walaber

Sorry about the AtariVox confusion, it's only used for saving high scores for all of the modes, there isn't actually any voice FX.

pretty big improvement! I bought a new RCA cable which I opened up and connected to the motherboard, and then connected that through a RCA -> RF converter, and that into one of those "TV BOX" converters that are designed to connect to screw terminals. this has definitely improved the signal quality. the noise starts to show up after playing leaving the Atari on for several minutes though, so perhaps there is some static charge that's slowly building up (maybe a grounding issue?).

Hello everyone. I was all excited to get my homebrew game on a cartridge and play on a real 2600, so over the last few months I bought a 2600 off e-bay (it's the light one w/ wood colored paneling, smaller switches for difficulty on the back), as well as an old RCA CRT TV. The kind that's so old you actually screw on the cable with little terminals. I stripped the wire coming out of the Atari and attached it to the VHF terminals, and the picture shows up and is somewhat playable, but there is a LOT of noise, banding, etc. I've tried fiddling with most of the settings on the back of the TV but they only marginally improve the issue. here's what it looks like playing my game: and here's that the various parts of the back of the TV look like: Is there a resistor or something needed, or a better way to connect a 2600 to a TV like this one that improves the picture quality? the amount of banding and noise changes a bit when I move the TV or console around, but I'ver never seen it completely clear up.

Should be available in the store soon! I took mine into work today and set it up next to my desk, and brought along some other homebrew games too (Flappy always gets a good reaction)

Got an advance copy in the mail today, everything looks amazing Albert! These should be in the store pretty soon I think.

Exciting!!! I can't wait to play the game from a proper cartridge. I think I'll take it into work and force all my colleagues to act impressed

I thought some members on this forum might not know about this and find it interesting. Zachtronics (creator of many super interesting PC puzzle games) has just released a new puzzle game called "TIS-100", which is all about solving puzzles through ASM programming on a made-up 80's computer system. As you play through the game you learn about the computer and who build it (and why). Here's the trailer for the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkUHGvy2pNU here's how they describe the game: It even comes with a 14-page PDF manual that you're meant to print out and use as reference while you code your solutions to the puzzles

I've kinda fallen out of working on it, busy with work and other things. I do hope to get back to it soon though.

I tried searching around to see if these were already posted, but didn't find anything, so please excuse me if everyone has already seen these.... but 2 "classic game post mortem" talks were given at this year's Game Developers Conference, with the creators of Adventure and Yars Revenge giving 1 hour talks each about the development of their respective games. usually these talks require a membership to view, but both of these have been made freely available! very interesting talks! Classic Game Post-Mortem: Adventure (Warren Robinett) http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021860/Classic-Game-Postmortem Classic Game Post-Mortem: Yars Revenge (Howard Scott Warshaw) http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021865/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Yars

Thanks for playing the game, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

OK I know I'm getting a little ridiculous, but check out this shirt I had made. There's a site called jakprints that can do wrap-around printed custom shirts. I thought that would be ideal for a shirt based on the background from the game, so: There are some tiny wrinkles in the armpits where the color is missing, I assume they lay the shirt out flat and then print the design on it, and there were a few wrinkles there that were unavoidable.

That's awesome, thanks!

Are you sure the data you're reading and putting into GRP0 isn't offset like that, or you have an error that's offsetting the data?

The games on your website are fun, seeing a 2600 version of one/some would be really cool! good luck!

Off topic: ALaMothe I learned C programming for DOS based on one of your books when I was in high school! Very cool to see you on these forums.

Just for fun (click to watch it animate): [edit] hmmm, the animated GIF doesn't seem to want to play.

pretty funny.

I definitely think you need to focus on the colossus battles first. if you get that to work and feel good, it will be worth solving all the other problems. the idea of the colossuses being constructed of the playfield is cool. perhaps they can be bigger than the screen (and moving) and you have to climb up from a side view, where pressing the directions climbs in that direction (by holding onto the fur), and holding the button tightens your grip for when they shake?

Here are some mockups for a potential box for the game

That's really cool! I really like that idea, and I think it will fit the game nicely. now I just have to... you know... make the game first

Today I got some basic syntax highlighting working in Sublime Text that recognizes all of the opcodes and VCS.H keywords, and also does the same kind of fancy highlighting that SpiceWare has. Enough procrastinating, I need to get back to working on the game If anyone wants the syntax definition file, let me know and I'll post it.

That's cool! I use Sublime Text as my editor, I'm going to look into something similar. It has a pretty robust build system as well, so I'm pretty sure I can set it up that I can hit Command-B and it will run my graphics script, compile dasm and then launch Stella. Something I think I'll look into as well.

no, sorry I didn't think of that... only removing Lava...

progress has been slow, but still moving forward. today I wrote myself a little python program to batch convert individual PNG files in a folder into a "graphics.inc" file that properly formats the data into 8-pixel wide strips of data, suitable for using with player sprite graphics. This allows me to easily take my photoshop/pixel images I create, and convert them into data for the game. I know other tools are around to do this, but all the ones I could find seemed to be either web-based, or only for Windows (I'm on a Mac). Other people might find this useful, so here's the python code (it requires the PIL image library): import sys import os.path import math from PIL import Image # this will be the string data we want to write to graphics.inc, formatted for DASM final_output = '\tMAC GRAPHICS\n' for filename in os.listdir('./'): base = os.path.splitext(filename)[0] ext = os.path.splitext(filename)[1] # currently only support PNG files. if ext == '.png': print 'processing ' + filename + '...' img = Image.open( filename ) img_size = img.size # convert to 1-bit on/off. img = img.convert("L") sections = int(math.ceil(img_size[0]/8)) for s in range(sections): section_name = base + "_" + str(s) final_output += section_name + "\n" for y in range(img_size[1]+1): # don't forget to invert the image vertically... # and also give an extra line of pixels of zeros at the top (bottom). final_y = (img_size[1]-1) - y final_output += "\t.byte #%" section_comment = "\t\t;" for x in range(: final_x = (s * + x pix_val = 255 if (final_x < img_size[0]) and (final_y < img_size[1]) and (final_y >= 0): pix_val = img.getpixel((final_x,final_y)) if (pix_val <= 128): final_output += "1" section_comment += "X" else: final_output += "0" section_comment += " " final_output += section_comment + "\n" final_output += "\n" final_output += "\tENDM" text_file = open("graphics.inc", "w") text_file.write(final_output) text_file.close() you use it by running in the directory with the PNG files: python process_images.py this creates a file called "graphics.inc" with entries that look like this: MAC GRAPHICS bike_0000_0_0 .byte #%00000000 ;........ .byte #%01110000 ;.XXX.... .byte #%10001000 ;X...X... .byte #%10111111 ;X.XXXXXX .byte #%10001111 ;X...XXXX .byte #%01110110 ;.XXX.XX. .byte #%00001111 ;....XXXX .byte #%01111111 ;.XXXXXXX .byte #%00011100 ;...XXX.. .byte #%00000111 ;.....XXX .byte #%00000011 ;......XX .byte #%00000001 ;.......X .byte #%00000000 ;........ .byte #%00000000 ;........ .byte #%00000000 ;........ .byte #%00000000 ;........ .byte #%00000000 ;........ bike_0000_0_1 .byte #%00000000 ;........ .byte #%00001110 ;....XXX. .byte #%00010001 ;...X...X .byte #%11010101 ;XX.X.X.X .byte #%11010101 ;XX.X.X.X .byte #%11001110 ;XX..XXX. .byte #%01100100 ;.XX..X.. .byte #%01111100 ;.XXXXX.. .byte #%10001000 ;X...X... .byte #%00101000 ;..X.X... .byte #%11011000 ;XX.XX... .byte #%11000000 ;XX...... .byte #%01110000 ;.XXX.... .byte #%11010000 ;XX.X.... .byte #%11110000 ;XXXX.... .byte #%01100000 ;.XX..... .byte #%00000000 ;........ ENDM Note how it also puts comments in that make the graphic data a bit easier to see. it puts all the graphic data into a macro called "GRAPHICS", so then in your main game code you can "include graphics.inc", and then wherever you want your data statements you just put "GRAPHICS" on a line, and they get pasted in there. so I've now got my rotation frames into the program, and easily updatable, along with making it easy to add new graphics to the game. Up next I need to get a level format that properly creates playfield and ramp data, and then start working on the actual bike physics.

Thanks for the notes everyone. I'm going to go with simplified math for the game, probably using basic scaled integer / 16-bit math where necessary.