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OK, you know me.... changed the gameplay..... again. You work your way up through the enemy to get to the bomber, same as before. This time the score is the # of rounds of ammo you have. It starts at 50 and if it gets to 0, game over. Shoot down the bomber to win. This is the "Over the Rainbow" release (and no it doesn't have gay munchkins in it). If you win the 50 rounds of ammo game, it unlocks the COLOR game. The color game has 100 rounds and is better suited for trying to beat your best score. Oh and all the bugs in the last one were fixed (except the one that appears to be compiler related). I was going to add audio to this one, but with all the other changes I thought I'd wait and see if there are any bugs in this first. Am open to suggestions to the color scheme for the color game. Not entirely happy with what I have, but it has a Combat sort of feel, so I guess it's cool. **** 7/28 - d/l removed. Keep scrolling down to get the latest version.

Not selfish at all. You wrote a fun game and are justifiably proud of it. Speaking for my case only, I just don't think the demand is there for a solo release of F-4.

*sigh* I apologize for starting this, but it has been an interesting read. I do it for the following reasons: - I'm a geek. - I do fairly dull system util programming in real life. - Nostalgia for the old days writing Basic. - It's fun. - Programming the 2600 holds more interest than programming say, the c-64, because I've already done that. It was something you couldn't do back in the day. - Gotta think about the next generation too. "My dad is cooler than your dad". I didn't get into this to sell my game. When F-4 is finished I may ask Albert to make a one-off cart for my son. If AA thinks people would buy a multi-cart of some of our games, I wouldn't have any objections to being part of that. I will point out that no matter what, games don't write themselves. If you are thinking about joining the community, please do... just realize there is work involved. If possible, share your source as well. It may help somebody else get started. If you want to get back at Slashdot, just go into a thread and ask "Which is better, Java or Perl?"

These have been fixed for the next release. Did a rush job when I converted it over from just one enemy and didn't think to redo the boundary checking (which I did a complete overhaul on this time). Playtesting with a PC keyboard you tend to forget to try some things. Just curious, I don't have all the necessary hardware, but are the bin's Kroko/Cuttle Cart compatible? I've got some ideas for what happens if you win. Possibly unlocking a special "mode".

Many thanks.... especially for the fire button code. I'm open to any and all suggestions for improvement (especially from people who are familiar with the limitations of the environment). The AA hack community (where I got my start) was always a fun, friendly place to hang out. I have a feeling the bB group will be as well. It is kind of cool, the few things that have been displayed in a finished or wip form are all pretty different and unique. I think the nay-sayers were expecting it to be a Mythicon type deal, minor variations on a theme.

Mine might get him started, but he'll still have to do a lot of work to get what he wants. http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=70390

Ok... found a minor bug. Subtract 1 from everything I said occurs at a certain score. (Ex. the 2 jets change to 1 at 14 instead of 15). 0 is still game over. I'll make the change for this in the next release which probably won't be until next week (and will hopefully include sound, etc.)

Just gave it a whirl. Took me a few tries to get the "feel" for it. But after that, it was quite fun. Very unforgiving for the uncoordinated though ( ). On 2 occasions the score semi-corrupted on me (see screenshot). It's not something I can replicate, and it could be the version of z26 I'm running or a bB bug or who knows what.

Ok, guess it's time to quit cluttering up the main thread. This is my 1st game in batari's wonderful Basic. Still not completely finished, but I have now finally decided how I want the gameplay to work (helps to start a game with a clear vision of what you want to end up with ). *** Gameplay has changed somewhat. Scroll down to the most current release.

Not quite ready to break off into my own thread yet. I'm hoping I can finish this over the weekend. Still have audio, etc. to get around to. I'm still play tweaking right now. In this latest version, if the score is 10 or less there will be 2 enemy jets on the screen. Over that, only one. As a kind of bonus, if you get to 25 a bomber will come out (which is easy to hit). At 26, back to one enemy jet. **** Update 7/21 - Now has its own thread.

Y'know what... you're right! Just went back and played Phantom II and everything moved way more smoothly than I remembered (combination of late at night and San Miguel I guess.... ). Anyhow, I've smoothed out the enemy jet and increased your starting score to 5. *** 7/20 - You know the routine. Go to post 350 for the latest version.

I haven't really looked at your code yet.... but in the above situation I would probably stick some code in after the pod location is calculated to check if it is the same as the player position. If it is, loop back and get a new random placement.

To each his own . I'm a 8-bit Avalon Hill collector, so I'm kind of predisposed to it for that reason as well (they were mostly written in Basic with horrible quality control so you had to go in and debug them a lot of the time ) I'm closing in on 36, so I had a few more years exposure. In the end, any program (procedural or structured) created with bB is a cool thing.

Part of the fun for me is writing old school Basic (nostalgia factor), so I hope batari always keeps line numbers, etc. in as an option. However, I agree that if you are < 30 yrs. old you probably need to stick to structured programming (especially if you have never done Basic before).

I'm not sure how they did the movement in Phantom II (the coin-op I based it off of), but the jerky movement is present in it too, so it kind of fits what I was going for. Does make it harder to hit. I may try to smooth it out a little later. Thanks for all the kind words. Can't take credit for the subtraction solution (thanks batari!).

I know I said I'd wait until the next release..... Here is the latest version of F-4. What's new/changes: - You now start with a score of 3. For every hit, add 1. For every miss, subtract 1. If your score reaches 0, game over. - You have to use the reset button to start a game (fire won't do it anymore). - Revamped the source somewhat. Added even more comments. Big thanks to batari for getting back to me so quick on the questions I posted earlier. I kind of cheated with my solution to the If..Then score issue. Still some things I want to do, but this is getting close. ** Update 7/20 - d/l removed. See post 340 for the latest version.

That works as far as the display. I'm also having problems getting score to work correctly in conditional situations. This may be my fault, not sure. Make the following changes to sample.bas to see what I'm talking about. Again, up/down the joystick to increment/decrement the score. The score color doesn't change if it goes over 10. However, if you roll it backwards to 999999 it will change. 35 if score > 10 then scorecolor = 80 : goto 45 60 if joy0up then score = score + 1 80 if joy0down then score = score + 999999

Ok. Thanks. I replaced my posted source with a new version that is compatible with the current release (clouds scroll now ). I probably won't release another update until the next version of bB comes out.

Ok, thanks for looking at it. Just d/l'd the latest, greatest and yes that did fix my scrolling issue. Was going to stick in another couple of quick changes and post a new source, but I've run into another issue. I can't get score to decrement properly. score = score - 1 yields 67. Just to see if it was my program, I changed the following lines in your sample.bas 60 if joy0up then score = score + 1 80 if joy0down then score = score - 1 Hit up a couple of times, then hit down.

Ok... well.... gotta say this is very cool. Kudos to batari for a fine job. For a alpha release this thing is very usable. Here's my first attempt at a game. It's not done yet, but it's playable. It may be a while before I can pick it back up, so I thought I'd share. I commented it as best I could and time would allow. Hopefully it may help somebody just starting. I tried to keep it simple. It's loosely based on the old arcade game Phantom II (check it out in Mame if you've never played it). One question - is there any way to tell it to only scroll a certain portion of the screen without resorting to inline asm? Remove the REM on line 80 to see what I'm talking about. It scrolls down into the score. ** update 7/19 ** - go to post 320 to get the latest version.

Whew... glad I'm not the only one. I was poring over the docs trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. I'll have to try the NOT operator (didn't think to try that). In my case it is detecting the collision immediately and the 2 objects aren't even remotely close to each other.

Cool! Are you going to post the bin for Space Invaders Vector?

Maybe you should have mentioned Trigun. He was more recent.

I know it's a dirty word to some around here, but if you have a programming background (or maybe I should say scripting - my asm instructor back in college used to tell us "You can't call yourself a programmer if you can't do asm." I've spent too long in high-level land, and am unable to claim to be one. ) , then maybe you'd be better served starting off doing hacks. That's the route I took. I'd still like to maybe do a from scratch Phantom II or Star Hawk one day. But with real life and whatnot, I can only devote so much time to learning the ins and outs of the 2600. The 2600 has a huge library filled with many themes. With imagination, you can do a lot. I'm not claiming to be any good at it, but I learn a little with each one I do. A simple strategy is: do a graphic-only hack do a graphic hack with color changes do a graphic hack with color changes and either audio or gamplay changes etc. You can find various threads on how to do each piece if you look hard enough. Not that it's easy (I usually start looking at a disassembly with 4 or 5 reference documents open in other windows), but you can produce something in weeks instead of a year or more. As long as you learn something new each time, it's a good thing. If somebody else likes the hack, that's an added bonus.

Yeah, unfortunately that's due to me trying to match the color scheme of the original game - see comparison below. It looks good under emulation on a flat panel. Probably not so swift on a real tv. I was afraid if I went with a lighter blue for the background it would really cause eyestrain. 54 seems to be the best I can do. Just 1 short!