Piggles

GO-B is my favorite of the bunch. I think it's because I like the motorcycle duel theme as well as the very simple but addicting gameplay. This would be a good one for a multi-cart. I also like the documents in each zip that describe how the teams developed their games.

Hi folks I've been out of the loop for months. I found some .bin and .bas files for the zombie game I emailed to myself in archive. I must admit both that I bit off more than I could chew with this project and that some life priorities have changed and I will not finish the game. Therefore, if you get the motivation to make a zombie game, you may edit my code, use my code, copy my idea, do whatever you like. Consider my code public domain.

You can do it!

I suggest you check out spin16.bas, one of the demo programs for batari basic for an example on implementing diagonal movement and diagonal fire in the combat game.

It's lovely. Reminds me of Raiders Of the Lost Ark inventory system.

Thank you for the compliments! I made the fenced city because I didn't want to code in a test for being at the edge of the map. That's one if-then for each screen place on the edge of the map. No thank you! I was conscientious about making too many unnecessary calculations and tests. One can always throw in another drawscreen command if short on cycles, but I preferred to be thrifty in my code. And then it provided a good story plot. I like your suggestion about no blank lines, because it would make the scenery that much more attractive. However, I think I may need access to missile1. I hoped to have random missile fire at the edges of town coming from the police/army/whoever stationed there to contain the zombies. However, if that idea doesn't add any substantive value, I'd be more than glad to trade my missile for prettier graphics.

I updated the zombies.bin to make the zombies chase a point slightly below and left of your real coordinates. Fixed the room in the house.

Thank you first of all for your kind words and advice. I like your idea. Everything is purple at the moment until I work out the rest of the game. Then again, given the limitations of the hardware being emulated, I should figure out what details are going to be on each screen before I have to start chopping game play to make the game presentable. I hoped to include a game timer that would cause the game to go from day to night. So a green grass background with a brown house by day, for example, and a darker color with black background for night. At night, the player0 and player1 would be invisible until you were almost on top of them, and finding the lamp object would allow you to see them from a distance. I considered having dark houses and lighted houses. Perhaps it would be helpful if I defined the end goal, and make sure I can include all the necessary eye candy to make it attractive. You're trapped in town. The government has sealed it off to prevent the zombies from spreading. The town will be nuked in X game hours. If you can find the parts of the CB radio and call for a rescue before the time is up, you win. There's a couple weapons in town you can use. You can fight with your hands at first, and then find an axe. There's a gun too. The hands and axe would work like the whip in Raiders of the Lost Ark: a missile with a very short range. The gun will cross the whole screen. There should be a lamp for night time and three parts for the radio (like in ET). I do like the idea of varying the style of houses and the colors. I wonder how many different houses would be enough to keep things interesting? With but a few items, I wonder if perhaps including such things as food to keep you going or first aid kits to cure zombie bites might be incentive to explore mansions, houses and hovels. With bankswitching, there's pleanty of ROM for maps and tables for item placement. Thank you! I fixed that but have not yet uploaded it. Thank you again! The zombies get trapped in walls from screen to screen again because it's unfinished. All your ideas are fantastic, and I think I'll go with the corner start positions and see how that works. Fixed the coordinates stuff. Attached is an earlier version with one zombie. The logic behind random vs chase movement is essentially the same as what I've got now. I still would like to get some semi-intelligent movement in the zombies. I hoped to achieve something similar with two zombies. As I've knocked my head on that a bit, I've went on with the map movement and other bits but it'll hopefully be done soon. It seems that if I were to use playfield pixel checking, I would first figure the locations of said pixels, and then based on the x and y coordinates of the zombies, check the adjacent pfpixels if they're on. In a rogue-like program I wrote a while back, I used a line of sight routine that would look for a clear line of sight between objects. If obstructed, it would pick a location that would have a clear LOS to the desired destination and go there instead. If not available, repeat n times, n being whatever you have stack memory for recusive functions. The problem here I think is time. I doubt (but am not certain) that the vcs has the juice to do even that simple path finding and have any clock cycles left for the game. zLoc4.bas zLoc4.bas.bin

I just realized that it would've been better to just post the new info as a reply rather than edit the original. I forgot to mention, if you stand completely still at the start of the game, you'll notice that player0 on the left will attack you but for some reason that eludes me, player1 on the right will abort it's approach just before it gets to you. If you move around, they seem to get "confused". Sometimes they'll approach directly, other times they'll just dance around. I set the range for their attack to be a long distance so I can more easily demonstrate the weirdness of the result.

You know, that's a good idea. I think the random movement would help get the silly things around obstacles and then close the distance when you're close enough to see or smell. [EDITED] PFRead!!!! I forgot all about that function! I'm so silly! Thank you MR!!!

It seems to me that the best way to deal with this is to use a little asm and check the playfield bits. Ugh. Well, for the greater glory of flesh eating Zombies and Atari, I'll have to check it out.

I like your idea. Perhaps I can instead of trying to make the zombie move around objects, I could have it move randomly, and then check occasionally if there's a clear path and move straight toward my ball-man again. Thanks for the sugestion! There's nothing wrong with line numbers!

Incidentally, I just updated my profile with an avatar. If someone else is using an Oink pig for an avatar, please do tell me. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen one, but I don't want people getting confused by seeing someone else's name on the same image.

EDIT UPDATED 16 SEPTEMBER 2006 Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great entheusiasm that I present to you the next version of my zombie survival horror game. I'm also looking for advice on a problem, if you have the time. In this version, the zombies move randomly until you're within a certain range, and then they're supposed to move toward you. Sometimes they will move toward you, but other times they'll dance around randomly even when you're right next to them. So I'm sure I missed something in my code, but I'm not exactly sure what, even after much study. So I post the code snippet for my zombie movement logic below, and attached the full code and binary. All I've noticed is that sometimes I have to move the ball a little bit and somehow they figure out to move toward you. You can explore the map. Currently you are in a blank field in which I'll be adding trees/obstacles later. Go left one screen and you'll see a house. Enter the door of the house and you can explore the house. There's nothing there but a few rooms. The map has several houses and a wall around the town. Clearly my inspiration was Adventure, but imitation I suppose is the best compliment. Below, the t variable is the game timer. On turn 1, player0 moves. On turn 2, player1 moves. moveZombie d = 0 rem q and r will be our temporary y and x coordinates respectively rem s will be our random number holder rem zombie0 will move on turn 1 and the zombie1 on turn 2 if t = 1 then q = player0y if t = 1 then r = player0x if t = 2 then q = player1y if t = 2 then r = player1x rem find distance from selected zombie to ball if q > bally then q = q - bally if q <= bally then q = bally - q if r > ballx then r = r - ballx if r <= ballx then r = ballx - r rem if close to ball, move toward ball, else continue onto random movement if q < 40 && r < 60 then goto skipzrnd rem random movement until close enough to pursue rem bits 0 up 1 right 2 down 3 left s = rand if s < 64 then d = d | %00000001 if s < 128 && s > 64 then d = d | %00000010 if s < 192 && s > 127 then d = d | %00000100 if s <= 255 && s > 191 then d = d | %00001000 rem Now that direction is selected, load the moving zombie's coordinates into q and r gosub assignQR goto directMove skipzrnd rem reuse q and r as y and x coordinates for movement gosub assignQR rem chase the ball sprite rem bits 0 up 1 right 2 down 3 left if q > bally then d = d | %00000001 if r < ballx then d = d | %00000010 if q < bally then d = d | %00000100 if r > ballx then d = d | %00001000 directMove rem Now actually move the zombie if d{0} then q = q - 1 if d{1} then r = r + 1 if d{2} then q = q + 1 if d{3} then r = r - 1 skipDirect if t = 1 then player0y = q if t = 1 then player0x = r if t = 2 then player1y = q if t = 2 then player1x = r goto doneZombie assignQR if t = 1 then q = player0y if t = 1 then r = player0x if t = 2 then q = player1y if t = 2 then r = player1x return [edit old message below] I'm working on AI for a zombie survival horror style of game. The zombies will move toward you (you being the ball), and if obstructed, will move either horizontally or vertically to get around a wall. Very simple AI. But then again, Zombies are dumb. In my original version, the zombie will move as desired, but once I insert a timer to move the zombie only every three loops through the program, it seems to get stuck on the walls. So either my AI just looks like it works, or it does work but somehow I break it when I delay the zombie from moving every loop. Please check out the attached binaries for an example of what I mean. My goal is to have the zombies move slower than the player. If you have any suggestions, please tell me what my problem is! I've tried drinking lots of coffee and eating bread and butter, but even those powerful mental stimulants have not availed me. In the code below, you can comment out "goto moveZombie" and uncomment "if t = 2 then goto moveZombie" and recompile. The two binaries are labeled as with and without the timer. Zombies.bas zombies.bas.bin

I love the intro screen also. The game is a good R-Type / Gradius style side scroller!

Though this is an old thread, I want to just extend my thanks to Mike Rideout for his explanation of collision because it came in handy for me today. It's good to have these forums.

I just love the new version of the game! It looks good! May I suggest making the piggies wiggle a bit to make them harder to hit? Perhaps occasionally it'll change direction from up to down without crossing the whole screen? :-) It's so cute, I think your finished product would make a great cartridge.

I like the game so far. It got me thinking about a running and hopping game that might be of interest to you. What if you were fleeing a hot river of lava and having to jump over obstacles as you try to get away? You could use the playfield pixels for lava, with the various colors for the flames, and then perhaps several different obstacles to leap over. Just a thought.

I agree, though I did hit the second pig with one missile! With multiple colors for terrain, your game looks wonderful. There's a lot of possibilities with the new BB!

I love pigs! How cute!

Just want to say I'm enjoying your game. May I suggest a bait of some sort to throw off the wolf? Get X points, get another bait.

If you want to avoid flicker, what about being only able to see ghosts that are in line of sight? Then program the ghosts to avoid each other but pursue you, so you'll only see one at a time. That would make for an exciting game. You could make the goal to eat the dot in a given part of the screen. Maybe you can't see the dot until it also is in line of sight. You could also hide a power pill on the map. If you find it, you can eat the ghosts or be immune to their attacks for a few seconds. As you progress through levels, maybe the power pill doesn't last as long, or the ghosts get faster.

I love how the cars jiggle about. Nice game!

Thank you Mike! I'm so excited! I dabbled a bit in .35 and managed to the some of the basics down. I'm ready to get my hands dirty!