ponlork

Thanks. I got some ideas in mind on how I'm going to reduce the flicker. As for the two button controller, I might make use of the second button for the menu access. luckily since it's a RPG, it doesn't require many buttons. I'll most likely design it with the one button joystick in mind. I thought up a way to bring up the menu by using input combinations. As for the plot.. hmm.. in the anime world we call that boobs XD but honestly though I'm going to keep the plot unfinished, like a Manga series. basically whenever I want to make more chapters, I just go ahead and update it. But there's no definitive end until I feel like giving it closure. So that's the idea I had in mind, just keep releasing new chapters until I feel like ready to end the series. At the moment, I'm thinking of making it very random. Pretty much I have a unwritten story, whatever comes along I'll just go with it. Maybe there'll be some naughty tentacles coming out of nowhere, maybe there'll be a racing scene completely out of the blue, maybe it'll switch from RPG to fighting who knows. I'm going to try to incorporate as many elements from various different styles of games that I was a fan of growing up. I'm taking it back to when I was a child playing videogames and fantasizing about all the things I wished were in certain games, and what they lack I'm going to try to include XD The plot is most likely going to be nonsensical at first, then I'll try to piece it together at the end. I can imagine the beginning stages of my game the dialogue is probably going to go like this. "Something something something", "blah blah blah", "Something something something Darkside" lol

Oh okay, I think I'm going to avoid using the multi sprite kernel. It won't be compatible with all the other features I want anyways. And hey that's a pretty neat trick you devised. I think I did something similar, but what I did was rather pointless. To give you an idea of how clueless I am, I drew the Attack icon with a height of 126px, so I can draw the dagger icon about 50px below it with a lot of empty space inbetween. Then when she attack, I would reposition the sprite higher so it would move to the dagger icon. Which in retrospect, that was pretty dumb I mean I could just draw a new sprite when she attack XD I'm still stuck in the mindset that we need to use files in order to load the sprites, but really we're telling the compiler to draw it each time. Why yes I was ^__^ before I went about designing it, I had absolutely zero knowledge of Atari's hardware. I didn't even know it only had one button XD I presumed that I was going to need to devise a scheme to display a very minimal amount of data on screen so since I was a fan of Pokemon, I thought that would be perfect. Plus we get to see ass now however I may think about switching battle screens. I would also like the traditional FF3 turn based battle system using the chibi sprites where it can display multiple parties. Now that I know we can display multiple sprites on the same horizontal line, I can see that as a possiblity. But I don't know I might switch it up from time to time depending on the scenario.

Definitely. Let's have a ending that's worthwhile for a change. One thing I never understand about old games in the past is why are most of the endings so unfulfilling. I mean even RPG games like Final Fantasy, Faxanadu, Metroid, or Phantasy Star. You just went through 100 hours of gameplay and the best ending they can come up with is some cheap text screen telling us the game is over? I'm like geez I know I could have came up with a better ending than that. I imagine the developers were just so happy to finally get the game over with and that they wont have to do anything anymore so they just slap together some weak ass ending lol Yeah it was a bit frustrating at times when the password doesn't work XD especially the long ones, before I press the button I am shaking like "Please God let this work" lol Well maybe I'll have multiple options if I can. Save with a memory card or a desperation password mode lol I just want to have the password system there to ensure that at the very least, there's a way for everybody to save. I was wondering, if one was to modify the cartridge, such as soldering your own chips in there, could one add a battery backup? Because I would do that if I could, even if I have to open it myself and do some soldering. When I was researching password systems I did come across the Save Key, but when I try visiting the links provided they were all dead. I would like to bundle the game with a save key if I can. I've also seen the AtariVox hack on games such as Bezerk. And man that really blew my mind. I thought hearing voices on the NES was impressive, I never thought it'll be possible to hear it on a 2600. Hell yeah I would like to include that. But I really want a feminine voice, like if the character gets groped she makes a girly sound XD Don't worry I'm probably in the same boat as you when it comes to programming. I have a ton of ideas but I have no clue on how im going to implement them. I got an idea for the club scene. If she goes up to the blonde chick, and press the fire button, the main character will start twerking hehe. And I got this idea if you lose to that creeper outside the club, he will grab her then throw her in front of a moving car to kill her. Okay maybe that's a little bit twisted XD I'm thinking about naming her LEDA. what y'all think? That's it, I'm going to fix that lol initially it was a bit awkward to draw that, because in my mind I was thinking I'm going to have to use NUZIS to stretch it wide. So I originally drew it super skinny, so I would stretch it later. It came out okay I think hehe I'm sure I can do better next time around. I'm tempted to make one more update. i want that motorcycle racing scene dammit. I just found out that the multisprite kernel doesn't work with the multikernel. Which is cool I had a difficult time messing with that anyways. I was wondering, is there a way to use the playfield as a collision detection? I notice there's a pfread in the multsprite kernel. I would like to use that for the racing sequence. My idea is to just have a timer, and a racing track. And I guess the point of it is to see how fast one could complete it. Then at the end the player would be given a certain amount of money depending on their time. What is this Wizardry D:

Thanks ^__^ yes when I figure out how to adjust the pfheight of each row, I'll get that fix. For me to give the guy color I had to use the playfield color and it's a bit blocky so it doesn't cover the feet properly. All in due time. And cool I'm going to try to incorporate a ton of panty shots and under boobage hehe XD Absolutely. The battle system I included was actually one of the fist things I experimented with in programming this. I had very little knowledge of Atari's inner workings or limitations. I'll revamp it once I get the chance to. I would like to modify the Score so it can include HP MP. At the moment I'm not even sure if that's even possible. Can I use the score to represent the Hit Points? I think I tried putting the score in a variable once, but it doesn't seem to calculate correctly. For instance, if I put n=20, score=n it would come out some other number. At the moment I'm just using the current battle system as a template, there's no AI or anything. It's just a placeholder. Yeah at the moment I'm using player0 to cycle both the player and the enemy. So I'll get that fixed eventually, along with adding color by using the playfield. If I use the multisprite kernel, would I be able to display the enemy sprite without flicker? I experimented with a sample script once where 3 sprites were displayed, but it would flicker if I move it close to one another. At that time I was clueless as to why that was, but I think I'm starting to understand. I'm still not really sure how keeping it at a distance will not make it flicker. But hey as long as it works I'm not complaining haha Also I've stumbled on a old thread of yours about making a password system. I would love to include that in my game. I actually happen to enjoy inputting passwords XD it brings me back to my youth. I would have like a bunch of notes with various passwords jotted down and I would think it was so cool that we can save the progress. My RPG however probably won't be as vast. I'm thinking of something very stripped down like maybe a maximum of 20 lvls, no classes, just Attack, Magic, and Item. And the hitpoints will go up to 999 or less. I also want the save feature to only be accessible at save points or the world map. Last night i was researching exactly how the hell does a password system work but I can't make heads or tails out of it :/ At the moment there's no AI, that's something I'm still clueless in. I've never programmed AI before in my life so I'm not sure how I'm going to do that yet. I imagine it'll have something to do with the use of using a random number generator, and I'm going to have to just play around with it until i get something working. That's how I go about doing things, I just dive in head first with very little knowledge of it, then gradually learn while doing it. And I like that lol Everytime I see a debug screen I just run, because I'm just not willing to research what it is yet. So that's why I tend to not know a lot. I purposely avoid looking things up until I really need to or am confronted with it. I now realize why I failed in School, there was no Google back then lol So pretty much it's just a visual depiction so others can get a glimpse of what I'm trying to accomplish. I made it so if you attack him 5 times he would go away. That's pretty much it, very basic. What I would want is to have a ATB (active time battle), where a bar would increase to indicate when it's your turn. And once the meter is full, then the Attack options will display. Oh no that looks like a tummy to you? I was actually drawing her butt lol I actually drew the top portion of her body including her head too, so I might pan the image upwards to avoid confusion. And maybe give color to her hair. I used Nusiz to increase the sprite to Double. So that wasn't even at quadruple the size. Great now I'm seeing a tummy too XD it's one of those optical illusions. In the end I would like to have a walking animation of her going up the stairs. This is also my first time drawing sprites of my own. I usually rip sprites from other games haha so I had no experience of pixel art prior to this. I'm just learning everything as I go. Since most games on the Atari 2600 had primitive looking graphics, that made me less fearful of drawing my own sprites. I would probably be too insecure to try spirting on other platforms though. I don't really have a good grasp of shading, blending colors, proportions, or perspective.

lol that'll be nice distinction to have. I got some ideas of how I would include a sex scene but.. nah i'm going to try to keep it relativey light XD You can probably tell when it comes to male characters I don't put much effort into it at all but when it comes to female characters i really try make it look appeasing as possible. plus seeing provacative imagry tends to keep me inspired so that helps keep me feeling motivated hehe I made a short gameplay video of it. sigh I really want to continue working on it everyday but darn I can't. I just hope I don't put it off for too long, because when I'm not consistent in doing something I tend to forget everything.

I stayed up all night, but I finally made an update. It didn't turn out as good as I wanted it to, but I'll improve it later. I've learned some new tricks to make nicer looking graphics, can't wait to apply it to my battle system. I used multikernel too! I am so glad it worked! I'm not exactly sure what to name it. I imagine it might be problematic if I keep uploading new versions with the same filename. Originally I wanted to break my game down in chapters where I would put 001, 002 etc at the end. It's probably going to take me a while before I finish the first chapter, i'll probably keep making revisions until I'm content. Anyways here's the update. I just added a club scene that's pretty much it. And I rewrote the code to make it work with multi kernels. Also, if you die, you can go inside the club and get resurrected XD Well I'm going to take a break. See ya ponlork_001.bas.bin

Aww man now I can't get the multikernel to work. I got it working the other day. Maybe I shouldn't have updated to the new build, because now when I try to use the old one it still won't compile correctly either. I can't even get the .bas files in the multikernel.zip to compile anymore. I think i understand why the latest versions aren't posted XD I might have to do a system restore. I hate when this happens, now I'm going to spend all night trying to get it to work again. Anyways, thanks for all the in-depth info in the previous page. I'll get to studying it in a bit. So is all this Basic language? I tried taking Basic in high school and I failed miserably. I don't know why it was so hard for me back then, probably because I was still new to computers at the time. hehe I was actually in the process of making the club scene right now. But then I hit a snag with this multikernel problem, as I code the scene using different kernels. Haha that glitch was actually done by accident. I was just trying to push her back a little bit but i didn't code the xy axis properly and she just flew out of her body XD and now im thinking about implementing that as a main part of the game. I'll have a new update shortly. i'm probably going to make the game a bit raunchy, but not pornographic, just a lot of fan service. i'm just trying to make something different and unexpected that's all. Here's some snaps Thanks for checking it out. i should probably think up a name for her. Edit: i really should proof read before i click post, I don't know why i always do it after i hit submit haha my mind is always in a rush i guess. oh wait, i got the multikernel working. I forgot, i need to open the .bas file within the multikernel folder. Awesome, I can now continue finishing up my update.

hmm I normally just put if joy0fire haha so how many inputs are there for joy0, is it just 0 and 1? and does 1 represent when the joy0fire is in use? if so, I can see how that can come in useful. Now that I think about it, last night I recently updated VisualbB 1.0 from Build_554 to Build 566 because the ImgtoCode program in build 554 didn't work with the Titlescreen kernel I was experimenting with. And in the new build it would give me a warning error that I had a extra "End" in there. So that might have been the cause for the black screen. The Sprite Editing program is much better in the new build also, the old one had a scrolling bug which was quite frustrating. Is there a reason why build 566 isn't featured on the main page of the Visual bB 1.0 thread? I assume all those links were up to date. Anyway, speaking of Titlescreen, I finally started messing around with it. Is it possible to use any of those functions in game? There was one function that I really like, and it was the animation example where it acts like a Sprite sheet. Is it possible to only display part of a Sprite? That would really come in handy for animation. I think I'm going to try to release one more update before I go on hiatus. I hope to make this one worthwhile.

Oh okay. all this time I've been working with only && XD it's nice to know that there's a NOT command. I was wondering is this is like a "Does not Equal" command. like "If this does NOT equal that than do this"? I used to mess with LUA and I always found that handy. in Lua it was ~= I believe. Also another thing that I was wondering about, should I use gosub instead of goto for retrieving frames from other banks? Because at first I used goto frame1 bank 2 but after doing that too much, it would just turn into a black screen. But if I use gosub it would work. I read something about gosub once but I think it said that it takes up 2bytes so I assume using it will eat up memory so I just avoid it. Thanks for the help. Told you I'm pretty clueless lol darn it's midway through Oct and I'm broke. I may have to put this project aside for a few weeks until I raise money for rent. I should move back in with my mom, I would have all the free time and creative freedom in the world haha but nah I gotta be responsible.

Wow that is great to know if I want to take my game further. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I assume it's using a rapid fire method to detect a different input? Well as long as it's possible. Maybe it's possible to create 3 buttons with extra combinations haha that's actually the idea I had in mine for my game. I might make the Menu access by using button input combinations. Speaking of the fire button, I notice in some code I would see something like "joy0fire !l" what the hell is that exclamation point at the end? One day I'll dig deep into researching it but right now I'm just a tad curious.

Ahh I see. I was going to ask about that. I did try to modify the score graphics once. But when I went to Score Editor, it would say Not a Valid Score Graphics ASM file. At first I thought it was a software bug, but now I believe I may need to have a asm file in my projects directory. I took a glance at the assembly code, I am so glad there's a batari compiler because there's no way in hell I would have even attempted that XD it's like writing on punched tape or something. I can see why it was so difficult for programmers to make decent games for the Atari back then. I'll probably never fully comprehend all the internal workings and capabilities of it, but it's cool I'll just get by with what I can do right now lol I mainly want to create a Atari game that has actual plot and lots of dialogue, which is something I never seen on a Atari game. That's one of the things that motivated me to make one, I grew up on the NES era and back then, RPGs weren't as prominent in the states. As a NES owner back in the day, i had a lot games that lack depth and i would sometimes fantasize there being some ultra secret code to make the game more Vast where you go outside the boundaries of the game XD but that's kinda like how I imagine Atari. People don't expect a epic adventure, but I'm sure many back then wished they had games like Princess Rescue on it growing up. Man that is crazy. The Atari 2600 is really exceeding my expectations of what it's capable of. It's quite amazing for 70's technology. I'll probably limit mines to 16k for now, and if I go over the limit, I'll increase the size haha. It'll be so awesome if I can get it run on a actual 2600. I should probably purchase the system soon. I just recently realized the Atari only has 1 button. But I saw in Princess Rescue that it's possible to use two buttons with a Genesis controller. Does anybody know how that works?

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes as of right now, everything is really atrocious. However I'm more trying to give a visual of how I would like my game to be like, so people can kinda sorta get an idea. When I get the core mechanics down, I think rewriting and embellishing later is not as difficult. There's a slew of things that I want to include that I haven't even touched yet. I still don't know what .asm is, or how to use the bottom portion to make fonts. I'll figure it out later. I'm definitely going to revamp the battle system. I'm currently using player0 to do 4 cycles of animation lol I have player1 free, I might change it so it only flicker once. The concept of cycling frames was still new to me, I thought up a temporary solution to do that because the multisprite kernel didn't work for what I was trying to accomplish. But now I'm reading a thread about using multikernels in the same game, and man that got me excited. I just may have to rewrite my entire code all over again haha i just wish I had more time to experiment with all the different functions. It'll probably take me at the end of the competition of my game, until i realize what i can do, and then I'll probably try to rewrite everything over again. Or maybe when I'm done, I can assemble a group of more qualified people to enhance it. There's only so much i can do. Like i said, I'm more of a visionary. I'm a horrible programmer. And I have no aspirations of becoming one. I'm thinking about switching the game to more of a dark tone. I might make the car accident scene more gory. Then when she's in the spirit form, i'll start using the player1 to draw dead people and a grim reaper haha

I had a similar experience with the sprite making program in vbB. I don't recall exactly what I did to cause the error but I remember I was multi-tasking a lot and copying and pasting. Then one of the sprite tabs just stopped operating. When I draw on it it didn't draw it correctly. I didn't even let me copy, or save. I tried opening it in the Projects pane and it would say something like This file doe not exist or something. So then I opened the sprite file in notepad++ and it was blank. So I feared that if I exit the sprite would be gone. So when I relaunch the program, the sprite was empty I tried to copy it but it was acting funny and when I paste it was empty. It wasn't a big deal though, but I can imagine it would be very frustrating if it was a .bas file. That's why I constantly make numerous backups. Whenever I reach a point where I'm satisfied, I just copy the ENTIRE folder each time XD doesn't matter it's duplicate sprites and files I just make a full copy of the projects folder.

Yeah I think I kinda get the concept. It's a bit tricky though. Initially I wasn't going to attempt this project because I thought 4k wasn't big enough. But then I started randomly watching Youtube videos of Atari homebrews and demos, and I started hearing about bankswitching. I'm still not entirely sure how it works but as long as it's possible to expand the memory, and play it on a actual Atari system then that's good enough for me currently my game is around 6k I believe, theoretically speaking, what's the highest amount of memory I can push it to and get it to work on Atari 2600 hardware? Yes I'm open to anything that can let me work around limitations XD that's one of the cool things about programming for the Atari, people have to find clever ways around restrictions. And I always find that fun. Thanks for the suggestion, I may have to use that later for secondary characters. I actually used the playfield in conjunction with the ball in order to make the car. It was kind of a redundant task, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. I might have some fun with this ghost mode thing, since it frees up the player1 sprite, i'll probably use it to make another ghost sprite telling her she's dead lol and then she has to find a way to get resurrected. Most of the things i do is completely on the fly, i dont plan anything i just go along with it.

I finally understand what the NUSIZ is for haha I've also found out that there's a Ball function that I can use for an object too which is great. I was hoping we could stretch it wider though, I was going to use it for a bike but it's cool I think it's better if I just draw new sprites with the motorcycle and character sprites together. Oh I also updated the game a bit, now if you get hit by the car, the character's spirit flies out of her body and you turn into a ghost XD that effect wasn't intentional, i just did a minor cock up on the code and i liked the way it turned out. Also I got a question if i may. Is bankswitching necessary for us to code in VisualbB? Because it seems to automatically optimize it if I set the romsize. I'm not exactly sure, the whole bankswitching thing is still confusing to me. Sometimes I can get it to work, other times it's just a blank screen. But if I move it to bank 1 it seems to load fine. ponlork.bin

Woah that is neat. So much potential now. Can't wait to delve into it. Can the Nusiz also be used to create multiple enemies? Aw thanks I made it myself yes that's pretty much exactly what I did. Before I even attempted programming the first thing I did was tinker around with the sprite drawing program in bB. Then I started to like what i see and when I get inspired I start to visualize things and it's difficult for me to stop haha. Oh all this time Ive been putting the Nusiz0 outside the loop. I had no clue what it was meant for, I just followed some sample missile script from a guy on youtube. I'll mess with that next If anybody's interested, I've attach a sample of the game. I finally got done rewriting everything. It was much faster this time around since I got my feet wet. My first attempt I didn't even know how to add comments so I knew it would be drastic if I try to move forward with a jumbo mess of code. I feel more comfortable moving forward now ^__^ There's not much at the moment, you may have to use your imagination. Pretty much it's just the basic navigation, and I implemented a battle system. And In order to proceed to the next level you must beat that creepy stalker guy twice, then in the 3rd playfield you will see a Motorcycle. The game ends there. My next attempt I'm going to try to make a racing sequence. I think I would like to release the game in chapters. Then when I have enough content I'll combine them into one cartridge. That way I won't be stuck in development hell and I would feel less pressure. Plus I think it's a pretty cool concept, have a unfinished story, and keep adding more to it whenever I'm inspired. You know I bet the game would work great in Japanese, because Japanese people actually read text from top to bottom. So it won't feel awkward at all. ponlork.bin

Thanks, I usually look up things only when I run into a problem. I'll check out those links. I have done a lot of reading on those topics before, however it's pretty difficult for me to grasp things. I'm not very smrat. I can read it a thousand times but I probably won't get it until I do endless trial and error and actually get something working XD A rectangle shape would be awesome. I notice a missile0height thing, but not one for width. Do you know how to make it into a fat shape in Batari Basic? I'm just barely beginning to understand kernels, I was stumped in that for a while. I didn't realize what it was, or that there were trade offs. Not until I tried using the multisprite kernel and notice a lot of things stopped working. Speaking of kernels, is it possible to switch kernels within the same game? I highly doubt that's possible. I'm also having difficulty with this Title_screen kernel that i downloaded from here,, i forgot who made it but I can't seem to load the multisprite kernel with it :/ I'm still not entirely sure what NUSIZ, i assume it has something to do with creating duplicates. I'll read up on it when I need it. Right now I'm in the process of rewriting everything over again. My first attempt was so sloppy, now I'm keeping a notepad of all my constants that are in use so I won't have to analyze it for hours

Hello I'm new. First let me just say that I'm not very good at programming. I can do simple stuff just to get my ideas across, but when it comes to putting something elaborate together and making it run smooth, I'm very bad at that. I'm more of a visionary. Most of the programming I do is mostly from tinkering around with existing samples until I get something working to my liking. So if I come across very noobish or ask silly questions, please excuse me, thanks. With that being said, for the past week I've been working on a homebrew for the Atari 2600. I'm not very familiar with the Atari, matter of fact I never owned one and I played my first Atari game a week ago through a emulator. However I'm growing a big interest in retrogaming. I feel that working with limitations bring out creativity and imagination and the thought of making something like a RPG on there is very exciting to me. So here's the game I've been working on so far, it's not much but I plan to keep working on it. In the game I used a missile to represent a enemy. I was wondering is there a way to stretch it to make it wider? Or better yet, is it possible to manipulate missiles and turn it into a character? I also notice when I use no_blank_lines the missile is not visible. Is there any other ways to represent a character sprite on screen? I got a ton of questions, but I'll ask them while I come across a problem XD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr2SdcP2FMY