Jungle Monkey

[+atari2600land]

Finally, a project I like enough that I'll stick with it to the finish (which is almost there if not already).

 

Help Jungle Monkey go bananas by getting them!

 

At the title screen, press fire.

 

To jump, press up. To hang from a vine, once you've got hold of one, hold up. To climb up to the top of a vine (and stand on it), press up and fire. The goal is to collect as many bananas as you can without touching the slithering snakes that creep across the vines. Once you get 50 bananas, the snakes go faster, and if you get 100 bananas, the snakes move faster still. If you move off the side of the screen, you'll reappear at the other side. Oh, and you get three lives. Once you lose all 3, your final score will appear at the title screen.

 

Tip on getting the highest score possible:

Stay away from the edges unless a banana appears there. The edges of the screen is where the snakes reappear, and one might appear where you are and kill you. If a banana appears at an edge, wait until there is no snake in the immediate area to grab it.

So, what do you think?

junglemonkey2.bas.bin

junglemonkey2.bas

[+Atari_Warlord]

I like it. It's quick to pickup. Any plans to add some atmosphere music?

[+atari2600land]

I'm not that good at composing music, but I'll try (unless The Golden Band wants to take a stab at it).

[Fort Apocalypse]

High score (so far) is 78. Good game! It might be good to introduce an enemy monkey or bird or something (bird could fly between vines?) and the concept of completing a level after a certain number of bananas.

[+atari2600land]

Here's the same game, now with music! I composed it myself, so tell me what you think of the music, and be honest.

I'll work on adding a flying enemy.

EDIT: Fixed the music, added a b&w option and now you can reset during the game.

junglemonkey4.bas.bin

junglemonkey4.bas

Edited February 7, 2008 by atari2600land

[uosipa llamxew]

The game is interesting. I like it, but it still feels early in development.

 

It would be nice if the monkey graphic was refined a bit and animated.

 

I'm not fond of the music. If you feel that you are "not good at composing music", perhaps your focus could be on sound effects and additional gameplay elements. There are people here on AA who are excellent at crafting tunes who might be willing to contribute to the project once you get the game more polished.

 

I've bookmarked the thread. I'm interested to watch as this one progresses

[gambler172]

Hi Chris

Nice game and the music is not too bad.

greetings Walter

[+atari2600land]

Nothing much in this update, I just added an option to turn off the music at the title screen using the game select switch. Next on the list of things to do is add a flying enemy. It'll have to be an Alien Greed bee-type enemy since the only sprite I have left is the ball. I'd like to keep this game at 4k, and I think I have about 600 bytes left, but maybe I'll have to go at 8k, we'll just wait and see about that.

As for SFX, I don't know how I can have that and music at the same time, unless the music takes up only one channel and the SFX in the other. I'll try to make another monkey graphic, also.

junglemonkey5.bas

junglemonkey5.bas.bin

[Impaler_26]

Really nice game!!! It's fun to play, hope you keep on working on this.

The music is not that great though and like in most other games it get's boring to hear the same tune over and over again during gameplay.

IMO it would be nice if the music would only play on the title-screen and to have some more nice sound-effects during the game.

 

My best score so far is 143, the game gets pretty fast once you reach 100 points!

[+atari2600land]

Just for fun, I wondered what the game would look like in multisprite mode. What do you think? Should I keep working on this version or go back to the non-multisprite one?

junglemonkey7b.bas.bin

junglemonkey7b.bas

Edited February 8, 2008 by atari2600land

[+Atari_Warlord]

Really nice game!!! It's fun to play, hope you keep on working on this.

The music is not that great though and like in most other games it get's boring to hear the same tune over and over again during gameplay.

IMO it would be nice if the music would only play on the title-screen and to have some more nice sound-effects during the game.

 

My best score so far is 143, the game gets pretty fast once you reach 100 points!

 

I agree with these sentiments. The other suggestion would be to have a way to pause it if there isn't going to be level breaks.

[+atari2600land]

New version.

I got rid of the music. I'm going to keep working on the multisprite version unless someone objects. I've added a little monkey walking animation, but it only works if you walk left. I need some help doing a REFP4-type thing in multisprite mode. I've read the manual, and since there's no REFP things in multisprite, "you can set the reflection bit for each individual sprite by using bit 3 of _NUSIZ1 or NUSIZ2-NUSIZ5, as this bit is unused by the TIA register NUSIZx." I don't know how to do this.

 

Things to do:

-add pause feature (I'm thinking b&w switch for this. b&w=paused, color=not paused)

-add SFX

-redesign monkey sprites (I need help with this)

-anything else?

 

I have <500 bytes left.

junglemonkey8a.bas.bin

junglemonkey8a.bas

[Fort Apocalypse]

I checked it out. Unfortunately there is a lot of flicker when they are all on the same horizontal. Still fun!

[Impaler_26]

I like the standard-kernel version better than the multisprite-version. There's too much flicker for my taste...

[+atari2600land]

Those who like the standard-kernel version should be happy to know that I'm changing it back to that. But I put some of the stuff I upgraded in the multisprite kernel back. Now I have about 800 bytes left, so I'm happy with that. This means the game will play in b&w again (yay!) as well as color, but I can't use that switch for pause, so I'm thinking left difficulty switch for that (a-not paused, b-paused), that is, if you still want there to be a pause function. It'll be like the Sega Master System, having to reach for the console to pause it though. Here's the latest version, flicker-free (hopefuly).

junglemonkey9.bas.bin

junglemonkey9.bas

[+atari2600land]

Nothing much in this update, I just added a SFX each time you get a banana. What do you think of it?

junglemonkey10.bas.bin

junglemonkey10.bas

[+atari2600land]

Another update. This one has a few problems I need to fix and I don't know how to.

 

#1 - the pfblocks at the title screen are messed up. I want to know why when I clearly defined the playfield. Instead of what I told it to do, it does this:

 

#2 - I added a demo/attract mode. Sometimes, when the computer animated player dies and goes back to his starting point, the game freezes. If you put the sound back in at the demo mode, you'll find that the death noise is playing even though he's at the starting point and no snakes are touching him. I've found that this "fake death" also happens in the main game, but not as much as it does in the demo mode.

 

I'd like to have both these problems fixed before I call this thing done (not that there's not more I'd like to add). I have <500 bytes left to work with.

junglemonkey11.bas.bin

junglemonkey11.bas

Edited February 10, 2008 by atari2600land

[gambler172]

Hi Chris

Plays really well.but i would keep the title music inside,cause it was good.

greetings Walter

[Fort Apocalypse]

Don't know about the 1st question. Never seen that, although TIA registers can flip right half of screen, I've never seen them flip the left.

 

#2 - I added a demo/attract mode. Sometimes, when the computer animated player dies and goes back to his starting point, the game freezes.

 

In my experience, this often can be attributed to either not doing "pop" for as many times as you need to before a goto and after one or more gosub (in which you would usually do a return).

 

If you put the sound back in at the demo mode, you'll find that the death noise is playing even though he's at the starting point and no snakes are touching him.

 

Should do an AUDV0 = 0 : AUDV1 = 1 at any point where you are getting leftover noise. The sound will continue to play until you set volume to 0 by doing that.

[Impaler_26]

#1 - the pfblocks at the title screen are messed up. I want to know why when I clearly defined the playfield. Instead of what I told it to do, it does this:

I fixed the messed up title-screen, the problem was that you didn't set variable d to 0 when it was greater than 3.

I just added this line to the code: ' if d>3 then d=0 '. Works fine now.

 

I like the sound-fx for grabbing a banana, i think it would be nice if you could also add sound-fx for the ape's movement!

 

EDIT: Doh!!! I just tested it again and it seems there's another problem with it. If i compile the attached .bas file with the original 2600basic.exe file (date stamp: February 14th 2007) it works fine but if i compile it with the fixed 2600basic.exe file (date stamp: May 26th 2007) i get the messed up title-screen again....

junglemonkey11b.bas

junglemonkey11b.bas.bin

Edited February 10, 2008 by Impaler_26

[+atari2600land]

If you put the sound back in at the demo mode, you'll find that the death noise is playing even though he's at the starting point and no snakes are touching him.

Should do an AUDV0 = 0 : AUDV1 = 1 at any point where you are getting leftover noise. The sound will continue to play until you set volume to 0 by doing that.

Yes, but also, it makes him lose another life, too, which is weird.

 

Also, what kind of SFX do you want for the monkey? The only thing I can think of now is for when he jumps. I've had the weird title screen before, maybe I can make it magically go away again.