Sprybug

I've been having issues with people getting the Genesis controller to work on the real machine. It works on Stella but not on a real Atari for some reason. I'm expecting some Genesis controllers to come in any day now so I can test it out on the real machine and see if I can find what's going on. the final release will be fixed.

That's a good idea. didn't think about trying something like that. The bit can be reset as soon as soon as the shell is no longer touching Mario, which is what causes him to get hit by it through standard colission detection. The one thing I'd have to work around is setting it for that moment and not set as him being invincible because he just powered down. There's really no check for that but I'll see what I can do. As for my cycle time it is spent. I tried adding a few lines to fix the top row color with a few if statements in the rendering screen part of my routine and adding those simple things caused me to go over my count. I am at my limit unfortunately.

I wanted to give the players the option. You can play it on a stock joystick or if you got it and want to, play it with a Genesis controller. It autodetects which one you are using on power-up. I like the Genesis controller because you can use the C button to run and fire and not have to use UP on the Atari Joystick to do it, which can be a little tricky sometimes. Also, it's easier to "duck slide" with the genesis controller.

This is good feedback everyone, thanks. As for the koopa shell. Can't be outrun, however it can kill you if you kick it in the wrong direction. The kick goes in the direction you are facing and not what side you are on. I did this because when I tried it the more logical way of being whatever side you were on, I had more issues of it killing you on the kick and couldn't debug it.

The 2nd quest are the same levels except the goombas turn into beetles, most of the enemies move twice as fast, the green koopa is sometimes replaced by a red koopa, and the moving platforms are half the size.

Okay, I'm going to throw this one out to you guys. I've been debating this to myself. Should the 2nd quest be selectable by the player? When you beat the game, you can play the 2nd quest, which are the same levels, but harder. I've gone back and forth on making this option selectable by using the select switch at the beginning of the game. However I see the 2nd quest as being kind of a gift for those that beat the game. Having it be an option to start with would kind of defeat that purpose. What do you guys think?

No way dude! I've play tested this hundreds of times already and have never gotten to 200,000. I've gotten all the way to 4-2 before having to continue and even then I didn't quite reach 200,000. Speaking of play testing, I'm going to need some play testers to spot any bugs I might have missed. Anyone interested?

Glad I could help.

I got a picture with the banner in the background, which is the same as the box art:

Now for a more personal note at PRGE. Here was my game, Super Mario 2600 now named "Princess Rescue" at display at the AtariAge booth:

You want photos? Well here you go... Computer Space Very cool booth David Crane and Garry Kitchen My high score on Mappy! I love that game. I never played Final Fantasy. -_o Original animation cel from Space Ace

Oh wow, didn't know people were still talking about it! Answer: YES...for the Genesis controller. You can use the B&C buttons the Genesis controller for the game. It's already been implemented and will be available when I release the next version.

Got it and already done. Did it about a week back. My next release though won't be until everything is finished and then ready for some beta testing. And to update, it almost is. I've got all the levels finished. I just need to tweak some of them. I need to add a title screen and fix a big bug that has to do when you shoot a fireball, sometimes it will automatically go right to an enemy that spawns when scrolled on and I have yet to find out where that is. The "death when having starman" bug seemes to have gone away so far. I haven't had it happen to me in a few weeks. Maybe there was some code somewhere that I tweaked for another purpose that may have fixed it. I also added a feature that if you beat the game, you get to go on a second quest, just like the original SMB, where it gets harder because goombas turn into beetles, most of the enemies go twice as fast, your platforms shrink to half in size. I'm thinking of throwing in a few other things, such as Bullet Bills constantly shooting out on x-3 levels and making the boss battles a touch harder. It's a little present for beating the game and adds to the replayability which is really important.

No more ROM for an extended outro, so what you get is what you get. Bowser Jr. getting up, crashing through the wall in his turtle shell and Mario following, which I thought would be enough for an outro which has some continuity from how he got from x-4 to x-1. May not have anymore ROM left to add that extra touch in the castle, but I can look into it.

This is really nice. I really like the color changes. I was trying the midnight blue already on the x-3 levels since the levels take place in the sky. Also for the x-2 levels I was trying a very dark grey ($02), but now that the color has changed there to a4 (i'll make these color changes tonight), I wonder if it'd work anymore. I may change that back to black. I left the x-1 & x-4 levels black too. Thanks so much for the color updates!

Good suggestions there. Actually when I was going to finish world 2, I was going to add the ability to start off at the world you lost all your lives on, so if you lost all your lives on 2-3, you'd start again at 2-1, which is much better than having to start all over again. I didn't even think of using the difficulty switches as "DIP switches". That's kind of a nice idea. It'd only take a line or two of code to do something like that and I'm pretty sure I got room for that one option.

Thanks for letting me know about that. Hmmmmm. This is something I'll have to visit when I get close to the point of finishing this.

Alright I just added Genesis Controller support tonight and works great! Just have to set Stella to use the Sega Genesis Controller. Of course on a real Atari, you just have to have a Genesis controller plugged in. It also autodetects it and hardly used any extra code. So the next release will have that support. Compared to the NES controller the button mapping is backwards (B jumps and C runs/fire), but it's going to have to be that way since the fire button on the atari is jump (B for Genesis).......unless I remap both buttons in the program when using a Genesis controller, but I'm not sure if I have code space left in that bank for it. It's already under 100 bytes! We'll see on that, because I would prefer it being mapped the same way the NES controller is. As for kicking the turtle, I originally tried to make it so it kicks depending on what side mario was on, but there was an issue that made it hit mario when kicking. I would prefer the kick to go depending on which side Mario is on and I may revisit it to see if I can get that working instead, so for now, yeah, it depends which direction Mario is facing. I've got Beetles and Bullet Bill on 2-1. I decided to make BB double the size cuz he looked too tiny otherwise. Redrew the sprite and it looks pretty cool. Thwomp and Bowser Jr. also uses the double sized sprite hardware, which helps give them the look that they have. Thanks for all the compliments on their look. For the Thwomp and Bowser Jr. I used several game sprite references and tried to make it look as good as I could on the Atari. The getting hit by koopas and koopa shells always had a bit of a bug that I was never quite able to figure out. I use the collision detection hardware provided by the TIA for pixel perfect detection, but if you hit them a certain way (usually somewhere on the edge), it hurts you. Still trying to figure that one out. I'm finding out that it's happening with Bullet Bill too.

It's pretty hard to do hair when you can only have one color per scanline. Mystique managed to pull it off in Beat 'em and Eat 'em, though. I believe the hair was done by layering up both hardware sprites. Maybe Peach is a cancer survivor? Or maybe Mario likes dudes? Who knew? EDIT: I fixed Peach. She has hair now and she's 4 pixels taller (8x24). Also, the legs looked dumb, so I deleted them and added trim to the dress: That does look better! I may take that and change it up a little (add some color gradients on the edges, redesign a little to match the style design of the SMB series, etc). I'll find a place for her. She might not get animated because as you know I'm runnin' outta room. 24 pixels is fine, because when mario is super, he's that tall too. I love all the suggestions you guys are giving me, but I gotta take it one thing at a time or else I may never finish. I'm going to continue and design/make/test all the levels first then add a title screen and end sequence, and if I have the room I'll try to add Genesis controller support, but as I said one thing at a time. I am strongly considering changing the name to Atario and some of the graphics for legal reasons. I've been getting a lot of cart requests and if those things get circulating around online, I don't want Nintendo come knocking on my door one day. As for Bowser Jr. Sorry to hear about that. Did you die jumping on top of his head? If you jump on anywhere but the top, it will hurt you. For example jumping into the side of his head doesn't count. Also if you are in the air and he pops up from his shell, that hurts you most of the time too.

Yeah go ahead and post the pdf. I have Photoshop 7, so hopefully it'll be compatible with that version.

You have some really good suggestions and ideas. I really like the Midnight Blue background idea too. If you think world 1 was kind of difficult, you should try 2-1. It's even harder. I have a trick that you must do with a koopa to get past it. The trick isn't hard to do but a must. I know about levels getting progressively harder as they go along. That's why there are few pitfalls and obstacles to get around. 2-1 is where you start finding more pitfalls, more obstacles, tricks, and things you gotta do to pass a level. The first world you can just run through if you want while only battling a few enemies. Pretty simple stuff. As for a water world. Can't do it. Not enough ROM left to program water levels. I don't have enough ROM to make a final Bowser battle (will have to be Bowser Jr.). I'll be lucky to have enough ROM left to have an ending sequence of some sort. I've done a lot of shuffling and right now things are this way: Bank 1 - Mario graphic routines, level scrolling routines, Mario collision detection and handling routines, screendraw. Bank 2 - Enemy and Object Routines, Enemy and Object sprite and color data, screendraw. Bank 3 - Mario Controls, level routines and handling, checkpoint routines, special item routines, fanfare & completed level routines, and some more enemy routines that I couldn't fit in bank 2, plus the 3rd screendraw for one game cycle. Bank 4 - intro screen graphics and routines,level preperations and initialization, Boss battle routines, game over screen and music. Bank 5 - World 1 & 2 Data and read routines. Bank 6 - World 3 & 4 Data and read routines. Bank 7 - All Music Routines and Music Data. Bank 8 - Where the BB engine goes and all the table data. Thwomp routine is here because I ran out of space in Bank 2. Title Screen and Ending Sequence will most likely go here as I still have about 800 bytes left to work with in this bank. Bank 1-6 (once I have all the level data in it), only have anywhere from 50-200 bytes left in each. Bank 7 still has about 500 bytes left, but I plan on using the remaining space for the end tune. This is also why Bowser Jr. doesn't have his own music and world 1-4 uses the standard underworld music. And as for six jumps instead of three, three was way too easy. Bowser Jr. actions are not only dictated by a sequence, but some timing elements as well. He'll walk around until those timing elements strike and then he'll jump, do his shell thing and when the timing elements strike again he'll pop back up, stay there for a split second and do it all over again. I found that he walks around for quite a bit (unless you shoot at him for a while first) at first before he does his first jump, but when does that first jump he starts doing it more often. By the time he does that first jump you can get 3 or 4 jumps on him. So get to him early while you can because getting those final few jumps gets more difficult, like it should. An end boss that gets progressively harder as it goes along. Something you don't always get. Wow, you've really got those banks stuffed and pretty well optimized already! I didn't know it was possible to divide so many different game elements into all of those banks and draw them all onscreen simultaneously. The game engine must be bank-switching constantly, even during the screen draws! It's definitely not like NES Super Mario 3 MMC3 mapper where you have like 16kb of ROM for the game engine/ physics, and another swappable 16kb for all of the level data, and then have little swappable chunks of graphics tiles for different world backgrounds/ enemies/ Mario powerup suits. I've still got a lot to learn about Atari VCS. The Atari graphics are so "raw" compared to the NES, it just blows my mind that people can program the kind of games they did with only 128 bytes of usable RAM. I downloaded the ROM file, and will play-test on my Atari later tonight. Sorry, I'm not gonna attempt to record it on my computer like last time: no more crappy grayscale video captures, LOL! It's been QUITE the undertaking. Whenever I start on a programming project I always say, "Oh this shouldn't be too hard..." And at that point I should know better, because any programming project I've done has always turned out to be something like this. Yep, there are no duplicate routines being run, even in the boss battle the routines from banks 1-3 are still run as in normal level operation mainly to use the mario routines. My enemy/object type variable when set to Bowser Jr.(I=64), shuts down some of the enemy related stuff to give the Bowser Jr. routines control in bank 4 and it also shuts off the scrolling element. I'm not familiar with how the NES does it's bankswitching and why, but the reason for the bankswitching on the Atari is basically just to get more ROM since you have 4k max at one time available to you. There are a few other types that use bankswitching to use such things as included RAM in a cart. And of course the better you organize it, the better it can work for you. There is plenty of bankswitching that goes on in this game in one game cycle. Depending on what is going on, some times more than others.

You have some really good suggestions and ideas. I really like the Midnight Blue background idea too. If you think world 1 was kind of difficult, you should try 2-1. It's even harder. I have a trick that you must do with a koopa to get past it. The trick isn't hard to do but a must. I know about levels getting progressively harder as they go along. That's why there are few pitfalls and obstacles to get around. 2-1 is where you start finding more pitfalls, more obstacles, tricks, and things you gotta do to pass a level. The first world you can just run through if you want while only battling a few enemies. Pretty simple stuff. As for a water world. Can't do it. Not enough ROM left to program water levels. I don't have enough ROM to make a final Bowser battle (will have to be Bowser Jr.). I'll be lucky to have enough ROM left to have an ending sequence of some sort. I've done a lot of shuffling and right now things are this way: Bank 1 - Mario graphic routines, level scrolling routines, Mario collision detection and handling routines, screendraw. Bank 2 - Enemy and Object Routines, Enemy and Object sprite and color data, screendraw. Bank 3 - Mario Controls, level routines and handling, checkpoint routines, special item routines, fanfare & completed level routines, and some more enemy routines that I couldn't fit in bank 2, plus the 3rd screendraw for one game cycle. Bank 4 - intro screen graphics and routines,level preperations and initialization, Boss battle routines, game over screen and music. Bank 5 - World 1 & 2 Data and read routines. Bank 6 - World 3 & 4 Data and read routines. Bank 7 - All Music Routines and Music Data. Bank 8 - Where the BB engine goes and all the table data. Thwomp routine is here because I ran out of space in Bank 2. Title Screen and Ending Sequence will most likely go here as I still have about 800 bytes left to work with in this bank. Bank 1-6 (once I have all the level data in it), only have anywhere from 50-200 bytes left in each. Bank 7 still has about 500 bytes left, but I plan on using the remaining space for the end tune. This is also why Bowser Jr. doesn't have his own music and world 1-4 uses the standard underworld music. And as for six jumps instead of three, three was way too easy. Bowser Jr. actions are not only dictated by a sequence, but some timing elements as well. He'll walk around until those timing elements strike and then he'll jump, do his shell thing and when the timing elements strike again he'll pop back up, stay there for a split second and do it all over again. I found that he walks around for quite a bit (unless you shoot at him for a while first) at first before he does his first jump, but when does that first jump he starts doing it more often. By the time he does that first jump you can get 3 or 4 jumps on him. So get to him early while you can because getting those final few jumps gets more difficult, like it should. An end boss that gets progressively harder as it goes along. Something you don't always get.

That's fantastic! Wow! Where did you find that image or did you do it yourself? That's so oldschool and fits it all pretty darn well! I was thinking of going silver or red on the label since the original came out in '85, the year right inbetween the two label styles. You read my mind. If this cartridge gets produced this would be a strong contender and I don't mind putting my real name on it.

That is really neat. Believe me, I wish I could program in Assembly. It would allow me to get around a lot of the limitations (especially visually). I've programmed in BASIC up to C++ throughout my lifetime and assembly was one step above my technical understanding, although I do have a pretty "basic" understanding of how it works. I know if I ever did, I'd have to get an even better understanding of the technical side of the Atari, as with bankswitching techniques. I can't wait until BB gets a full release that takes advantage of the DPC+. Right now, it's not quite there yet but I hope it does soon, because I'd like to port other games to the 2600.

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know I'll be attending the PRGE at the end of the month! I live in Portland, so it just makes perfect sense! Hope to see some of ya there.