SIO2

August 16, 2021

Thank you for this wonderful tool.

I am currently using Atari Dev Studio v0.7.1 on a recent Chromebook with linux support enabled (Crostini/debian buster). Batari basic programs will compile but Stella fails to launch and reports: 'GLIBC_2.29' not found and also, 'GLIBCXX_3.4.26' not found.

ldd reports: ldd (Debian GLIBC 2.28-10) 2.28

From what I have found in researching this on the internet, it is not advisable to try to upgrade GLIBC.

So my work around was simply to install stella 6.0 build 4667 by itself then launch it from the terminal and load the bin I am working on. It adds a few steps but still gets the work done.

Just thought I would make the note in case there is some easy fix or better work around that I am missing.

Thanks

August 14, 2021

Nice work there. I'm looking forward to seeing the demo.

I recently watched the movie, "The Outlaw Josey Wales". A great film. In that movie, revenge drives the hero.

In your game, the motive (so far as we know at this point) is that father is missing. That seems to set up a search. Why is father missing? Where did he go? Was it an accident or was foul play involved?

Will the game incorporate the traditional elements of Western movies and games such as moving livestock, gun play and romance?

I am intrigued.

October 17, 2019

Exciting! Looking forward to this.

August 5, 2019

NostAlgae37 was kind enough to provide some new sprites with frog that displays more movement, a new fly and some smaller cars that folks were wanting. So, I have put those sprites in to what I was working on last.

I was working on switching from a continuously randomly generated field of cars to a pre-generated field of cars when things got busy around here and this project got set aside. So, there are a number of glitches and rough spots in the attached files. For example, the option to set difficulty level (dense traffic, light traffic, normal traffic) is still in the menu but will not affect the number of cars on screen at this point. There is also an option in the menu to select the color of your frog. The color of the frog sprite and the color of the frogs in the caves does not always match and so on.

Oh, one interesting glitch is that the old way I was doing things the program would not insert a fly near a car. Since it was constantly inserting and removing cars, it just put a fly in between cars. With the constant field, I had to come up with a different way making sure the fly didn't get placed on top of a car. That part I got but, currently there is nothing preventing it from putting the fly right back in the same place you just picked one up. So, you may get multiple flys at one time. Needs work obviously.

frogus08042019.bin frogus.bas.a78

July 20, 2019

I never bought one of the superchargers back in the day because I didn't like cassette tapes. I have one now that you can use an MP3 audio source. It would have been interesting if BID they had offered games on vinyl. I can imagine a turntable linked to my 2600.

July 20, 2019

I have to confess, I put my Retron 77 back in the box a while ago. Tonight I got it out and tried the 6.1 beta 2 release. Loving it. Just want to say thanks for the great work here. :)

July 12, 2019

In giving it more thought, I think that the burdensome way Frogus handles the cars has to go. I like the randomness of it but, it is too heavy of a load for the old machine.

I have done some testing with a pre-generated field of cars and it runs much faster. I have also done some experimenting with a second player. My idea for that is: the frog vs a ms. pac like creature or perhaps the mouth from my game Sick Pickles. The field of obstacles will be a mixture of cars and ghosts. The frog will race to collect flies while the ms. pac like creature will race to collect fruit or perhaps pickles. Whoever eats more before the timer runs out wins the round.

July 9, 2019

Strange the seller would list a valuable item like this on an account with only 6 feedback all as buyer and 5 of those more than a year old.

July 8, 2019

30 minutes ago, NostAlgae37 said:

Thanks for the info, I had no idea about all of the particulars that you laid out in your response. It was very informative and gives a clearer impression of the constraints that you are operating under. First of all, what is the resolution that the game is running at (I'm assuming that it is one of the 160 modes)? If you can send me a sprite sheet of what you currently have (yeah I know that this isn't generally done in the Atari 2600/7800 world, but it helps me to visualize), I will see if I can punch them up for you. This would include the frog protagonist, the flies, the cars, etc. PM me if you are interested and wish to continue this conversation offline.

I will PM you.

Thanks.

July 4, 2019

Interesting comments. Here are my thoughts:

Regarding the sprites: I am satisfied with the sprites that I have but am curious to see examples of what others might prefer. I have this philosophy about the 7800 where I see it as the ultimate evolution of the 2600. So primitive or large and low color count sprites are fine by me as long as they don't flicker.

If the objection to the cars is mainly that they are hard to jump between, that is sort of intentional. I tend to prefer a twitchy fast and difficult game that surprises me.

Frogus spends a lot of its time randomizing and determining where it will insert sprites. That means that there is not much horsepower left over for frills. I am no expert on Frogger but versions that I have seen appear to generate a field of obstacles that remains constant during each level. This lessens the burden on the processor and frees up cycles for other things. Having a constant field also allows the player to plan to catch a ride on the log next time it comes by or jump between cars next time they come by. That is the way Frogger plays but not the way this game plays. I am wanting to avoid this becoming a clone of Frogger.

As Frogus is written now the flys are sprites that could theoretically move in other than straight lines. Moving in other than straight lines takes more processing time. When you say flutter about do you mean outside the lanes? If so, the fly sprite would either potentially cross a car sprite or need some sort of AI to avoid hitting cars. I suppose the fly could also be killed by hitting a car. That could be interesting but adds another collision detection so, more processing time.

The bottom line is: Anything is possible but most things are improbable because as written Frogus is strapped for time. I think that the program is doing what I am asking of it fairly efficiently at this point, it just has a lot to do. Unless I simplify the process for it, I can't add much to it.

I would be interested to see other sprite proposals though. Also if there is anyone that does TIA sounds and wants to propose some music or sound effects, go for it. Even if I don't use it here in Frogus - other game developers may pick up on it through this thread. One thing I want to do is have different sounds for the timer ticks and the eating of a fly. Right now, I think eating a fly sounds about right but the timer ticks should sound different to avoid confusion.

June 30, 2019

Press Start bar/arcade in Rapid City South Dakota has a barely playable machine. No sound and the monitor is washed out but it is playable. Their Super Pacman machine looks and works great though.

June 29, 2019

Thanks Bob and Al.

I also used $1982 for my game Sick Pickles as stated in an earlier post in this thread dated October 28, 2017.

June 22, 2019

On 6/18/2019 at 10:28 AM, gambler172 said:

Hi Brek

yes,sometimes it works,sometimes not.

Do not know why???!

I do not know why either. The high score module is written by RevEng and we know RevEng's work is awesome and others have used this module and it works. Somehow though when I put it into my programs, I end up stepping all over it. I have not been able to put my finger on the cause. So until the game is about finished the high score part is the least of my concerns.

What I am posting below is a slight update that hopefully addresses the issue of cars appearing out of nowhere on the left. They now move in from the left but still are pretty quick so watch out.

Also, I took a stab at the incremental scoring designed to encourage players to stay out in traffic and collect more flys. Each additional fly is worth more than the previous one. It is not exactly working yet. It looks like the tenth fly reverts to the base value? Not sure. I will have to do more testing there.

Other than that, there was some more work on trying to lean things up and get it to process faster.

I played a few games on my red system and did not have any issues with the high score this time but your results may vary.

frogus06222019.bin frogus06222019.a78

June 21, 2019

What! Again! Don't you all have something better to do?

June 21, 2019

I tried the June 20 version on my red 7800 console. Looking good.

When I tried it at first, I had a 2600 joystick in the left port. Looks like this game will not support 2600 joysticks?

I switched to a 7800 compatible game pad. Then it worked. I don't know how but somehow, I managed to activate pause a few times.

Really cool game.

Thanks for bringing this to 7800.

June 17, 2019

2 hours ago, gambler172 said:

Hi Brek

works very well....but DENSE is damn hard....

I used my savekey...and played DENSE....

i got 250 and put in my initials. GAM

then i played normal got 200 and put in my initials too....

Then turning off system and start again.....The score in the

DENSE difficulty was saved....but when playing normal.....

the score was not saved.....so i can say....the savekey works

partially...

Hope this info helps....

Tomorrow,i will play around with it again

greetings Walter

In my testing, it works most of the time. Not sure why it sometimes fails. It may be a timing issue. I just don't know.

June 17, 2019

2 hours ago, Swami said:

Looks great. Challenging, but I slowly get better. Unique and fun take on the Frogger concept. Not really anything else out there like it, but very much like a bitd 8-bit game.

Thanks. That is what I am aiming for.

June 16, 2019

Today's buggy update. Caution: It has savekey support but I haven't been able to test it well. Not responsible for loss of data or damage to your savekey or atarivox. Proceed at your own risk.

Pressing up on the joystick at the title screen will now access a single item menu where you can choose from 3 traffic density settings. I prefer dense because while more cars come out, also more flies come out.

frogus06162019.bin frogus06162019.a78

June 16, 2019

Reserve $1983 for my game Frogus please.

June 15, 2019

First update in nearly two years!

Still a lot of work left.

In the version from an old post if you got 10 bonus flies you got a free frog. There was a counter displayed showing how many flies you had left to get but I have that counter disabled at the moment and will probably do away with it all together as I found it confusing and would rather see that space used for something else like a level counter display. I am also thinking about making the flies ramp up in value like first one 50 points second one 100 points third one 150 points, etc. That would encourage the player to hang out in traffic as long as possible to collect as many flies and possible.

The version attached here corrects a couple of typos. One caused sound corruption. The other could have set up a recursive loop under certain circumstances. There was also a substantial amount of optimization done.

Let me know how it works for you.

frogus06142019.a78

frogus06142019.bin

June 13, 2019

Anyone got a video of this? Would be cool to see.

I need to do some more work on it before it is ready for a video I think.

It was passing emulation but not running on real hardware. My first thought is that it is just running out of cycles. I leaned up the code a bit and got some good performance increases and when I take it to real hardware now - it plays without crashing. However, I am still getting very badly corrupted sounds. Not sure what is happening there yet but I am looking forward to working on it some more soon.

June 12, 2019

One thing I don't get is why in the bonus level it gives you the same y values despite me using the rand function. I tried seeding rand but that didn't help.

Not sure if you got an answer for this one. It does pull the same sequence - like from a table of random numbers. Somewhere I saw how others handle this but basically, you need to tie your rand pulls to user input like if the player is moving up pull an extra rand and throw that value away. If anybody has a better example or link I am sure it would be appreciated.

For testing, if you can get one of the CPUWIZ Devcarts that would be a great way to go.

For my own stuff, I end up using an Eprom burner and an EEPROM most often for testing. Best to test often on the target hardware because, emulators have been letting my slop slide by too much.

June 12, 2019

It will be a very hard sell to get people into this version with Froggie already out there for the 7800. The bar for a Frogger clone was set pretty high with that one.

Indeed.

Not aiming for a clone though. Right now, I plan (and plans can change of course) to focus the game on catching flys rather than just getting to the other side without getting killed.

Frogger doesn't make sense to me. Sure, maybe once in a while a frog wants to cross the road but frogs mainly want to catch flys or other insects. Maybe he doesn't even need to get to the other side? We will see.

At any rate, I am not trying to compete with Frogger or Froggie or any other games. I am trying to make something a bit different yet reminiscent of a type of game. Sort of an alternate universe version.

When I did Alpha Race people were putting pressure on me to change it to be more like Omega Race but, I like how it finished. I love to play it still. I enjoy Alpha Race more than Omega Race.

I have to say, it is nice to get some input from others though. Suggestions have made Alpha Race, Sick Pickles and CybUr better games than I would have created without people's suggestions.

June 12, 2019

This is not a dead project but needs a lot of work. I may be looking at it soon so, decided to mock up some art for the cart.

June 8, 2019

Finally got my chores done and found a moment to play.

Awesome game. Challenging too. Clearing a board feels like a real accomplishment.

Thanks Bob and everyone involved for putting this together. It is a real treasure.

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