Lodmot

Does the game play by itself if the title screen sits there for a while? Can the player choose to start the game using the fire button or the reset switch? Is there a two-second pause at the end of the game, and after that, can the player play again by pressing the fire button? Has the fire button and reset switch been debounced? Well, the way it works as of now is this: -- There isn't a pre-recorded or automated game demo if you sit at the titlescreen for a while. It just stays at the titlescreen and loops the music. -- At the titlescreen, you press the Fire button to go to the player mode select menu, which from there will take you to the game. -- At any time during a game (1P or 2P), pressing the reset switch will bring the game back to the titlescreen, clearing all variables, etc. -- At the Game Over loop, (when the frowny face is shown), a timer is set which will send you back to the titlescreen. You cannot press buttons to skip this, you have to wait for the timer. I had to make it like this so the fire button doesn't cause the titlescreen to be skipped immediately after the Game Over loop. -- When you beat a level, you get a green smiley face, which runs on a timer, and then the game will automatically bring you to the next level. -- After each match in a 2P VS game, it starts a new match. The 2P mode will go on forever until the players decide to stop playing. XD

Any suggestions or small ideas for the game? 0:

I see. So are you saying the game wouldn't run in a 7800 correctly because of that bit of code it executes?

I have no idea what that is... Lol.

Well, it's a 2600 game anyway. But why would it have the problem?

Yeah. Well, everything is working great now, and I actually got the game finished. ^^ Thanks for helping out everyone. :3

Alright, after doing a bit more research I was able to try out Omegamatrix's suggestion by making a single image to the Harmony cart. That did the trick! So I assume when I get this game put on a custom cartridge, it will not have this problem, right? Thanks for the help guys. :3

I'm looking at your source code for that unfinished game you made, and I was wondering, what exactly is "seeding", and how does it help with randomizing things?

Okii. Ill try that when I get home from work. Thanks ^^

Alright, this problem has gotten even stranger... Last night I went ahead and implemented a game over screen, which resets the game via a timer. Today, I tested the game on the real console. I tried the rand/# method, but that didn't change anything. HOWEVER, as I was playing through the game on the real console, I discovered that if the game over screen happens, and you begin a 2nd game, RANDOMIZATION WORKS! It only doesn't work when you play the game first time around. How's that one for you? Oh, and also, I use randomization for the "rants" that you get whenever one of the shitty game objects (the playfield pixels) touches the game systems at the bottom of the screen (colored horizontally moving squares). The rants also don't get randomized at first on the real console, but as stated before, after a Game Over and starting a 2nd game, it does.

Hi. I'm having the strangest problem with randomization in my new game that I'm working on. What's going on is, I have single playfield pixels falling from the top of the screen, and when they either hit a missile object or reach the bottom of the screen, they are supposed to appear back up at the top, but at a different randomly-chosen x position between 0 and 31 (because they're playfield objects). The code I have seems to work fine in Stella, but when I tried it on my real Atari, the playfield pixels never get randomized; they always appear at the left-most X coordinate. Periodically the same thing will happen in Stella as well, but on the console it happens all the time. Is there anyone that may know how to fix this problem? Thanks. default.bas

By the way everyone, I'm now taking suggestions, so feel free to post any kind of feedback. :3

I also forgot to mention mine it NTSC. Sorry for the double-post but the edit button on my first post is missing for some reason.

Mine says "S/N: 13601N". Made in Sunnyvale, CA. Bought mine at a local Game Xchange store, found it in the Employees Only section, and they told me it was untested and considered non-working. Took it home and replaced the two controller ports and fixed the color adjustments-- the unit plays perfectly now. I have the speaker grills in my console and the channel select switch.

Alright, so I have a light-sixer Atari 2600, and it looks like pretty much every other light-sixer out there. Nothing too special about it. However, when I was hanging out with my friend, he and I stopped at Game Xchange, where he bought himself his own light-sixer. When we got back to his place, I placed my light-sixer right next to the one he just bought, and there were actually a couple differences with the two consoles, even though they're both considered light-sixers. Firstly, I noticed that his light-sixer had an orange-painted trim going around the panel where the cartridge slot and the six switches are contained, whereas mine didn't have any painted trim; it was just black. Second of all, on the bottom of the console, I have a channel select switch in my console, but while we were testing his, I noticed that the channel select switch was curiously missing, however the hole and label for the switch were still there. Very strange.. I know heavy-sixers are known to have this quirk, however I double-checked it, and no, his is a light-sixer (supposedly) like mine. The last odd thing about my friend's light-sixer is that quite a few of the games I have seem to have a hard time fitting in his cartridge slot, but on my system they slide right in just fine. And also, the casing kind of humps upward where the cartridge slot is on his system, but my casing is straight. Has anyone else noticed these subtle differences between multiple light-sixers? And if so, what do you think the explanation behind it is?

"Unless you have a clear understanding of how the Atari works, what I said will probably sound like greek to you" As in, I didn't assume you were.

Well, I used modified bullet sprites for the games (colored flying boxes) and the player sprites are used by the player and AI persons. By doing that I was able to avoid graphics flickering. And the rest is just basic movements and color commands. As for the titlescreen, I actually used the titlescreen kernel to allow for higher resolution graphics. And the menu select screen is done by using a playfield block and the two player sprites for the "1P" and "2P" text. Unless you have a clear understanding of how the Atari works, what I said will probably sound like greek to you, but technically that's how I pulled it off. There are definitely other games for the 2600 that have way better graphics than this.

Hey Reo, did you want to do the other two songs? I'm putting 4 songs in the game total, but only two are done. Lemme know if you'd be interested. ^^

Speaking of rand, I noticed that reboot is being used in the program and that can mess up random numbers: http://www.randomter...nds.html#reboot I totally forgot about that... >.< Thank you!

Yeah, unfortunately it does, in order for the playerscores kernel to work properly. I tried numerous times to keep the playerscores kernel in the last bank while having the main game code in the first bank, and it just caused the weird screenshot that I posted earlier.

Okay.. o.o As long as the gameplay itself doesn't get changed, I can let you try and make it less laggy. I'm sure there's a way to program it more efficiently. I just don't want the actual gameplay design to have to change because of it, because how it works now is how I'd like to keep it. I don't know about the resizing thing. There's not much space left in the main bank to add much more code to it.

LOL!!!!!!! You crazy person 8D! Me likes. o; Check the first post! ^^

xDDDDDDDDDD Alright. Yeah, you can help. :3 And it's okay that you act young. I do too! 8D HUAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! xDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD So anyhoo, yeah. ^^ Just so you know though, this is gonna be my biggiest project I ever done so far. I hope to have a titlescreen, sound effects, 4 music tracks (two of which are ready), a menu select, and 2P mode. O: Also, I presume you know the objective in the game by this point. I was thinking about it like 5 minutes ago, and I'm thinking I'm gonna have to bump up the game to 32k, which is the max you can make your games in Batari Basic. LOL! The two music tracks I made for the game are so intricate that they take up almost 4K each. And I still need that extra space for programming everything else in. And ontop of that, the game is already getting laggy! X_X

o.o;; I'm not sure I like that idea right now... I'm used to just making games by myself. Also, have you done any kind of programming in general before? If you're just learning how to program for the first time, it may not help me very much. >.< I'm sorry if I offended you. :/

xD Sure, no problem. ^^ Just so you know, for security's sake, I will eventually have to stop posting my updated source code. This is an original game of mine, and I don't really want people stealing it. Perhaps later on I could just PM it to you? Basically what the memory banks are for is to allow the game to be bigger than 4k. Usually your game starts out being 4k in size, but if that's not enough, you can extend it to 8k, or in this case, 16k. But because the Atari 2600 can only address 4k at once, you have to do what's called "bank switching".