MemberAtarian
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Posts posted by MemberAtarian
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Hmmm, the whole game runs in one loop? Because the scanlines are over 262, mostly 272 and the screen jiggers. On the real hardware, that could even make the screen roll a bit. You should only call elements (like the playfield and the kind of sprites, even the actions) only as they are used, so they won't waste the poor circa 2100 cycles that is done by the CPU in one drawning.
If there are really costful actions, like pfread or pfpixel, you can move them to vblank.
I had 4 days only optimizing my current project and I had to remove the Waterdrop effect, because I got 266+ cycles as it appeared.
To be fair, I was thinking of a port of this game as well, the labirynth and fight part won't be to hard to make, the real deal would be the text, that can be only done is assembly and it is really above my skill levels.
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Great. Really hope this gets finished.
This will be for sure. This is my biggest projekt since I began programming the VCS. These days I optimized, optimized, and optimized, gaining at least 1600 bytes and now the cycle count won't go over 262. Unfortunately, I had to remove the WaterDrop, it took much cycles with a little effect only (mostly only for decoration) and I can use it's X and Y values in the randomizer. I used up all the usable aux and stack, and even the missile variables, and 4 variables are used by single bits.
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Rad game man, sorry I did not see it sooner, but I am going to give it a go later!
Love the music and the stylistic shadow art!Thanks for you nice words! I was away for a month or so, because I'm learning Python right now (got the mood for learning more languages), but I'm back for my game project. The boss fight is ready, only the ending and the randomizer of the survivor mode is left. I have completely rewritten the module that decides which sprite to draw (spared 700 bytes) and remade the one that makes blocks disappearing as stomped (got an extra 400 bytes), so I have now a 'plenty' of space again to dream. I moved a lot of the hard parts to vblank, but still the cycle counter goes over 262 if there are too many blocks around you, did not decide which ones to optimize yet, I have 200 bytes left in bank 8. XD
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Thanks, I'm working on putting some code to vsync, so it won't have nudging.
Call be just Member, I use this name because Member was already taken.
Hey man, thanks for the kind words! I was surprised when I saw this thread. I had completely forgotten about that game. My first post on AA!
I still lurk often, but work and real life has kept me from getting involved in any projects. Maybe one day
PS -- This Fear of the Dark game looks great! Nice work, MemberAtarian!
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I was sorry that no one ever picked that up to work on it! Brian O was a great guy and did terrific artwork and he was really dedicated to figuring out as much as a non-coder could to make the game developable. And he did terrific box art for all kinds of projects. Is he still around?
I'm a non-coder as well, I'm originally a social worker in my personal life.
Unfortunately, I don't know about Brian, he made that homebrew so long now that I didn't know that it existed.
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-Ducking makes you heal yourself, but if you hold the fire button, instead of healing, you make a flare to see the whole screen and the location of the Demon.
-Bats added (max. one per screen)
-The second number represents your trials, so you don't have to start over if you die. With "Survivor" mode, it will count the rooms you completed.
-In some rooms, you have to jump and crush the platform under you. Sometimes it falls even under your weight.
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Regarding music and ROM space, the “Atari Sings Mappy” thread link in my signature was my TIA test 3 years ago.
Way better than I thought it would be.
((So glad I got to help with the 3-channel music Champ Games Mappy and sound effects!))
I do not know assembly or C, but I know “batari Basic”.
The first code of TIA Mappy main tune, with 8 number data for every Volume, Channel, Frequency and Duration was over 8,000 bytes for the 1 min 18 sec song.
I kept thinking king of ways to optimize the data and put most of it in that thread linked in my signature. I just made up ways to shrink the repeated data. I never did anything like that before.
It ended up using 800 bytes without dropping anything. Nice having it 10 times smaller!
Even at the end I figured I could save around 100 more bytes if I used 1 Byte to hold 2 values, but I never recoded that in the song.
Not intending to use your thread for this TIA Mappy tune, but I wanted an easy way to show you and hopefully help you learn while making your interesting games!
(I had just watched Aliens and Alien when I found your horror game that could be compressed and expanded into a fantastic fun horror game people would pay to own! I really see that much potential!)
Yeah, the song sounds amazing.
The original code in BB is taking really horrible amount of space, I found out that if the volume is 0, the F and C should be 0 as well, so I save 2 bytes instead of wasting 3 for silence.The interesting part is the way you made flags, I never tought of it before. I mostly use V=8 for high and V=6 for bass channel, and 2, if the tone is repeated, so a little fade-out would make it more like the original. I could make it maybe work like if the value of F is 0, then V is zero, else if the value is same that before, V=2, else 8 (or 6), and I never change the C on-fly (pure has most of the right tones), so it could save place as well.
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I upload a first playable version with 3 stages to try out.
This is how you play:
-You jump by pressing up. If there is nothing in your way, you move a bit forward as well.
-To grab the platform above you, press fire, to climb up, press up, to fall back, press down.
-To throw the torch, press fire and hold it down. To throw it, move the crosshair to the desired position and release fire. If you release fire while the crosshair is on your body, you cancel the operation.
-If you fall from too high, you take damage.
-If you press down, you duck and heal yourself slowly.
-The Demon is faster if you cannot see him. Be careful, if the light goes out, it can get really close in no time!
So, now I'm gonna work on addig everyone's favorite enemy: The bats.
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Added two track segments:
-Hallowed be they name (death)
-Wasted years (title)
I made the torchlight so you can see the enemy without flicker if you are not present. The enemy is following you in y coordinate if he is out sight. So now you can die.
Problem: Scanline number, as always. There is just too much pfread again to calculate positions.
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I would really try for a 1 player version. Even if you have to
up the size of the cartridge ROM.
Yeah, AI is a big problem. I created a more advanced AI in Apollyon (I used some part in Beeware as well) and only the AI of two enemies took a whole bank of 4K. And that AI was only about rectaing to your moves, no strategies at all!
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I'm of course really interested in the game still. My biggest problem is that my partner newer really liked Atari 2600 (she had on XBox and some memories of playing famiclone games in the past, but that's all) and my son is still half years old, so I can't count on him yet. But if I have time, I can check it for you without a real partner in the night.
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Not bad, it's a bit repetitve but reminds me the really old days of the console with simple and challenging games.
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Added some details:-You take damage if you fall from too high-You can throw the torch-There is a waterdrop that can turn your torch of-Added some details in animation-
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Love the mechanic of teleportation, keep up the great strange moody work that you do!
Unfortunately I gave up on this project, the intro just took up too much space and I did not enjoy the first three stages as testing, so I used up my methods for Fear of the Dark: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/280212-fear-of-the-dark-atari-2600/
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Technically the other one never got to the completed stage - but had awesome artwork for the label and manual. I'm listing it as Fear of the Dark 2018 on the "List" as of now until any changes are made to the title.
Yeah, I did not know about that title. Originally, I wanted to do a port of Alone in the Dark, but now it seems a bit hard even if I do a 2D game, but the Iron Maiden cover was already planned for that.
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hey cool another Fear of the Dark homebrew!!!
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/172046-newbie-with-a-game-idea/?do=findComment&comment=2131245
Okay, should this be a sequel or a prequel?
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naah, the AD&D I was refferring to (Intellivision version) does have very very little of RPG's. It's more an action game.
Oh, you meant Cloudy Mountain? I reviewed that game back in the day, it had only little RPG elements and most of them were strangely made.
But yeah, that was all about caves and arrows. -
It's kind of a mix of Haunted House and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, two games that I love. Please, go ahead!
AD&D is an RPG game, a really different genre.
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How much of a song/album can you put on a cartridge? Atari plays Maiden, Priest, Ozzy, GnR, Queen...
Unfortunately, even if I just use some part of the songs and use some tricks to to make the code in BB shorter, this song takes up 2 banks. So if I calculate with one title picture, three songs are max.
Awesome. Which heavy metal song will inspire the next game? I bet you're onto something here. Maybe Electric Eye by Judas Priest?
My next game will be a port, if things go well, so it won't have music.
(i will need the channels) To be fair, I'm mostly into slavonic pagan folk metal bands, chinese folk metal and irish folk punk. But there will be a really short part of Hallowed by thy name as you die.-
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#Update - 2018.08.23.
The game is nearly finished, I'm waiting for some brave gamers who could search for bugs.
So basically, there are two modes, one is called campaign and one is survival. The campaign has fixed, more detailed levels and has a specific goal. In this case, the game counts the number of death, so at the end you will see how many lives you wasted for getting the treasure.
After you beat the campaign, the game changes to survival mode automatically. In that mode, you have to wait a lot before you can play, because the CPU generates the stage, simulates if it is beatable and then, it places the bat. Yeah, I wanted to put there more possibilities, but I just ran out of space. And I mean, I rewrote most part of the code and the music is compressed to the limits, but I don't have any place left for calculations. In this mode, the game counts the rooms you completed without dying.
You can see the footage here, but it's really spoiling the fun of the campaign mode, because most of the rooms have specific rules those take time to figure out.
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Sometimes you have to start over.
I rethought the idea of Gloria and created the very fist steps for my new game. You are a young girl in a dark cave, with only your torch lightening the cave. You will have infinite number of torches, so you can throw them and see whats ahead, but beware, that time, you won't see yourself! Of course there are no games without hazards, there will be an invulnerable demon chasing you, waterdrops to kill the fire, some animals in the cave.If things goes will, there will be 30 static rooms and a randomizer.
And you are listening to Iron Maiden while playing. Stay tuned.
FearoftheDark0.15_NTSC.bas.bin
FearoftheDark0.20_NTSC.bas.bin
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Simple, but really addictive.
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The timer overrun is minimal. So maybe you can use some primitive scheduling to reduce maximum CPU cycles. You could look for two tasks which must not happen every frame. Then one task happens in odd and the other one in even frames.
And/or try to optimize your code a little bit.
But man, this is what happens.
The swarms have a 3bit counter using the 1st and 2nd bits of n (as p0 with the cannons and your swarm), while the people are going on "l", which goes from 0 to 30. 0-7 is p1, 8-15 is p2, 16-23 p3 and 24-30 is p4 doing things. -
The game concept is great, but IMO you should really do some further polishing.
The game jitters, which is especially bad for PAL (odd scanlines cause color loss) and the game is way too short. After you beat the boss it just ends. IMO instead it should increase in difficulty. And the blue bees are hard to see, the red ones to a lesser extend. IMO they should be brighter.
For scanline display use Stella's info display (ALT+L).
I don't really know what to do with it honestly. I'm already using two drawscreens to reduce scanlines on level 2-5, there is just too much things going on and the AI of the people is more than going to left or right, they try to flee. I'm already using a counter to make only one move at the moment, the same thing happens to the swarms as well.
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Heya MemberAtarian! We'll be playing your game Beeware today on ZeroPage Homebrew's live Twitch stream at 2PM PT/5PM ET!!
We'll also be playing the homebrew games Marble Craze, Doodle Jump (WIP) and Mine Dig. Hope to see everyone there!
Livestream Twitch Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew
New Games on Classic Hardware. RGB Modded Light Sixer through a Framemeister @ 60FPS!
Wow, thank you! You are welcome!
This game has no switch to turn off music, so this time it won't happen. XD Marble Craze is one of the games I really couldn't figure out how to play properly, so I'm really interested!
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Apshai beta 4.2
in Homebrew Discussion
Posted
Time is always a problem. I'm working on Fear of the Dark since April I guess.
Debugging is very boring and annoying, sometimes you make a mistake but you progressed so much you don't want to load the previous version of your code. 
I'm learning Python now and I really like that Thonny tells me which line has the error, Batari Basic is more mysterious in that way and of course, a program in BB is much longer than one in Python. 
By time, you learn a lot and you realise you never get crash with the assembler and you will find your own way to compress the code (I'm really good with music data for example). If I would look at my first game, Plague, I would cry on that coding. It was my first attempt and my first game since 2010, so, it really a garbage in many way.