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Ben_Larson

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Posts posted by Ben_Larson

  3. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    It has come to my attention that there has been a disturbing lack of Atari holiday cheer 'round these parts in recent years. ;)

     

    To rectify this situation, I have taken the liberty of embarking on a crash homebrew project which I am tentatively calling 'A Very 2600 Christmas'. Basically I am arranging a bunch of Christmas songs for the Atari 2600 using some of the music code I took out of Panky the Panda as a starting point.

     

    I've got 4 songs done so far, which I am previewing here in this rom. The songs done so far are:

     

    * Jingle Bells

    * Deck the Halls

    * Silent Night

    * We Three Kings

     

    Use joystick left right to change songs.

     

    There's no visuals yet (literally it's just a black screen :) ), so I'm open to suggestions (or help!) in that regard. Let me know what you guys think...

    very2600xmas.bin

    • Like 5

  5. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    The reason I didn't make a PAL50 version of Panky the Panda is because I didn't want to mess around with all of the fixed point math in the game. Mainly I'm not entirely sure it's possible to increase the values used right now without messing up the landscape collision detection.

     

    I guess it would be fairly easy for me to whip up a prototype PAL50 version for the show that runs at 83% of the speed of the NTSC version if nothing else though...

     

    Edit: Ok I'm an idiot. :) I just realized I already have PAL50 support in the source code - I just didn't include it in the final zip file because of the lack of speed correction...

  9. Posted

    Sorry it took so long to respond, Brian - I haven't logged in to Atariage in a while. That box art is indeed pretty awesome.

     

    I haven't made any plans for a physical release, though, and I don't know if Al is planning any new releases anytime soon either. Maybe if enough people pestered him though... :ponder: :D

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    Bumping this to see if any more progress has been made, or if this game is shelved. I really enjoyed playing it, and would love to see this finalized.

     

    -B

    v1.0 came out in Sept. 2010. I made an minor update the next month to fix an issue in JStella, which I'm using to emulate it on my site. Here's a link that version which is the latest (v1.01):

     

    http://www.blarworld.net/Panky1.01.zip

     

    I wasn't really planning on making any more tweaks (except maybe for bugfixes)...

     

    Ben

    • Like 1

  11. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    What I'm asking is where to start. How do I make this possible? I'm the worst learner on the planet, but as soon as I understand the basics, I should be able to learn fast. Sorry if I sound bland.

    I don't want to discourage you, but assembly language is hard, even for professional software developers. That's why almost nobody still uses it anymore... we have better, much easier tools at our disposal nowadays for most all programming tasks. But allow me to elaborate further:

     

    When you're programming in assembly language, you're basically one step away from the 1s and 0s that the CPU actually uses and understands. The assembler is the program that takes your assembly language text file and converts it directly into the 1s and 0s. If you've used PHP, you're probably familiar with *some* of the principles you'd still see in assembly language, like variables, conditional statements... stuff like that. But you're still pretty far removed from the details, and there's a lot of things you will run into that are going to be new: like binary number representation, binary math, bitwise operations, addressing modes. That's all stuff that you don't normally worry about in most high level programming languages like PHP, because the compiler or interpreter abstracts it all from you. And there's a reason for that: most of this stuff is a pain in the ass to deal with manually. :)

     

    It's kind of like the difference between driving a car and working on a car. Most people can drive a car without understanding all the details of how exactly the car works. That's like high level programming. Assembly language programming is more like working on the car, because you have to know how everything under the hood works.

     

    So I guess what I'm saying is, if you really want to program for the Atari 2600 and avoid the hassle of dealing with the frustration, you *could* try writing something in Batari Basic, which is the one high-level language available specifically for writing Atari 2600 games. Sure, you won't have as much flexibility in terms of capabilities, but it's going to be much easier and probably more enjoyable for you.

     

    Anyway just my $0.02. :) Feel free to ask any other more specific programming related questions you might have though...

  12. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    Doing that would force the ROM source to be released under the GPL as well. This actually happened with an old Windows port of Stella; CyberStella. The author includes ROM data as header files in Stella, but wanted to keep copyright of the ROMs. That couldn't be done, and the release had to be pulled. If you include any data into a GPL app at compile-time, it automatically becomes GPL as well.

     

    No that would just mean you're in violation of the copyright agreement set forth in the GPL for the original GPLed software.

     

    Otherwise I could "accidentally" include Microsoft Windows in a GPL project and *boom* - free Windows for everyone. Right? :)

  13. Posted

    No reply yet. I hope I didn't kill the motivation. :|

    Well... to be honest.... I already didn't feel very motivated to make more changes at this point. :) But I can at least answer your points! ;)

     

    -Lots of screens seem pretty empty (how about more enemies in higher levels?)

     

    This is mostly due to the level storage design. Each screen only holds a maximum of 2 objects (an object being an enemy, ladder, save point, item). Each screen's data is basically 16 bytes long:

     

    Tile pointer data - 6 bits per tile (5 actually, but high bit is reflect bit) x 12 tiles = 9 bytes

    Adjacent rooms (left, right, top, bottom) = 1 byte per room x 4 rooms = 4 bytes

    Room object types = 4 bits per object x 2 objects = 1 byte

    Room object X/Y positions = 4 bits per axis x 2 axes x 2 objects = 2 bytes

     

    Each tile pointer points to one of 32 tiles that all the rooms are built from.

     

    -Continue seems to restart the game, why not from the last checkpoint?

     

    Well it doesn't really restart the game. You still keep everything in your inventory...

     

    BTW: How do you score?

     

    You don't, really. The only object is to explore and eventually open all the doors so you can get to the end of the game.

     

    -The animal to the left could use some animation, maybe the terminals too (Nathan could sure do magic here)

    -It would be nice if Panky could duck (maybe only in easy levels?)

    -Could not make out any differences between the levels (except for less lives), something like harder physics (e.g. more gravity) or -faster, less predictable and more enemies etc. would sure help.

     

    I think I'm going to plead lack of RAM and ROM space here. :)

     

    According to my handy text file that has my notes (last updated in July, so possibly out of date) there's only 148 bytes free in Bank 1 and 69 bytes in Bank 2. Banks 3 and 4 handle the title/ending screen and music, respectively. I don't think the situation there is much better either...

  16. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    Hey sorry to resurrect this dead thread, but I just thought I would weigh-in on some new thoughts I had regarding digital distribution today:

     

    So I've been perusing Steam the past couple days, looking over all the games they had for sale via digital download. I noticed all their indie game packs they're selling as part of their holiday sale right now. A little while later I noticed that Sega is now offering ROMs of some old Genesis/Megadrive titles through Steam for a couple dollars each.

     

    Then I had the idea that you could basically solve all the problems being mentioned in this thread at once (piracy, reaching a wider audience, adding value) if you packaged a bunch of *embedded* ROMS together of a similar theme (adventure, action, strategy, etc.) *with* an emulator *and* the extras, etc.

     

    While it might be a longshot to actually get something on Steam, all they could possibly say is no, and you'd still have the package to distribute elsewhere (i.e. here on AtariAge, maybe).

     

    Of course then there's the small matter of licensing an emulator... which I suppose would be the necessary first step ;)

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    Ok guys, I'm gonna call it a game. Here ya go: Version 1.0

     

    Changes since Beta 5

    --------------------

    * Fixed bug related to having an item equipped, quitting, and then starting a new game

    * Fixed slight horizontal motion judder

    * Ice screens are now light blue instead of white/gray

    * Fixed the order of keys in key display to be more consistent color-wise

    * One minor sound effect change

    * Altered color of red key in the key status display to be darker

     

    This version also includes a PAL 60Hz binary ( SECAM 60Hz too... for the 0.0 people who probably want that. ;) )

     

    I don't plan on making a 50Hz version unless somebody really wants it.

     

    BTW, in case anyone is interested in how much time is involved in making a game like this, I've been (anal retentively :) ) keeping a log ever since I started. Looks like the total LOE is about 242 hrs. That includes time in front of the computer, programming, as well as all testing... but doesn't include, say, time spent passively watching TV while also thinking about some implementation detail. If you add that in, it may be closer to 300 hours or so.

     

    I think I remember reading once that David Crane spent something like 1000 hours on Pitfall. Not saying this is equal to Pitfall, but I think this may say at least something about the benefit of modern development tools vs. what they had back in the day...

    Panky_the_Panda_1.0.zip

  18. Posted

    Have you entertained the suggestion of adding something to a couple of those dead-end areas? ...like an extra life or something?

    Well I could conceivably add one more item/enemy, but there's no memory left to 'keep track', for example, of whether the player has fetched a certain extra life item yet or not. I've already gone through 3 times to squeeze out more bytes for features too - first time for the random movement of the bat, second time for the music, then once more for the sound effects...

  19. Posted

    Quick update:

     

    I'm now working on the PAL conversion right now, then I think I'll be done.

     

    For anyone from Europe, which do you prefer: true 50Hz PAL conversions with squished screens or 60Hz conversions with a non-squished screen? (which I guess may not work on some older TVs, right?)

     

    I plan to offer both, but I can't say for sure there won't be issues with adjusting the gameplay speed for the 50Hz version...

  21. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    And without further ado I present to you... SQUARE RAID. In 1K of javascript:

     

    http://www.blarworld.net/squareraid.html

     

    Your mission is simple: carpet bomb the SHIT out of hapless enemy squares. :)

     

    Controls are W/A/D for up/left/right and B for bomb.

     

    Score appears in the title bar, the screen wraps from left to right and top to bottom (for you, not for bullets and bombs), and enemy squares spawn faster as you progress.

     

    This uses the HTML 5 canvas element BTW, so it won't work in Internet Explorer (yet)...

  22. Posted

    I figured this might interest some of the minigame coders here. There's some 1K javascript competition going on online, with submissions due next month:

     

    http://js1k.com/demos

     

    There's some really really impressive graphics demos - only a few games so far, though. I'm actually working a game right now that I might submit... assuming I can fit it into the requisite 1K, of course. :)

     

    Ben

  23. Posted

    I mean, anyone can declare a project and If you didn't vote, please don't think of voting as a sign of confidence in me. I know the history of home brewers and 2600 RPGs. I just want to know which way you would swing IF there was another Atari 2600 RPG out there.

    Your sarcasm is coming across loud and clear :) With that said, I vote for Nethack. I think that would be the most doable for a couple reasons:

     

    #1 because it would involve procedurally generated content, which means less content to create (and hence less work). Underestimating how long it's going to take to create content is one of the major reason these projects fail IMO.

     

    #2 doesn't seem too impossible from a technical standpoint: You could use the playfield to create the room walls, and then use some 4x8 player sprites for the player, objects, monsters, etc. You could probably even use Batari Basic to do it... :ponder:

  25. Posted

    I think the 'freemium' model would work the best if anyone was going to attempt this: i.e. give away the original ROM for free, then have a deluxe version which can be acquired for a small donation. I doubt a donation model by itself would be very effective - if, on the other hand, there was something additional that the person would get for their donation, then I think that would be a stronger motivator to donate.

     

    Maybe this deluxe ROM could also have an additional title screen with the person's name or something - thus deterring piracy and also giving them a bit of personalization at the same time. :)

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