Lumi

Hey all, I've posted about this before and got positive reception, so I'm trying to bring more attention to it. Any feedback is appreciated, although there's not much space left in the ROM for new features. This is an Atari 2600 homebrew game that's been in development for a while, and I believe it's finished now. It's a 4K, single player paddle game with SaveKey/AtariVox support. Plot: In this game, you must use the paddle controllers to steer your car left and right, avoiding obstacles in your path while collecting treasures. When you touch a treasure, you will get 1500 points and it will be added to your collection (the yellow dots on the left side of the status bar). You can have up to 5 treasures in your collection at a time. At any point, you can press the paddle controller's trigger to "burn" a treasure, giving you the energy to jump a short distance over any obstacles in your path. Any treasures you have left when your game ends will grant you an extra 1500 points. The game is won upon reaching 99,999 points. There are different kinds of treasures. Some of them will grant you unique powers: Gold coin: Does not grant any powers, is only worth points. Necklace: Gives you an extra life (the red dots on the right side of the status bar). You can have up to four lives at a time. Jar: Lets you pass through all barriers for a few seconds. Statuette: Lets you jump as much as you want with no penalties for a few seconds. The game will speed up when you get enough points. There will be a transition period where the game stops generating obstacles briefly, and the speed-up will occur while there are no obstacles on the screen. The difficulty switches toggle certain features. I highly recommend setting both to A for the full experience (Note: Stella sets both to B by default): - The left difficulty switch will make obstacles farther apart (B) or closer together (A). - The right difficulty switch turns moving obstacles off (B) or on (A). If the game feels too easy for you, enable Speed Freak mode! Simply press the game select switch at any point. When the title screen's background is red, this mode is enabled. Finally, the most important feature: if you press the paddle trigger while you have no treasures in your collection, you can honk the horn! Wow! As previously mentioned, the SaveKey and AtariVox are fully compatible for saving high scores (although there are no AtariVox speech functions). It saves unique high scores for Normal and Speed Freak modes. If you want to clear your high scores, press the game select and game reset switches at the same time. Drive! v1.4 NTSC.bin Drive! v1.4 PAL.bin Additionaly, here's a possible label I have for now:

Hmm... I see what you mean. How about this, then? I tried to make it look more dynamic.

How does this label look?

I'm glad you're enjoying it! Let me know if you encounter any bugs.

I've found two shops that carry Atari games in my city. One of them is a big game reselling emporium that has quite a good selection, assuming you're willing to pay $15 for a loose copy of Combat. The other is a smaller pawn shop which "prices their games so that they'll sell quickly". All their 2600 games are $5, which isn't too too bad, the downside is they're always commons and they only have 3-5 at a time. I've never seen an Atari console in the wild so I don't know what those go for. Actually, there is one other place I know of that sells Atari stuff. I walked in, saw they had priced a Dr. Mario (NES) loose cart at $55, and immediately walked out. Let us never speak of it again.

Thank you! I'll do that once I get my computer back.

Hmm, it should definitely work on a Harmony. Two ideas: 1) Are you using paddle controllers? This game is like Kaboom! or Circus Atari in that it can't be played with a joystick. 2) Are you trying to start the game with the game reset switch? That switch is used to re-boot the game. You have to use the left paddle's fire button to progress past the title screen. It also has to be plugged into the left controller port (you used to be able to plug it into either port, but it caused issues with the AtariVox features).

Ah, OK. Just the first post is fine, then.

Hi, would it be possible for me to edit this thread and remove some of the old binaries so people don't get confused? http://atariage.com/forums/topic/250070-drive/

Really? Vsync is kept on for that long? That's not how I programmed it! (But I guess mistakes happen when you don't comment your code thoroughly...) I'll take another look at it to see where it went wrong. Unfortunately my laptop had to go in for repairs, along with the most recent version of the source code, so I can't check it at the moment. But thank you for taking the time to fix my mistake! I'm very happy to know PAL users can play it without jitter or artifacts now By the way, just a question... I'm not saying it will, but if this game were sold as a cartridge in this form, would anyone actually buy it?

Hmmm. According to Stella the PAL version is 312 lines, so I have no idea why there would be artifacts. I'm mainly guessing at this point because I can't test it, but try this. I may have misunderstood how PAL sets interpret the VBLANK signal. Drive! v1.3.1 PAL.bin

I've done this! Also, I have updated the game one more time. I also now have a speed-adjusted (except for the sound effects) PAL50 version working.

Thanks, everyone! Yes, actually! I designed the music routine to play only that one song, so it's easy on RAM and ROM space, but isn't very useful if you want other songs. Hmm. I don't know why it would be jittering, I hope it doesn't have anything to do with it being PAL60. In any case, here's a standard PAL version that's been speed optimized (except for the sound effects): Drive! v1.3 PAL.bin

An update that fixes a rare bug. Drive! v1.3 NTSC.bin Drive! v1.3 PAL60.bin

[Make sure you download the files attached to this post, as they are the most recent. I only have permission to edit this post.] Hello, everyone! I've been developing an Atari 2600 homebrew game for the last little while, and I think it's nearing completion, but I'd like to get more feedback before I call it final. It's a 4K, single player paddle game with SaveKey/AtariVox support. Plot: In this game, you must use the paddle controllers to steer your car left and right, avoiding obstacles in your path while collecting treasures. When you touch a treasure, you will get 1500 points and it will be added to your collection (the yellow dots on the left side of the status bar). You can have up to 5 treasures in your collection at a time. At any point, you can press the paddle controller's trigger to "burn" a treasure, giving you the energy to jump a short distance over any obstacles in your path. Any treasures you have left when your game ends will grant you an extra 1500 points. The game is won upon reaching 99,999 points. There are different kinds of treasures. Some of them will grant you unique powers: Gold coin: Does not grant any powers, is only worth points. Necklace: Gives you an extra life (the red dots on the right side of the status bar). You can have up to four lives at a time. Jar: Lets you pass through all barriers for a few seconds. Statuette: Lets you jump as much as you want with no penalties for a few seconds. The game will speed up when you get enough points. There will be a transition period where the game stops generating obstacles briefly, and the speed-up will occur while there are no obstacles on the screen. The difficulty switches toggle certain features. I highly recommend setting both to A for the full experience (Note: Stella sets both to B by default): - The left difficulty switch will make obstacles farther apart (B) or closer together (A). - The right difficulty switch turns moving obstacles off (B) or on (A). If the game feels too easy for you, enable Speed Freak mode! Simply press the game select switch at any point. When the title screen's background is red, this mode is enabled. Finally, the most important feature: if you press the paddle trigger while you have no treasures in your collection, you can honk the horn! Wow! As previously mentioned, the SaveKey and AtariVox are fully compatible for saving high scores (although there are no AtariVox speech functions). It saves unique high scores for Normal and Speed Freak modes. If you want to clear your high scores, press the game select and game reset switches at the same time. So, that's everything you need to know! Feel free to give feedback. However, there is very little free space in the ROM, so I probably won't be able to implement any extensive new features. Sorry about that. [Please make sure you download the following files] Drive! v1.5.3 NTSC.bin Drive! v1.5.3 PAL.bin

OK, everyone! Version 1.2 is live! See the first post for details. I did have to sacrifice some features to get the treasure graphics working, but maybe you won't notice. (Unfortunately it's not totally stable, and the treasures have some issues with vertical placement, especially noticeable on the first speed. It's just a result of cramming way too much into the kernel.) As a result of adding the SaveKey features I'm pretty much out of usable space, so there's not a lot more I can do with this. (Also, if someone with an actual SaveKey/AtariVox could verify that it's working on the real hardware, that would be great. I don't see why it wouldn't, I'm just scared like that.) By the way, everybody, thank you for being patient and dealing with my incompetence. I have less than a year of experience with 6502 and the Atari, so this has been a real learning experience.

Yes, I just didn't see that part initially. I brought it up just in case someone else misses it or doesn't read it.

By the way, just so nobody makes my mistake, ReadSaveKey will not return anything if it encounters $FF at any point. I didn't realize that initially and was confused.

Mostly, it's a matter of saving time in the kernel. I'll try to optimize it more, but if all else fails I might have to sacrifice some graphical detail in the car or background. I said it in that thread, but this amazing! Thank you for doing this!

This is brilliant! Thank you so much!

Good suggestions! I should be able to do some of them easily. Just a few things... Hmm. I thought I solved the first problem but it's back for some reason... Maybe I should go back to the original way of gaining points, it would solve both of these issues at once. I've struggled endlessly trying to make them more distinct from the dark background - It's hard because the Atari's bright colours are so desaturated. I thought I had struck an acceptable balance this time, but maybe I'm just used to them being a little tough to distinguish. I wonder, if I flickered them between a dark and light colour, would that help make them more distinctive? I'll try it, it's the only solution I can think of. I had a lot of trouble with this. A few months ago I spent a number of days researching how it works, but found very little of use. Apparently I have to use Richard Hutchinson's website to reserve a space in the static allocation area, but his website has been down for a while now. There also doesn't seem to be any example code showing its use in a real program. I don't like guessing how hardware is supposed to work, especially when people's save data is on the line. I'm sorry if this seems stubborn, but trying to piece together all these scraps of information is a real struggle. Edit: does this car look any better? I'm trying to make it so no parts contrast with the background, but again, there's the saturation issue.

Sorry for the double post, but v1.1 is out! See the first post for details. Well, I can't really think of anything else to add. Unless anyone has ideas or bug reports, that may be the final version.

This is excellent! I only played a bit, but it seems like you've put a lot of work into it, and I'm guessing the end result will be quite complex and fun.

Thank you! I feel like it's mostly done at this point, unless anyone can think of anything I should add (provided it can fit in the little chunk of free space in the ROM). I may release v1.1 in a few days to improve some colours and sounds, maybe add a hidden hard mode, but other than that there's not much I can think of.

I'm happy you both like my hard work! And thank you for the advice, Thomas Also, if you find any bugs please report them. I tried hard to debug this but I wouldn't be surprised if a few slipped by.