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Dragon's Descent is now available in the AtariAge Store! https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1260 I'm currently porting I've ported a version of my Atari 2600 Roguelike, Dragon's Descent, to the Atari 7800! The latest test build can be found here: ***MAJOR SCORING REVISION*** - Hard Mode now has its own set of leaderboards, removing the 70000 point "bonus." Infinite mode doesn't affect what leaderboard you're on, only combinations of Random and Hard modes. DragonsDescent_1_7_2021.bas.a78 - High Score graphics glitch fixed DragonsDescent_1_7_2021.bas.bin - binary version of above DragonsDescent_12_16_2020.bas.a78 - Sprite revision DragonsDescent_12_16_2020.bas.bin -binary version of above DragonsDescent_3_28_2020.bas.a78 DragonsDescent_3_28_2020.bas.bin - binary version of above CONTROLS Joystick - Move the dragon around the labyrinth. The dragon is flies through the maze, and has momentum - keep that in mind! Button - The dragon will breathe fire in the direction it is facing, left or right. SETTINGS You can change the settings by choosing the options on the title screen. If the text is gold, the setting is "on." If the text is blue, the setting is "off." Infinite Maze Mode: Game will continue indefinitely, only ending with a game over. If turned off, the game will end after you complete level 7 Random Maze Mode: You will start in a randomized maze. If turned off, the maze will be the same layout each playthrough. Music: This option on the title screen toggles music on/off Hard Mode: If turned on, walls will harm you if touched. If turned off, the walls are harmless. "Hard Mode" is the same mode as the 2600 version of the game. Maze Select: Allow you to set the random "seed" when starting the maze. Move the joystick left/right to select the left or right seed, each can be set to a value between 1 and 255. The levels are procedurally generated, but are always the same progression, and the layout can be mapped. HOW TO PLAY Depending on your game settings, you may find an end to the maze on the 7th level, or the maze can continue until you are defeated, trying to attain the highest score! Each level of the maze is made up of several rooms - you can leave through any exit on the boundaries of the screen you find. To make progress in the maze, find the key on each level, and then the level's exit. The exit, resembling a door with a key imprint, will only activate if you touch it while you have the key found on the same level. Upon each new level you will face more dangers but also potentially increased power and scoring! Avoid touching walls and enemies - doing so will deplete your hit points, and eventually end your game! Scoring comes from collecting gems and defeating monsters. You get more points for defeating monsters in deeper levels, and a slightly higher score for each shot you use with stronger fire breath. In addition to a key and exit, each level of the labyrinth has a treasure room. Treasure rooms allow you to pick one of three power ups, just wait until you see the one you want: Gem - increases your score. Heart - increases your total hit points, while completely replenishing your health. Lamp - increases the strength of your fire breath, while refilling its supply. Don't stay too long on a single level, or you may find things getting much more difficult! The deeper you explore, the more monsters, dangers, and higher scores you find... You hit points are shown next to the heart icon at the bottom of the screen. Your game will end when if the hit points reach zero. The strength of your fire breath is indicated by the color and size of the flame. If you collect a flashing lamp from the treasure room, it will increase in power but you will only have a limited amount, shown at the bottom of the screen next to the flame icon. If this supply ever runs out, you will go back your initial, weakened fire breath. You can find non-flashing hearts and lamps from fallen enemies, which will replenish a small part of your hit points or fire breath, respectively. If you survive long enough, you may reach a maximum amount of hit points or firepower, in which case your health or score will be flashing. [EDIT: Older posts] -------------- DragonsDescent_2_18_2020.bas.a78 - "Reset" will reboot game from title screen, start a new game with existing parameters if used during gameplay. "Select" will return user to title screen if pressed during gameplay. DragonsDescent_2_18_2020.bas.bin - binary version of above DragonsDescent_6_25_2019.a78 Earlier build(s) here: DragonsDescent_6_14_2019.a78 This version fixes a background color bug. I also found MAME rendered the background a little dark, so I tried brightening the background tiles. Let me know if you feel this is too dark/light! Older versions: DragonsDescent_6_13_2019.a78 Dragon's Descent has you explore countless mazes filled with monsters, treasure, and power - How long can you survive, and how powerful can you get, as you seek the masters of this endless labyrinth? Here's a preview with the first three levels - and the game has much more to explore, fight and find! [EDIT: Original post text] I'm still updating the graphics (the backgrounds are the last major element I need to complete) but I wanted to post a picture or two to compare, and share little bit of my experience in porting the game. Here's a screenshot from the 7800 version compared to the 2600 version (which you can find at http://atariage.com/forums/topic/286017-dragons-descent-rogueliteaction-game/ ) Here are a few more new screenshots as I update the background tiles, compared to the old playfield graphics on the 2600: Whew! On the one hand this was easier than I feared it would be, and worked as well as I hoped. The basic logic of the game didn't really need to be touched (it's 99% Basic) - as long as it didn't touch the graphics/collision detection. What took the longest was integrating/updating the new graphics - I actually find the system pretty fun to use, although there was a little learning curve, as with anything. I also realized that I designed the 2600 version of the game to take advantage of a lot of the older machine's quirks and limitations (limited sprites, good but limited collision detection, built-in mirroring, etc.), limitations that the 7800 often directly addresses. This actually made things more complicated than if I had decided to make the game for the 7800 first. I went from a pretty big Atari 2600 game (16k) to a very small 7800 game (32k) - mechanically it's a near-identical game, but after updating the graphics, incorporating the character/tile system, adding text to menus (hey, there's space/expectation for text now!) and updating the collision systems, the extra 16k filled up pretty quickly! The one thing I'm possibly looking to add is music - I have about 200-400k left as I look at the possibility of adding music, and fix some lingering menu bugs - The Basic music tracker included is very impressive, and would even sorta fit in the space available, but doesn't seem to play nice with the existing method I'm using to handle sound. I might see how far I can get with a more limited/customized method of storing/playing music - I know the TIA isn't the most melodious of chips, and music is not one of my creative strengths, but it's something I've been playing with regardless. I plan on posting updates here as I get the game releasable. It's perfectly playable at the moment, but I still have some old graphics and menus that need updating. I might post a few questions as I continue, but I've worked through a lot of unknowns so far - it's been a fun experience, and the 7800 is a pretty fun platform to work with - thanks to everyone involved with developing/supporting 7800 Basic!

https://www.mickmuze.com Hey everyone, I'm Mick. A little while ago I decided to try and learn batari Basic and finish what I hope would be considered a good game in 30 days of programming. I kept a daily journal as I did this and the game is now complete. I am currently working on creating the artwork and designing the manual but thought I would release my development notes as a blog in the mean time. So the link to the daily blog is above if you are interested. Cheers Mick

DRAGON'S DESCENT Direct your dragon through a sprawling labyrinth, hunting for treasure, power, and danger! Dragon's Descent is currently part of the Holiday Homebrew High Score Competition - here is a ROM you can use for the contest: DragonsDescent_Holiday_2019.bin Now for sale on the AtariAge Store! Instructions on how to play below... -Thousands of possible maps to explore, either randomly selected or predetermined -Eight different types of enemies -One mid boss, one final boss, one hidden boss -Powerups to increase firepower or health as you delve deeper into the labyrinth ...and an easter egg or two, of course! Here's a video of the first three levels, up to the midboss. The default mode has four more levels ending with the final boss, and other modes allow potentially thousands of different levels! This game is, among other things, an experiment in procedural maze generation for the Atari 2600 - There are a few secrets to find, so I won't reveal everything here, but I will give a basic outline of the controls and mechanics. I posted little write up of how I generated the mazes, and programmed the game in general. Many thanks to those on this board who have posted an incredible amount of useful information, as well as those who have authored the kernels and other components on which this game has been programmed. STORY Legends speak of a labyrinth created by the mind of a dreaming elder dragon. This maze is filled with the promise of wealth, power and danger-an endless length of corridors, with spectres and monsters appearing out of thin air, and strange happenings occurring the deeper one travels and survives. You are a young dragon yourself, perhaps trapped here, perhaps tempted by the wealth and power that drives your kind. Regardless, you have little choice but to find your way through the corridors and chambers of the labyrinth, finding glory, or perhaps escape... CONTROLS Joystick - Move the dragon around the labyrinth. Button - The dragon will breathe fire in the direction it is facing. SETTINGS Left Difficulty A - Game will continue indefinitely, only ending with a game over. Left Difficulty B - Game will end after you complete level 7 Right Difficulty A - You will start in a randomized maze. Right Difficulty B - Maze will be the same layout each playthrough. Game Select (Make sure right difficulty is also set to "B") - Will allow you to set the random "seed" when starting the maze. Move the joystick left/right to select the left or right seed, each can be set to a value between 1 and 255. The title screen will reflect what options the game is set to - an infinity symbol for an unending maze, and an alternating maze pattern for random mazes. HOW TO PLAY Depending on your game settings, you may find an end to the maze on the 7th level, or the maze can continue until you are defeated, trying to attain the highest score! A - The Player B - Dragonfire C - Monster D - Firepower Meter E - Score F - Health Meter G - Room exit Each level of the maze is made up of several rooms - you can leave through any exit on the boundaries of the screen you find. To make progress in the maze, find the key on each level, and then the level's exit. The exit, resembling a door with a key imprint, will only activate if you touch it while you have the key found on the same level. Upon each new level you will face more dangers but also potentially increased power and scoring! Key Exit Avoid touching walls and enemies - doing so will deplete your hit points, and eventually terminate your game! Scoring comes from collecting gems and defeating monsters. You get more points for defeating monsters in deeper levels, and a slightly higher score for each shot you use with higher fire breath power. In addition to a key and exit, each level of the labyrinth has a treasure room: This room allows you to pick one of three power ups, just wait until you see the one you want: Gem - increases your score. Heart - increases your total hit points, while completely replenishing your health. Lamp - increases the strength of your fire breath, while refilling its supply. Don't stay too long on a single level, or you may find things getting much more difficult! The deeper you explore, the more monsters, dangers, and higher scores you find... Your hit points are indicated by meter on the right, as well as the color of the dragon. The strength of your fire breath is indicated by the color of your score, as well as the size the fire itself. If your firepower ever increased, you only have a limited amount you must replenish somehow - this amount is indicated by the meter on the left. If it ever runs out, you will go back your initial, weakened fire breath. You can find non-flashing hearts and lamps from fallen enemies, which will replenish a small part of your hit points or fire breath, respectively. If you survive long enough, you may reach a maximum amount of hit points or firepower, in which case your health meters or score will be flashing. SCORING Defeating Enemies: Fiery Eye - 5 points Medusae - 10 points Dragon Head Sentry - 10 points Teleporting Masque - 20 points Janus Guardian - 25 points Ghost - 20 points Dragon - 25 points Shadow - just 1 point base, if you can even manage it. Getting rid of it might be reward enough, though... Revenant Dragon (Midboss) - 500 points Elder Dragon (Boss) - 1000 points Jeweled Dragon (a hidden beast) - 2000 points Collecting a gemstone in a treasure room will get you 500 points. Your strength of your firepower is also added to your score whenever you hit an enemy with your fire breath, so you can gain 1-6 points for every hit even if an enemy is not defeated. Defeating enemies on lower levels adds further bonuses: Level 2 - 1 point Level 3 - 2 points Level 4 - 3 points Level 5 - 4 points Level 6 - 5 points Level 7 - 10 points Level 8+ - 15 points HINTS -Find a balance between increasing your hit points and increasing your firepower - each level gives you the opportunity to do one or the other. -Gems give you large amounts of points, but your forgo an increase of power for that level - they're for those brave or foolish enough to think they can survive regardless. -The beginner mode always gives you the same maze, be sure you become familiar with the game before tackling the random mazes offered by the advanced mode. -Each enemy has a specific type of behavior, learn all of them-and learn how to counter them! -Time can be your enemy, but remember that you don't have to fight everything - pick your battles! -Despite the enticement to hurry, be patient and careful! Most situations can be escaped with a little bit of caution and forethought, and impatience has ended more games than the cruellest monster. There are many secrets to discover within the labyrinth, so I won't tell you everything here! Older builds: Another change to the door graphic - the door should be flashing with a key symbol. DragonsDescent_2019_8_15_2019.bin This older build has a changed the graphic for the exit. I even squeezed a few more bytes out so that it has "closed" and "open" graphics, depending on whether you have a key. I'm hoping this is close to the final version, so any feedback on how it plays is appreciated! DragonsDescent_2019_8_12.bin I've added four separate high scores, one for each "mode" - they should show up when you have the appropriate switches/settings applied on the title screen. I think it works properly (with caveats, for instance you can fool it by using the switches mid-game) but I would appreciate feedback! I also added an easter egg bug fix: DragonsDescent_2019_May_HiScoreTests.bin DragonsDescent_3_22_2019_Beta8.bin 3-22-2019 Another update - found a semi-exploit (really just method of scoring late game that results in boring gameplay) and adjusted things to discourage the behavior. DragonsDescent_3_19_2019_Beta7.bin 3-20-2019 Another update - no better method to find a bug or quirk in a project than to claim it's finished! The method to reach the hidden boss, while functional, had some odd loopholes and inconsistencies that I wanted to close. Fixed a thematic inconsistency involved with getting to the hidden bonus boss. DragonsDescent_3_5_2019_Beta6.bin - Font change and a few other tiny adjustments. DragonsDescent_1_10_2019_Beta5.bin - Retry random maze option (press up or down on the Game Over screen to see the "Retry Maze" screen, press button to start again), starting rooms have no enemies, score placement adjusted. DragonsDescent_12_16_2018_Beta4.bin - Maze generation fix, random seed shown when picking random level, other small fixes I might go into more details about what I did to fix the maze generation later - the short answer is that every seed -seems- to work now, without the hacky checker I had in earlier versions. I also added a -little- more time solve a given level before various "complications" arise. It can still be a little mean. I'm keeping an informal version history even as I remove the older versions - I can repost them if folks clamor for the older versions, but hopefully the bugs present in them have been addressed. 3-5-2019 - Changed to a custom font. Semi-final build. 12-16-2018 - Current public version. All attempted maps seem to be solvable, certain UI color cycling adjusted. 12-15-2018 - Tentative "fixed" beta for random mazes This version has a band-aid for the random mode bug - I'm keeping it here for the moment in case the above version has some unforseen bug or error. 12-14-2018 - Old version, only play the default mode (Left/Right switches set to "B") on this one. I've tentatively tested it on my ol' sixer as well as the Flashback Portable, and the game seems to run ok, although I would welcome any bugs/issues found if anyone else plays. I'm curious to see what people find! Updates: -You can now retry a randomly generated maze by pressing up or down on the Game Over screen - when you see words "Retry Maze," press the button to restart the game at your old starting point. -Starting rooms on a level no longer generate enemies, giving you some time to breathe or get used to the controls. -Hopefully the level generation bug is fixed - any random seed should generate a solvable level. When choosing a random level, you will be shown the seed in case you want to try the level again. -I also fixed a flashing problem to a more pleasant "pulsing" effect for max health/fire breath. DragonsDescent_2019_April_Competition.bin

So after completing my XB version of Oregon Trail, I decided to go a different direction entirely and, since I saw a thread from about four-and-a-half years ago regarding a Rogue-like game for the TI: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/157876-roguelike/ but never seeing a resulting game, I thought it would be a cool idea to run with. I also saw a similar game on Jim Gerrie's TRS-80 MC-10 website, specifically here: http://jimgerrie.blogspot.ca/2013/01/grail-of-gods-port.html which is itself a port of a DarkBasic 20-line challenge, so I thought this looked promising and doable. The only issue I could think of was how slow it would run on a stock TI. That concern proved well-founded. I programmed it in Extended BASIC as it's so much easier to use than standard TI BASIC. The game absolutely crawls in Normal speed in Tursi's Classic99 and is playable but still sluggish in CPU Overdrive. Thus I compiled it using Harry Wilhelm's XB compiler, which presented its own challenge in additional manipulating of the code to get it compliant with the compiler's known requirements, plus a couple of other things that don't seem to compile properly even though they are supposed to, or don't work the same as in interpreted XB. The common thread for the things that didn't work right involved strings. Regardless, I came up with workarounds and am pretty satisfied with the end result. So what I ended up with is a simple 8-level dungeon crawler using ASCII characters. I gave up on generating random mazes pretty early when it was taking 10 minutes in CPU Overdrive to get one level to 10% completion. So I "borrowed" the dungeon layouts from the "Doom" dungeon in Ultima III with very minor adjustments. The levels are 17x17 (15x15 explorable due to the border), each with static locations for gold, traps, potions, starting location, and exit, plus random placement of monsters, weapons and armor. For those playing it, I will note that there is really no difference in any of the weapons or armor that you find. A rusty dagger will increase your weapon meter exactly the same as a magic claymore, the same as cloth gloves will increase your armor score as much as plate armor. The original was like this, so I didn't deviate from that, at least for this initial version of the game. I just wanted to make certain I could get something like this to work and was happy to find that I was able to. Also, the only plot is to get to level 8 and claim the Grail of the Gods. Goals can be to see how much (or little) gold you can get, how high a rank you can achieve by wiping out all of the monsters, or how low a rank you can achieve yet still reach the Grail. Hope you enjoy playing it as much as I did programming it. The attached ZIP file contains the compiled version of the program (GRAIL-C), the XB source that the compiler used (GRAILEB), and a txt file of the program listing with some explanations at the beginning of it. Latest version available in this post: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/271679-grail-of-the-gods-a-rogue-like-game-in-compiled-xb/?p=3922022 GrailOfTheGods-TI-XB.zip

I've been on an Angband kick lately. Finally settled on Dwarf Cleric as my character and have been having a lot of luck. I had a nice Lightning Maul and Mace of Orc Slaying then like an idiot I walked into a swarm of enemies and got zerged to death. Level 26 at 1000', furthest I've gotten so far. About to start up again. I both hate and love this game

A few months ago, the alpha version of this game caught my attention an onlive 'indie showcase,' but I was too late to try it out. The full version is due out friday (though I don't believe onlive will be carrying it). If you haven't seen it, take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr3QHJJnAUA It claims to be a roguelike, and with random universes, permadeath, and short gameplay sessions it seems to hit some of the high points of the genre with a theme more compatible with my tastes. Cost on it will be $10. Did anybody here jump on the kickstarter for beta access? It'd be nice to get some more details on mechanics. On the down side, I'm reading resolution problems running it on 1024x600 netbooks, which is where I was hoping to play it. It seems like about the perfect netbook game, so that is a shame. It wants 1280x768, IIRC. I believe there will be a demo shortly after release, and I may have to wait for that to try it.

I've heard Desktop Dungeons described as a 10-minute "dungeon crawl" or "roguelike," and that's really not a bad summation (though it's definitely closer to the latter). You take your character (picking race and class) and attempt to navigate your way through the dungeon and ulti mately take on the boss character (they're at level 10, you always start at level 1). The only way you'll do this is by carefully using what potions and spells you're able to find or buy and very carefully working your way up to as close to level 10 as possible. It's very challenging, but doable once you get the hang of it (unless the dungeon randomization really stacks the deck against you impossibly, which it can do). As you clear the levels, you'll unlock more areas, challenges and classes to play, so it's fairly addicting. Probably one of the biggest things going for it is its length. If you're looking for some bite-size gaming that actually satisfies your sense of progression, Desktop Dungeons fits the bill. It comes in Windows and Mac flavors and you can download it for free at DesktopDungeons.net today.