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Ben_Larson

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Posts posted by Ben_Larson

  3. Posted

    Please be released!...Please be released!

    Well, I don't want to put anyone on the hook for this if it doesn't happen, so to protect people's identities, let's just say that I think a certain website admin may be making cartridges as we speak for a certain expo that shall remain nameless... :ponder: :)

  6. Posted

    You have to remember: A) those games were largely designed for kids, B) NES games back in the day were expensive, and C) most kids have a lot of free time. Hence, if the game was too easy, kids would have beat it too fast, and then the parents would have been pissed off that they just plunked down booku bucks for a game that their kid beat in like 3 days.

     

    That's my theory, at least. :D

  7. Posted

    For me it was:

     

    Aladdin's Castle, Eastland Mall, Columbus, Ohio (long gone - mall's still there, though)

    Bally's, Hamilton Rd., Columbus, Ohio (long gone)

    Malibu Gran Prix, Columbus, Ohio (it's now a day care center I think?)

     

    I also used to ride my bike over to the local strip mall that had some assorted games. There was a drugstore there called Dane Drugs that had Dragon's Lair, Wizard of Wor, and Gauntlet 2; a TG&Y next door that had Ikari Warriors and Demolition Derby; and a pizzeria (which is still there) that had Joust. I'd usually play some of those games (or watch people play them) and buy some Garbage Pail Kids and junkfood with my allowance. :) Those were the days...

  8. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    My only gripe is that you get sent to the beginning of the game when you fall off the bottom of the screen, even when you know there is a ledge underneath (and when it is much less distance than falling from the top to the bottom of the screen)

    Yea I know it doesn't make much sense. :) I'm not sure there's a consistent way to do pits on the horizontal parts and also do vertically oriented screens, though. If you allow falling off the screen, then you have to make separate screens for each pit on the horizontal parts and just watch your guy fall to his death each time, which I thought would be very aggravating for people. I mean, we all know watching your player fall in a pit over and over has already been done on Atari and no one liked it (*cough*, E.T ;) ). Alternatively, you could just make the player die instantly when falling in a pit on the horizontal part, but then it's kind of inconsistent.

     

    My final rationale for doing it like I did was "well, you die on the vertical boards in Contra when you fall off the bottom of the screen... so if they did it then I can do it" :)

  9. Posted

    Ok, here's a new binary. This one is semi-playable, although I've removed the orange key to prevent proceeding to certain currently unimplemented areas.

     

    There's no enemies, no save points yet, and no 'lives' yet (you just get infinite), but there are a couple of keys and other assorted things to find. Also (this is important): there are some secret passages which look just like walls. You've been warned! :)

     

    Feel free to play it around, give feedback, see what you can find, etc.

     

    Lastly please try not to give away game spoilers in the thread... :)

     

    Thanks,

    Ben

    pp.bin

  10. Posted

    FYI:

     

    In case anyone was wondering ( or cares :) ), I am still working on this. Been adding content, mostly. I did implement my own little Java editing app a while back which is indeed proving invaluable in doing the screens. Attached is a screenshot of the editing program (with the rest of the development related stuff open too). I'm up to 48 screens thus far, out of I think 122. Hopefully another binary will be forthcoming soon but I want to get a few things done first so that it's at least a semi-playable experience...

     

    Ben

    post-644-1251497796_thumb.png

  11. Posted

    I'm wondering about doing some king of parallel PF loading where I can use 6 pages instead of 6 cosecutive bytes. This would allow me to leave the index unchaged for the PF loads saving thoes 10 or so cycles for DEC's.

     

    Can I get a hint here please?

    Well here's one idea: limit yourself to 256/6 = 42 playfield 'pieces'. Then they'll all fit in one page and you won't need to use indirect Y addressing for the PF - you can just use absolute X or absolute Y. You'll also use up half as much RAM. Otherwise I think you're stuck using indirect Y...

  13. Posted

    Looks really cool. I love the premise of the game too. :)

    To be honest, I do need to say that I'm starting to get pretty restless just to have this wrapped up.

    Most of you likely don't know, but it's been over a year-long project, and I've put a few other things on hold for this.

    Yea I know what you mean - it's hard to stay motivated. But there's no real rush either...

  15. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    I will warn you that good jumping code is not simple. I consider myself a slightly better than average bB programmer, and the jumping/platformer code I wrote took probably 40 hours to get working the way it is.

    Very true. First, the physics is somewhat difficult, especially if you've never done anything with newtonian physics (i.e. vectors and stuff). What I think is really a b*tch, though, is doing the platformer software collision detection and player position collision adjustments - all kinds of irritating 'gotchas' start popping up.

  16. Posted

    I think as a society we've become afraid of everything

    Well said.

     

    I should point out that back in the day kids did not wear bike helmets (you would have been laughed at and called a retard) and I walked and rode my bike over to my friends' houses and to the store all the time. Nowadays I think most parents are too scared to even let their children go out of their sight. And I don't think it's really any less safe nowadays, it's just too much moral panic and fear that has gotten rooted into people's minds. I blame the media for this somewhat, but also I think in a twisted way some people want to be afraid because it gives their lives some sense of drama...

  17. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    I can somewhat relate being 31. I've read the biography of Steve Wozniak and stories about the early days at Atari, as a computer programmer, I feel incredibly jealous at having missed out on the 'computer revolution' of the mid-late 70s.

     

    As a kid, though, I did at least get to experience the arcades in the mid-late-80s before they all went extinct. That was the best thing ever back in the day - going to the arcade with my friends and $5 and just seeing how long I could stretch it. Or even just riding my bike over to the local drugstore - I remember the one down the street from me had Gauntlet 2, Dragon's Lair, and Wizard of Wor. Next door they had Ikari Warriors, Demolition Derby, and one other I forget.

     

    Alas those days are long gone. Even Gameworks or Dave and Busters is kind of a poor substitute nowadays I think.

  18. Posted

    The whole legal system in this country is corrupt if you ask me. Not in the sense of taking bribes or anything like that, but simply because there are so many unjust laws that are passed by either fear-mongering-legislators or by corporate-lobbyist-friendly-legislators. The end result is absurd prosecutions like this one. Common-sense jurisprudence goes out the window.

     

    I guess all you can do is stay informed and vote though.

  21. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    I had a GPS receiver that I dropped in a river - completely submerged. It seemed dead, but about 6 months later I powered it on and it worked fine. Well, except a couple of lines on the LCD were out.

     

    One of my friends claimed that he washed his computer keyboard and then it dried out and used it without problems.

     

    So long story short, yes it may be salvagable if it's dried out thoroughly. Maybe putting some desiccants on it would help?

  22. Posted

    I don't think you can convert an NTSC Atari to PAL. They run at different clock speeds and have different TIA chips, so you would need to alter the hardware.

     

    If your television supports PAL (I think many new ones sold in North America do, but I may be mistaken), you can play PAL games on an NTSC console - the colors will just be wrong.

  23. Posted

    I don't think we've ever seen a console since then that had worse specs on paper that held its own for so long in which first and last gen games for it look so radically different.

    That was due in no small part to the hardware design that offloaded a lot of the work that would normally be done in the hardware, to the software. IMO that contributed a huge amount to it's longevity...

  24. Posted · Edited by Ben_Larson

    I also put a post on my Facebook page mentioning Rob's lawsuit.

     

    Sadly, I think a lot of people in the software industry don't have much respect for the old timers. A lot of young programmers today have actually never done any real-world low-level programming, so they have no idea how difficult it is or how much more involved it is compared to what they're used to. Or, alternatively, maybe they do realize it and just have some kind of inferiority complex...I don't know.

  25. Posted

    I bought a Gamecube shortly after launch and played the crap out of it - still play it occasionally. The best thing I liked about it was it's portability - I was living about 75 miles away from my girlfriend (now wife) at the time, so it was easy to pack it all up with a couple games when I came over for the weekend. I have very fond memories of playing Metroid Prime over the weekend at her apartment. :)

     

    Actually I also started hacking around on my Gamecube a year or so ago - doing some homebrew related stuff - and ported a very old 2D DOS game to it which you can download here:

     

    http://code.google.com/p/gamecubesopwith/

     

    Of course you need an action replay and a memory-card-to-SD card converter to play it.

     

    The same guy that wrote the main graphics library I used for this port actually ported Quake to Gamecube, if you can believe that...

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