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Hello,I have decided to start a blog to record and report the progress I am making on the many Atari related projects I have going on at any time. If you are interested by any of my planned projects please feel free to add comments or suggestions for what you think would make them even better. I have just finished moving my whole family and all my houshold goods from IL to NY to begin a new job. As I get settled in I plan to have much more time to commit to these projects than I have in the past because my new job requires fewer hours. My top project goal is to have a 1K entry in the 2005 mini game competition. I am aiming to have a Jupiter Lander clone running on the 2600. I will then expand that game into a full 4K version with many more features for general release to the public through AA and/or Packrat VG. A big annoucement this week is that Jarett over at Packrat VG has graduated from college and landed a new job. He is now finally able to commit some time back into Packrat VG. As a result, my joint Wolfenstein hack with neotokeo2001 is finally shipping its first run. I look forward to playing the real cartridge on my system. If you have been holding off from ordering from Packrat VG, you can rest assured that they are up and running again now that pesky things like higher education and employment are taken care of. Here is a quick break down of the projects I have boiling around in my head and my workshop/computer harddrive:VCS Lander: --------------This is the game I will first target to complete as a 1K game by September for the 2005 mini game competition. You will control a ship with limited fuel and attempt to safely land at different locations of varying difficulty as many times as you can. I have a working 1st draft demo that allows a player to move a ship around a landscape made with striped PF graphics. I am not happy with it though so I have begun a more ambitious approach that uses a kernel that executes a script to modify some self modifying code in RAM. The result is to be vector-like graphics of monochrome lines forming a moonscape like the Atari Lunar Lander arcade game. As your ship nears a landing site, the view will be magnified 2x.In the 1K version controls will be like in Jupiter Lander with the ship fixed in a vertical position. In the full version the ship will rotate and the only motive thrust for the ship will be the main thruster. RPG Project:---------------I want to create an RPG for the VCS. My main approach on this project is guided by my discussions with neotokeo2001 who originated the idea of porting Dice Warrior from the NES to the VCS. Its definitely a feasible project, and I plan to get past the paper planning stage with it or something similar some day.Light Gun Project:---------------------I want to tackle the challenge of using the light gun for player input on the VCS. With either a wild west shoot-out game, or a Sci-Fi themed shooter as the end product. Little Man Project:---------------------I want to create a platform game for the VCS. I envision a single screen platformer (no scrolling) with elements like ladders, elevators, vanishing floors and enemies that hunt the player down. I have a working title of Little Man, and I have a notebook with some concepts I outlined for the game long ago on the C-64. I am working to convert those ideas to the VCS.Four Player Indy 500 Project:----------------------------------With an adapter and the right software driver, it would be possible to connect 4 driving controllers to the VCS. I envision a 4 player Indy 500 game with the players cars flickering at 30 Hz which I know is exceptable on a monochome background from my work on Wolfenstein. The adapters could be used to make other 4 player games it simply would need programmers to support it.Paddle Stick Adapter Project:---------------------------------The goal of this project is to create an adapter to allow you to plug a 5200 joystick into the VCS and use it in place of a pair of VCS paddles. The result is an analog joystick for the VCS. I have a working prototype of this device. I have used it to play Marble Craze and have managed to reach level 16 in that game using it. It also makes games like Kaboom and Circus Atari playable with a joystick motion. You can control 2 Warlord shield independently, but doing that hurt my head The major problem with it as it is, is that you have to hold the joytistick rotated 90 degrees to the right for Marble Craze. I need to develop a switching and inversion circuit that will swap the horizontal and veritcal voltage values and flip the voltage for either axis from the joystick allowing the joystick to be held the correct way for any game. Game Genie Project:------------------------This is an ambitious project to create a device with similar function to the Game Genie for other classic systems to work on the VCS. I have the basic design roughed out on paper, but I am much more interested in creating real games for the VCS at this timer than I am at getting this beast to work. Someday though, it will move to the front of the line. The main features would be:- Ability to manipulate memory locations to hold any fixed value, thereby granting infinite lives, time, etc.- Ability to pause and save a game state to flash to be restored later.- Ability to save high scores and store them by game title so when you plug a cartridge in the system recognizes it from its ROM image, and displays all saved games and high scores for that game in the system. * Some features would only work with non-bankswitched games.Sorry that was so long winded. I will post progress as it happens.Cheers!Rob
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We had a visit from corporate central. They have decided to shut down the group I am with. They are calling it site consolidation since we are a remote engineering group, but I doubt anyone at the office has any desire to move to the HQ in Ohio. I know I don't because I just moved cross state last June, and that was hard enough on my family. I am really not worried about finding new work (yet). There is a lot of high tech stuff around here. I am going to be surprised if I like my new work as much though. It was a nice small group of engineers that all got along really well. Its going to be a shame to see it broken apart. It was inevitable though. Our jobs are collateral damage for the layoffs and troubles at GM and Ford. With job hunting in my near future I doubt I will be able to make an entry for the 2006 minigame competition. I was really hoping to have an entry this year. Oh well. Cheers!
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I finally got off my lazy butt and cleaned up the source code for my 13-character no-flicker technique. I have created a completely unexciting demo showcasing the trick. The detailed description of how it works is given in Draw13.inc so I won't go into it here. I plan to use this trick to display the level names in Little Man. I hope other programmers find them useful too. There is a lot of room for fun effects to be done: bouncing text, whirling colored text, scrolling text. I didn't do anything cool like that for the demo becuase I want to get going on my mini-game entry. I am still hoping to squeeze into the 1K deadline. Enjoy! Rob BTW: This demo will not work correctly in Stella which does not correctly emulate the behavior of RESBL. You will need to use Z26, or real hardware to see it work correctly.
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Hello,Please find attached the release candidate ROM for the updated Wolfenstein hack. It has been decided by the development team that this version will be called Wolfenstein - The Next Mission. There may still be some changes to the enemy graphics, but the final functionality is in place barring a terrible bug is found. Here is a list of the key changes from the original release:1. There are 4 level layouts that repeat twice to make 8 levels rather than 2 layouts repeated 4 times.2. I updated some colors to make them brighter.3. The patroling guards have 4 starting positions now. In the original they had only two starting positions.4. Picking up the gun or ammo gives you exactly 8 bullets total. So the player can never have more than 8 bullets on hand. I wanted to up the difficulty a pinch, so I made this change. 8 bullets is also the number of bullets in a German Luger pistol, and the max number shown by the ammo bar, so I think it works well. 5. I fixed a bug in the original for randomizing room contents that made ammo show up either too often or not enough. 6. The secret level is easier to find.7. I updated two zoomed room layouts. One has a minor change, the other I gave a complete overhaul. Features that didn't make it: - Have the player not teleport to the start of level every time he is hit.- Robot are immune to the knife. - Enemies that can shoot. Feedback and problem reports are always welcome.Cheers!Rob
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Its been a long time since I posted anything. I am working on a new release of Wolfenstein with neotokeo2001 and Nukey Shay. Neo and Nukey came up with the clever idea to double the 4K ROM and animate the game sprites. I am working on updating the level maps, fixing a couple bugs from the original, and adding a couple new features as space and free time permit. The new release will be offered through the AA store so hopefully the shipping problems of the past will remain in the past. I am attaching a work in progress binary. The big changes so far are to fix a problem with the room randomizer, that could make thing unrandom. I also added 2 more level maps. There is a bit of a glitch on the level map switch that I need to iron out. It works fine, but makes a nasty visual glitch some times. The life bar was changed from dots to a continuous bar. I am not sure if I like it or not. Looking to finish within the 1st half of February. Cheers!