Cave-In (PAL50/60 versions available)

[espire8]

Wow, great prorgess! Your new rockslide screen is better now, I could not tell how my version would look like and had a feeling it was too tight, but thought you could work with it as you see fit anyway. And thanks for implementing the slowdown idea, (though the slow movement looks shakey, maybe that can be smoothed out by using the same rate speed as the slow moving monster). indy is quick with his feet at full health which allows for easy navigating and out running slow enemies, so the weakness in health nicely ramps up the balance in difficulty. How about slowing him down one more step to 1/3 speed on the last block of health so even the slow monsters can outchase him? Besides, if players already know where to find the healing fountain, you should make it harder to reach for players who risk letting their health sink so low as to get to the fountain at a crawl, and suddenly replenished to full speed! That's another play element I think you should take advantage of so players will have more reason to watch and keep their health up, that 'risk factor' makes it more fun.

 

I know these ideas are late but they seem to come to me only while i'm playing your game, anyway, I had another idea -that classic bolder chase in Raiders that indy outran, you can do this here using the same screens you used for the railcar, just have a large boulder moving side to side which indy must past on foot to get to the other side by ducking into the wall and getting around it at the right time. It would be pretty easy at full health but if their health is low they'er in trouble. (see pic for example)

I love the railcar screen, KEEP IT! For another idea, perhaps you can reuse only the falling rocks in the railcar screen elsewhere in the game. How about causing a rock to fall from top to bottom of the screen every time indy fires his loud gun in all parts of the cave immediately after killing a monster? and having occasional rocks falling sideways in all the lava cave screens as you have it in the rockslide? or perhaps causing a rock to fall for touching the cave walls with the earthquake noise?

Don't know if there's room for this but at least I can say I really enjoy this even without in-game music, actualy it don't need it, if I had a choice I'd like to see more falling rock hazzards due to firing a loud gun in a cave in.

 

That's as far as I can see for play elements here, just wanted to pass off those thoughts while I was playing. Hope they sound good to you and that there's room for them if you decide you like to use em' as you'er welcomed to .

Edited September 28, 2007 by espire8

[+Propane13]

Do you need help with the music?

I could probably try to help, if all else fails.

Been awhile since I wrote anything for 2600, but it would be a shame to have this gem go out without that little extra "oomph".

 

So, what are the limitations?

Are we stuck in one bank, and if so, how many bytes do we have to work with?

Or, can we swap banks for a little bit, and therefore keep things pretty open?

 

-John

[gambler172]

Hi Steve

Checked the new version on the emulator and i think,i found a bug.I ran arround and was in the lava room(the one,which is shown in the manual).

But suddenly,when touching a wall,i was sucked into it and could not escape.Certainly,i died after a few seconds.It was not possible to move away.I could not move anymore.

On sunday,i will check it on real hardware.

But now another thing.The railway scene is great.

Everything is great in "Cave In".This might become my game of the year 2007.

greetings Walter

[gambler172]

Hi Steve

Oh i forgot;maybe i have another idea for a minigame.How about a "Boulder Dash" like screen.You must collect items,try to avoid boulders or enemies,to get another item or to reach a hidden door.

But i do not know,if this can be realized,but it would be nice to see such a minigame.

greetings Walter

[mos6507]

Well done.

Edited September 28, 2007 by mos6507

[Fort Apocalypse]

I ran arround and was in the lava room(the one,which is shown in the manual).

But suddenly,when touching a wall,i was sucked into it and could not escape.

 

Sounds like good simulation of a lava wall to me, although I would assume that I would turn into a flaming ball of fire and my charred skeleton would melt into the lava, but I would settle for just being sucked into it.

[Fort Apocalypse]

Hi Steve

Oh i forgot;maybe i have another idea for a minigame.How about a "Boulder Dash" like screen.You must collect items,try to avoid boulders or enemies,to get another item or to reach a hidden door.

But i do not know,if this can be realized,but it would be nice to see such a minigame.

greetings Walter

 

I like the idea of Boulder Dash. Would be cool to do as a standalone 2600 game too, but I guess you would pretty much be stuck with a single screen's worth of playfield. Seems like maintaining the state of the dirt, rocks, diamonds, enemies would be too difficult if you had more than one screen's worth of playfield.

Edited September 29, 2007 by Fort Apocalypse

[SeaGtGruff]

Hi Steve

Oh i forgot;maybe i have another idea for a minigame.How about a "Boulder Dash" like screen.You must collect items,try to avoid boulders or enemies,to get another item or to reach a hidden door.

But i do not know,if this can be realized,but it would be nice to see such a minigame.

greetings Walter

 

I like the idea of Boulder Dash. Would be cool to do as a standalone 2600 game too, but I guess you would pretty much be stuck with a single screen's worth of playfield. Seems like maintaining the state of the dirt, rocks, diamonds, enemies would be too difficult if you had more than one screen's worth of playfield.

Boulder Dash has already been done for the 2600, but unfortunately, it can't be released.

 

Michael

[Fort Apocalypse]

Boulder Dash has already been done for the 2600, but unfortunately, it can't be released.

 

Michael

 

That sucks. I'm assuming it is tied up in some legal issue.

 

Edit: I just now found the thread where the Boulder Dash stuff is discussed here: Boulder Dash for the 2600. This is totally ridiculous, but at the same time I think it is super cool that this game has lived on.

Edited October 10, 2007 by Fort Apocalypse

[espire8]

Hi Steve

Oh i forgot;maybe i have another idea for a minigame.How about a "Boulder Dash" like screen.You must collect items,try to avoid boulders or enemies,to get another item or to reach a hidden door.

But i do not know,if this can be realized,but it would be nice to see such a minigame.

greetings Walter

 

I like the idea of Boulder Dash. Would be cool to do as a standalone 2600 game too, but I guess you would pretty much be stuck with a single screen's worth of playfield. Seems like maintaining the state of the dirt, rocks, diamonds, enemies would be too difficult if you had more than one screen's worth of playfield.

I would think likewise because of the way the cave in kernal is set up to have only 2 detailed sprites (the player hero and the single monster he encounters) on the screen at one time in order to avoid flicker. So that's why I try to offer suggestions to take advantage of features already grafted into the game -such as reusing the railcar's playfield scene (as shown in the mock up several posts above), have indy run freely on foot while keeping the rocks that fall down from the tunnle's ceiling for indy to avoid and replacing the railcar with a huge boulder that moves left and right across the screen while slowly bouncing up and down to give the challenge of scooting by without getting pinned against the wall or stags. This is not to say to replace the railcar scene, but rather to add a 'boulder run' scene elsewhere in the map. Maybe the sprite that represents the warp and healing rooms can also be used as the boulder image to save some bytes. If that's doable i think it's worth a try.

[MausBoy]

It seems like you would still have the rom space and the cycles to create a lot more monsters and obsticles using the ball. You can do a lot with it with some creativity.

[gambler172]

Hi Guys

I do not want a complete "Boulder Dash",i would like to see only a "Boulder Dash"like screen as miniplay.

But certainly,it would be great,if there is someone,who could do a BD in Batari Basic.

 

Hi Steve

I checked the actual version of "Cave In"with real hardware and i have good news for you.I tried several times to get this bug(from the emulator)in the lava room,but everything works great.No bugs found.

greetings Walter

[+Atarius Maximus]

The gameplay portion of this game is 100% complete now. Here's the final things on my to-do list:

 

1. Titlescreen Music and/or music for the final "you won the game" screen.

2. Check and tweak all sound effects. Most of my testing is done at work with no sound - I need to make sure all sound effects work correctly.

3. Bug testing. There are specific areas I need to test on real hardware as well.

A. Done - Entering and exiting secret rooms - need to make sure they don't make the screen roll

B. Done - Enemy death animation - need to make sure it doesn't cause a screen roll. I may adjust the speed of the animation or number of frames used.

C. That the game is winnable - I need to play through an entire game without using the debug mode cheats.

D. Further test and make sure all items work as expected (shield, gun powerup, keys, etc) in all areas/rooms of the game.

4. Create final version of the map and instruction manual.

Well, I've been really busy the past few weeks and haven't had much time to work on the game or read the forums. I made some more bugfix changes to the code - there was a severe screen roll when changing to and from the secret rooms that I've fixed, and somewhere along the way I must have accidently deleted the code that let you discover the hidden keys, I've added that back in. The only items on that list that are complete are 3A and 3B.

 

How about causing a rock to fall from top to bottom of the screen every time indy fires his loud gun in all parts of the cave immediately after killing a monster? and having occasional rocks falling sideways in all the lava cave screens as you have it in the rockslide? or perhaps causing a rock to fall for touching the cave walls with the earthquake noise?

I like all of those ideas. I can try and implement one or more of those in the next revision. The problem always comes in when I do hardware testing, I won't know what will work until I test it. I guess I'm not 100% done with gameplay additions after all.

 

Do you need help with the music?

I could probably try to help, if all else fails.

Been awhile since I wrote anything for 2600, but it would be a shame to have this gem go out without that little extra "oomph".

 

So, what are the limitations?

Are we stuck in one bank, and if so, how many bytes do we have to work with?

Or, can we swap banks for a little bit, and therefore keep things pretty open?

 

-John

CurtisP had offered as well, but I'd love to see what you could come up too with if you've got the time. I'm sure I could do a little cleanup in some of the banks if I looked, and some things could probably be moved around between banks. Here's what the free space looks like in the current version:

 

140 bytes of ROM space left in bank 1

966 bytes of ROM space left in bank 2

603 bytes of ROM space left in bank 3

1113 bytes of ROM space left in bank 4

193 bytes of ROM space left in bank 5

248 bytes of ROM space left in bank 6

577 bytes of ROM space left in bank 7

164 bytes of ROM space left in bank 8

 

Currently, the titlescreen asm code is in bank 7, where there's only 577 bytes free. Is that enough space? Also, since the titlescreen doesn't use bB, it's all asm, so any music code written for that screen would have to be added to that mini-kernel. I don't necessarily think we'd be stuck using one bank to add music, but it may complicate it a little bit. If you're interested, shoot me a PM. I agree it would be a great way to add a little extra "oomph" to the game...but I'm positive I can't do it myself.

 

It seems like you would still have the rom space and the cycles to create a lot more monsters and obsticles using the ball. You can do a lot with it with some creativity

 

You're right, I could add some more obstacles with the ball. I'd have to balance it's use with that of the shield, however, which also uses the ball - I couldn't have both on the screen at once.

 

I've been fighting with using too many cycles for much of the development of this game - most of my revisions have been to fix hardware compatibility issues. Cycle usage is still a problem when you fire the gun, but otherwise I seem to be in good shape. On my old 1980's TV I don't notice it, but when I hook up the Atari to my large screen TV you can see a very slight screen jitter when you fire your gun, and it only happens when you fire near the bottom of the screen. It's so minor that I don't think I'm really going to worry about it - especially since shaking the screen is already part of the game.

 

I checked the actual version of "Cave In"with real hardware and i have good news for you.I tried several times to get this bug(from the emulator)in the lava room,but everything works great.No bugs found.

Thanks for continuing to test this for me Walter, you've been a great help!

 

 

Thanks to everybody for all the feedback!

 

Steve

adv161source.txt

adv161.bin

[gambler172]

Hi Steve

Great;i will check at weekend.

greetings Walter

[gambler172]

Hi Steve

Checked the actual version on my 7800 system.Works great.I did not find any bugs or so,but i let you know,if i should find any.

greetings Walter

[+Atarius Maximus]

I've had this version ready for a while, but I haven't had any time to test it at home on the CC2. This update may cause hardware compatibility problems, so I may have to remove or change this feature. There are now rocks that fall in a random pattern after you kill an enemy, but only when you're in the locked cave areas. If you fire your gun or touch a playfield wall, they will fall faster. I wanted to make those areas of the game a little more challenging, so that worked out well. There were no other changes to this version.

 

Steve

adv163source.txt

adv163.bin

[+Atarius Maximus]

I've had this version ready for a while, but I haven't had any time to test it at home on the CC2. This update may cause hardware compatibility problems, so I may have to remove or change this feature. There are now rocks that fall in a random pattern after you kill an enemy, but only when you're in the locked cave areas. If you fire your gun or touch a playfield wall, they will fall faster. I wanted to make those areas of the game a little more challenging, so that worked out well. There were no other changes to this version.

 

Steve

 

 

As I suspected it would, the falling rocks caused some hardware compatibility problems. I had to remove that feature. I think the gameplay additions have come to an end - anything else I add now just causes more problems. There just aren't any cycles left to add more features.

 

I was working a little bit on adding a titlescreen song, and I've got the music engine code working. The only problem is the song itself -- it's from the demo by Kirk Israel at (http://www.alienbill.com/2600/basic/music/), so it's the same title music as Joust Pong/FlapPing. Now that I've got a working music engine, I might be able to come up with a workable title song. I'm just not very good at making music.

 

So, here's the latest update, minus the falling rocks, with the addition of a title screen song.

 

Steve

adv164.bin

adv164source.txt

[gambler172]

I've had this version ready for a while, but I haven't had any time to test it at home on the CC2. This update may cause hardware compatibility problems, so I may have to remove or change this feature. There are now rocks that fall in a random pattern after you kill an enemy, but only when you're in the locked cave areas. If you fire your gun or touch a playfield wall, they will fall faster. I wanted to make those areas of the game a little more challenging, so that worked out well. There were no other changes to this version.

 

Steve

Hi Steve

I checked this version on my 7800 Pal system.And there are no problems with the rocks.I think it is a nice addition to the game.

greetings Walter

[gambler172]

Hi Steve

Will check the 164 at weekend.

greetings Walter

[+Atarius Maximus]

I've had this version ready for a while, but I haven't had any time to test it at home on the CC2. This update may cause hardware compatibility problems, so I may have to remove or change this feature. There are now rocks that fall in a random pattern after you kill an enemy, but only when you're in the locked cave areas. If you fire your gun or touch a playfield wall, they will fall faster. I wanted to make those areas of the game a little more challenging, so that worked out well. There were no other changes to this version.

 

Steve

Hi Steve

I checked this version on my 7800 Pal system.And there are no problems with the rocks.I think it is a nice addition to the game.

greetings Walter

 

That's cool that it works on your system, I'm not sure why I would see a problem on my 7800 NTSC system and there would be no issues on a 7800 PAL system. When I tried it on my 7800, the screen shakes up and down a little bit when the rocks are falling, and I also noticed some more minor screen shaking with that version on any room you're in, even if you're not in a room with falling rocks. Unfortunately, if it happens on my system, it's likely to happen on other NTSC systems, so I'm going to have to remove that feature. Sorry.

 

Steve

[CurtisP]

I'm not sure why I would see a problem on my 7800 NTSC system and there would be no issues on a 7800 PAL system. When I tried it on my 7800, the screen shakes up and down a little bit when the rocks are falling, and I also noticed some more minor screen shaking with that version on any room you're in, even if you're not in a room with falling rocks.

 

Having jitter in NTSC and not in PAL is a pretty clear indication that you are using too many cycles, since there are more cycles available per frame on a PAL system AFAIK.

[espire8]

That's cool that it works on your system, I'm not sure why I would see a problem on my 7800 NTSC system and there would be no issues on a 7800 PAL system. When I tried it on my 7800, the screen shakes up and down a little bit when the rocks are falling, and I also noticed some more minor screen shaking with that version on any room you're in, even if you're not in a room with falling rocks. Unfortunately, if it happens on my system, it's likely to happen on other NTSC systems, so I'm going to have to remove that feature. Sorry.

 

Steve

 

That's too bad about the cycles.

 

I was hopeing there could be a little more screens that present itself as more of an obstical course because the maze itself is pretty straight forward and me as a player, I do feel there's too much repetition of moving from screen to screen and shooting at a single monster which is quite easy too do without losing health at all.

So here's another idea: The game needs to have more urgency and this is a large enough maze to get lost in. Since the basic idea is to get out of the cave with the crown alive, -give the player a limited amount of time to complete the quest by using the health status bar and have it decrease a notch automaticaly after a certain amount of time, gradualy depleting and endding the game if the health runs out (he dies). The only way to replenish to full health is at the water fountain. The medical box will only 'reset' the clock for the current notch of health before it goes down another notch. I hope plan to keep in the slow speed of the hero at low health, that would complement this key element of play.

 

Also, the idea of the boulder run scene came to me when my game endded in the railcar tunnle where the car sprite was replaced with a 'GAME OVER' rocking back and forth across the screen and I immediately thought to myself "that would be so cool as an obstical to get pass on foot!"

So I did a mock up and replaced the 'game over' with a boulder that I imagne would move the same fashion, back and forth.

 

I think this is the kind of gameplay that's needed to balance out the overall running around and shooting creatures, for an additional challenge that require some fancy footwork against indestructable objects like the boulder run scene example above. If there must be a compromise, I would replace the rocksilde screen because as nice an idea it is, it's short lived and don't really present any challenge, at least to me.

Maybe you can have the boulder run scene come into play somewhere on the map once all the crown pieces is found and give the hero a run for the money just like when Indy escaped the boulder in the first movie! That would be something!

[Fort Apocalypse]

Wow! Man this is fun! I just played it a few times and I got through a few brown moving block screens and the rail car screen and got a key and a dot. I couldn't open the door with green walls and then I died in the rail car. Really good job!

 

The monsters are way better looking than last time I played! I like the mosquito when it is really quick and bites you a lot.

 

If you have any more room it might be neat to have a water scene where it is all blue background and you move slowly and there is a fish or octopus or something? It also might be neat to be in a room where shakescreen is always on and there are blocks quickly dropping from the ceiling (really quickly- faster than the slow moving brown block room).

 

Great work!

[gambler172]

Hi Steve

Checked the version 164 on my 7800 Pal system.The start melody sounds good.There are no problems.

Everything seems to be ok for me.

How about adding some "shaking screen areas"which should make moving around much harder?

This could be like an Earthquake or so?????

I think some shaking screens would be a nice addition to the game.So you could implement the boulders from 163 again?????

greetings Walter

[+Atarius Maximus]

Thanks to everyone for all the comments and suggestions, I appreciate it. I can probably add a "boulder run" room to the game in the same way that I added the railcar mini-game, it's a separate kernel that runs outside of the main game loop. That avoids the problem with the lack of cycles in the main game. It still involves a lot of trial and error testing, and I've been so busy at work and at home lately I just haven't had any time to work on this. I'm going to try and get back to this as soon as I can!

 

Steve