KevKelley

This is awesome! This definitely opens up a lot of possibilities!

Orange!

It's by no means anywhere near finished but I think I got some basics down. Now to kind of work on them. Interested to hear any kind of feedback. Hope you enjoy.

So my next step is to try and fix the car spawning and then I wanted to experiment with the difficulty switches. I was thinking I could have one keep the customer still, one move him, and then maybe a combo of him having random movement. I had also considered putting a timer on getting the cart to the customer but I was having problems trying to make a statusbar like in the original. And then of course my wife looked at it and wondered why the cars were so small and the cart so big... But it was an improvement over my buzzing square. Lol

Thanks. I had wanted to make this for years. Originally I had wanted to make a game with a parking lot and each car acted as a gravity well. I would imagine something like that could be possible on the Atari but it may be very difficult. I may try to reserve that for something else. My adaptation of my idea was to try and make something like a classic Atari game but try to do something just a little different so it isn't some weird clone. I was actually inspired to switch to a DPC+ kernel because of your games. My programming isn't that good yet but I'm having fun with the trial and error. Everyone here has been very helpful and I have learned a lot. I was surprised how quick I got the DPC+ version up. I thought rewriting the code from the standard kernel would take me forever. Only a couple hours now.

After seeing this I had considered something similar. I have to find the websites but I had found similar cases. I had considered using a foam insert to keep things in place.

Was working on this a bit today. Tried adding some gameplay elements. Added some sprite animation for player and customer, some basic sounds, and simple gameplay. Basically the game play involves the player (Bag Boy) retrieving a cart from the parking lot and bringing the cart to the customer while avoiding the cars. I am trying to work out some details. I had some issues with the following: Sometimes while near the customer the cart may linger or accumulate more points then it should before going off screen. It may also jump around a bit. I was having a hard time trying to get the car sprite to randomize which aisle it comes down. I have other cars that I will eventually utilize that may have different qualities but for now I was trying to get the one to work alright. For the most part, once Bag Boy touches the cart he holds on to it but sometimes it does get away from him. Hope everyone enjoys this work in progress. This is a wonderful learning experience and I am hoping to make some progressions. Forgot to mention - added the files to the first page...

I just uploaded what I had started with. I was playing around with this at lunch.

Right now it is kind of back to square one. I am trying to be more organized with the coding so I am trying to figure out how to best way for the cars to move and how I will have things progress. I have so many more ideas but I don't want to get ahead of myself and get discouraged if I run into some roadblocks.

This is kind of what the playfield and sprites look like right now. I have 2 cars, a cart, bag boy, and a customer. I was having a bit of an issue getting life counters or a status bar in the DPC+ and have to figure out how to organize things in banks but I like this direction.

I figure I could put in an update here since it had been a while. Using the standard kernel I had gotten the gameplay kind of where I wanted it and started to implement the powerups. But... I was a little unhappy with the appearance and I used up a bit of space and all the variables so I started playing around with various code and had recently decided on switching over to a DPC+ kernel to take advantage of multiple sprites and nicer looking playfield, as opposed to my bland green bars and square missile "car." Still got bunches of learning but this looks promising...

I have yet to play with the tracker but I have always found the Atari to be very capable musically, especially after I got the SynthCart years ago. The VbB music editor is neat and it is awesome to visualize the notes on a keyboard but I found it difficult to use effectively. Looks like this may bridge that gap.

In my mind I understand what needs to be done. It is the implementation that has got me since I am still learning the in and outs. I was never an experienced basic programmer and only knew enough to copy programs from books, make simple games, and hack. I just want to do this right (I know there is no right answer) and make something fun that closely resembles my thoughts and get better. I like the idea of waves and introducing more elements as it progresses. Since the cars have a couple paths to take I can reasonably use multiple sprites to accomplish this. With waves, is there a good method of implementing, like using a timer or is this pretty much like difficulty - it all depends?

Awesome. It sounds very dense and reminds me of some NES-type songs.

I was curious since I have kind of got the movements down and what I need to program I was trying to figure out the best way to get things progressing at a fair pace while not making some overly complicated code. I liked the idea of tying to the score because it was easy for me to test. I haven't done anything with a timer yet but I was considering using one for things like power ups or little bonus things. I will dig deeper on this subject in the coming weeks as I get closer to that part of my game. I'm still playing with the playfield and sprites on the dpc+ version.

I was wondering if anyone has tips or preferences for difficulty progression in games. I had noticed in some games the difficulty switches are utilized and perform actions like increasing player speed or affecting the way balls and missiles operate but what would someone think is the best way to make a game get harder? Currently I was thinking of doing something tied to the score so that when a player hits a certain number things may either get faster or introduce a different Sprite or different movement. I was thinking I would probably have to do something like have a variable tied to difficulty so that it would have a global impact. I'll keep researching this subject but just curious. Thanks!

It would be cool if this became a double Ender cart... Just putting it out there...

I got one years ago for around $15 but when I played it it had Maze Craze on it. The cartridge didn't seem tampered with but when I mentioned it to the seller they refunded the money no questions asked, which led me to believe they knew or it was counterfeit some how.

Stella 5.1.3 VbB v1 Build 568 batari Basic 1.1 I got the code posted here to work and had even plugged in my own playfield and got that to work. Looking over the code that I had I think I had either screwed up when I copied it the first time or did something when I was initially editing it into my own program. Not sure why I didn't identify it at the time - I guess staring at a screen got my brain stumped. Thank you. Now I am trying to play around with the heights/colors/appearance. I had one question. I had initially designed my playfield in the vbB playfield editor but when I compiled the program it appeared the width extended a little further then what I had made. Is this normal and something that is just programmed around? I didn't see anything on the website so didn't know if this would be something considered common knowledge and I am just missing it. I attached the .bas of the game for reference if needed. BBPv11919.bas

Those are what I was playing around with. When I had copied the code the screen would be black in Stella. I was inspired to take a stab at the DPC+ after playing with Tyre Trax. I was gonna play with the code posted above when I got the chance but I think the only thing different in mine was the size of the playfield and a couple of the DFxFRACINC values were lower).

I had. When I inserted the code from the playgirl editor I had noticed it was all the same so I just changed some of the lines to see of that made a difference. Ill play around with that some more to see if I missed something. With DPC+ does it have to be a different dimension than in the standard kernel? I had noticed the example had a really long playfield.

I have been messing around with the DPC+ kernel after seeing some of the benefits of using it versus what I had done with the standard kernel so I decided to try and start out a program in it but I couldn't seem to get it to work. I tried copying the sample code from Random Terrain page as a start (as well as playing around with it) and read through the table of contents and numerous threads but couldn't find anything that helped. Basically when I ran it in Stella the screen was black. Not sure if I was missing something. I can try and post the code in the morning. I was hoping to play around and get it on my own but I am stumped and my laptop died.

Cool. I saw your website mentions other games as well. Nice work!

Okay. Thanks. That's what I thought from all the reading but wasn't sure if I missed anything.

Sorry. I was wondering if information can only be accessed in 4k increments or is there a way to have more without bankswitching? Not sure if I am fully understanding it or not or if my question makes much sense at all...