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CDS Games

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Posts posted by CDS Games

  2. Posted

    But for a homebrewer (at least for me) that seems pretty boring. If I create a new game, I wouldn't want to be restricted with the packaging. Instead I always want the best individual solution for my game.

     

    Star Castle Arcade is a great example what a talented artist can do. Or look at Nathan's work. A label template would make things look uniform and dull. IMO.

     

    You lose individuality but you also gain harmony and symmetry. There's a reason collectors like sets—they have a classic beauty all their own that is greater than the sum of the parts.

     

    I was actually thinking Star Castle Arcade would be a perfect prototype for the template. Each new game (Scramble, Draconian) would get its own distinctive stylized lettering ala Coleco's carts. Either take it from the cabinet or come up with something new. The art will of course vary for each game, though naturally Jordi will have to do them all. ;)

     

    With the Star Castle design there's very little that would need to stay the same. AtariAge logo, copyright font, and have the A R C A D E below the game title be the official "series" marker. Anyway, them's my 2 cents..if I ever put anything on cart.

  3. Posted

    You know how Atari came up with the RealSports set of titles? Why not do the same thing with games of this caliber and call them Authentic Arcade series or somesuch.

     

    Love love this idea. Or "AtariAge Arcade"?

     

    And what about standardizing the label style, maybe with the transition to the new shells? Same look across all the carts so that they *look* like a series instead of the typical motley assortment of homebrews. Wouldn't that look spectacular on the shelf, and maybe even rope some of the collectors into buying more well-made games, as folks were lamenting on that other thread? ;)

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

    To all:

     

    Thanks so much for all the feedback! I'm glad everyone is enjoying the game. I have made a few changes and modified the first post with the latest build.

     

     

    The changes are brilliant, particularly the autofire and the enemy movement tweaks. Suddenly I seem less awful at Novice level. :D

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    Thanks for all the input in this topic. Very informative and I'm glad I'm talking mostly to people who grew up in that generation. By the time I was born, Sonic The Hedgehog was about 8 months away from launching on Genesis :P

     

    Whereas when I was born Pong consoles were still a half decade away. :)

     

    Here's a compare and contrast for you. I am the exact reverse of the people you are talking about...a guy frozen in console amber.

     

    I went straight from the VCS to computers and never got into any other console. In the early 90s when all the guys around me were playing NES and whatever else in the college dorms I brought in my dinosaur of an Atari. Genesis I had no significant exposure to. I just watched Sonic on Youtube (I was that unfamiliar with it) to get an appreciation for what was done on Zippy. I don't think I quite get it :). Maybe it's because these interminable platformers where you run around and collect stuff don't appeal to me. I suppose I feel toward them the way some younger folks feel toward space shooters.

     

    Controllers are definitely an issue in my case. I don't really want to play on a d-pad. I've played many games on computer keyboards but to me the optimum controller was, is, and ever will be a joystick. I kept using those well after we made the transition to the C64. And that was of course what we had at the arcades--which was the gold standard of gaming in those days.

    • Like 2

  7. Posted

    Did you fix the narrow passages problem? It appears that it's easier now to pass through them. I loved the new Elf sprite and the new others too, the music and other little things. It's everything excellent. Can't wait for that big update you'll make next.

     

    I didn't actually. Hmm! I've noticed though that you can go through them easily as long as you hold the joystick diagonally (upper left, for example). If you try to go straight through you can't though. Is it possible that's what happened?

     

    Glad you like the new additions. The 32k version is proceeding well so far. The sorcerors are back in purple and do their disappearing act. Demons are back, although I'm not terribly happy with the sprites. And I've got an extra magic potion implemented.

  8. Posted

     

    Yeesh that can't be good. :) Saw one commenter on there who mentioned programming skill.

     

    It barely takes any programming skill at all to modify a game. Writing one is a different story. DC is a very well-designed game to start with and an amazingly versatile engine, thanks to Adam Clayton. Give him the credit, not the guy who turns BNEs into BEQs and calls it a day.

  9. Posted

    I probably explained it badly. What I meant by zeroing out was that although I corrected the bankswitching addresses from F6 to F4, there was an instruction in FFF4 and FFF5 that I had to move so those addresses would be clear. I checked to make sure the program knew to find those instructions at the new location so it all worked out.

     

    Nope not planning on a multicart. The idea is simply that by having two parallel games I can have a greater variety of enemies, mazes, objects that just can't be fit into one. It's part of the Gauntlet port I'm working on here:

     

    http://atariage.com/forums/topic/238273-dark-chambers-to-gauntlet-conversion/

  10. Posted

     

    I'm in this for the fun, the passion, and the love for the hobby. It was a childhood dream of mine to make video games for my beloved console (Intellivision), and now 30 years later I have the chance.

     

    Yep, me too! I came into the hacking scene well after the hack glut. All it did was inspire me not to just tweak pixels but think hard about game play and giving people a new experience on the system. So this all kinda feels familiar with bBasic.

  11. Posted

     

    That's a great reply. There's a third option - find something else to love, and pour your heart into that.

    Cheers

    A

     

    LOL...that can work too. I guess I was assuming that your heart was in this to a degree that it wouldn't change. Nothing wrong with moving on and discovering something else.

     

    By the way, this community right here will the bulk of who remembers and judges games into the next generation. Not the collectors. And in that regard I think you have nothing to worry about as far as appreciation! :)

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    There's no answer to this Andrew. There's no fix to it. It's nothing unique to Atari, it's just an age-old manifestation of the artist's dilemma-- chase popularity, or do what you really believe in, though it may not be popular.

     

    I have heard similar complaints from very talented artists. Based on their behavior I've found there are actually two ways of not playing the game. They can bow out entirely and not produce anything--and usually in the process become increasingly frustrated because they have an inherent impulse to create without an outlet. Basically, they turn from creative artists to carping critics. A waste of good talent in my opinion.

     

    The other way is to just tune out every last aspect about what you hate about the "industry", and just focus on the craft like nothing else exists. Head down, pencil to paper, and charge ahead on what moves you without a care in the world for what will be received or not. Throw it out there and let the ages and future generations sort it out. This, I think, is the way of the true artist.

    • Like 11

  13. Posted

    Didn't we sorta go through this already with hacks, about ten years ago? For bBasic substitute any number of hacking tools that let anyone change sprites. So we got umpteen versions of Space Invaders and the vector craze. It was all fun but it got less interesting as time went on. But on the other hand look at the stuff Nukey and others did...adding functionality, levels, expanding memory, improving graphics and game play.

     

    In many ways, this seems like a second "golden age" of Atari. Step back a bit. 10 years ago we had people clamoring for the missing levels in Donkey Kong, a slightly more accurate version of Pac-Man. We now have two amazing Donkey Kong translations. Such unbelievably accurate Pac-Man ports that people are actually discussing the minutiae of monster pursuit logic. Ports from more advanced consoles (!!) like Princess Rescue and Zippy. Star Castle, Bosconian, Scramble.

     

    Amidst all this, yes, we have collectors paying thousands for bad games.

     

    But that's a story as old as the hills. It's the traditional aristocracy watching the nouveau riche throw money all over the place with very little taste or refinement to back it up. It's the artisan or composer who spent decades minutely honing his craft and now gets stuck churning out whatever his patron wants.

     

    We need to take the long view. Once the mania for tulips, or beaver skin hats, or boxed copies of Air Raid dies down, the people that were only in it for the money will go off and chase something else. And the hobbyists will be, once again, alone with the hobby they enjoy and will remember what made game X great.

    • Like 3

  14. Posted

    Thanks Tempest! I'm a little astounded myself at how things just sorta clicked. The good Lord must've been whispering code into my ear or something.

     

    A good disassembly and lots of unneeded room on the cart made a huge difference, and I can't say enough good about this underlying engine. You can get far more involved RPGs out of it than Gauntlet.

  15. Posted

    The original LEVEL text on the arcade and on the home ports is not very fancy--it's a rather plain serif, so that's what I was going for.

     

    Honestly, I didn't want to change it because I mostly liked how it looked. Problem was, it was off center with the level number below it, and I was unable to figure out how to move the number right enough. Hence the font redo. But if that problem gets sorted out I will consider changing it back.

     

    I've been using Playerpal online, and just treating the various animation frames as side by side sprites. Works ok for my purposes, and I'm not on Windows anyway. :)

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    I was honestly trying to make this update the final one. Really I was. But I had a huge breakthrough that I will explain in a bit. For now though, here's an interim version: gauntlet1108.bin

     

    * elf and object sprite redesigns
    * added title screen music
    * added 2nd food sprite
    * restored missing exit to level 81
    * moving joystick left and right on title screen changes player 1 character
    * "LEVEL:" text redraw
    * pressing select no longer clears high score
    * two player exiting bug fixed

     

    But the big news is that with some help from the folks in the Programming forum I was able to successfully expand the cart from 16k to 32k. With some creative redesign I can now restore the purple sorceror & demon, double the number and variety of mazes, and even add new objects. So now I have a lot of work to do. A LOT.

     

    Don't tell the Mrs. It's already a sad joke around here that I've been "almost done" this for months. :grin:

    • Like 3

  18. Posted

    The hotspots are different from 16 to 32k. You have to modify the game to run in Stella. Also how are you going between games. Dipswitch?

     

    Ok I will dig back into the bankswitching tutorials and pore over the disassembly, see if I can uncover what is going on.

     

    The idea was to switch back and forth within the game, with the switch points at the level transitions. So every odd level it runs in banks 1-4, then every even level it runs in banks 5-8.

  20. Posted

    Just discovered how easy it was to combine ROMs into larger ones using concatenate in Unix (I'm on a Mac and don't have a running compiler--I do all my hacking right in Stella). Turned Combat into a 4k, then 8k bankswitched ROM and it ran great in Stella.

     

    But I tried to do the same with a hack of Dark Chambers and though 8 banks show up, it won't run. Did the same thing I did with Combat: took the two 16k files, concatenated them, and then reset the ROM preferences in Stella to F4SC (32k Atari + ram)--Dark Chambers runs with SARA.

     

    I have a feeling I'm missing something very basic, so any advice or help would be much appreciated. :)

  21. Posted

    Bellissimo! Allora non c'e problema.

     

    And wow, I didn't know that there was a PAL conversion tool on RT's site...that makes it even easier.

     

    I've been working piecemeal on a new update, which will be the final one Deo volente. But right now I am swamped with work. When I get a breather I will try and figure out the last changes and then put together a PAL60 version.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    There's some weirdness in the two player exiting, definitely--I'll investigate.

     

    The infinite continues should be fine. Because that's what you can do with quarters in Gauntlet arcade and I personally always loved that feature since Vanguard. Since like you said, you have no powerups on restart, I think that's limiting enough.

     

    Unfortunately, I can't change the yellow sorceror color. I only have 7 unique character slots to work with, which includes animation and color tables. So if I add a purple sorceror I have to take away one of the characters or enemies. I wish I could do it--I already had a purple sorcerer coded in and blinking in and out like the arcade.

  25. Posted

    Cool thing. I played Gauntlet alot on my C64 back in the days, so i like this project. Hope that there will come a PAL60 version too, when it is finished.

     

    Me too...I've had my C64 Gauntlet on my desk throughout this process. :)

     

    I've never made a PAL conversion before...is it just the color palette, or do the scanlines have to be adjusted? I can't do the latter.

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