How would you rate Ninja Commando by Zepplin

[How would you rate Ninja Commando by Zepplin]

Thanks. I just wanted to know if there was more than at the beginning with no weapons and only one move: jump on top of the enemy or die! I like the GFX and music, but since the learning curve is so high, I find the game too boring in gameplay to play it long enough to get good. So I doubt I'll ever play it long enough to get other weapons just to make it marginally more interesting. It's a shame to me, becuase I like multi-monochromatic coloring in 8-bit games for increased shading/detail as opposed to 4 different colors that lacks detail. The parallax scrolling, though only two levels, is cool too. I wanted to like the game, but it needs moves and weapons like Ninja. Or some more depth to it like techno-ninja.

In fact it's not that hard to get a better weapon, I played it today and you get an upgrade after killing every 3 opponents. First is a shuriken, which kills one enemy and has only limited range, then a bomb which can kill multiple enemies also on a short distance. Didn't try the other upgrades.

[How would you rate Ninja Commando by Zepplin]

I tried this game a year or two ago(and again tonight), and I like the colorful graphics, but I can't seem to live too long. I'm sure I'd get better if I practice, but so far the game just seems like some mario bros. clone in essence where you just jump around from platform to platform and jump on top of enemy ninjas to destroy them. Is this all there is to this game? Are there any other moves you get or weapons or anything like that? Is my only option to flip around and make sure I land on top of the evil ninjas or die?!? Becuase so far, gameplay wise, super mario is more fun, and I hate that game.

You can get some better weapons on your way. I remember finishing this game, it's not too long - about 8 levels AFAIK. You start with bare hands but later into the game there are some shurikens and even later you can get some pistol. The most impressive things about this game are the awesome graphics and Gilmore's great music. The playability is much worse though.

[Kjmann's RMT Music]

I noticed that you do not use vibratos in your instruments - why so? They would add some more variability to the sound.

[Is it possible to have colored text like a C64?]

If there are just short strings on every line (ie. 10 chars per line), you can use PMG for masking the chars and this way have the text use different colour than the background. But such use is very limited. My advice would be to use GR.12 (Antic mode 4) and define a font to be easily readable in 4x8 pixels. Such font is used eg. in Spellbound. This way you can even use more colours on single line (up to 4).

[Looking to do an Atari Game]

Hi peteofborg,

 

You may think of using EnvisionPC for creating worlds, of course if you plan to use character mode for the game.

http://atari.miribilist.com/envision/index.html

 

And yes, indeed, your demonstration is good, the use of colors is balanced. Keep up the good work.

I suggest trying Mappy editor - http://tilemap.co.uk/mappy.php

It is quite powerful, especially when registered.

[Magical Sound Shower RMT 8ch w/synth Final?]

This Is The Final Version!!!! finally found a mistake in the rhythm in the beginning of the song.

 

So Here It Is Folks!!!

 

 

I had Fun Doing This One.

 

 

 

This one sounds good! And it is probably the first time I hear hardsynth instruments that fit the music. Otherwise I won't overestimate their usability but in this song they just work well (even though the pitch is in some places not absolutely correct).

[Space Harrier Project Music Final]

Yeah, both these songs sound better now. Glad I could help you :-)

[Magical Sound Shower RMT Version]

Not a bad conversion, though I would work on the drums a bit more - they sound kind of flat. Have a look at the sample instruments packed with RMT to see how e.g. snare is built. I would then implement the improved drums to Space Harrier as well.

[PMG over GR8]

The magic word is "inverse". While sprites in Gr.8 are only visible over playfield (color reg. 710) and pixels (color reg. 709) are in front of them, you can achieve more colours by making everything inverse - i.e. fill the whole screen with value 255 and then draw to it with playfield colour. This way, if you underlay sprites, your graphics will show with the colour of the sprite.

[Games for the 2007]

I am starting this thread so that everyone can share their knowledge about this years expected game releases.

So far the only game I know of (or am allowed to talk about) that should be finished this year is Crownland. Anyone else knows any background info about 2007 games?

[Game of the Year 2006]

pseudografx suggested a vote about the game of the year 2006.

 

Here it is.

 

No unfinished games.

 

I hope I haven't forget something?!

 

Thankyou to all programmers for these nice games!!!

Oh great, thanks, I was planning to start the poll myself, but you were faster :-) I placed my vote to Nibbly.

Here are my two cents - links to the games so that everyone can check them out:

 

Accion: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5458

Astro4 Road: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5265

Cavernrunner: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5460

Flowers Mania: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5288

Fujiama Run: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5363

Getris: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5157

Head On: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5457

Klony: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5392

Light Up!: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5459

Ms. Bulimia: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5259

Nibbly: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5318

Plague Attack: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5461

Scorpions (&2.0): http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5174 / http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5463

Sudoku: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5141

Sudoku Sweep: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5472

Venus Express: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...l=venus+express

Voyage to Home: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5462

Vulcano: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5300

[Flower Mania]

Definitely the "Game of the Year 2006"

 

 

Well, It does have great use of color.. And I didn't ignore it. I played it back when it came out.

 

I disagree about "game of the year 2006"..

 

I think Crownland (the Super Mario Clone) was a MUCH bigger accomplishement, overall.

Well, Crownland is definitely a fantastic game, but it is still in production, so I'm afraid it cannot qualify as a 2006 game.

Perhaps we should make voting for the true best game of 2006 - in fact last year was really plentiful regarding new game releases. IMHO the best year in this millenium.

[Vector - 3d Quake engine]

oops. could be duke nukem 3d.... not sure...but definitly not doom as you can not watch up down which you can in the vector demo...

Not in Doom, but afair games like Heretic/Hexen let you look up/down while using the Doom engine.

I think Hexen was built on Quake 1 engine, but I may be wrong... Anyway, IMHO this engine is a little bit too sluggish, perhaps some optimizations could still be made. Or maybe the viewport could be reduced in favour of performance (narrow playfield?).

[RMT 1.25 released]

just in case you haven´t noticed that...

 

http://raster.infos.cz/atari/rmt/rmt.htm#download

 

 

It's really interesting to me.

I made suggestions over about 3 years and Raster doesn't even give 2 cent for attention.

 

PG wanted a longer envelop for the instruments (which is a logical thing! ) , Raster made it....

3 years ago, I asked for the same... nothing happened ....

First, longer envelopes weren't requested by me.

Second, it is up to Raster which feature will he implement and which not. I don't think he will ever add a feature for you if you talk to him in such a tone. I also asked Raster for a feature which he does not want to implement but I respect his rejection. After all, he is the author.

[sudoku sweep]

final version:

 

http://atari.online.pl/v01/index.phtml?sub...&ct=nowinki

A very nice game! Looking forward to the next

[Artifacting on PAL Ataris...]

If you do a Google search on page 6 you'll find their website, they have nearly or all their issues up online.

The Page 6 archive in fact only contains issues up to #30.

[New Rally X, port Atari 8Bits]

I just encountered a bug in the radar - the player position appears in the playfield rather than the radar map. Also the music became out of sync after a fer rounds.

[New Rally X, port Atari 8Bits]

I tried several configurations and finally found out what caused the problem - an incompatible ROM image (R3-800XE.ROM). After switching to R2-800XL.ROM the game started to work.

Thanks for suggestions though.

[New Rally X, port Atari 8Bits]

I get a blank screen after I press fire on the title screen. Am I doing something wrong? I use Atari800Win PLus 4.0.

[Anybody still code here?]

I have some reserves for making graphics and music/sfx for anyone who needs them. Currently I'm quite busy though, but in the following weeks it should get better.

[the NUMEN demo]

Dang! Got to 97% and the download stopped or lost connection.

 

Anyone know of a good small utility that restarts downloads?

Well, if only 3% are left, you should be able to replay it in VirtualDub (ignoring the error messages it displays).

[SCORPIONS - new game from Poland...]

new version of scorpions v2

 

http://atari.online.pl/v01/index.phtml?sub...&ct=nowinki

This one really looks better, even if the ingame graphics would still need some facelift Jakub's music is great, looking forward to the SAP file

[Diablo-look a like possible on A8?]

There must be some bugs in the inventory code. When I keep on collecting items, the ones that are already in the inventory start to shift up. Until a certain point I cannot select the last item in the inventory. After a while I was also unable to pick up any more weapons even though the inventory still showed about 5 free slots. Later I was able to select the last weapon in the inventory but when revisiting it, the last weapon was not highlighted as the one used. I was also able to choose from empty inventory slots.

[Super Mario Clone being written now]

just tested the preview on my pal 130xe...

 

as mentioned before i have the same "overscan" glitches when the "mayhem in monsterland"-level text bounces out of the screen...

 

in emulator i have to press fire to get into the level but on my 130xe it enters automaticly when the text bounces in and out...? could be my autofire enabled on my real competition pro but i dont know...

 

the colours look not so bright and sharp on real machine... for me its hard to see the stars when they are in front of a background... but this could be my sony tv set and my 130xe as well as the xe shows green sky instead of blue...

I think the not so well visible stars are done so at a purpose - some of them are quite well hidden and you can easily overlook them :-)

I didn't meet the fire problem in the emulator - just one press and (after the text goes down) the level starts. Perhaps your joystick configuration in the emu is different.

[Super Mario Clone being written now]

 

Yes, it is possible to jump over the water. Although you have to do pixel perfect jumps. The hardest jump btw is near the end of this demo version. There are two birds and you have to jump onto one of the birds back to get on safe ground.

 

Anyway, I had to play it quite a lot of times to finish the demo. So I agree with you that the difficulty level is a little bit too high. Nevertheless once you finished the demo you start getting used to it and then you can finish it quite often. :-)

 

patjomki

Well, actually I consider the first water surface much more difficult to jump over. I never lose any life when jumping over the bird near the end of the level. If this is the first level, the difficulty might be a little bit lower, but still it is not that high to kill the playability.