KevinMos3

That's an exciting looking list. I noticed you said in another thread that you're 15 years old. As someone who's been around since the Atari was introduced, (actually I was born the same year the 2600 was released), I'm very glad when I see the younger generation still enjoying it. I do have a few friendly words of advice though... Take it a step at a time & be patient - The really great games on here took (at least) months to develop, with the programmers taking ideas from the community, tweaking, testing, & repeating. Don't be afraid or offended by criticism - Your projects can only get better when people share ideas for improvement. Do whatever's necessary to keep yourself enjoying your work - You've planned some fun projects, but the work will be grueling at times. It's good that you can take a break from one to work on another for a bit, just don't get too distracted either. Folks here have seen many come and go with a vast majority of projects remaining unfinished - Expect a little cynicism at times and use it as fuel to prove us wrong when it happens, rather than being offended. You've made a great start and I hope you stay around a long time and have some great releases. Just know the road is rough and don't forget that criticism is your friend. Again, it will make your projects better. Welcome to the community.

This is one of my favorite homebrew games and one of the ones I just had to buy. However, never satisfied to leave well enough alone... I started comparing this to the arcade, looked at espire8's ship, liked his cockpit but not so much the body, merged the shape with yours, made an attempt to interpret the arcade colors, and... Juno First (New Ship).bin Let me know what you think of the edit. I haven't checked this out on a TV yet, so I may need to lighten the nose of the ship a bit.

I just tried the ROM from the AA archive and I get the same result. The stock ROM I tried before was 16k, this one was 32k. So far, all 3 ROMs I've tried don't work right on the 5200 with the Multi-Cart. I hope it's a bad dump floating around and not some incompatibility with the Multi-Cart, (though I don't know why it would be the latter).

I love it! Those touches took it from good to great. edit: I especially love the blinking eyes on the title screen.

I played around with it on real hardware. The TV I tried it on doesn't have the greatest color, but I used it because if a game looks okay on it, the game should look okay on just about anything. I recommend lightening some of the colors, such as: dark grays dark purples dark blues dark greens (optional) The other rooms are okay, but the ones with those colors are a bit too dark for you to clearly see that dot that moves across the screen. Also, I'd recommend lightening the player's color by at least one lum value. On screens where there's a lighter background, it makes the player color look too dark. It just takes a little learning how colors work together on an Atari + CRT TV and a little trial and error. The game plays a bit easier with a real joystick. I always wanted a game like this when I was a kid. It feels good and I'm glad you're working on pfread. Keep in mind that if you move back a screen that has a boss, the boss will reappear on the far left and follow from screen to screen. It should be that once a boss is defeated he does not reappear, but if you aren't able to do that, at least make sure that he'll appear in a place where you can defeat him again. Also, you may want to fix the spelling on the false ending screen that says "TRY AGAN". That "real" last boss is pretty awesome. I haven't beaten him yet. He gets me with about his 3rd pattern. I still don't know the right way to get to him though. I just move up and across screens that I shouldn't be able to get to until I find him. I realize you're fixing this, which is a good thing.

Nice game, especially for a first effort. I really like this, but it just needs some things ironed out. It's way too easy to jump up through the top of the screen by accident. The top should be solid to prevent this. You may be able to get some help with pfread to fix that and also make the sides solid where you don't want people to go. Right now, it's just too easy to get yourself screwed up in the walls and end up in funky places you don't want to be. I think I got to that hidden screen you mentioned with the "real" boss, but I'm sure I didn't get there the way I was supposed to. You may be able to get help with the sound you wanted. You just have to be a bit patient as everyone has their own lives going on and may not be available immediately after you ask. Just keep working out issues with the project and someone will pop in who can help. That almost always happens, just not always overnight. If you can use multiple colors in your playfield, then I have a suggestion for you. How about using a lighter color on the walking area of a screen? This wouldn't look right on all screens, but there are several that would look great. Here are two examples: Also, you may want to get someone to test this out on real hardware to see how the colors will look on a TV. Actually, I can do this later today. The colors you've chosen "may" need some tweaking so they show up right. The lum values can be an issue and make it too hard to see in some cases. Anyway, I hope you'll consider these things. This game has great potential... too much potential to not hammer away at some of the issues before you leave it behind. I encourage you to not get impatient and call it finished before it's all it can be. There are a lot of very knowledgeable and helpful people around here who can help you iron out problems.

If it helps track the problem, I tried the standard Ms. Pac-Man ROM and it does the same thing. I hadn't noticed it before because I'd only played the original cart instead of the Multi-Cart. There may be a problem with the ROM you used to add the sound hacks.

I have instructions for almost all my 7800 games. The ones I may be missing them for are a few really common games. The reason being that some of those commons came from a flea market back around '94 or so. A few of them were bought from friends who were happy to get rid of their Atari games for $.50 or $1 each and some of those came with manuals. The bulk of my collection was purchased new in the box back when they were still not too difficult to find. Many came from a Hills department store at clearance prices, (I miss that chain). Others from Big Lots, and several from Video 61. I remember spending about $300 on games with Video 61 back in '95, and got several nice 2600 titles NIB too. That was basically my life savings at the time. So basically, I have boxes for much of my 7800 collection and all the more rare games except Rampage. However, I never really cared about collecting boxes. They're more of a hassle than anything for me. I've never thrown any away, but I don't make a point to buy games with them either.

Awesome. Where did you end up finding it? Other than Tank Command, I've had a complete NTSC 7800 collection since the mid-to-late nineties. I've always wanted Tank Command, but was never willing to shell out close to $100 to get one.

Very nice start. IMO it has a distinct MegaMan feel to it. I would love to see this cleaned up a bit and expanded to a full game. The ability to reset definitely needs to be added at some point. That's my single biggest gripe with this demo. Otherwise, it's looking very good.

It's not working on my 5200 for some reason. It boots, but I can't control Ms. Pac-Man and when I move the joystick, I get a couple tiles of garbled graphics here and there. Any idea what's wrong? BTW, I'm using the 128-in-1 Multi-Cart.

Should I regret purchasing the Atarimax 128-in-1 Multi-Cart this past year?

I second that. I always handled mine very carefully because of those holes, but most of the flea market finds have the labels mashed into them to some degree. Actually, the same thing happens with DVD cases. It seems every time I go to buy a used XBOX game and have picked out a pristine case with DVD insert, the cashier (after opening the case to put the disc inside) makes sure to mash the case closed RIGHT ON THE HOLES! It drives me crazy. The case survived all these years in great shape only to be screwed up by a mindless cashier. The fewer indentations or holes under a label, the better.

I liked the first demo you posted a while back and was looking forward to more. I've tried out your "final" version and find the controls too frustrating to enjoy the game. I hope you will consider revising the controls before leaving it as totally finished. I would love to see the player not be knocked down by touching a wall during a jump. Even the slightest miscalculation about the placement of your jump can keep you from completing the level and result in a game over. When going into water, this is especially frustrating. As you are sinking, if you touch the sides of a wall, your character will not respond properly once on the bottom. This usually guarantees death. A continue option would also be a nice addition, especially if you don't want to revise the controls.

I always liked the Atari style cases better than any 3rd party case (2600 or 7800). Everything else just felt more cheap by comparison, with no exceptions. I've always wanted to put some of my favorite 3rd party games in Atari shells, so I would DEFINITELY be majorly turned off by anything other than Atari shells for the 7800 games.

A few minor changes: Changed the font for "Adventure" on the title screen The bat now faces the player like the dragons do Made some slight alterations to the Dragon attacking and dead sprites Changed the Ice Peninsula screen and added animated waves Added the 2-color animated fountain As always, grab the latest binary in the first post. To Do: Next step will probably be to merge the work so far into Nukey's newer assembly, as I'm still currently using the older 8k one. It's almost time to begin work on the real intent of this project.

I agree. I like the maze layout as well... just thought it needed some sprucing up, but if you're happy with it, that's what matters. I always have plenty of suggestions! lol I'm never happy with anything I do, so don't take it wrong if I suggest something for you. ...speaking of which... You can add a title to your number selection screen. Here's a sprite for you if you want to use it: .byte $C0 ;XX .byte $A0 ;X X .byte $90 ;X X .byte $F0 ;XXXX .byte $90 ;X X .byte $00 ; .byte $CC ;XX XX .byte $AA ;X X X X .byte $A9 ;X X X X .byte $AF ;X X XXXX .byte $09 ; X X .byte $E0 ;XXX .byte $AC ;X X XX .byte $AA ;X X X X .byte $EA ;XXX X X .byte $0C ; XX .byte $E0 ;XXX .byte $4A ; X X X .byte $4A ; X X X .byte $4E ; X XXX .byte $04 ; X .byte $A0 ;X X .byte $AE ;X X XXX .byte $E8 ;XXX X .byte $AC ;X X XX .byte $08 ; X .byte $EE ;XXX XXX .byte $80 ;X .byte $CC ;XX XX .byte $8A ;X X X .byte $EA ;XXX X X .byte $0A ; X X .byte $C0 ;XX .byte $AE ;X X XXX .byte $A4 ;X X X .byte $C4 ;XX X .byte $A4 ;X X X .byte $00 ; .byte $0A ; X X .byte $0A ; X X .byte $0A ; X X .byte $0E ; XXX .byte $00 ; .byte $0C ; XX .byte $0A ; X X .byte $0A ; X X .byte $0C ; XX .byte $0A ; X X .byte $00 ; .byte $0E ; XXX .byte $08 ; X .byte $0C ; XX .byte $08 ; X .byte $0E ; XXX

Sounds excellent. I look forward to seeing that. I have an idea for a much more in depth project as well once I finish my current one, although you'll probably complete your's well before I ever get around to mine. I was just saying it would "fit" the theme better if you gave it some touches like the other screens. You have some nicely detailed screens and then you have... the plain ole block maze that feels kinda out of place. If you were to add some dots to the playfield graphics like you did with the borders of your screen with the 2 trees, that would probably look good. If you're going for a hedge maze, then aim for a hedge looking pattern. If brick, then a brick look, etc. For an example of what you "could" do, you can look at my hack-in-progress. I left the original mazes as well, but gave them a little more detail. Of course this is just my taste, so take it for what you will. :-)

I think before you make the cartridges, you should adjust the starting position of the player. It needs to be lowered by at least one pixel so it doesn't get hung up when trying to go left or right from the start. Also, many of your screens look great, but leaving the maze untouched doesn't quite go with your overall theme. I hope you would consider adding some kind of detail to the mazes so they fit the look better. Take a look at what I did to the mazes as just one idea... or feel free to copy. I like where you were going with this hack, I just think it still needs a bit of polish, (like the issues named above). It would be even better if you moved your changes over to Nukey's newer assembly and took advantage of the multicolor playfields and/or sprites. I'm not trying to be a buzzkill. It looks like you're putting a lot of effort into the cartridges, labels, and manuals, (especially if you go through with the boxes), so I'd like to see you make the most of this hack before committing to burning those ROMs. You owe it to yourself and to those who will be making the purchase.

More changes. Now with animated grass on a few screens and other changes. See the first post for updated pics and binary. edit: Yet another update... I had the animated lighting (surround gfx) flickering in the dark rooms. I was going for the torch/candle/firelight look, but I didn't like it. So, I've removed the flicker and just went with the animated lighting. I also lightened the title screen because I suspect it would have been too dark on real hardware & CRT TV before. I'll need to play around with it when I get time and tweak LUMs as needed. Binary link has been updated. I'm also working on an animated fountain with 2 colors, but it seems to be making the Green Dragon act strange, so I'll have to work on it more before I upload.

Here's your last bin with the sprites edited a bit... (just to hold me over until you get the new ones above added in). smb2 edit.bas.bin

A bit of an update. Finally got time to upload a binary with the White Castle inside walls touched up. Today, I decided to go ahead and make the walls the same color as the castle (instead of red) and the floors the color from the game I'd like to eventually imitate. The insides of the Yellow and Black castles have also been updated. As always, see the first post for the binary.

Just to chime in... I checked out the AU website a few weeks ago with the intent of ordering the magazine (and all back-issues). When I saw it was PDF only, I said heck no! There's no way I'd pay essentially the same price, if not more, for a PDF as a real paper magazine. I think they should print an actual magazine and let subscribers also download the PDF format, or offer a STEEP discount for a PDF only option since most all the overhead is not present.