen, people's statuses would. Using the joystick, you would select one of the following options:

    - "Like" the status

    - Comment "LOL"

    - Comment "*hugs*"

    - Comment "I am so sorry!"

     

    It's a timed game: you start off with 20 friends, and the goal is to see how many friends you have at the end of two minutes.

     

    If you comment inappropriately (for example, responding "LOL" to "My grandfather is in the hospital" instead of "I am so sorry!"), you will be defriended and your friend count will drop by one. If a certain number of statuses pass by without you commenting (or "liking"), that person will think you don't like them and will defriend you.

     

    On the other hand, if you're able to keep up and respond appropriately, friends of your friends will friend you, increasing your friend count, i.e. your score. But the more friends you have, the faster the statuses will come, and the quicker you'll have to be with the joystick to keep up.

     

    Attached is a shot of the title page. No binaries yet; it will probably be a while before it's ready to test.

     

    I'm LOLing just thinking about it.

     

    --Will

     

    post-23222-126713465513_thumb.png

  20. Posted

    The manual should be back online now. (Still the old version for now, I hope to have the newer one uploaded this week.)

     

    If I am carrying the flashlight and another object and try to drop one item, both of them are dropped. I noticed this first while carrying the flashlight and magnet; upon dropping, the magnet was dropped with the flashlight attached to it. I also witnessed this with the flashlight and an egg.

     

    Yep, it's supposed to do that. The fire button drops whatever objects you have, unless you're carrying the zapper, in which case it throws that instead.

     

    While carrying the zapper and an egg through the gray area in which you pick up the flashlight, when I collided with the flashlight, the egg was dropped such that it was completely enclosed in the bottom wall. This made it necessary to get the magnet, which was an irritant. Would it be possible to modify the drop logic so that items are dropped a minimum distance away from the outer walls? It probably would be difficult in odd-shaped rooms, though. Perhaps just a minimum distance away from the edges of the screen would be fine. Another alternative would be to always drop toward the center of the room (ex. if I'm in the lower-left quadrant of the room, the dropped item appears to my upper-right), but that could make it difficult to drop objects while moving toward the center, since the object would be positioned in front of your movement path.

     

    While in the pink diamond room, I launched the zapper toward the left side, where a door is. The zapper wedged itself to the left of the door. Due to the position of the door and the surrounding walls, it was impossible to get the zapper out without the magnet. What do you think of having doors stop the zapper in its flight?

     

    Unfortunately there isn't any room left in the game to do either of those things. The latter would be especially tough since if you have the thrown zapper, the robot and a door in a room, flickering is required and the zapper and door will only be on the same frame sometimes, so a door-zapper collision test would only work some of the time. The only consolation I can offer is that the magnet is usually pretty easy to find, and it will grab anything that's otherwise inaccessible.

     

    Finally, if you launch the zapper while the magnet is in the room, the magnet affects the zapper's movements. Is this by design? I expected that the zapper would be unaffected while in flight but would then come back it hit something. Perhaps I just need to learn more about Duck Attack physics. :)

     

    Please keep up the good work and the enhancements! (By the way, thank you for adding the indicator that a duck has been permanently stopped by the super zapper. It does help.)

     

    You're welcome! It was a good idea you had, I'm glad I had the room to squeeze it in.

     

    --Will

  21. Posted

    I spent some time playing version 0.27 tonight. I finally made it through levels 6 and 7. I'm struggling to even find an egg on level 8, but I'm probably just missing an area that I assumed that I went to. I'll admit that for testing purposes, I am creating save states, so that I don't have to play through lower levels. :)

     

    I noticed some fairly nasty surprises, such as how to get (or miss) the final egg on level 7 and a certain path on level 8 that should not be taken. In an earlier post you stated that the manual will warn of such things. I'm not able to access the manual at http://www.willnicholes.com/duck/; I am getting a "server not found" message.

     

    Ah, looks like my webserver is down; I will investigate.

     

    I haven't uploaded the final version of the manual yet, but it doesn't warn about specific paths and doors: just a general warning that some of them lead to traps. There are a finite number of such traps, though, (less than ten, I'm pretty sure), so once you encounter one once, you'll know to avoid it next time around. That is by design: the game is supposed to be full of surprises, some pleasant, others not so much.

     

    The magnet-zapper interaction is also by design. I kind of like the boomerang effect.

     

    --Will

  23. Posted · Edited by e1will

    Hello again!

     

    Attached is the latest - and possibly final - version of Duck Attack! (v0.27)

     

    The main changes are the addition of a second bonus item in each level, implementation of the "elusive red balloon," and a fix to the "jitter bug" which would cause the screen to flip back to the old screen briefly when moving from one screen to another horizontally while hugging the walls. That took a long time to fix, but it's fixed.

     

    Also included is a tweak to the logic that controls when a duck throws a fireball (previously there was a slight chance a duck would get into a loop, sitting in one place blowing fireballs and not chasing you.) I also changed the "permanently zapped" duck color from red to yellow since it wasn't very distinct from the color of the red duck being temporarily zapped if there were more than 2 objects in a room.

     

    Thanks again to everyone who made suggestions... I'm really glad you did; I think the game is a lot better because of it.

     

    --Will

  25. Posted

    The guy that is writing Duck Attack started Super Pac-Man and if he can get the flicker fest resolved it looks outstanding.

     

    Ladybug has a bit more substance then other dot munchers and when the game speeds up it has me on the edge of my seat.

     

    If I were doing an improved DK, I think my first priority would be "first, do no harm." DK is one of those nice arcade ports that has absolutely no flicker, and several of the improvements discussed would require adding flicker to the game, which would be a turnoff for a lot of folks (myself included.) And the gameplay in the existing two screens is actually pretty decent, so I'd probably leave the two existing screens alone for fear of making them worse.

     

    But I can think of some improvements that could be possible on the VCS without adding any flicker or otherwise degrading any existing elements of gameplay:

     

    1. The title screen animation of Donkey Kong climbing the girders (skippable by pressing the fire button)

    2. The "How high can you get?" interstitial between rounds (also skippable)

    3. A nice-looking Kong sprite at the top of the game screens

    4. "Kong climbing the ladder" animation for completing the 1st screen

    5. "Kong falling down" animation for completing the 2nd screen

    6. Close-to-original background music in the 2nd audio channel

    7. "Got the hammer" background music

    8. "Running out of time" background music

    9. Mario death animation and sounds (also skippable)

    10. Improved walking sound

    11. 3rd screen (elevator stage) with those bouncy springy things

    12. 4th screen (conveyor belt stage) complete with oil can (kinda like this) and pies

    13. high-score-saving logic (assuming an attached AtariVox or SaveKey)

    14. high-score display screen

    15. colors closer to the arcade version

     

    All of the above should fit comfortably in a 32k cart, and wouldn't really be too tough to program given a good disassembly of the original.

     

    But as to the original question of why nobody's done this yet, I think it comes down to the likelihood of working for months to improve the game, and then hearing:

    1. from the community that it still doesn't quite capture the arcade version, and/or

    2. from Nintendo's lawyers.

     

    Both possibilities are pretty depressing to contemplate, when one could have instead been spending those months on an original VCS game that has:

    1. no arcade version expectations to live up to, and

    2. no lawyers to worry about.

     

    But it's definitely doable, IMO.

     

    Of course, even if you did all 15 things above, some people would be turned off by the lack of multiple barrels and/or fireballs on the same scanline (which the arcade version has), the inability of the fireballs to chase you around, and the lack of the bonus items from the arcade version (hat, umbrella, purse). And if you did add those, you'd have to add flicker, which would turn off a whole other set of people (with possibly a lot of overlap of people turned off by both possibilities.)

     

    So it seems to me like it would be a pretty thankless task. But you never know. Someone might just say "what the heck" and do it anyway.

     

    --Will

    • Like 1
AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...