mickmuze

Was wondering if anyone has come up with a solution for this? I’ve just run into the same problem myself with my next game and can’t figure out an ideal workaround.

😮 I was not aware of a possible update like this. That would be great! 🤞🏻

Very sorry for such a late reply. Unfortunately I still don't have any information on a rom release. That would all be up to Albert. I know he's still working on it but I'm not sure how far along he has got on a system for that. I really really wish that my games would work on the Atari 2600+ but they do not. The Atari 2600+ does not support DPC+ games. Hopefully Atari will release a more compatible system in the future. I really love the look and feel of the Atari 2600+, it's such a great product in many ways. I'd love to see an FPGA version of it though. I'd buy that in a heartbeat.

Thanks, I appreciate it 🙂 My head still hurts from the amount of time I have spent on this "side project" lol I agree it would enhance the immersion but there definitely isn't any room for this on the cart. It's a 32kb game and there is currently only 18 bytes free spread out over 7 banks unfortunately. I have spent a lot of time crunching the code down as much as I could. I have thought about that when I first started thinking about power ups. I didn't think I'd have room for power ups at all but people requested an extra pumpkin so I tried really hard to crunch things down and squeeze power ups into it. I thought about having a special pumpkin that allowed to clear multiple enemies but the code to clear the enemies is kind of complicated the way it uses multiple sprites to splat the enemy while leaving the enemy on the screen and then raising the amount of points the player receives up from the enemy when hit. I didn't want the game to have any flicker of sprites at all so I tried to think of an alternative way of wiping out multiple enemies at roughly the same time and came up with the Lantern power up, where Tober grows large and just runs the enemies over. There is no splat animation or points displayed during this power up but I feel like that made more sense (to the player, that they wouldn't even think about it) during that power up then another pumpkin being thrown that didn't have those animations present. Do you know what I mean? I don't know, it's kind of the choice I made I guess when dealing within the limits. I'll just say that, due to the amount of free variables to record hit points, there IS one enemy and only one enemy in the game the requires more than one hit to take out. I had to borrow a single variable that was already in use to make that happen. 😛 technically it is possible to have nine enemies on the screen at once, it doesn't happen anymore because I found it unfair to the player but the code does allow for it. For as many enemies on the screen at once as it is, you would need a byte or at least a nybble per enemy to keep track of the hit points, there just isn't any left at this point. Or enough space to deal with storing in the stack. I guess there is constantly a give and take, it is possible to do certain things but you may have to remove something else to make that happen. Constantly need to keep asking which idea is more important to the game. Thanks for your feedback

Is 1Up owned or copyrighted by anyone? (the big N?) I have put this in Tober's Nightmare for an extra life item and got to thinking. Does anyone own 1Up when used in games? I googled it and found that it was a phrase that began in the Pinball era and was used in many games. However I also seen people get take down notices from Nintendo for designing shirts that had no mention of Nintendo but just had 1Up on the shirt. I really like the nostalgia of the term 1Up and would like to put it in my game but I do have a (Not as satisfying) backup if this is something that is frowned upon (which seems ridiculous to me if that is the case)

Will Atari 2600+ ever be able to play DPC+ games?

Congratulations Al!! Happy for you and hoping this is a positive change for the community. I’m curious however, do I still own my game that is being sold by AtariAge? If I wanted to sell it somewhere else digitally (itch.io or something, no plans to do that anytime soon or at all really, I would much rather sell it digitally through atariage when that becomes available) Do I have the right to do this? I always kinda assumed I did.

Thanks for your interest in the game. Albert is planning to have downloading roms a purchasable option on AtariAge. I believe he said he was going to set it up after the forums were updated and PRGE was over. So hopefully this will happen soon.

I like the ideas about switching between different difficulty. I seen somewhere about game design that through a level you should aim more for a wave than just a straight line of getting more difficult, which definitely makes sense. I like this thought too and did that in my first game.. I believe after floor 50 it is no longer possible to gain health or free lives, but it definitely a big challenge to get that far. However I also made a limit to the enemies speed as well. Was never sure if that was the right direction. Good points, I think I agree with you here. Would definitely want to avoid marathoning and I like the idea of reaching the human limits but still going back to push further in game to find ways of reaching the highest possible score within those limits. I think I’ll go this route with this game, in that game mode at least. That’s the trick right there. The hardest part is finding that perfect balance. I find when developing and testing a game, you become very skilled in it yourself, without really noticing. I think that might be why a lot of the early games were so difficult at times. Probably from developers bug testing and playing their game so much that they lose track of what the game is actually like for a new player who doesn’t yet know how to play or what to expect.

Something I’ve been thinking about and was hoping to get some opinions. For a game that never ends… Is it fair to continuously increase the speed of the enemies over time to the point where it is basically humanly impossible to go any further. If the game is all about points? Or should there be a limit to the enemy speed so that there is always a possibility of the player outrunning the enemy if they are skilled enough. The latter sounds like the correct answer but then comes the question of where to set the speed limit, and if the player is so skilled to always outrun the enemy, should the game really be set up so that skilled player can play basically forever, racking up points, and then only gets game over from exhaustion? I’m sure this has probably been discussed a ton, I’ve looked before but had a hard time finding any thoughts on the issue. I’m currently leaning towards having the speed increase with no limits for Tober’s Nightmare for the infinite levels game mode, unless you think this is the wrong way to go and feel it is unfair. Because at some point it will become impossible to outrun the green flame and tracking enemies, though most players will probably not make it far enough to get to the “game is now impossible” point.

Thanks SpiceWare! I appreciate that

So far I have already added an end boss and a little end game sequence for one of the game modes. I have also added a green flame that behaves much in the same vein as Evil Otto when the player runs out of pumpkins. Oh, and I added an Easter egg into the game. I need to decide what I am going to do with the other two game modes exactly and actually do that as well lol. Probably nothing too crazy here, just one with an ending and one that goes on forever for high score purposes.. and maybe just a more difficult game mode? I also plan on adjusting some of the later levels to make them more possible and fair. I’d like to add some sounds to the title screen, currently it is completely silent. I’m running low on space but I do have some ideas on adding a new item, but this may be cut back depending on what I am able to pull off. I really hope I am able to get this idea in there though. I may try to rewrite things to fit this. We’ll see 🤷🏻‍♂️

Thanks Prizrak glad you enjoy it Unfortunately no, I had some personal events come up that kept me away from coding or anything enjoyable for the last two months. Things seem to be improving now though and I just began work on this project again. I’m excited to be able to get back into it however this break did set this back for Halloween this year

Just seeing these screenshots now, this is beautiful! Great work!!