Coolcrab

Whoo, the game got a review on Retrogaming magazine. http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2017/12/13/view-heavenly-bodies-on-atari-2600-with-astronomer/

Glad you guys like the idea! Looking forward to your opinion I also made a label that does a good job showing what you are doing in a much higher resolution.

Made a label. I think that its a nice High res representation of what the games is supposed to look like.

Easy to get on a cart mostly. And that outweighs a proper titlescreen for example, and the rest will fit within 4k. (atleast everything i can think of)

That really helped thanks! I posted the game in the main atari board. If anyone wants to give some feedback that would be great. I don't think that there is much more that can be done on a 4k cart apart from better sound. But i've had some very good tips before, so maybe i'm totally missing something.

I agree that complete and published should be a criterion, otherwise there are way too many. I really like the atarimania website while the homebrew solutions are spreadsheets and blogs at best, but not really searchable properly. I wouldn't mind helping setting up a good site for the homebrews. I have a nice library site from some years ago, and I think that with light modifications it could be used for this purpose. http://pietrow.net/lib/

I feel that my first atari 2600 game is mature and playable enough for a beta. Therefore I posted it here as suggested by RandomTerrain. Feedbacks, critique and tips of any kind are very welcome. In the thread you can find a short game description, a 'manual' and some downloads. Enjoy The game is 1 player and works with both the joystick and paddle. You are an astronomer and you are working at a telescope. You are tasked to observe a certain star for your research project. Point your telescope at the star and observe! But look out for clouds, as they ruin your observations. Other astronomers also want to use the telescope, so make sure to finish your observations before the time runs out. Otherwise you will be banned for wasting time. Goals: *Fill the healthbar by pointing the telescope beam at the star and press the fire button to observe. Make sure to finish before the score reaches 0 *Don't observe clouds Manual: Flip the left difficulty switch to A for playing with paddles, B for joystick Flip the right difficulty switch to A for randomized levels. Press select for more randomization. Set it to B to remove all randomness and have a more structured level progression Flip BW switch to pause Use reset button to reset After a game over, your score will be shown on the title screen Play the game here or download the rom. http://javatari.org/?ROM=http://pietrow.net/games/astronomerV0.75.bin If you want to see the code, this is discussed here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/270313-betaastronomer-wip/ astronomerV0.75_NTSC.bin astronomerV0.75_PAL.bin

New version uploaded and some screenshots. I think that it is mostly done now. I'll be posting it in the main atari forum tonight.

You are a hero! Thanks. This totally beats editing in notepad and pasting it into VbB.

For some reason my VbB is very slow, it takes > 20s to type a character. Very strange. I'm on win 7.

AH! this helped yes I added it into V0.71. Also added a pause button (BW switch) and a way to get past the boring intro buildup. (Set right difficulty to A and press select button. This will also make the game more difficult in general) It is quite playable in that mode if I may say so myself. I have 1100 bytes left, so that should be enough for a title screen.

Ai 1343 bytes of ROM space left.

Managed to solve it with trial and error, there was some issue with my numbers. Anyhow, it now has paddle support! (Set left switch to A) Also the clouds will now changes their shape and multiply and move based on what level you are in. (download in main post) or play here: http://javatari.org/?ROM=http://pietrow.net/games/astronomerV0.7.bin One problem that I still have is that I can't seem to display the level at the end. In the game over loop I set score to _level (which gets raised every time a star is observed) But the score in the game over screen is always 47 for some reason. Does anybody know why? Also how can I see how much space there is left on the 4k? I want to add a title screen and a better Game over screen __Game_Over_Setup playfield: ..XXXXXX..XXXXX..XXXXXXX..XXXXXX ..X.......X...X..X..X..X..X..... ..X.XXX...XXXXX..X..X..X..XXXXXX ..X...X...X...X..X..X..X..X..... ..XXXXX...X...X..X.....X..XXXXXX ................................ ..XXXXXX.X........X.XXXX..XXXX.. ..X....X..X......X..X.....X..X.. ..X....X...X....X...XXXX..XXXX.. ..X....X....X..X....X.....XX.... ..XXXXXX.....XX.....XXXX..X.X... end __Game_Over_Loop COLUPF = $86 drawscreen score = _level if switchreset then goto __start_restart AUDV0 = 0 goto __Game_Over_Loop

Strange it works for me, I changed the name and saved it again to make sure that its the real file. astronomerV0.57_mod.bas

I love atarimania as it is a beautiful database with all roms and game descriptions that I could wish for. One thing that I noticed though is that they only list games until 1992. So all homebrews and hacks that were made afterwards are still mostly floating around and (I think not documented elsewhere?) Is there some site that does something similar? Could the atarimania people add a homebrew section or does anybody have other solutions? Like the real games these games should be conserved I think. (And I'm.not just saying that because I'm making a game myself, but it did make me think)

I solved the sound problem, I had to add a sound stop when the beam didn't touch anything. I also updated the game script to have descriptive variables, which helps I think. The current change I am trying to make is to add paddle support when the left difficulty switch is set to A. I based it on RT's paddle example and tried to make the beam move as the paddle. However it still has some bugs that I didn't spot yet. (for some reason it goes to a game over when the paddle is all the way on the right) Also it doesn't seem to work in paddle mode on the emulator (and I did change the control settings and reset the emulator. Could someone confirm?) However it does work on my starpath supercharger so thats a way to test it. Also how can I check how much space there is left on the 4k cart? I think that I might be reaching it. astronomerV0.56_mod.bas astronomerV0.56_mod.bas.bin

Is this still a thing? I would love to have Qix on the 2600!

I tried to fix the variables but the code is not working, so I'll try again in the weekend. But the important part is this I think. So if it collides with the star it plays sound 3, if it collides with the cloud then it plays sound 1. These sounds keep going unless you put in a stop sound. (as far as I understand) So I added an if for when the fire button is not pressed. But the sound still plays if you keep it pressed and move away from the star. if collision(player0,playfield) && !collision(player1,playfield) && joy0fire then j = j - 1 : AUDC0 = 3 if collision(player1,playfield) && joy0fire then n=n-1 : AUDC0 = 1 if !joy0fire then AUDC0 = 0

They actually provide pre-flashed and preassembled boards (for an undisclosed price)

The bataribasic.com page seems to have expired. are there any MacOS mirrors?

V0.5 is out! I added basic sound and changed the score mechanics. The cloud now starts to move faster with each level and the star moves to a random location. (to simulate the selection of a new star) I have a problem with the sound though, as it still keeps buzzing if you move the yellow beam off of a star or cloud. Any tips on fixing this? Other feedback welcome!

This worked, thanks! I went for the loop solution.

Hmm, I'm sill not sure. This would still overflow the a if its over 256 right? if s{3} then dec a = a + $20 score = score + a

I am quite confused about math in batari. I want to set the score to a certain value as X+n*Y. With n being the nth level that the player is in. So lets say the game starts with score=1000, then in the next level I would like it to be set to 1050, then 1100, 1150, etc. I tried doing this as: if score then m=m+1 : score = 1000 + 64 * m But that doesn't work. I assume that this doesn't work because it only lets you do one operation after the equal sign? You also can't make the m go up by 50 at a time, as it will go over 265 very fast. (And as far as I understand that is the limit for all variables apart from score?) Is there some way to do this? I want something that ads roughly 50 each time.

I got mine here: https://www.8bitclassics.com/homebrew-supplies/Atari-2600-Blank-2k-4k-PCB-Homebrew.html