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I would be very interested to hear people's thoughts on the game, especially those who voted for it.

Thank you for the kind words, and of course any of the judges reading this—it means so much to me to hear !

Thank you I have been asked about a PAL release before, so I wrote a bit about it here

One is planned, currently negotiating and prep

Hi everyone ! I'm happy to say my first Atari 2600 game SOUL OF THE BEAST inspired by the 1989 Amiga classic, is done ! It features more than 15 unique enemy types, variants, and items. Non-linear level design, in a standard 4K NTSC ROM. I'm hoping to move forward with a cart release and a PAL version. https://aeriform.itch.io/beast I hope you check it out !

Hæ everyone ! It took a while but I finally have a version I am happy to call "done". I may tweak little things but everything I intended to implement is in and working. In this standard 4K ROM I managed to fit 5 areas with non-linear design. More than 15 enemy types and variants, key items, health potions, and importantly something resembling sound. This has been an absolute labour of love for me, and more than proud of what I have been able to do with no prior experience making Atari games. I hope you enjoy playing this. https://aeriform.itch.io/beast I'd like to thank everyone that has supported the development of this game, the kind words, and amazing tips on how to optimise and handle certain problems.

wow this is already very impressive !

Thank you ! I am proud of it. This is an old video though.

That's cool, I wondered, it was looking great !

Hey @skywaffle is this still going ?

brilliant, thank you. I've noticed this a few times: .byte $2c You indicate that it skips the next LDA instruction but I don't understand why that is used, the context of it. OH, I think I see it. It's a way of reusing the store instruction without changing the value right ?

Hey, does anyone have any suggestions on how best to mask parts of a sprite, to change a certain number of lines—instead of having a separate full sprite ? *ideally without doing this during the kernel lda (objectptr),y cpx #5 bcc .nomask and #%11110000 .nomask sta GRP1 I am doing this in the kernel though, and seems to work as intended, but wondering if there is another way.

Thank you so much for steering me towards this. It was suggested to me to subtract the worldpos from $80 and then I was able to count down from $7F and works perfectly. After rewriting all of the area data it's saved me a lot of ROM space, much less cycle use and I don't get that issue with out of range branches !

hey @Andrew Davie ; FOREST RIGHT ForestRT subroutine lda #1 sta visible lda worldpos asl tax lda VectorTable,x sta zp lda VectorTable+1,x sta zp+1 jmp (zp) ; The table... VectorTable .word .Well .word .Gremlin .word .None .word .Well .Well: jsr SetWell jmp .Done .Gremlin: jsr SetGremlin jmp .Done .None: ldx #0 stx type .Done: rts I have this in as a test and it appears to be working from $80 onwards, but I am not seeing how I would count from $7F down, am I missing something glaringly obvious or does this code not work like that ? also I assumed that the zp value needed to be a .word ? I tried as a byte and that didn't work for me.

whoa okei it never occurred to me to poll SCHWA—I'll see what happens ! EDIT That's amazing—thank you !

Release 20051101 is out ! https://aeriform.itch.io/beast/devlog/145263/20051101

MoveRT subroutine lda direction cmp #0 beq .repeat lda #0 sta steps .repeat inc steps lda #0 sta direction rts MoveLT subroutine lda direction cmp #$20 beq .repeat lda #0 sta steps .repeat inc steps lda #$20 sta direction rts I friend chimed in with some advice, this seems to be working !

Hey everyone, Is there a way to check if the direction input was the same as the last ? I have a value that needs to reset if it is not. MoveRT: lda direction cmp #$20 beq .Reset jmp .Done MoveLT: lda direction cmp #0 beq .Reset jmp .Done .Reset lda #0 sta value .Done: rts I have a direction facing that switches thanks to advice from @SpiceWare This is what I am trying to do, but I am missing something.

It would mean a lot if you could go everywhere possible and see if any sprites fail to show properly, please. If you encounter spikes that don't move, that's the end of the area.

amazing—thank you for checking that. Oddly I didn't find anything in the code that was causing it to not work so glad that works !

Thank you ! This is a no-damage build just to test whether everything works and all of the sprites show correctly without dying constantly ! beast_nodmg_20050801.bin

may I impose on someone to test a version of this on hardware for me ?

I think I found it. It was a single missing # needed before doing the SetHPos routine — so silly !

@SpiceWare can I assume from this that there is definitely a problem—and also assume that I should see the game as normal with that setting enabled if there is no problem ?

ah okei, thank you, I'll look into this !