RKGames

Totally agree, the tumbling effect will be a challenge. I've got a good plan of attack for coding it and hope to start on that part sometime next week. I'm currently focusing on the player coming out of the plan and the drifting as he falls to the ground section of the game. Take care, Russ

Cool, thanks! Russ

Weekly update - Helicopters and Plane! Take care, Russ

I do plan on the 3 modes (arcade, coleco, and a new missions / neo rip cord mode). no idea what the name of the larger game mode will be, i know i keep say missions mode, but who knows. yes i do plan on using menus similar to the original coleco for game selection options, but it will not look quite the same do to the number of options in the game. i will look into triggering the bios menu for coleco mode as pixelboy said. The larger game mode will be as pixel boy implied, same game mechanics, but with different landing areas and perhaps a new enemy type or 2 for the later levels. seeing that the main game is so easy and small to code I'm thinking of adding new levels to add to the fun. but again, the original coleco version will be in the game for those who just want to play the same level over and over for max points! Hope this helps a bit, but please feel free to ask any questions about the game. ultimately i want to make sure it will be an enjoyable game for everyone!!! Take care, Russ

Yes, i'm using the mame version as reference to make sure it's like the arcade. Same thing i did with Side Trak Take care, Russ

Not a big update but from a new lesson learned while working on Rip Cord tonight, i applied the change to the Monster Bash code and saved another 0.3k so the new rom build comes in at 24.8k which is probably just about enough to get the game done as is (hopefully at least)! I'll still look to improve a few other places to save space but i hope to find other rom saving techniques while working on rip cord. Take care, Russ

Thanks man! an improved version of Rip Cord, coming up!

Coool! Whats good about Side Trak and Rip Cord for me, is these are two games i truly wanted as a kid! so alot of love is going into my versions! Rip cord is nicely coming along!!! I'm not sure why exactly but i was always a fan of Exidy games in particular for the coleco!!! I'm not 100% but i'm not aware of any other vapor ware Exidy games for coleco once Rip Cord is done?! I told my brother tonight that i am finally now working on Rip Cord, he was excited and cant wait to finally play it also

The Label looks great!!! cool stuff!! I'm glad to hear there is interest in the revamped version of the game! I will do my best to please all sides. I made some good progress late last night on the game. the video update for next week should be really neat. i'll post it sometime next Saturday morning! hopefully I'll have even more done by then. Take care, Russ

Wow is that hardcore or what! if that's what the majority wants i'll do it, i dont ever want to disappoint! I really do have some nice ideas for the new levels that would be perfect for this game, what do the others think about this?! you make some very good points. unless i release the missions version as Rip Cord II? not sure how eager people would be about buying both games?! Take care, Russ

I agree, that could have been the reason for it not coming out. I will say, after having looked closely at the coleco mock-up of the screen shot in the catalog as i was creating the tileset for the game, they did a great job adding color to the game. that picture alone is what always keep my younger brother and i to watch for that game at the toy stores when we where kids! i thought it looked like it would be a super fun game back then! Russ

I agree, i do plan on having a difficulty level option (Easy, Medium, Hard) when selecting the game mode (Arcade, Coleco, Missions). and you are right, the difficulty will determine the number of Choppers and Max wind strength! I got some good coding done tonight, it now randomizes the choppers at the start of the level and knows not to generate a chopper if it's hitting the bkg tiles. Tomorrow i'll start working on the chopper movement code and chopper to chopper collision detection (as in the arcade version). Hopefully my decision to use 3 difficulty settings is ok?! i know the usual coleco menu gives 4 levels of difficulty. i could if it's really needed instead of 3. what does everyone else think? Take care, Russ

Yes and No. Yes meaning i'm still going to finish the game and i'm now focusing back on coleco games after by 1 year away from the scene! no meaning I'm working on Rip Cord as of this week and want to get that game done by december so i can finally get the game done (I've wanted rip cord for 30 years). Once Rip cord is done I will absolutly focus on monster bash and finally get it done! Sorry for the so movement on it, but i'm back!!!!! Not to mention with all the good info in this thread from the others on back switching and better compression techniques i'll be reviewing those off and on during rip cord development so if i have a breakthru sooner i'll let everyone know! Take care, Russ

Awesome work!!!! cant wait to see the actual box once the game is done! Russ

Yes i'm planning on an arcade mode. as well as a New Missions mode with 30 to 40 levels with different layouts! I'm also planning on adding wind to the game to make things more challenging. It's up to the others on here. I personally never really liked the coleco Skill Levels screen, but if others want it in the game i will add it! because i'm planning on an arcade, Coleco, and missions modes i already will need a new UI for game options selection. I hate to just release the game with 1 screen as the arcade had. The Coleco mode will indeed just be the 1 screen version to be true to the original release, but with increasing difficulty as the player progresses. Also if there are any musicians out there (DAN!!!) that would be interested in working on the music / sfx on the game let me know!!! Take care, Russ

Finally started working on Rip Cord! This should also be the return to my bi-weekly video updates, for those who liked my side trak dev video series!? Been looking forward to working on this game for some time! The next videos will include play on the real coleco hardware! Take care, Russ

Great to hear you found a way to improve your game! Great job on bomb jack so far! looks amazing! Russ

Thanks for posting this! coool trick indeed! Glad i wasn't too far off with delay(1) Russ

I had some weird things happening in monster bash with all the tiles i was replacing for the candle and lightning effects and it would cause sprites locations to change for no reasons at times and i would sometime get a few bad garbage tiles to appear when switching tiles on the fly other times. what solved my problem was calling i noticed when i wasted a few cycles every other frame with a delay(1) it made my problems go away and i was able to remove all my extra enable nmi calls per each tile redraw on the candle animation. I see you are replacing a heck of a lot of tiles with the bombs as the player collects them and might be the same issue. just for fun try putting a delay(1) in your main game loop and try it for a while. if that does work the only down side is you might need to recalc the timing of the game to compensate for the delay() as i did in monster bash. Russ

Tooo funny man! I guess there is the little matter of completing Monster Bash I have not forgotten the game and will complete it within the year! (let the countdown begin!). However I will be starting on a new coleco release in late october as something to keep a few gamers busy till monster bash is ready! I'll let Toby do the announcement on that one, when he feels the time is right Nice job on all the released you got out this and last year, you've been a busy person for sure! I'm still kicking myself for not ordering ninja princess! That looked like an amazing port! Russ

Awesome! thank you sir! Thanks everyone for voting on the game, I'm glad to see it was that liked! and please be sure to congrat Dan on his amazing sound fx and music work on Side Trak!!!! Russ

Dan, So sorry i'm chiming in on this thread so late in game! Thanks for all your hard work and contributions to the coleco community! Without your work I would have never been able to realized my own dream to create games for this platform! If it was not for your dev kit and amazing tile / sprite editor i would never had been able to create Side Trak, not to mention i see the game just won best music for 2012 releases and that award is for you, for your amazing composition of 8bit music!!! Thank you again for all the years of your life you devoted to this community and for giving others like myself the chance to make games for a system that was otherwise out of reach for the average coder! I will be sure to give you a credit in every future coleco game i release as a thank you! Take care, Russ

Awesome info! I'll look into Dan0 compression. I do use RLE already, but Dan0 might do the trick. I'll also have to look what screen_mode I'm using. I only use 256 tiles anyways, so i wonder if i've been using the wrong screen mode all along??? can i use Sprites in screen_mode2_text? I wont have time to test this till the weekend. Take care, Russ

Thanks for the info! I see there is a unpack.asm in the .zip file. I'm guessing that is what you modified in your games to decompress? or did you roll your own assembly routine to decompress? I would need a month or two to get myself caught up onassembler to be good enough todo anything with that info, but any additional info / help is always appreciated! Either way, thanks again for all the info on the subject, it's great to see there is a very powerful compressor available!!! Russ

Coool info! If it's a small amount of assembler, maybe i can sort that out then?! Where can i get info on Pletter compressor? I just did a google search and found nothing! By the way, amazing work you did on Zombie near and Princess quest!!!! You set the bar pretty high with those! Also, if it's not to difficult to just do bank switching, if you or someone could supply me with a working example of moving from bank to bank (even if each bank just wasts alot of space on some char set data) and move a few values (score, level, lives ) to the new bank to retain player data as example then i can take it from there and retool monster bash to work that way! If i can sort that out, that i can go back to my original idea of adding 1 or 2 new levels with new monsters as i originally wanted to. Take care, Russ