Papa

Fun little puncher. I like that they come from both sides and have a sense of randomness.

This game is cool. I like the vehicle designs and the zoom plates. Sweet. It reminds me of Wipeout with a little Tron mixed in.

This game is quite freaky! The characters are a little scary. Good use of the blocks for graphics as you can see a lot of different rooms and what not. Interesting!

Cool take on Outlaw. I like the badguys frustration on the cacti. He's trying to saw through it with bullets.

Gulp, gulp,gulp..Neat concept. There really is no escape!!

Fun game! I like the variety of spells! It can be frustrating as the Dragon is coming at you (this is good), and getting the mana potions before having to zap his arse is quite the challenge! I found myself missing him from anticipation more than from lack of timing. Graphics are pretty good and creative for the system it's on and the concept is enjoyable! I love games where I get to be a wizard. The manual helps a lot as once you learn the regeneration technique you have a fighting chance.

Ah, but the seventies and eighties were full of the ease of use tactics, like hitting the cabinet just right to get a free game, tying line to a quarter shaped disk and pulling the yank and drop. I was actually born in the seventies and saw a lot of this first hand. I remember being totally beaten down in Street Fighter II by some twelve year old once at Kings Island (I can beat the game, too.). He's mad because I'm actually getting hits on this obviously programmed arcade shark child, yelping over and over again "You ruined my perfect..you ruined my perfect.."! Nothing beats the corruption of the Billy Mitchell years of arcade gaming when Twin Galaxies got its steam, though. In the modern we see those people eeking up the ladder to redefine the scores and then crappy dubbed and obviously edited 'proof' of Billy beating anyones score before they could ever even give it a try! When his wife is asked if he still plays those old arcade games, she kindly answers from his salsa plant "In the eighteen years I've been married to Billy, I've never seen him play one single game." I use a linear turn table that only skips or wows if the vinyl is truly wretched. I contest that modern technology really isn't an upgrade at all. CDs= Built for portabilty but skip whenever you hit a bump in your car. Scratched once and they never work right again (unless you can afford a real resurfacer), they warp and degrade at an alarming rate. You scan skip songs..wooptey doo.. Cassettes don't skip EVER and, if taken care of, still sound great today! (I have an awesome open face player that just never sounds bad unless the tape is wretched.) LCD and Plasma screens= One is just waiting for the backlight bulb to crap out and the other uses as much power as a refrigerator. They look blurry when you play games or they have gross color seperation that wreaks havock on the eyes. I still use tube tvs and crt monitors that can be easily recapped and retubed and look great today. I watch movies on a Sony Videoscope projector from 81 that looks like an old school movie screen. It still works great and I can tweak, adjust, and recap if I need to. MP3 players= Sure they're little! Once the little tiny itty bitty battery decides not to charge they usually get trashed. The earbud earphones are so easy to break I bought a big pack of five (having already had five or more sets) for my kids and now they fight over the one set that barely still works. You can still use a walkman cassette player and the batteries can be replaced easily. I have big, cushy headphones from a school that sold them to 'upgrade' to smaller more modern headsets. They still sound great today and were used by monsters! My wife works in the school system and has detailed the adventures of finding a working headset in todays classroom. Modern Cars= The baby of industry. In the eighties a honda got 35 miles to the gallon and came with a cassette player! Today every industry has something plugged into that terrible thing you had to get a loan to even get near! They talk, tell you where to go, lock their own doors if your naughty and stop working if a cop hit's a button! They have an lcd tv, a built in game system, an internet connection, a yelping security system that barely lets YOU IN! They are made to wear out in four years or less and you're still paying for them ten years later! They get 20 miles to the gallon if you're lucky! I quit driving (having been one of the fastest private couriers around for some time)!! My experience in the nineties was, more often than not, at bowling alley mini arcades, college pizza joints, closely monitored mall arcades, etc.. I only saw the kid wave at places like Chuck E Cheeze or Kings Island. I just love that era of 16-bit, 68000 and Z80 boards mixed with Neo-Geo MVS that really connected to all the things I loved. The comics, martial arts, bit graphics and the party atmosphere of my mid to late teens and early twenties, that I still vibrate with today, come from then.

Someone should mod a couple of them to put up on eBay! Start the trend of reaping them up and fixing them.. Mine mod kit has been in the air for a couple of days now and is about to land here in the arctic (or so it seems, with all the snow we've been getting )! WOOOHOOOOO!!

I LOVE clicking buttons. My favorite arcade time was the nineties, when Street Fighter 2 cabinets were everywhere and you could really feel that arcades were bigger than ever. I was an awesome child of the eighties and played arcade games throughout, although I really was just being babysat while my mom shopped or groceries got bagged. We sometimes got to be fully deflected by being handed a five apiece (WOAH!) and told to stay in the arcade until the parents got done. When I worked at Loony T-Birds In the nineties I remember dumping quarters in a SFII cab and playing a lot of League Bowling and Magician Lord. The clicks gotta be there for me. The concave buttons and switch driven sticks are just a necessity. I can replace a switch easily and I know all my own hardware, so that's another must. I've built a JAMMA-DRIVE for my Street Fighter Alpha cabinet and also wired in MultiCarts, etc.. The competition pro feel that is clicky micro-switches is where I come from as a gamer and not just a kid having fun at the check out line. I've always been nuts about JAMMA and JAMMA+, Neo-Geo and Candy Cabinets. I can see where these buttons would have a place, but once their dead what do you do with them? I can easily replace switches and have a giant bag of back ups ready for all the cabinets. Of course, I've never played an arcade game and been like, "Man these deterioration factors are too much.." or "If only there was no clicking then this game would be better.", or "If only there was a fixed, gold contact fused into this button, it would be better!". I was more like "AWESOME, ARCADE PARTS! LET'S BUILD!" I love HAPP, ZIPPYY, Cherry and those products that kept things great then and now. To each his own, though, and to hear that another enthused arcade hacker is working the Jaguar into the scheme is music to my ears (or is that the Guardians of the Galaxy sountrack.. )! I really love working consoles into the cabinets. Rampage was made to be played standing up and banging on buttons! Then it was ported all over the place with little cross pads and tiny buttons everywhere, and to put it back upright and infuse it with arcade controls is a GREAT feeling for me! It's also a great way to protect the systems, screens, and controllers from grubby fingers! I have six kids, so they may inherit and near-mint condition system one day! I also think that fastening the butt to the sofa is all the norm today. People look like The Borg, or little Star Pilots, with portable urinals and 12 year olds smack talking in kill-fest Call of Duty games throwing controllers and all Cheetoh faced! I like being able to play a game and then walk away from it when I'm done (sometimes fifteen minutes later), no subscriptions required! No headset, portable urinal, anime chick avatar, thirty something technophile! I listen to RECORDS and CASSETTES! I watch VHS and VCS almost as much as DVD. I don't watch TV! I listen to the radio ON THE TOILET, if I'm not READING PHILO or LATIN! I like COMIC BOOKS! I write books and poetry.. ..anywho. GAME ON!!

Considering that even the creator of the GameBoy attempted to compete with Nintendo shows that the door was opened to try. The WonderSwan used less batteries and was much more compact. It had Bandai to help which really should have made it a bigger interest, even in it's own country. Whether it was ever going to have an overseas future was probably speculative. I think the growing popularity of RPGs also contributed to Atari's lackluster performance in the mid to late nineties. If they would have seen from the mid nineties up (when the WonderSwan was being designed) as a chance to catch onto new ideas they may have grabbed up an Ultima game here or a Might and Magic game there and appeared to have some link to the emerging desires of the current gaming crowd. If, instead of folding under the pressure, they would have brought out a Lynx Redux around ninety-five and (*sigh..not shut the Jags tail in the door so hard) then caught Nintendo in a transition between baby-crap green and colors and being laughed at for the Vitual Boy, the could have been able to pick up some portable potency! It all seems to be penny chasing and bad marketing that keeps Atari from being what they could have been (ahem..8K Pac-Man!!)! I totally agree that the Lynx should have been brought back, though! It was the first handheld with a color LCD, the first to have scaling (really sweet scaling, too!), 16 linked up players, a flippable screen (like lefties can't adapt!? More of a novelty.), and games that went vertical! It's still a sweet system in my opinion.

I still need to be able to combine down and up and left, so the !(not) is pretty important! I like else commands, and when I do 2D games (I mean games where there is no discernible foreground that the sprite enters or exits) I use it to stop the variable, but as it is I'm pretty sure I would lose the reflection if the direction was combined. I actually have a much longer set of controller based variables that are cancelled and/or activated to allow for jumping in both direction and using the special attack. If I were to 'else' the variable in this particular game then my upward walking animation or downward walking animation would activate on a combination of directions rather than the mirrored walking frames. What I wrote out was a simple example. I agree that things can be changed to free 1 byte here or there, or reduce cycles, however this is simple explanation. I was more emphasizing that the variable can be used in conjunction with a direction to control animation and also coordinate with a 'reflect player' command to mirror the sprite. Anyone interested in using the above example for games should definitely take note!!

In the case of left and right movement I use variables that are assigned to the directions to control animations. Like this.. characterleft REFP0=8 if n>15 then n=1 character if joy0right then m=m+1 if !joy0right then m=0 if joy0left then n=n+1 if !joy0left then n=0 if m>4 then player0x=player0x+1 if n>4 then player0x=player0x-1 player0color: *colors end if m>1 || n>1 then player0: *frame1 end if m>5 || n>5 then player0: *frame2 end if m>10 || n>10 then player0: *frame3 end if n>1 then goto characterleft if m>15 then m=0 This creates a mirrored image of the right facing sprite for left movement. Of course, up and down movement, attacks, and jumps are all to be squeezed in there as well. The 4 is the speed regulator and, when increased, slows the character movement. This is far simplified (it should goto somewhere to create the circuit, possibly to a background and where it came from will have first landed on character, not characterleft) but should explain how two variables can be used to move and mirror an animated character.

Nope..that one slipped right through the radar! Looks pretty good, though, AND it has bigger balls!! I'm spinning wondering how paddles worked for a pinball game, though!?! There were a lot of misadventures on old school Atari. I remember that Kaboom was almost psychic in how fast it could get and still have a sense of connection with the action. After cleaning out my paddles I felt that same whirring kind of speed like my mind and hands were faster than my eyes when the bomber got so fast!! I really LOVE video pinball, though, and have included flipper buttons on all of my cabinets that are set up for video pinball on several systems. SNES, Genesis (Dragons Revenge is awesome with flipper buttons), Atari, PC (reminds me I need to set up Creep Night pinball for that), 3DO, Saturn, and more recently, the Jaguar! Ruiner Pinball is extremely good with flipper buttons..

Magic can destroy them or move you one screen past them, or they will miss you by standing in the foreground (the bottom of the screen). If you are high enough up the screen they will hit you. Slashing at them while they are within striking level will not prevent them from hitting you. This is a type of emulated collision detection, otherwise the stars would unrealistically hit the top of your head and hurt you when you are in what would appear to be the foreground. The same rules apply for enemies. If you are below an enemy and they swing or lash out they will miss you as you will them. The rules apply to a greater degree in the foreground and as you move into the background the enemies will have an easier time hitting you. This allows a sense of dimension that imitates the playfield of more advanced games, although it is flawed in that the background opens up the character to easier attacks. If you start the screen by moving upward ,and thus setting the enemy on a path upward to intersect, you can then lower yourself rapidly and dodge an attack even though the two sprites are actually colliding. The enemy will then scoot down the screen to try and attack, and once they are close enough the hit will happen. Magic also has the benefit of driving the enemy back to their starting X coordinate after use, getting them off of your back, so to speak. My latest revision, which I will post soon, has an updated Game Over screen, some graphical upgrades to certain backgrounds, more magic uses (making the game easier), and some other minor alterations. Eventually, if all things go as planned, the jitters on three screens in levels four and five will be gone and there will be different types of magic effects in addition to the present ones. The dragon may come in from the side rather than above and other alterations. The lightning may crisscross and have other effects, based on the characters stamina. Magic can be used to transport to the next screen, eliminate projectiles and damage or defeat enemies. Based on the weakness of an enemy when used, you may go to the next screen as an added bonus. If you use magic on a screen where the enemy is defeated it will usually take you to the next screen and subtly damage the next enemy. RIDE THE LIGHTNING!!

Ah..I thought maybe that was the ol' DPC+ going on in there! Best of fortune with your game, though! I love the way it plays. A bit like pachinko meets pinball with a bigger ball and stellar targets. Cool game! I would keep chipping away at it until your happy with it. The city graphics and animated target already separate it from previous pinball offerings on the VCS, so it's all good! The face is reminiscent of Midnight Magic, but the ball says it all.. Bigger and more like a pinball then the little dot graphics of yester-cade!

It's a sky for a city-scape! So, have you tried to use the border code and then match the outside color to eliminate the spill over? It might encapsulate the effect and keep it more background-ish looking? PF0=%11111111 (before the playfield color declaraton or the playfield itself..) I'm thinking it's maybe in there already somewhere, and I'm not sure how your code is, but I know this will create a border that extends to the edges of the screen (less 1's will bring it inward). If you already used it for you're existing border colors, then it's obviously out of the question, but if not, then you may be able to cancel out, or extend beyond the edges of the table. If it's a playfield up front and playfield collisions are used to redirect your ball, then the edge colors at that point (black) would then extend to the edge of the screen. Depending on what kernel options your using, this could create unwanted effects, though.

In my game you will notice that the two special attack animations (down+action) loop one way, mirror, and then loop the other way (while activating a collision, timed at the blade),and then stop and reset to the primary frame. This is very easy to do with two controlled variables. I use several instances in the game where two variables are used in tandem to control various aspects of animation. Of course what is best for a programmer is best in the end. To argue eccentricities of style could go on forever. I sought out to be able to use similar methods for all of my animation cycles so controlling the mirroring of the player (like for moving left), jumping, rolling, and attacking is much easier to time, adjust and to understand!

I use certain animation that loops back and forth and must have multiple variables. I was quoting 'the book' for the the programmer. I'm also pretty sure that answering in assembly isn't going to help this beginner with ease of use, or help to explain how to stop the sprite! Ease of use does calculate into efficiency, in my opinion.

There is no better way to animate using BB with as many sprites as I use. There is no simpler way, either! I use goto, and the 16-bit randomizer, on a 32K bankswitched game! The only overinflated ego I see here is yours! Using a variable timer is as base level as it gets! There are several frames of animation per character in my game and it requires the ability to control the timing of each sprite frame change. There is no better way than using a controlled variable. Now you've attacked my ability to program, like I haven't programmed PC games that are more advanced than even this! You don't know me, and you seriously have no idea who your talking to if you think I haven't 'graduated' into advanced enough programming for simple animation! You've insulted me by acting like you're superior to me, and that IS the sign of an over inflated ego. You wrote the guys code for him while I explained HOW to do it himself in a way that uses the least amount of RAM and gives him complete control over the timing of the frame!

Yeah.. Like what I just said isn't a RAM efficient way to animate! I know it works great and you haven't done anything that shows me that you've 'graduated' beyond anything that I've done! Show me a game with more animation than mine from BB?

The bar is binary and only to help in the final stages of programming. It will be chopped off when the game is finished. I have used basically (he, he) all the RAM that can be used for graphics, so a graphical counter is not possible at this stage. I will be posting an updated version of Titan Axe later with some changes! Thanks again for saying my game is fun. I really love it. If you pay close attention most of the details explain themselves, although to add some mystery to it isn't bad. The Dwarf is rolling back and forth while popping up with his axe. This can seem a bit confusing, I guess. The Valkyrie is spinning and hacking in two directions. The moves are as follows.. Hold down plus action to do a special move Hold up and action to use magic (this uses some life force) Hold left or right and action to perform an attack Hold action to jump While jumping use left or right to go in that direction Letting go of action in mid jump does a jump attack Combining these attacks creates a combo effect that knocks back the enemy and eventually destroys them.

Yeah..I added that a few days ago to fix up the scrolling. Animating characters is pretty easy and fun, though! I use variables! Just declare a variable (a=a+1) and then if a=0 then player1: *frame if a=10 then player1: *next frame if a=20 then player1: *next frame and so on.. Also..if the colors in each frame are the same, you only need to declare them once (otherwise you'll be wasting a TON of RAM). So after you declare your colors then set up your sprite frame by frame with a variable to time them. Adjust the variable count to change the speed of the animation and then end it later with a count killer, like if a=30 then a=0 This is easy and works great.

That was your first soldering experience!!

I agree that the marketing tactics likely killed the system before anyone could love it properly. I also don't really believe that either is a failure! Whether a system makes a ton of money or has a lot of games really has little bearing in my mind. I think that the fact that people will shell out near original costs for these systems (Lynx and Jaguar) decades after their 'failure' shows that what people want is quite different from what is being 'sold' to you today! In a few years all the Wii systems and PS2's and 3's will all be dead or dying and the Jaguar will still play carts just like it did from day one! The market will flood with remade Lynx systems with new screens and AV/VGA out and people will still pay one and half hundred dollars for one. The games still get between ten to forty dollars a piece (used market value even when the system was out!) and will still get more valuable and sought after when Nintendo finally succumbs to the cloud and gets rid of media while Sony dominates all!! I've paid sixty bucks for a 360 just a few years after they were on the shelves for hundreds! I've had four Wii systems. Only the first did I pay near original cost for, and the rest I got for fifty bucks a piece at a local pawn shop! The Jaguar didn't fail, it's just the only one of it's kind! The Lynx didn't fail, it's screen pooped out and needs replaced with one of these newer ones that is sharper and can hook up to a monitor AND uses less power! The games are awesome.. the collectors always want them! WIN, WIN!!

Well, I've officially had a post deleted from this forum with no explanation why. It was an extremely informative post and it is really pi$$ing me off that someone couldn't have just edited it (with the authority of an admin that would have been easy..) or, at the very least, explained to me why it was deleted. I can see that seeking maturity enough to care about the truth is not something for a forum like this. I check my facts quite well and am certain that I wasn't overstepping any boundaries. I think someone just wanted to hurt me and that's what they did. I will be working on my games and probably avoiding the forum as a tool for communication as the truth really has very little place being expressed here. I can see that if it's enough truth to rouse anyone at all it's as likely to be deleted without explanation. On the note of DPC+.. You still are restricted to the last bank for graphics data, so my sprites would all have to be redrawn to use DPC+. All of my sprites would take up much more RAM and so the number of different sprites I have in my game would go down. The amount of graphics in my game use up the entire graphics bank (the last bank in a bankswitched game). To lose nearly the entire first bank, have to double the amount of RAM each sprite and the backgrounds take up, and redraw the entire game from scratch to use the DPC+ kernel would likely make it impossible to make this game! I think that having multiple sprites is important to push the Atari up to the standards expected in more modern games, and the type of games people need to try for also has to advance along with this. I understand that making a pong-like game or a combat-like game using BB might be what it was originally intended for. I think the environment can do a lot more. DPC+ is proof that sharper graphics and more sprites are a possibility with the system, however, the memory constraints will always hinder what can be done. If all graphics data resides in the last bank and once that bank is full you are out of graphics, then DPC+ will still have limits as to how big or advanced a game can be on this system. ..I really wish I would have saved that post. I've read posts about giving Nintendo carts blowjobs on this forum and to have a ultra-informative post deleted, as this was, is a sign that if people are jealous of you or are just looking for a reason to single you out or hurt you then all they have to do is complain. I'm sure someone could find a reason to delete many of the comments on this forum if they wanted to single someone out. Many off topic posts are made regularly. I will be finishing up this game soon, and I am beginning to feel that it was a mistake to post it for download, as that may have had a more positive impact for me in the long run. There are people who do their homework (like me), and there are twisted people who pick, poke and prod at things they don't understand or just don't want to read or hear. I would have expected a forum of computer enthusiasts and programmers to be more lighthearted and even be appreciative of the learned, but it just seems to be graced by a lot of immature people that don't read and care very little about the truth.