Koffi: Yellow Kopter update

[+Cafeman]

http://cafeman.www9.50megs.com/atari/5200d...offiKopter.html

 

Hello, all. I'm taking a moment to update everyone with Koffi's status. I've updated the page again, and included a new demo for you to play. The demo allows you to play all 4 stages on either Level 1 or Level 2, but also at any difficulty. It should give you a good taste for what the game is like if you haven't tried it.

 

I'm estimating Koffi at 95% completed. FYI, the "Pyro's Mom" stage is what is not complete yet. It needs a bit more polish, but it's basic gameplay is set in stone and playable. I also hope to have some more prompts and even a how-to-play screen whipped up soon, but these aren't in this version.

 

All of the contest animals are accessible in this demo. You may have to play a bit to seem them all though. Each animal lives on its own stage. I've kept the fowl, bugs, and water-residing creatures on the swampy Windy Vines level -- that worked out nicely, I thought! Hint: if you want to see all the animals on a stage, hit Pyro until each pops out, then rescue them in turn. After Pyro goes berzerk, kill yourself. Each time you die, another Animal will pop out. You should be able to see them all this way, on each stage. Note that a few need color tweaks still.

 

Koffi will come with a manual explaining its modes and gameplay tips, but for now click on the Instructions link on Koffi's dev page where I posted a few tips and how-to's.

 

I hope to have the programming all done by October 1st; the cart, box, and manual work is all underway so I hope to have the game ready to ship by mid-October to end-October!

 

ZZZZZZZZZzap!

[+Cafeman]

Thirty views, no responses. At least you guys are reading.

 

I felt like telling somebody this. THe past month, in the final 10% or so of coding up and finishing my first 5200 Homebrew, I've hit the weirdest of timing bugs (that I got past but still I don't understand WHY it was happening), my test board started to act up, and I RAN OUT OF MEMORY!! All 32K was taken!

 

Fortunately, I kept in the back of my head the fact that I drew the BG graphics in a rather memory-wasting way. I did this way back in November and December of 2001 because I didn't understand ASM all that well yet.

 

So I went back and made the bg graphics routines and data more efficient, freeing up a whopping 1300 bytes! YEE HAW. Lots of room left now.

 

The timing bug was in the routine that draw Pyro's Mom's Face. It kept messing up with stray pixels here & there. I triple-checked the code, no clues. Finally, as a test & out of desperation, I called the subroutine from a lower place in the Initialize Level code -- and the problem disappeared!

 

For the programmers, it acted like my index, the Y register, was getting wiped or messed with somehow, almost magically. Simply calling the routine from a different location seemed to fix the problem that I toiled with for a week. Strange and scary, that 5200!

 

The reason I could never figure out why this was happening, was that I usually use VSS, the debug version, and this problem never occurs when using this VSS emulator. It occurs on Atari800win though, and on the real 5200. In the past, I've noticed that DLI timing issues would be visible on Atari800win and not VSS -- if I exceeded my DLI time for example, I'd see that using Atari800win.

 

HOwever, unless I'm missing something, I can't seem to get Atari800win's monitor to do the "run until this line of code in memory" function that it is so easy to do using VSS debug.

 

Any help or ideas?

[NoahsMyBro]

Hi Ron! I've been excitedly looking forward to Koffi! for a long time, and I was thrilled to read you rpost this morning. I wanted to reply to acknowledge the post and show some appreciation for your hard work, but I have been just too busy today.

 

But be assured, I for one am very interested in your progress, and I will be ordering a copy as soon as they're ready. judging from the # of views your post received here and over at DP, I'm confident I'm not the only one.

 

Steve

[+Cafeman]

thanks Steve!

 

Actually, I'm having all kinds of data processing problems at work -- I've been here 12 hrs so far. In between running jobs, I hot-key over to the net, so I've been watching this site nearly all afternoon.

 

I'm watching U ALL! Bwuahahaahaha!

[Bob Mackey]

Out of curiousity, have you tested your game out on 5200 controllers that work less than perfect? My only 5200 controller has analog stick trouble (it doesn't move all the way to the right.) It works just fine in most games, but Buck Rogers is simply unplayable. So is Super Breakout, but that's more understandable. Anyway, I'm sure I'm not the only one with this trouble. So I guess what I'm asking is, how sensitive will control in your game be?

 

Oh, and are there any "Easter Eggs" in your game? Don't tell us where they are!

[Charlie_]

@cafeman: I'm just waiting for it to go on sale.

 

Since the day I played the beta with Old Guru at a Nava meeting.

 

@Bob Mackey: I'd be happy to clean that stick up for you. Or just send you another analog pointometer if you'd like to do it yourself.

 

Anything to help a fellow 5200 fan

 

Charlie

[+Cafeman]

Good point, Bob Mackey. Personally, I have only two 5200 sticks. One is more worn out than the other. I use the tighter one mostly, but Koffi is controllable using both.

 

There are at least 6 people who have played Koffi as testers over the past 6 months -- none reported any problems there.

 

Koffi's joystick code is not super-sensitive; you have to press a little ways before it registers as a left or right or up or down. Did you get Ronen's Castle Blast? If so, did you have problems with your stick with it?

 

Too bad you can't burn a copy of the demo for yourself, then you'd know for sure. Or, you could just go track down a new stick.

 

Edit: Bob, there WILL be a hidden secret, an 'egg' to find. I haven't put it in the code yet, so don't bother looking for it in the demo. I have talked with some about how to activate the secret, but nobody really has any idea of what it truly will be. More on this subject later though...

[CPUWIZ]

I just plopped that onto a cart .... nice work man ! You can sign me up for a copy for sure.

[holygrailvideogames.com]

I would be interested in buying a copy as well.

[skywalker2000]

I might try for a copy myself. "Behind my wife's back " I have to admit that you did a great job with this 5200 game.

 

 

BTW, do you have an Idea how much it's gonna sell for?

 

 

 

[Inky]

Wow! That's fun!

 

Good job!

 

Makes me want a 5200

[+Cafeman]

Guys, go ahead and email me at Cafegarcon@msn.com with "Koffi Preorder" in the header if you want to reserve one, and in a week or two I'll be contacting everyone to send payment. I want to build a number of them and be finished w/programming & testing before anyone sends payment. I'm only making 100 of these, and 70-80 are accounted for assuming the pre-order folks all keep their word. So, there's some left.

 

It will cost $35 + shipping now that there's a box included. I'm investigating the cheapest way of shipping, probably one of those post office cardboard boxes. You know, I am very happy with the game as its turned out, and I am also very very happy with Dave G's label and box art, and in Geo Reese's boxes which are very impressive IMO. I was not going to make a box originally, now I'm glad I had them made.

 

Thanks for all the encouraging and positive comments! I appreciate it.

[skywalker2000]

Guys, go ahead and email me at Cafegarcon@msn.com with "Koffi Preorder" in the header if you want to reserve one, and in a week or two I'll be contacting everyone to send payment. I want to build a number of them and be finished w/programming & testing before anyone sends payment.  I'm only making 100 of these, and 70-80 are accounted for assuming the pre-order folks all keep their word.  So, there's some left.  

 

It will cost $35 + shipping now that there's a box included.  I'm investigating the cheapest way of shipping, probably one of those post office cardboard boxes.  You know, I am very happy with the game as its turned out, and I am also very very happy with Dave G's label and box art, and in Geo Reese's boxes which are very impressive IMO.  I was not going to make a box originally, now I'm glad I had them made.  

 

Thanks for all the encouraging and positive comments! I appreciate it.

 

So your making 100 games. No more no less?

And another question. If I make a pre-order, when would you expect payment? If I make a pre-order, can I make payment like in two or three week?

 

Sorry for the silly questions, I just need to figure out how to slowly take money out of my paychecks making it look like I was buying it for a dollar or two.

[+Cafeman]

Sigh, I hate to talk dollars and cents but I guess it's time to do so.

 

I expect to email all the pre-order people sometime between now and a week. I will wait for about a week after that for a confirmation email, and payment should also come within a few days of the confirmation email. So I'd say you have 2 weeks to embezzle funds (don't we all do this so that the Game Police / The Accountant doesn't catch us?) .

 

If you are very sure you want a copy, send me a preorder email so I can mark you down.

 

Oh, and I think that Mr. Dennis Debro has solved my "timing issue" that I mentioned above ... I was clobbering an x register in a DLI. shame, Cafeman!

[CPUWIZ]

You've got mail !

[deadtech]

I sent you an email for a preorder about as soon as you asked, months ago. I hope those are still archived. I am really looking forward to this game.

 

-deadtech

[oesii]

I just sent you a preorder, looks like it will be a fun one

[Doc4]

I have a question, I tried out Koffi in the Rainbow emulator and can't seem to make the game do anything. All that happens is Koffi is able to fly around the title screen. What am I doing wrong?

 

Thanks

[oesii]

I have a question, I tried out Koffi in the Rainbow emulator and can't seem to make the game do anything. All that happens is Koffi is able to fly around the title screen. What am I doing wrong?

 

Thanks

 

I don't think you are doing anything wrong, I haven't been able to get the Koffi demo to work on any of the 5200 emulators on the Mac. I'm running OSX and it hasn't worked on Atari800, MacMess, or Jumbot.

 

So its not properly emulated on those either, my guess is that Rainbow just doesn't know how to properly run the game.

 

It does seem to work on some of the Windows emus, like VSS, so maybe just try a few different emus, Atari800Win?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I do want to state that the new demo of Koffi under Atari800win Plus 3.0 will crash randomly. I have had it do it mostly when I press F4 to start the game...but then it usually does it shortly after I get into a game. I haven't been able to beat any level yet without it crashing a few moments into the game. The previous demos..didn't do this at all...and I was able to play for a good long while..hehe..

 

So something has changed...I just hope there aren't problems on the real deal...

 

[+Cafeman]

Funny, Atari800win crashes for me now when I try to press the * button, which is shift 8. That's why, in the current version, I also use the 3 key for *.

 

I've not seen any problem with the real game. And the only problem I've seen with 800win is the "*" key presses when I press Shift 8.

 

Atari800win crashes for me all the time lately -- just now, for example, I loaded Jungle Hunt and it crashed. ??!?!

 

Anybody else having emulator problems with Koffi? I use VSS and Atari 800win 3.0, both seem to be fine. Can't understand why Crossbow's would crash and nobody else's would.

[+Cafeman]

One more thing -- I am making only 100 of these Koffi: Yellow KOpter games. I have 100 boxes and enough parts to make 100 of them. These first 100 Koffi's will be signed by me (unless you don't want the box / cart marked) and will have unique boxes/labels.

 

Additional Koffi's will be definitely made available after the first 100, as demand requires. However the first 100 will be the signed ones with the "first edition" / custom tag on them, to make them more unique.

 

So if you I get > 100 orders, although there will be a wait, the surplus orders will be filled. I will let everyone know for sure via email. So far , there are a number of them left though.

[+Cafeman]

Just for peace of mind, I just tested the last demo of Koffi dated 7/24/2002, and the current demo , and the current real Koffi ROM, and the NAVA demo from last spring. All of them work fine for me in Atari800win -- and ALL crash when I press shift 8 for the "*". I'm pretty sure that Atari800win 2.7 didn't crash for me at this shift 8 press, and I'm pretty sure I know *why* it crashes too, but don't worry -- no problem on a real 5200!

[TheSmirk]

just sent in my official pre-order, nice work cafeman !

[Doc4]

ok, so i tried it out on the PC and it works, as in i can get to different levels and switch games styles (color mode etc) but i can never seem to put out the fires, where is the rain? and how do i know if koffi's water tank has something in it. i have never seen rain nor snow. why is this.