Aaron

Heh, personally I thought it was the other way around. The gravity is actually a bit weaker in demo #4 though. Yeah, I've been meaning to redo the animation entirely.... drawing is hard though And I've already used up most of it

Ok, I've been working hardly on Fall Down, and I think it's approaching a point where it might actually be fun to play (well... sort of). So I have a new version for everyone to try out.... New stuff: Gradius-style powerups - you can collect little squares and press the fire button to apply them. Currently using 1 gives you a short speed boost, 2 digs a hole in the platform beneath you, 3 gives a longer speed boost, and 4 swaps your position with the other player (in 2 player mode). An AI player. Currently it's not very smart - it doesn't go after the powerups, though it does use them when it gets in trouble. A title screen, with the high score shown on it. Select changes game modes (1 player, 1 player vs. AI, 2 player) and fire starts the game. Jumping. Really the only use for it now is to grab powerups, though I have some plans... X-acceleration. Well, everyone seemed to like this in Alex's game, so why not... And lastly.... some bugs. The guy's feet can disappear at the bottom of the screen sometimes. I think I could maybe fix this one, but it would be a lot of work for something that only shows up rarely. Thoughts? fd_31jul04.zip

Hello again The power-ups make things a bit more fun I think, compared to the version you posted before. This is really a game that punishes greed... Would it be possible to have a power-up that let you wrap around the edges? Also the Joust idea sounds fun

Just so Alex can't have all the attention, I've put together an update. Unfortunately my hard drive is dying, so I didn't get as much stuff into this one as I would have liked. Still no title screen, alternate game modes, AI players, etc. What I have done is put in a whole new scoring system - the idea is that the platforms are 'captured' by either player, giving one point each time. When a platform is captured, it changes color to match the player that got it, which looks nice I think. Also the platforms have color gradients now. fd_11jul04.zip

Yeah, I've been hoping to get to that eventually. I don't think it would be too hard... all it would do is go left or right towards the nearest hole, though if I add jumping it might complicate things. Right now I'm thinking of having a game mode where the players block each other, so jumping would become important... it'd probably be simpler than putting in obstacles at least.

I have an updated version with a second player. It needed a little more trickery than I thought... still, it works and all. Also I improved the graphics a little. Obviously it needs some work still... the second player can't die yet, and the scores really should be independent. Alex - Go Down is pretty cool. The collectibles combined with the player's acceleration are a nice touch. Your sprites look a lot better than mine Nathan - Things to jump over would be kind of fun I think. I'm not sure how I'd fit them into the current kernel though. fd_30jun04.zip

Oops, already submitted for the Spectrum but I think that's okay. You might want to read the rules as I haven't read them yet. Hey, now there's a coincidence - I was the author of the original FallDown Forever on the TI-86 Anyway, I don't see anything in the rules about different authors doing the same game, so I'll submit it eventually. I think I've figured out a way to get both players on the screen now, though there's still the problem of actually writing it...

Hello AA forum people. For the past couple weeks, it's been my life-long dream to write an Atari 2600 game, and thanks to Andrew Davie's excellent tutorial I actually have something that kind-of works. It's a recreation of an old TI game called Fall Down - playing it is pretty simple, you just keep falling for as long as you can. I just picked the colors at random, so it probably looks awful... though I think it animates reasonably well at least. I'd like to add a simultaneous 2-player mode (hence the second score counter), but have run into technical problems... I'd need to either move to a 2-scanline kernel or show the players on alternating frames. Or maybe I could use a symmetric playfield instead. Any thoughts on this? Or on the game in general? fd_24jun04.zip