Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'assembloids'.
-
We are quite happy and proud to announce the release of Assembloids for the Watara Supervision. Its first (and so far only) aftermarket game at all Here is a short unboxing video with very short gameplay:
- 10 replies
-
- 4
-
- watara supervision
- priorart
-
(and 1 more)
Tagged with:
-
Hi everyone interested, while we are at the middle of creating our entry for the 30 years Lynx compo organized by atarigamer.com, I thought it might be nice to share some details on tools or concepts we use. I will happily answer questions but some replies may take a while during the compo We work on a rendition of Assembloids, a fast-paced action puzzler. The concept was originally developed by Photonstorm for the flash game 'Quartet' and we ported it to C64 and Atari2600. The original artist contributed to the C64 variant back then and we have the official ok to spread the love across multiple systems. The Atari Lynx surely was missing so far! We try our best to give it some different style and touch for each system and to make the best use of the given hardware. Not too long ago we formed some hobbyist homebrew game-dev group 'PriorArt' and you can find us here: http://priorartgames.eu For Assembloids Lynx, I (Martin) work on the code, Oliver 'v3to' Lindau does most of the main graphics and Kamil 'jammer' Wolnikowski is the man behind the sound effects and music. I get most fun out of developing for any platform when I have everything understood from scratch and am aware of every single byte written. This also means that all bugs are my own So everything is written in assembly language and I usually write my own tools. For this game the only external tool I use is 'sprpck' that basically does exactly what I need and had not time/motivation to write my own converter Thank you for it! But no other libraries, loaders, converters or routines by others were used. This may sound tedious but it is half-the-fun. Of course this approach heavily relies on information available somewhere and I thank in particular: Bjoern Spruck for detailed information and examples, Bastian Schick for much of the legacy documentation and pioneering work, Karri for sharing thoughts and enthusiasm, And LXdev for his 'Diary of an Atari Lynx developer' which was a great start! And also Bernd Thomas for his flashcard that I needed alot to test things on real hardware which still differs alot from emulation, Sascha 'Luchs' for hints and contacts and a couple of hardware-tests, i.e. for the true RGB image routine the Retrokompott podcast (with Oliver Lindau) who triggered my urge to look into the Lynx, Igor from atariage.com for constructing a 'center of knowledge and information' for the Atari Lynx + everyone involved in emulation-development which is the key for anything getting done today [sorry if I forgot something while writing this up, feel free to ping me or simply comment here] And, naturally, my own group mates for their patience during endless (still ongoing) test-iterations Preferring coding in assembler from scratch, I soon needed/wanted some own loading routine. The one I now use loads pretty fast and the whole loader fits into the smallest possible decode-unit of 50 bytes. There is an Atariage thread about the start of my routine. I also prefer to stay optimal and not 'waste' space (this is purely emotional these days as 128KB or 1MB hardly make no cost difference anymore). Anyway, Assembloids Lynx suits into a 128KB cartridge. This is already way too much text so I will take a break here and add details here and there Cheers, Martin 'enthusi' Wendt
- 41 replies
-
- 5
-
- priorart
- assembloids
- (and 5 more)
-
Dear all fellow Atarians almost a year ago, our game Assembloids2600 saw the light. http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/assembloids-2600 It's been in the AtariAge store summer last year and while it sells every now and then a single unit, I was hoping for it to me more successfull. Not for the money - I have not yet received a single penny, which is totally fine with me. Albert has sent out numerous free copies to me, the box artist, helpers and friends. One of them is in the Berlin museum of computer games even When guests see it on my shelve at home, they sometimes even ask what I had to pay to get it released like that (top notch quality). I am more than happy dealing with a guy like Albert here So thank you Al! Sales for Assembloids2600 recently topped 50 sales (not counting the free units mentioned) which is quite cool already, considering the date! I would love to recapture the past (year) and end with some open questions I have. I hope you do not mind the long text... An early version of the game was presented by a friend at Sillyventure. Some gameplay footage even made it into polish TV back then. But I feel like this is a game that you have to actually play for yourself to get an idea of what it is like. Yeah, cheap selling argument It's simply not like Tetris where watching can be just as mesmerizing as playing it. Before we finished it, we put it on display during the german Gamescom in 2016. It was played by literally hundrets of people and remained busy for 10 hours a day during the exhibition. That helped alot giving it the final subtle tuning. You can follow the thread about it here, even though I started it rather late in the process: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/216403-new-game-assembloids-2600/ Since it hit the AA store https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1094 It got 7 quite positive reviews (thank you . Some rather short, others more elaborated. All of them are highlty appreciated! 8 Bit guy featured Assembloids in one of his videos: "Modern games for Vintage systems: Assembloids, Bear Essentials, and Bittboy!" I was quite amazed by it (Just as side note, this generated not a single sale) [no, I did not use a teleprompter there, we just had one shot in a hotel room during vacation which is probably why I look so serious] Since I designed the game to work with Supercharger and actually used it for testing, I made a small video of a rather unique crossdevelopment setup - though most of the game was written on a PC I was very happy personally when Metal Jesus reviewed our game in his youtube channel! http://atariage.com/forums/topic/277618-new-games-for-old-consoles-6-games-for-nes-snes-atari-2600/?do=findComment&comment=4004927 Or a direct youtube link is here: That you enjoy this game means alot to me! In fact, I spent alot of time polishing and tuning the game mechanics to make it 'more addictive'. Some seem to hesitate when they see 'yet another puzzler', but still they enjoy it. I love the style of the 'ZeroPage HomeBrew Video Gaming' channel. They play games the way they should be played Well, reading the manual would be helpful but then again: who did that? Maybe their review is a bit symptomatic? Obviously they enjoyed playing it, yet I hear 'for kids' somewhere inbetween. Are these kind of fun quick games really mostly for kids these days? I had hoped not. (This just made me thinking, no criticism here. I really enjoyed your video alot!). In the end those that played seem to value it for exactly that: quick fun with some addictive component It was mentioned in the Atariage "Party Game ;-)" thread to my delight http://atariage.com/forums/topic/277699-best-party-games/?do=findComment&comment=4007153 Even though some people actually advised against it, as he is known for his harsh reviews, I asked the VideoGame Critic to give it a try. I consider his opinon on games subjective but honest and consistent. It got an A- which I find great! Visitors voted it 'A' even. http://videogamecritic.com/2600aa.htm It also got tagged as 'hidden gem' and 'chicks dig this' (something I can confirm after the huge Exposition here and from my wife+daughter Please read his short review - he summarizes all about the game I hoped people would feel/see. Or on his forum here: http://videogamecritic.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=39461&t=16471&p=156097&hilit=assembloids#p156097 So everyone who played it, seems to really enjoy it. Friends, family, gamers and even professional gamers I got very nice feedback from people here, as well. Thank you guys. I am open for feedback of any kind here So feel free to comment if you bought it and liked it, or didnt like it or decided not to buy it. In case you consider the pricing too high, Albert just told me that a cheaper cart+manual version will be available soon, though. Is the distribution of physical boxes with the sheer amount of releases along with more convenient SD card solutions obsolete nowadays? What do you guys think? Thanks for reading, playing and being part of this community Cheers, Martin, enthusi / PriorArt
-
Hi everyone, as of this week, Assembloids 2600 is available in the AtariAge store. https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1094 Thanks Albert! And also thanks for Thomas Jentzsch who published his savekey code which enabled us to support it for this game and all of its skill levels. I set up a simple score chart here: http://assembloids.de/scores.html and I will update it with incoming scores pasted to this thread (or other sources). Would be great to see what people reach. So far the highest scores I saw were from Sven the graphics artist who made the game with me and my wife (myself as well . During the German Gamescom last year we witnessed several people returning to our stand to improve their play. The attached file is an animated GIF from some shots during that event. I believe the highest skill levels pose a serious challenge to anyone (and quite possibly to your heart). Best wishes and thanks to all of you who helped getting this game done and out! Cheers, Martin
-
Hi I just uploaded a playable binary in this thread: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/216403-new-game-assembloids-2600/page-3?do=findComment&comment=2884033 Maybe you enjoy it a little bit. Cheers, Martin
-
- 2
-
- assembloids
- 2600
-
(and 6 more)
Tagged with: