beoran

This is a small note to everyone reading this thread. As I also have a thread on the homebrew forum, I'd prefer to discuss the game there, to lessen my work in keeping up with your comments. I will not answer to any comments made here anymore, so please take it to the thread on the homebrew forum. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Dear KevinMos, Thanks for explaining, now I see your point! In a new version which I will post in a moment in the homebrew thread, I've implemented your idea simply like this: if you didn't get all items, you simply level up 3 levels, and you can go look for the missing items. If the game sees you have all the items, then the bosses, switches, and also your inventory is reset, but you are leveled up to level 90. That way, players who collected all items can still play the game again, with a small added challenge (you still can level up the last 9 remaining levels).

Gambler and TrekMD, Thanks for the kudos. I hope you enjoy the game. Personally, I'm not going to invest any money in a cart release of this game. I didn't have any monetary goals, I just made the game for my own pleasure, and in the hope that some other people would enjoy it. But since this game is licensed under the Zlib license, anyone can make a cart out of the game if they like, as long as they credit me. I think Yuppicide will probably be the most likely candidate for doing this if no one else volunteers.

Gabriel, that's because FF13 is very entertaining, but it is not really fun to play. In that lies the difference between FF13 and some of it's predecessors. Entertainment means, keep people busy, and waste their time in an agreeable way. Fun is something else though, something more intense, awesome, memorable, and pleasurable. If we don't have any good memories after doing something, we weren't having fun. But fun is far more difficult to design in a game than mere entertainment, though. That's why we're getting a lot of beautiful, entertaining yet not fun games as of lately, but much less truly fun games. Also for the economical reasons I mentioned before.

KevinMos, It would be nice to have such a map, yes, but we'll have to wait for (or look for) another volunteer. It would certainly be possible not to level up the player to level 99 when you already have all items, however, most people will be already level 99 because they beat the game before getting all the items. Perhaps I should not level up the player after winning all the way to 99, but just 1 level or so, so they can replay the game with some challenge involved? And yes, I fixed that sound bug. The sound stopping subroutine wasn't called for the end music. Oh, and where should ipost a label contest? Should I just mention it in the homebrew forum thread?

I've also played FF1 to FF12 except FF11, and I got about 14 hours into FF13 before I got bored, and switched to playing FF3 in stead (which I hadn't played before). Sid Meier said that a game is a series of interesting choices. FF13 is very beautiful in the art department, with nice music, an interesting plot and varied characters. But it doesn't offer any interesting choices! Or at least not for the first part of it. That's why I can hardly call FF13 a game, it's mostly an interactive movie. Now, some people complain about linearity, but all in all, I'm fine with linear games, if they have a strong story, and compensate the linearity in the story line by offering a range of choices and interesting game play elements in other aspects of the game. In previous FF's you got the choice of equipment, the map layout of the dungeons was branching with some dead ends, and some puzzles to solve, difficult to find treasures in hidden corners or unlocked by solving riddles, towns where you could interact with NPC's (or not, but that's also a choice you can make), possibility to do some side quests or games. Most FF games also offered nice character customization though jobs/espers/guardian forces/grid systems. Or, you could always choose to do a bit of grinding outside a village to get the next level of equipment (or not, and make the game more challenging), etc. It feels to me that in FF13, they went out of their way to actually /remove/ or at least /hide/ as much choices as possible. Not only in the plot, but also in the map design, and in every other detail of the game. It really feels like they wanted to make a "casual RPG" that appeals to a wide audience, with every RPG-like gameplay element introduced in a step by step fashion, resulting in a game that is a 30 hour tutorial to a 30 hour game. In essence, it's a prime example of what I dislike about contemporary commercial games: since the development costs for 3D games has become so high, the developers are forced to make games that are immediately accessible and which appeal to a wide audience, in order to get enough revenue to cover the costs. And the way big game companies do this is by emphasizing the graphics, and keeping the game play simple and casual. While this is fine for certain genres, for a 60 hour RPG, this is actually a bit of a contradiction in terms, as was stated before here. I think it's a regrettable evolution, as game companies are forgetting what games are all about: giving the player interesting choices. FF13 is definitely one more step in the wrong direction. For all these reasons, I think of FF13 as "Final Fantasy Mystic Quest for Adults". I did play Final Fantasy Mystic ques to the end, and even though it was quite casual and simple, I ended up enjoying it in the end. And I do think that if I continue playing FF13, I'll probably enjoy it somewhat in the end (one I get to the part where it opens up). But life is short, and games are plentiful, so I think I'll pass for now, only returning to it when I finished my other games I still have not finished yet. B.

I've almost completed a new homebrew action adventure game for the Atari 2600, named "Ature". After some discussion on the programming forum, I thought I'd release it here for you all to try. Currently there's only an NTSC version for playing on an emulator, ature.bas.bin, a pal version will only be considered if there is enough demand. The zip file also contains the source code, and a full manual in pdf and openoffice format (www.openoffice.org). All comments are welcome, but I hope you'll all enjoy it. Kind Regards, B. Edit: if anyone wants to design a label for this game, that would be nice, too. So let's start a label contest. Edit: ature_20100709.zip is a new version with some small bugs fixed, and more of a challenge if you reset the game after winning, depending on your achievements. ature_20100708.zip ature_20100709.zip

The manual is finished, including a version of the map that hides most secrets. And I've made the post in the homebrew forum: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/165701-ature-my-homebrew-action-adventure-game-for-atari-2600/ Perhaps you could also print the manual, it's already set to A6 size.

Dear KevinMos, Thank you for that map. If you don't mind I'll use that map, after covering up the secret areas, as the map in the manual I'm working on. As for the spoiler, yes, this was completely intentional. In Ature, there are in most cases two ways to achieve any goal. The second way to reach that switch was intended for players who don't collect the 3 leaves but go for the Numen Sword in stead. The changing of the background color when entering the boss rooms is a bug which I also encountered myself, but I'm yet clueless as to why it happens. I'll try to see if I can fix it later after I finish the manual. As for the other two bugs, I'll also look into them, but I can't promise anything for the last one, as there's already some code to prevent the player from being kicked back into a wall, but sometimes it fails, apparently, and I'm at a loss on how to fix it. But, let's just do as you say and call it a feature, or a trap in stead, as the player can always reset to go back home.

Well, I'm glad to hear you like the map. As for getting on a cartridge, the game is zlib license, so anyone can do this freely if they'd like as long as they gve me credit for the game. I hope of course that they would just sell at bare cost, but again, I don't care for any profits from this, I just made this game for my own fun. I'd love someone to draw me a label, but I don't know anyone who could do this, so I'm open to your advice. I'll probably make a post to the homebrew forum also, but I'll probably make a PDF file for the documentation, with the screenshots included. As for making another game like this, but bigger, I will and it will be "Eruta", but it will not be for 2600. I know it's very ambitious but I hope to make that game 50x bigger. And it will have all of the essential elements of Ature and more. If I finish it in my lifetime, that is.

Ok, I was able to generate an image from the text map, attached to this post. No colors though, I'm lazy today. But, if you just want to finish the game, you don't need to defeat the -. The - is an optional boss, as are many things in this game. The Numen Armor, Numen Shield, Book of Healing and the Book of Striking are all four optional, and not needed to finish the game, though they all make it quite a bit easier each in their own ways. Basically, to finish the game, there are 2 approaches: one is a more battle oriented way where you must fight your way to 3 bosses and gather the 3 leaves they guard, and use them to break the curse. A second, less battle oriented, but more crafty approach involves solving some difficult puzzles to get the Numen Sword, and use that to break the curse. If ypu want more hints I'll send them to you in a private message. Kind Regards, B.

Oops, forgot to include the attachment. You can find the map attached to my modified previous message.

As a side during development I tried using a constant called "coin" and compiling barfed. Changed that sucker to "bonus" and all was good. I never got a reply from beoran about his experiences with constants bugs in Ature. He actually resorted to using a C preprocessor apparently. Yes, I experienced similar problems with constants. I'm using Linux, and I know my C, so I'm comfortable in suing the C preprocessor on non C programs to simulate constants. Tell me if you need some help there. Kind Regards, B.

Dear KevinMos3, Attached to this message is the map in text format. Look at it with a notepad with line wrap turned off and you letter type set to very small. I warn everyone, it's a HUGE SPOILER, so don't look at it until you're finished with the game, or feel you're totally stuck. Kind Regards, B. ature_map.txt

I uploaded yet another new version at the top of this thread (sorry for the short delay), in which I added a few more blocks to the map there so you shouldn't be able to get stuck like that anymore. I also changed the game over music, although I don't know if it's better. The _ is indeed the hardest foe to beat to beat of them all. And some f the puzzles are rather complicated. But I'm glad you're enjoying the game.

Dear yuppicide, i've uploaded a new version (look at the top of the thread) whihc should prevent ythe player from being kicked off the current screen by an enemy. I'd still love to here about the room where you got stuk, though. Kind Regards, B.

[edit: submitted by mistake ] Dear KevinMos, I'm glad to hear the game also plays on the original hardware. As for your questions: I didn't want to give a name Sygne's beloved, nor specify any gender. I'd like to leave it up to the player's imagination. There are 8 items in the game, although the 3 Numen leaves only show up as one item in the inventory. All 8 items are alluded to in the manual. And yes, I'm a union member. Your level can go all the way up to 99. Every level you need (level / 2 ) + 1 experience point to level up. however, if you win the game and continue playing, your level will be maxed out at 99, so no need to level up anymore, just look around leasurely and try to find any missing items. As for your suggestions, I'll change the color of the boss somewhat. It was intentional that that boss is difficult to see, however, not /that/ difficult. I'll update the manual into an html file with images, and link a walkthrough to it. An inventory/status screen would be nice, I see if I can do anything with the B/W switch. As for the music, I wrote a bit of music for the start, game over, and the end. It's not great, but it's probably a nice extra. Yuppicide: I have a map automatically generated from the source code (it's a big spoi ler, though) and I can write a walkthrough, although I hope people will at least try he game without it. Since I'll probably update the game for some of KevinMos's suggestins, I'll look into the collision detection problem as well. But, if you find any place where you can just walk off the screen and end up stuck, this is a bug in the map design, so please tell me where this happened. Kind Regards, B.

Dear Yuppicide, I can actually agree more or less with your feeling. However, my main reason for making this game, though, was as a sort of 'ramp up' or exercise if you like for my other full blown game project, "Eruta", a 2D classic looking action RPG for Linux/OSX/Windows. I wanted to see if I could get the game concepts in a very simple machine, that had very low art requirements. So that's why I don't want to invest too much effort in Ature. I just want to make sure it's playable and fun, and bugfix it where possible, but I don't want to go out of my way for it. I hope you'll understand. As you hopefully could see from Ature, I have many good ideas for making an action RPG, but the art requirements for a good-looking 2D game are very high. No wonder the industry moved to 3D, it's much less work, because a 3D model can be reused, while this is harder for 2D art. But I don't like the feel of 3D models. So anyway, I got a bit discouraged in making Eruta, so that's why I tried my hand at Ature, with rather satisfactory results. Perhaps I should be more daring with Eruta, make sure the game plays well even when the art is not too good, and release many public beta's, while polishing on the art later. All this aside, though. Kind Regards, B.

Dear Yuppicide, Yes, it's probably a good idea to prevent you from being thrown off the screen or through a wall. I'll see if there's anything I can do about this within the memory limits. Kind Regards, B.

Dear Yuppicide, It was intentional that a heart is always dropped at your home. It's your own home so you can relax a bit there. The health will not be reset to full, but only to 1/4th. This is on purpose, to punish you a bit for losing the game, (and force you to go back and forth collecting the heart to fill it up again). You also lose some experience and some Numen when you die, but you never lose below your current level. So if you level up, your level will be preserved, just as well as you maximum health level. I should have mentioned it somewhere in the manual, but the signs you see below are your Numen points, which are unly useful if you manage to find one of Numen books. As for the bad collision detection, I know about it, but I don't see any way to make it better within the limitations. If anyone could suggest something by looking at the source code, it would be nice. When such a thing happens to me when playing, I just suck it up and press reset. Sorry. And you are right the world wraps around, so you can never end up in non existing part of the world. In the worst case, you'll end up in front of your house again. Kind Regards, B.

KevinMos3, Yes, that was mostly the feeling I was ging for, Seiken Densetsu dseries (aka Mystic quest and Secret of Mana) are also part of my inspirations. I hope you will enjoy it. Kind Regards, B.

Sandmointainslim, I hope you liked it!

Thanks for the encouragement, BassGuitari.

Dear Another World, Thanks for offering your help but don't sweat it. I know that life can carry us away. Good to hear you like the health bar.If no one complains about it, I'll just leave it like that then. I looked into the music in numbers but it doesn't sound good enough for game music. In stead, I'll add some music for the opening screen beginning and for the ending screen when I find or compose some good music for it. And yes, the game does have an ending, although it may be difficult to find. It's not in the manual, but I though it was clear that if you get killed, you can press reset and continue the game with your Numen drained and your health partially restored, but with most of your experience intact. If you keep on playing like this, you should level up enough to make you strong enough to defeat your enemies more easily. In case this wasn't obvious, I'll add a reference about this to the manual. Kind Regards, B.

Atari_afternoon, The game wasn't exactly the work of one year. I started one year ago and worked on it for a month or two, then I just polished it a bit from time to time, with this being the "home stretch". But glad to hear you're enjoying it, and still looking to pierce it's secrets. Turns out that the bug with the sound was in Stella, not in the game. On my system I needed to change some of it's sound settings and then the sound effects keep working nicely.