Ature

[beoran]

Important notice: Discussion on this topic should be continued in the homebrew forum here:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/165701-ature-my-homebrew-action-adventure-game-for-atari-2600/

 

I will not answer to any comments made in on this thread anymore, to make it easier to keep up with your comments. It gets confusing if there are two threads to discuss the game. This thread is only kept here for reference.

 

Here's Ature, and adventure game. I started working on it a about a year ago and now I'm polishing it and finishing it up. Read ature.txt first for the manual. Can you beat the game and find all secrets? Hope you enjoy it, any comments welcome.

 

Edit: Added some screenshots.

 

Edit: Attached a zip file that has the three files in it. If you distribute the game beyond this forum, please do it using the zip file so the manual and the sources don't get separated from the ROM.

 

Edit (2010-07-04): New version with the following features:

* Music on title screen, game over screen and victory screen.

* Kick back after touching an enemy cannot throw you off the screen anymore. It does make the game slightly more difficult, though.

* Color of sword boss changed to be somewhat better visible.

 

Edit (2010-07-05): New version with the following bugfixes and features:

* Bug in map design solved somewhat bluntly by adding a tree trunk next to the water to prevent player from getting stuck in the next screen.

* Different music for the game over screen, hopefully somewhat better.

* New zip file with new version and source code.

ature.txt

ature.bas.bin

ature.bas

ature_20100705.zip

Edited July 9, 2010 by beoran

[SeaGtGruff]

Here's Ature, and adventure game. I started working on it a about a year ago and now I'm polishing it and finishing it up. Read ature.txt first for the manual. Can you beat the game and find all secrets? Hope you enjoy it, any comments welcome.

I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but it looks interesting!

 

Michael

[Atari_afternoon]

Thank you for your work

 

I´m trying it out at the moment with Stella. Works great so far.

 

Looking forward to later when I´ll be trying it on my DS, which is my favourite way to play Atari in bed now

 

Again, thanks! Found you by the PDRom-site (pdroms.de, public domain collection)

[beoran]

Glad to hear at least a few people may be enjoying my game.

 

Is this game already on the PDROM site? I couldn't find it there.

[pitfall_jerry]

Great game! Keep up the good work.

[gambler172]

Hi Beoran

Great game,plays very well.

greetings Walter

[Atari_afternoon]

I played it some 15 minutes the previous evening via Stella DS, I like it. It is a nice little decent game for a coffee break to get away from stress.

Much to explore, run around and much to "kill by sword".

 

Thanks once more. I´ll play it regularly, that´s for sure.

 

PS. http://www.pdroms.de/news/23021/ which is where I found it.

Edited June 1, 2010 by Atari_afternoon

[Another World]

this is a great game. i gave you a front page post at gbatemp.net. i think everyone should check this out. it is like a scaled down zelda or angunaDS. i've had a lot of fun with it so far. it does run really well on StellaDS. i've been playing it on my dsi XL the last few days.

 

i've found a few spots with collision detection issues, mostly by the buildings. i could try to write down where they are if you care about that sort of debugging. perhaps its not a bug but by design, i can't tell.

 

i'd love to see a sequel that stars a mage who can throw different spells =)

 

cheers and keep up the good work!

[beoran]

Another_world,

 

First of all, thanks for making some publicity for my game.

 

Yes, I'm aware of some collision detection issues which are largely due to the limitations of the platform. In some extremely rare cases, an enemy could knock you straight through a wall, but generally you shouldn't be able to go anywhere you're not supposed to go. So if you have some time, you could tell me the places where you had these issues? I can't promise I will be able to solve them, but if they are game-breaking, I can try to solve them by changing the map layout somewhat.

 

The other bug that the game has is that the color of your health bar is always the same as that of the first foreground line of the screen you're on. I found that in batari basic, apparently pfcolors and statusbarcolor do not mix well. If anyone has hints on how to solve this I'd be glad to hear from them. And another bug I experienced is that the sound seems to stop working for some reason after working a few times. I also had some music planned, but I guess I'll limit it to the title screen if I ever implement it, since always hearing the same music may be annoying if you're playing this game intensely. Or perhaps I should use the music in numbers algorithm to create random music.

 

As for your idea of a sequel, it's not bad, but it's not quite the kind of "feel" I prefer. I kind of like the feel that close-range combat gives. It keeps the game challenging and I like the stress relief that swinging your virtual sword at the baddies entails.

 

 

Atari_afternoon,

 

Glad to hear you're getting the stress relief I intended. It takes me about an hour to play the whole game and find all available secrets, so if you're able to do this in 15 minutes you'll have a speed run record there.

 

gambler127, pitfall_jerry,

 

Thanks for the kudos. If there's anything you dislike about the game, please do tell me about it.

[Atari_afternoon]

Damn, after 15 minutes the other day I played it over an hour yesterday (or more precisely, the equivalent of 3 coffee mug).

It´s a lovely little game and I still have a long "way to go".

Thanks once more. Work of over a year, wow

[beoran]

Atari_afternoon,

 

The game wasn't exactly the work of one year. I started one year ago and worked on it for a month or two, then I just polished it a bit from time to time, with this being the "home stretch". But glad to hear you're enjoying it, and still looking to pierce it's secrets.

 

Turns out that the bug with the sound was in Stella, not in the game. On my system I needed to change some of it's sound settings and then the sound effects keep working nicely.

[Another World]

beoran,

 

I am involved with a few projects right now which are taking all of my free time. I promise you that I will write down where I was having some minor issues in the next week or so and get them posted for you.

 

As for the health bar, I like that it changes color with each screen. For some reason that made me feel like a kid again, sitting infront of my Atari in 1983. Perhaps I am just remembering those screen protection modes where the Atari game would continue to flash the same graphics in 1 color after you died.

 

Music on the intro screen would be a great idea to help complete the feeling of a "full" game. I have yet to beat this game, is there an ending? I keep getting killed, and I'm loving the level of challenge this game offers.

 

-Another World

[beoran]

Dear Another World,

 

Thanks for offering your help but don't sweat it. I know that life can carry us away.

 

Good to hear you like the health bar.If no one complains about it, I'll just leave it like that then.

 

I looked into the music in numbers but it doesn't sound good enough for game music. In stead, I'll add some music for the opening screen beginning and for the ending screen when I find or compose some good music for it.

 

And yes, the game does have an ending, although it may be difficult to find. It's not in the manual, but I though it was clear that if you get killed, you can press reset and continue the game with your Numen drained and your health partially restored, but with most of your experience intact. If you keep on playing like this, you should level up enough to make you strong enough to defeat your enemies more easily. In case this wasn't obvious, I'll add a reference about this to the manual.

 

Kind Regards,

 

B.

[BassGuitari]

Looks great!

[beoran]

Thanks for the encouragement, BassGuitari.

[sandmountainslim]

Looks great!

I will try it out on Stella tonight Thanks for posting.

Wp

[beoran]

Sandmointainslim, I hope you liked it!

[sandmountainslim]

Sandmointainslim, I hope you liked it!

 

I actually just got thru playing it for second time

I like it VERY much! Thank you for your work and for posting it.

Has a very "zelda" feel to it.

Wp

[KevinMos3]

I just wanted to say that I was blown away by this game. You did an excellent job! I haven't gotten very far yet, but I'm looking forward to spending more time with it and maybe mapping it out. It's definitely one of my favorite bB games.

[beoran]

KevinMos3,

 

Yes, that was mostly the feeling I was ging for, Seiken Densetsu dseries (aka Mystic quest and Secret of Mana) are also part of my inspirations. I hope you will enjoy it.

 

Kind Regards,

 

B.

[yuppicide]

Hey this game is great so far. Good job.

 

Some of the screens are lined up nicely, meaning you can't go around the side of a building to avoid a monster. I like that.

 

I got up to a section that had a switch, that was neat. I died shortly after. Soon as I finish shoving a burrito in my fat face I'm gonna play some more.

 

What I didn't like is that you can keep going back to the starting screen to get another heart. Maybe that's good, though, I'm unsure.

[yuppicide]

So, I found another switch and some big boss dude who killed me. Awesome work!

 

Need to put this on cart..

 

Bug I see so far.. when you start the game you have XXXX amount of health. If you die and hit the reset switch you start with hardly any health. I'm guessing the things in bottom left are lives?

 

Another bug when an enemy hits you and pushes you back, you could get thrown through a wall. I'm guessing your "world" wraps around so when I go through the right edge of the world I appear on the left? I started by going up and right to hit switch.. then went down to go through opening next to the black pepperidge farm goldfish. I went to the right and somewhere in there I got hit my an enemy who pushed me off the screen, through a wall. I went off that screen and I was back near the start of the game.

 

Here's a screen shot of me being pushed through the screen and now I am stuck:

 

Edited June 26, 2010 by yuppicide

[beoran]

Dear Yuppicide,

 

It was intentional that a heart is always dropped at your home. It's your own home so you can relax a bit there.

 

The health will not be reset to full, but only to 1/4th. This is on purpose, to punish you a bit for losing the game, (and force you to go back and forth collecting the heart to fill it up again). You also lose some experience and some Numen when you die, but you never lose below your current level. So if you level up, your level will be preserved, just as well as you maximum health level. I should have mentioned it somewhere in the manual, but the signs you see below are your Numen points, which are unly useful if you manage to find one of Numen books.

 

As for the bad collision detection, I know about it, but I don't see any way to make it better within the limitations. If anyone could suggest something by looking at the source code, it would be nice. When such a thing happens to me when playing, I just suck it up and press reset. Sorry.

 

And you are right the world wraps around, so you can never end up in non existing part of the world. In the worst case, you'll end up in front of your house again.

 

Kind Regards,

 

B.

[+Gemintronic]

The source for Ature mentions bugs in Batari Basic constant definitions..

 

What are they? I'd hate to stumble over issues you've already worked around

[Gorf]

Looks promising beoran. I'll have to check it out when I can find a moment. Thanks for your efforts.

Edited June 29, 2010 by Gorf