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keithbk

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Posts posted by keithbk

  1. Posted

    Great videos!

     

    I'm sure others have probably mentioned this, but Atari came along with Star Wars, was at its height during Empire, and ended with Return of the Jedi.

     

    My initial interest in the Atari followed along with those same movies. 

     

    Star Wars: couldn't get enough; had to see it!

    Empire: Needed EVERY toy; this was getting GREAT!

    Jedi: Ewoks? Sigh....

    • Like 2

  2. Posted · Edited by keithbk

    Remember, the initial design of the Atari VCS was based on PONG and its various iterations.

     

    Therefore, you had this basic structure for all graphic elements:

     

    Background

    Foreground

    Player 1 (8 Line Sprite)

    Player 2 (8 Line Sprite)

    Ball

    Missile 1

    Missile 2

     

    Everything created for the Atari had to function within (or find workarounds for) these hardware limitations.

     

     

     

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    Is it better than Sssnake? Absolutely.

     

    Could it have been better? Absolutely.

     

    Does it deserve another sequel? Absolutely!

     

    How about "Pack-man," where Pac-man goes around and picks up all his belongings after Ms. Pac-Man kicks him out of the house? Just an idea...

    • Like 2

  4. Posted · Edited by keithbk

    On 10/1/2019 at 11:26 AM, KaeruYojimbo said:

    I had a friend who loved the Swordquest games, even though he didn't get any of them until after the contests were over. He just liked running around and playing the minigames. I never liked them, but if I were going to remake them, I'd ditch the whole place the objects in a room to get a clue angle and replace it with something simpler, like win a minigame to get a key that opens a new area with a new minigame to find. The goal would simply be to find the titular treasure (Talisman of Truth, Chalice of Light, etc.) in each game.

    I think you are on the right track with this idea...

     

    Drop the Zodiac idea altogether; irrelevant to gameplay.

     

    Instead, you begin easy, able to navigate through a small number of rooms with a handful of items.

     

    You have some rooms (redesigned) that serve as "clues" as to which item needs to be brought to the room (for example, one room is designed to look like a LOCK and you have to drop the KEY). Once you bring that item and drop it in that room, you enter a minigame to proceed to unlock the next series of rooms.

     

    Only certain rooms are "Clue Rooms" where an item can be dropped. For example, a room that looks like a CHASM for the ROPE, or a dark room for the LAMP, and these are the only rooms that lead to a minigame. Other rooms contain objects or are (perhaps) empty.

     

    You have, say, 10 lives to get it all correct, or you lose the game. There is loss of a life upon dropping the wrong item in wrong room or losing a minigame.

     

    Once you beat all the minigames, you get to a final screen that gives you an image of the treasure you were seeking in that game.

     

    What do you think about that?

    • Like 2

  5. Posted · Edited by keithbk

    23 hours ago, edladdin said:

    I was very angry about the Swordquest games back in the Ferg.  IMHO, the real issue is that Todd Frye completely missed what made all the previous Adventure Zone games great.  

     

    Consider Adventure:  the objective is crystal clear, and every object in the game has a very specific use and purpose.  Object stuck in the wall?  You need the bridge or the magnet.  Chased by dragons?  You need the sword.  Keys open specific castle gates.

     

    In contrast, in SQ the objective is to put random objects into specific rooms in specific combinations so you can get a number that referenced the comic books. The specific objects have zero in-game purpose at all and could have been replaced with squares with alpha letters to tell them apart.  So except for the Mythicon-quality minigames, “solving” the game is either just random guesswork OR tedious process-of-elimination object grouping.  

     

    TERRIBLE!  I’m as irritated now as I was when I blew a precious birthday gift choice on the whopping turd that is Earthworld at age 13.  WTF Todd Frye?

     

    Your feelings reflect mine, which is why I end up thinking (from time to time) WHAT WENT WRONG???

     

    You've got cool items, some cool mini-games, and a series of rooms... could it be re-worked? Could it be tweaked to be fun?

     

    Unlike Sssnake, which is TERRIBLE in every conceivable way, SwordQuest has interesting elements that need to be salvaged. The opening screen, for example, is great... room transitions are interesting, the minigames are a step in the right direction, and the sprites for the objects are eye-catching (even if they are completely useless as usable objects).

  6. Posted

    Enough time has passed that the Atari VCS can IN NO WAY be "revolutional" to the gaming community.

     

    Seriously, with even with a Raspberry Pi, you can make a complete gaming system that covers everything ALL the classic gaming systems provided and more.

     

    If you are going to make a cloud-based system where games/roms can be played at will through a hardware device enabled with wireless capabilities (for example), the actual device would not need to be much larger than a Roku. You just have to determine how your peripherals would interact (wireless/bluetooth or via plugin).

     

    I get that there are licensing issues to consider, and that would be the BIGGEST hurdle (for both Roms and System emulation), but that could easily be addressed through an online PUBLISHING platform (much like Google Play), where you purchase titles or bundles, with some free games provided for the system out of the box.

  7. Posted

    I'm a late-comer to this topic, but is the Atari VCS a total scam?

     

    I seem to remember they were saying it was going to be a game system when they initially announced, but the more I heard (early on), the more it sounded like a Linux box running emulators. As a result, I stopped following the news...

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    I remember as a kid my excitement when the first Swordquest game was released; I was a huge fan of Adventure and I had been waiting FOREVER for something to come out similar to it.

     

    I loved Superman because it was an open-world environment, but was disappointed in Dragonfire because, in spite of it's lovely graphics, you just went over two screens and there was no quest.

     

    Then, I played Swordquest... and wow, what a disappointment. You're doing all this to find words in a comic book and the storyline/purpose simply did not make sense to my child-mind. Even today, reading the plot, it all sounds so convoluted.

     

    Now, I enjoyed some of the mini-games and thought these showed promise, but what each game in the Swordquest series needs is a simple, easy-to-understand objective (similar to "find the chalice stolen by the evil magician and return it to the gold palace") and not THIS:  "Tarra and Torr's parents were slain by King Tyrannus's guards, prompted by a prophecy by the king's wizard Konjuro that the twins would slay Tyrannus. The twins were then raised as commoners by thieves to avoid being slain by the king. When they go to plunder Konjuro's sea keep, they accidentally reveal their identities to him. The twins then start running from a demon summoned to kill them, but it appears that a jewel they stole attracts it. After smashing the stone to avoid the demon, two of Tyrannus's old advisers appear and tell the two about the 'Sword of Ultimate Sorcery' and the 'Talisman of Penultimate Truth.' They are then transported to Earthworld. After defeating many beasts of the Zodiac and another thief (Herminus) in Earthworld, the twins are transported to the central chamber where the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery and the Talisman of Penultimate Truth are kept."

     

    Because I have mixed emotions about this game, I always thought it would be interesting if someone hacked it. Keep the mini-games intact, but give it a simplified objective. Remove the need to reference a comic book, and make it more of an Adventure-style storyline.

     

    Has anyone attempted a hack of the Swordquest games along this end?

     

    If it were to be hacked, what would you do differently?

     

    • Like 2

  11. Posted

    Intellivision players know that one of the best games for the Intellivision is Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, later renamed "Crown of Kings" due to licensing on Intellivision Flashback Consoles.

     

    At one time, I had toyed with creating a version for the Atari 2600, but alas, I have been unable to do it and most of the workfiles were lost when that computer went kaput.

     

    Still, would love to see someone make a version for the Atari 2600. It would not be overly difficult for an experienced modder to create (far less difficult than say, Draconian).

     

    To simplify, arrows should be shot the facing direction (as opposed to the difficult keypad move on the Intellivision) and the fire button should replace most action funtions (like using a ladder) when over an action space.

     

    AdvancedDungeonsandDragons_09152337.png

     

     

    advanced_dungeons_and_dragons.png

     

     

    • Like 3

  12. Posted · Edited by keithbk

    No, that's fine.

     

    I just know that I gave up for a week because I thought my wire or my flashback was incompatible or non-functioning, when I just should have tested the Red wire with the video signal. Not that anyone else had this problem, but I did see someone post somewhere (perhaps the AtGames forum or something) that the wire they attached did not work.

     

    ALSO, make sure you hook your AV cable to the AV out and NOT the headphone jack. Yes, the cable will fit in either hole, but if you are in a dark room, you may mistake one for the other. As one other user pointed out, you can use a separate audio cable out in the headphone jack and send two channels to your tv audio.

  13. Posted

    Just a heads up (don't know if anyone figured this out yet and posted, but if not, here is a tip).

     

    I had an AV wire handy that was stereo out with a video cable (three wires out, instead of the recommended ATGames cable that is Video/Yellow and Audio/White). When I hooked it up, I had sound to the TV and no video. For a while, I thought maybe my unit was defective or this particular cable just would not work.

     

    Then I discovered that the RED output on the three wire AV cable became the video signal, the WHITE was audio, and the Yellow was unused. So, issue solved.

    • Like 1

  16. Posted · Edited by keithbk

    But that's the issue we were talking about until you rode in on your high horse. No one is saying the seller shouldn't download or possess ROM's. Just that he shouldn't be trying to profit on them. Additionally, he's breaking Ebay's TOS.

    Just so you know how I feel about it, I am happy to allow you to download the ROM to Another Adventure and play it. I don't mind if you help a friend put it on their Flashback Portable (and it does play wonderfully).

     

    Please don't sell my ROM. I'm letting you download it and play it for free, but I did spend much more time working on it that you will downloading it and sticking it on a flash card, so you don't have the right to profit on my ROM. Now, you can go ahead and sell the Flash Drive for what you paid for it and you can have my ROM on there for free. Why? Because I like you. :)

     

    PS: Sorry I'm so late in joining in this discussion, which is WAY back in this thread, but I was off for a bit working on my novel and a graphic novel, so got heavily sidetracked.

    • Like 6

  20. Posted

     

    AtGames was bigger on that in the past, but that's slowed down considerably over the past several years. I do pass on interested parties (homebrew authors) to the appropriate individuals at AtGames, but I know there are no real needs for homebrew stuff for the forseeable future, so it's not necessarily something I'd suggest bothering with at this time. If it does come up again, I'll certainly put a query out there.

     

    I would certainly love to see Another Adventure on a future release, if they are open to it.

    • Like 2

  21. Posted

     

    The only firmware update is going to be with a new model in 2017 I'm afraid. There is simply no capability built-in for flashing the firmware in any of the recent AtGames' products, and that's not going to change in the future. These are meant as closed plug and play systems, period.

     

    It's also highly unlikely someone can put something else on this since it's mostly custom internals (i.e., it's not running a flavor of Unix/Linux or Android). To get Stella to recompile on non-standard hardware would be quite the challenge I would imagine. Frankly, someone could just spend a little more and get an open source or Android handheld and go to town with that. They really don't need to put the monumental effort into trying to mod something like this.

     

    Any word if AtGames is open to having Homebrew authors provide their .BIN files to include on an upcoming game system?

    • Like 2

  25. Posted

    Nice video. I feel the same way about some of those. Side question - how did you get the sounds to be in stereo? I always thought the vcs was mono.

     

    My 2600 is modded with modern outputs (S-Video and component audio). There are a few forum members who provide this service (for a fee, of course), but if I understand correctly, the Atari is capable of stereo internally, just mono in its original "all things combined" original output.

    • Like 1
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