Tyler Frisbee

Hey guys! Back by unpopular demand: me! Back in 2015, whilst in High School, I pushed out a game called Dragon Defense. Some people did enjoy it but, this year - older and wiser - I decided to significantly update the graphics and gameplay. I didn't plan on sharing it so early, but @ZeroPage Homebrew streamed the original tonight, so I hooked him up with a demo of the remake. Some people wanted to check out the progress on the new game for themselves, so here it is! I got a lot of good suggestions tonight and theres a few known bugs and glitches I need to address, but I'm hoping to get it wrapped this year and maybe even do carts somehow - who knows! I still have no idea what I'm doing You can check out the original here if you're curious. Instructions for the new version: The original mechanic of defending the wall against the dragon and other enemies has remained. Killing ground enemies (gnomes and skeletons) will drop items (a heart to refill health, a crystal ball to rebuild the wall, and a wand to restore health, ammo and the wall.). I removed the mechanic of casting spells because it was confusing and awkward with the joystick controls. Now you just collect mana potions to refill on ammo. Curious to know what you guys think of progress so far! DEMO-DragonDefense2021.bin Updated art: Here's a demo reel of the game: Some gameplay screenshots:

Well, there may be a better way than this, but here's how I do it. First I just type out a field of the "periods" (88 x 32 or something like that?) into a text box in Photoshop and change the font to something monospace like Courier. Then I stretch the text box horizontally so it's the same dimensions as what the game should probably be. Now everything fits the screen and when I start to replace "periods" with "X's" I should easily be able to see what's going on; the dimensions of each "X" is similar to the dimension of each pixel. I think your main issue is that the built-in editor is tall and skinny as opposed to short and wide...if that makes any sense. I'm sure there's a 'normal' way of doing it, but this is how I pull it off. Anyway, I don't know if this is what you meant, but I hope this helps!

This isn't exactly what you're asking for, but this may be the easiest solution that really anyone here could do. Rather than messing with the code in the game, the easiest, quickest solution may be to just get someone to write a program in either assembly or batari Basic that'll just display the message without the game. Then at the Atari Age store, you could send them the program and have them burn it to a cartridge with the Crystal Castle labels. Give her the cart, have her plug it in, and it'll immediately display the proposal; sorta like what toiletunes mentioned. I know it's kinda a cop-out, but worst case scenario, if one of these guys can't figure out a good way of inserting the message, this may be your best bet and it'd definitely work. Really anyone could easily help ya with that EDIT: Actually toiletune's version of that was a lot easier, this pretty much does exactly what I said: https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=846

I am so sorry. I thought I had the most recent bB since I got it from the website...apparently I was wrong. I downloaded the updated version you linked to on your site and it works beautifully now. Thanks for your help!

I've been trying to figure out how to use the DPC+ kernel, so I tried compiling the .bas for one of the example programs I found on Random Terrain's website. I can compile and run the code, but I am presented with a blank screen with two lines (see attached screenshot). I've been having the same problem with multisprite programs as well (same blank screen with two lines). I thought that it might be my emulator at first, but I can run the .bin version without any issues. I'm a noob so I'm out of troubleshooting ideas...does anybody know what I'm doing wrong (its probably something silly)? Thanks for the help! mini_ex_dpcfrac.bas

Awesome, glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the feedback! I hope to start working on another game shortly once I find the free time

Awesome, hope you like it! Don't expect anything earth-shattering though...only my first game. The brick thing probably has been done, but it was a good way to get my feet wet with batariBasic.

I always wondered what he did during his downtime on La Santa Maria...

I managed to reduce the amount of pfpixels which fixed the scanline issue throughout most of the game. It plays beautifully on the 2600 too I've attached the updated version, the wall is one layer thinner now which makes the game a lot harder, but it fixed the problems Dragon Defense.bin

I think I know what your doing, but I don't completely follow...heh, I'm not a great coder..

Thanks!

I think that its probably the pfpixels, I tried playing with the drawscreens and speed optimization with no improvement. I can't really do anything about the pfpixels though without really changing the game entirely. Dragon Defense.bas

Is there anything that typically causes it to exceed 262?