L.E.M. Lunar Excursion Module

[Lendorien]

Any more activity on this? I'm thinking about revising the manual to something that's more full color with backgrounds and the like.

 

I still suggest a graduated difficulty level and a game select that allows you to choose between the landing pad sizes.

[+Philsan]

L.E.M. v06 released:

- title screen (made by RevEng)

- high score (thanks to Random Terrain's How do we keep a high score? thread)

- asteroid changes position only after 4 landings.

[simonsunnyboy]

Great title pic!

 

This game is already better than many many 1982 vintage commercial releases.

 

Big kudos!

[Lendorien]

I can't wait to get back from vacation to try this out on my real console. Stella will have to do in the mean time.

[jbaudrand]

very funny game.

 

I just wish I can access to asm part to understand how the titlescreen was made.

[+Philsan]

L.E.M. v07 released:

- added another row of ground (now all shades of grey are used) and playfileld's rows are slightly smaller.

 

Thanks to RevEng titlescreen kernel, I can use all playfield's rows (before 5 of them were used for my title screen).

[Lendorien]

L.E.M. v07 released:

- added another row of ground (now all shades of grey are used) and playfileld's rows are slightly smaller.

 

Thanks to RevEng titlescreen kernel, I can use all playfield's rows (before 5 of them were used for my title screen).

 

Hey Philsan,

 

I played V06 a bit on emulator. Got to say I really love the new title screen. I also love the way the difficulty ramps up the way it does. The asteroids going from static to shifting is great.

 

I have a couple thoughts about the game at it stands.

 

1) I wonder if the extra Life position should be changed. Right now it only awards once, and after only 2 successful landings. Maybe it would be more of an award for the player playing well if it were raised it to 7 to 10 levels into the game. That way it would also come along more when the player is more likely to need it.

 

If you ever decide to make the awarding of extra lives a repetitive thing instead of one time only, I would put them after significant amounts of points or landings (Every 10 maybe) to make the game more of a challenge.

 

2) I played V06 quite a bit and it occurred to me that the number of landings between each "difficulty increase" might be a little too low. You don't have many difficulty increases in the game, so increasing the number of landing required to get to the next difficulty level would help lengthen out the game and make it more challenging. Perhaps 4 landings with no asteroids, likewise with the static line asteroids and so forth.

 

3) This last one is a cosmetic thing I noticed that really has no effect on the game at all and probably is not with changing.

 

I've noticed that in LEM, you show three lives at the bottom of the screen. Every time a player dies, one life disappears. When you're on your last life, is still shows one at the bottom of the screen.

 

In most arcade games, the life you start with is not shown at the bottom of the screen. Instead, only two lives are shown, representing that you have 2 EXTRA lives remaining beyond the one you're playing with. The one you're playing with is almost never represented on the screen at all. When you're on your very last life, NO lives are shown at the bottom of the screen.

 

This is a minor thing, but if you changed it, you'd be more in line with what most other games do in terms of extra lives. (See Pacman or Space invaders for examples of this) If you decide to change it to this way and include reoccuring extra lives at some point, it'll give you more room to display them.

 

In any case, This game is really gathering a lot of polish! I really enjoy playing it. Last high score was about 21000. I'll have to try out v07 now.

Edited September 12, 2010 by Lendorien

[TooSlowGamer]

Amazing. If I had to guess, I would have never thought it was in Batari Basic.

 

One complaint. The title screen music is bad! It's boring, and the long note pierces my ears. Yuck.

[TooSlowGamer]

 

It's rough, there's some little kinks I can work out. There's also a big gap in between Atari and Lem. I could put VCS in it, but the C could be tricky. I could also try to move "LEM" over on top of the space ship.

 

Oh, I didn't read about the 2600 in place of 1969. That could get tricky, but I could try it.

 

Also, I like the original cover art. The one that someone said was too dark. It is too dark, but I think that's a good thing. It gives it style and gives the cool feeling of openness. Makes it feel like a space game.

Edited September 12, 2010 by TooSlowGamer

[+Philsan]

L.E.M. v08 (codename Lendorien!) released:

- number of landings required to get to next difficulty level raised to 4

- new extra life awarded after 8 landings (I cannot give more than 2 extra lives because there's no place for more than 4 dots)

- lives system now like the majority of arcades (read Lendorien's post for explanations).

 

 

TooSlowGamer,

thank you very much for your appreciation and your patch photoshopping (a custom patch seems to cost not very much - $4 - if I order 1000 pieces!).

I am sorry for your and others ears (including mine).

I have done my best to add a title screen music but

demo's music is definitely better!

[TooSlowGamer]

L.E.M. v08 (codename Lendorien!) released:

- number of landings required to get to next difficulty level raised to 4

- new extra life awarded after 8 landings (I cannot give more than 2 extra lives because there's no place for more than 4 dots)

- lives system now like the majority of arcades (read Lendorien's post for explanations).

 

 

TooSlowGamer,

thank you very much for your appreciation and your patch photoshopping (a custom patch seems to cost not very much - $4 - if I order 1000 pieces!).

I am sorry for your and others ears (including mine).

I have done my best to add a title screen music but

demo's music is definitely better!

 

That would be amazing if a patch came with every cartridge. I think it'd be worth it if it only added 5 dollars to the price. Although, I doubt you'll sell 1000 cartridges. But, then again, how many sales does the average homebrew cart get at atariage?

[Marc Oberhäuser]

That would be amazing if a patch came with every cartridge. I think it'd be worth it if it only added 5 dollars to the price. Although, I doubt you'll sell 1000 cartridges. But, then again, how many sales does the average homebrew cart get at atariage?

 

Not enough to justify the costs:) Limited homebrew releases sell about 20 to 50 copies, top games might sell somewhat more in the AA store, but that's just my guess.

 

@Philsan: If you are looking for more reasonable prices for patches drop Walter Lauer (gambler172) a line. He has great connections to Asia.

[TooSlowGamer]

That would be amazing if a patch came with every cartridge. I think it'd be worth it if it only added 5 dollars to the price. Although, I doubt you'll sell 1000 cartridges. But, then again, how many sales does the average homebrew cart get at atariage?

 

Not enough to justify the costs:) Limited homebrew releases sell about 20 to 50 copies, top games might sell somewhat more in the AA store, but that's just my guess.

 

@Philsan: If you are looking for more reasonable prices for patches drop Walter Lauer (gambler172) a line. He has great connections to Asia.

 

What if he found someone who made them to order and it could be optional to buy with the cart?

[Marc Oberhäuser]

That would be amazing if a patch came with every cartridge. I think it'd be worth it if it only added 5 dollars to the price. Although, I doubt you'll sell 1000 cartridges. But, then again, how many sales does the average homebrew cart get at atariage?

 

Not enough to justify the costs:) Limited homebrew releases sell about 20 to 50 copies, top games might sell somewhat more in the AA store, but that's just my guess.

 

@Philsan: If you are looking for more reasonable prices for patches drop Walter Lauer (gambler172) a line. He has great connections to Asia.

 

What if he found someone who made them to order and it could be optional to buy with the cart?

 

Someone still would have to pay for the full production run of the patches...

[+Philsan]

The game is free and with Harmony cartridge everyone can play it on real hardware too.

 

Boxed edition will be produced for collectors, so I think they would pay something more for something original like a patch (message to Walter sent).

Anyway, I will sell the game at price cost.

[Lendorien]

L.E.M. v08 (codename Lendorien!) released:

- number of landings required to get to next difficulty level raised to 4

- new extra life awarded after 8 landings (I cannot give more than 2 extra lives because there's no place for more than 4 dots)

- lives system now like the majority of arcades (read Lendorien's post for explanations).

 

 

TooSlowGamer,

thank you very much for your appreciation and your patch photoshopping (a custom patch seems to cost not very much - $4 - if I order 1000 pieces!).

I am sorry for your and others ears (including mine).

I have done my best to add a title screen music but

demo's music is definitely better!

 

 

Heya!

 

I played the latest version. The spreading out of the difficulty increases really helps I think. The moving asteroid at level 9 really does up the difficulty a lot. It's a thrill to get to it.

 

If awarding more than 2 extra lives are a graphical problem, could you do something like limit it? Make it so the player can only have up to 4 extra lives. Perhaps you could code a check to see how many lives the player has when one is awarded and if the total = 4, then the awarding cancels out. So you'd never be able to have more than 4 extra lives in the game. That would eliminate the need for more displaying more than 4 lives. I think a number of old Atari games use this solution as well.

 

If you are stuck with only awarding 2 lives, I note you still award one at 2 landings. A suggestion might be to move the distribution to say, 6 and 12? Or 8 and 16? If there's only going to be 2 extra lives, put them a bit into the game so it's a challenge to get to them.

 

On another tack, I tried the game on my unmodded heavy 6er today as well as my svideo modded 7800. I note that the title screen jumps up and down quite a bit. It doesn't seem to do that in Stella, but it does seem to do it on actual hardware.

 

The landing zone usually is pretty obvious on my 37" LCD, though when it's drawn on the lowest level, it can be hard to see. I wonder how it looks on CRTs or smaller TVs. I'm worried that the landing area might be hard to see on a CRT given that it's the same color as the hills. Since a lot of Atari aficionados use CRTs, it's something worth checking. I'd do it for you, but the only CRT I have is in the basement and lacks an antenna port (it uses those little wire connections.)

 

Hope this helps!

Edited September 20, 2010 by Lendorien

[gambler172]

Hi Phil

Checked out the latest version.Great......I always liked LL.

greetings Walter

[+Philsan]

L.E.M. v09 released:

- shades of grey in titlescreen

- extra life now awarded after 3 (was 2) and 8 landings

- explosion brighter

- RevEng has fixed 2 bugs in NTSC and PAL60 titlescreen kernels and in PAL50 batariBasic kernel.

[RevEng]

The shading on the title reminds me of the shading of lunar surface in the game, which is a nice touch!

 

I gave it run in stella and I think you've got a good balance of difficulty now. I'm looking forward to having an extended play session on real hardware this weekend!

[+Philsan]

In my mailbox I've just received macdlsa's entry for label contest:

 

Thanks Mike for having noticed that titlescreen's shading recalls in-game lunar's surface shading.

[+Philsan]

Entries so far:

Philsan

RevEng

macdlsa

Brian O

 

Perhaps a patch would be included in the package, thanks to gambler172 Asian connections:

nems idea

TooSlowGamer's photoshopping ("1969" will be changed in "2010")

 

Lendorien made a mock-up of the manual:

LINK

http://www.atariage....39#entry2073639

[Tinman]

Fun game! And not too easy, which I like. Very well done!

[Brian O]

Hey Philsan,

 

The game is fun. I like it a lot

 

Here's my entry into the contest. I'm still tweaking the colors a bit, but the label design close to final.

 

 

Let me know your thoughts.

 

-B

[+Philsan]

I proudly announce the winner of the contest.

IMHO all entries are beautiful but I choose this one because it is a very original design:

Congratulations and many thanks to Brian O.

He wins a copy of the game.

 

I updated program's title screen "L.E.M." with Brian's new font (see first post).

[RevEng]

Dang! And I've been working on a new entry for all these months...

 

 

...Totally the right choice, Phil!

 

That's one cool label, Brian! Congrats!

Edited December 31, 2010 by RevEng