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A fully working gosub would really help me out on the thing I'm working on now. So, release away!

Well... this was just going to be a simple little b-side game, but I guess I need to just break down and turn it into a full-fledged standalone. I've got some ideas, got some good suggestions, and still have a lot of room. So we'll see. This is one of the things I like about bB. It allows you to do games that are non-traditional 2600 type games and more like something you'd see on an 8-bit.

Ok.. this version is a little less "rough". Increased the island to 7x7 (it can really be any size, I'm just trying to keep it from getting out of hand. This is just a small little time waster.) The outer edge of the island now has a beach, with trees for the interior. If you run into the pirate, you now either have to fight or go back the way you came. Some of the more wonky problems associated with the 1st version have been fixed. For people confused by the display on the right, sorry about that - should have explained. This is the equivalent of old text adventures saying "you can go south, or east", etc. Although the view in the other window is 1st person, the display on the right is saying you are allowed to go in the following directions by pushing the joystick that way. You are in position 1,1 on a 7x7 grid when you start the game. The display on the right indicates you can go east or south by pushing either right or down. Does that make any sense, or did I just confuse everybody more? Everybody has good suggestions. Not sure how many I can implement. Mainly trying to keep it small.

WIP game... WIP name.... This started life earlier this evening as a proof of concept test to determine whether a Bard's Tale or Telengard type game is possible. I like it enough that I'm going to try to finish it up and try to squeeze it onto the end of the F-4 bin. This is similar to any number of the primitive adventure games you used to find in the really old computer game books. You have landed on a 5x5 island looking for the treasure of the dreaded pirate Upchuck LeDuc. Upchuck has been dead for awhile, but his spirit still haunts the island. You need to wander the island, first looking for a shovel. On the right of the screen will be a diagram showing which directions you are allowed to move. Tap the joystick to move. When you find the shovel you can pick it up by hitting fire. The screen will change color to indicate you have the shovel. Now find (if you haven't already) the X. When you find the X and have the shovel, hit fire and you will dig up the treasure & win. Upchuck wanders the island looking to protect his treasure. He moves every time you move. If you encounter him, you have the option to fight by hitting the fire button. Fighting is pretty much a 50-50 affair. If you win, his spirit will be laid to rest and he won't bother you anymore. If he wins, you die. At the moment you can simply move away and ignore him. My thinking is to make it where your only options are to fight him or move back in the direction you came, thus making you waste time. A score is kept. It is the total number of moves it takes for you to complete the game. You should be able to play a complete game in about a minute. Nothing fancy. My attempt at tropical foliage is probably very goofy looking if you aren't sure what it is supposed to be. Anybody have any great, smallish ideas? I am happy to say you should be able to do any number of adventure type games if you keep the world small enough. BTW - it's not readily obvious, but you will need to hit reset the 1st time you play.

My source (included with the bin) uses a missile. I think if you look through the original bB thread there are some samples of missile use also. I will warn you, I maintain old RPG programs (some written as far back as the 70's) in real life. RPG has it's own bizzare logic and it carries over into my other programs. My source may blow your mind, so if you look at it and it makes no sense - stop and look at something else.

Barring any bug reports, F-4 is finished. 2 player mode was the last thing added. Anything more would kind of go against what I was going for (a 70's vibe). I'm waiting for the next version of bB before moving on to something more complex.

You can try this one. It works on Win2k which usually means it'll work on XP. It's old and seems to not be as accurate as z26 and Stella (example: when playing my game the asm portion doesn't seem to work. The jets are in the foreground and the clouds are in the background. The opposite is true with the other emus).

This might need to go in a seperate thread....... I'm using Win2k and doing everything from the command line. I do all my testing with z26.

Don't try to take too much in at one time. Trust me, if you taught yourself Java you can do this too. My suggestion would be to look at Batari's sample program that comes with the compiler. Look at it and try to see what's going on. Once you feel you understand it (even if only a little), make a few minor changes to it and see if you can get them to work. Then just go from there. Also, keep in mind there are other docs too. The help file that comes with the compiler and potatohead's User's Guide. The User's Guide in particular might make more sense to you. Good luck!

This is extremely well done. You've done your part to lower the bar for newcomers to enter the scene. I hope a few more will after looking at your docs.

As nobody has reported any bugs, I'm declaring this one to be finished. I'll wait for the next version of bB before moving on to something more complex. I will point out to anybody with little kids this one falls into the Bowling category of being little kid friendly. My 2 yr old tried it for the first time the other day. He didn't even bother trying to move the jet, just hit the fire button. He did pretty good all things considered.

And of course, it wasn't...... Added 2-player mode (player 2 controls the enemy jet(s)). This is set with the right difficulty switch (a) - 2 player (b) - 2600 controlled. The cool thing about doing it this way as opposed to a seperate game selection is that it can be toggled back and forth on the fly. [EDIT : Download removed. I'll post a updated 0.35 or higher compatible version sometime. May try to clean up the source a little as well.]

I just don't want to set "rules" where people coming into the scene feel that to have a "polished" game it has to have a title screen, or music, or an easter egg, or unlockable stuff, or whatever. Music, in particular, if not done well really detracts from the experience (As an example, play Parachute. Totally inappropriate music and annoying as hell). Still, so far everything that has bubbled to the surface has been really cool. Especially considering lack of docs, etc. It's been probably 15+ years since I wrote any kind of game from scratch. So, big thanks once again to Batari!

That should be relatively easy (assuming you plan ahead). I should be able to write another game independently and if I keep it small enough, combine it with this one. I may try that later. For now, this is a game unto itself.

FINAL VERSION........ (I hope) And so this is it (unless somebody finds a bug). For once, the gameplay hasn't changed. See description a few posts up if you are new to it. What's new since last time: - Was going for a 70's kind of feel, so hadn't really planned to do a title screen. As it seems to be expected though, I did a simple one. - Various minor graphic glitches have been fixed. Parachute placement is much better. - The reset switch now works in-game. - Once you win the b&w game, not only does it unlock the color game, it also releases the console switches. B&W switch now works in case you want to keep playing in b&w. Left difficulty switch now toggles between day (b) and night (a) missions. No gameplay difference, just different colors. Gotta say I'm really impressed. I expected to run out of space quickly. According to bB, I still have 1798 bytes free.

Just did. The tree section is very cool. You get a brief glimpse of a different screen right when the trees catch on fire. There is a score, that's about all I can make out in the split second it is on the screen.

You could conditionally change your enemy sprites. If on screen 1 then the player is defined this way, on screen 2 this way, etc. EDIT: Just reread your post. Sorry, not what you were talking about. However you could change the fire to something else as you progress.

Usually when that happens to me it means I have whitespace at the end of the line. If you have a space after the on, get rid of it.

Share and share alike. Your user's guide is what got me started. The more info shared leads to better programs all around.

Missile0 is working. Not entirely sure about missile1. I tried using it once and no matter what, it always seemed to be on the far right of the screen. Even when I hard coded a number into it's x value. The y value was working correctly. I don't know if this was just my own stupidity or a bug. I was going to write a small program to test it, but never got around to it.

Hmmm... just realized I got rid of the post that had the instructions in it. Anyway, getting closer to a final version. The main highlight of this release is sound. Also now allows you to move up higher into the playfield. For those that haven't seen my various rambling posts on the game, here is a brief overview. This game is (very) loosely based on the arcade game Phantom II. You begin the game with 50 rounds of ammuntion (your score). You must shoot down 24 enemy jets to reach the enemy bomber. Shoot it down to win. This gives you 2 shots each to win, so be selective. Early on there will be 2 jets flying in formation. A hit on either counts. As you get closer to the bomber, it will drop to just 1 jet. Shooting down the bomber also unlocks the color version of the game (the 50 rounds of ammo game is in b&w). As you have "won", you'll have to hit reset. The color version also starts you out with 100 rounds of ammo, which mostly assures you of victory. This allows you to play to try and beat your best score. The enemy employs a "Death Star trench" method of defence (get in the way and let yourself get shot down so the bomber can make it through). The do not shoot back. You can collide with them though (automatic game over). You are safe at the lowest level of the screen. They don't come down all the way. Higher up you run the risk. Please report any bugs you may encounter. I apologize for the state of the source. I started writing this with the original version of the compiler and only a vague idea of what I wanted to end up with.

You can do it without assembly (technically it is an asm command, but it is also a bB command). Take a look at the NUSIZ command in the bB help file (look under TIA registers). Basically it just mirrors the player. The value I entered for the NUSIZ command in my source is different from what you see in the bB help, but it works the same way (just used to seeing it like that in the asm tutorials I used to look at when I was doing hacks). Cool game btw! Perhaps make your ship slowly melt when you lose? (I know the feeling about not knowing what to do - my game has changed several times. Source just keeps getting uglier ).

I still do RPG (it's still the dominant language on the iSeries).

We're kind of putting the "cart" before the horse anyway. So far Jess is the only one who has a "finished" game (not trying to diminish your game Tork110, just haven't seen a "it's finished" from you). However, it's probably a good thing to get this discussion out of the way now before too many people join the scene. I have a feeling we're currently making the equivalent of the initial 9 Atari games (about half of which I still like - but that doesn't seem to be the prevailing opinion). By this time next year, bB will be much more robust with a bunch of different kernals. Newbies will be looking at the stuff we're doing now and laughing at it. But we were here first . BTW Jess, keep in mind what happened to Kirk. If you do do Satan's Hollow, you may want to call it Lucifer's Canyon or something like that.