OS2600

[+Atarius Maximus]

Wow, It's been over a year since I've done any programming with batari basic. My new job and family responsibilities have left little time for hobbies. I've had the urge to make something new, but I wanted to make something "just for fun" that sounded interesting to me - not a big project like Cave In that would take several years to finish. This was made just to mess around with and have fun.

 

I saw the threads about the DPC kernel and that looks fantastic, I'll definitely use that kernel for my next project. For this one, I just used the standard kernel with the superchip option enabled. I used playfield and sprite colors also so I lost the missiles, which made this project all that much more challenging.

 

This is a collection of five mini-games and three apps with a "OS like" presentation where you have to click on icons on a desktop to launch the individual programs. They all have a similar theme, I was trying to give the appearance of simple games in a desktop window similar to the old Windows entertainment pack games in Windows 3.1. For lack of a better name idea I'm going to call it "OS2600".

 

I've been working on this off and on for about a week, and it's mostly done - the main thing that's not implemented is sound. There are no sounds at all right now. It's hard to work on audio when you're working on this stuff at work. There are issues with a few of the apps, but they do all work.

 

Here's the games:

• Boulder. In this game you have to run around and avoid the bouncing boulder while at the same time shooting it to score points. You get one life, if you're hit by the boulder you die and the game ends.
  
• Pong. You play against the computer, and whoever gets five points first wins the match. The computer has a basic AI and will occassionally miss.
  
• Tubes. The gameplay is based on a game that atari2600land wrote a few years ago called "Smiley", it's one of my favorites from him. There are four pipes in each corner of the playfield, and you control a ball that can roll between the four corners. The object is to keep the bombs from entering the tubes by rolling the ball back and forth between the tubes. Once you start rolling, you can't change direction until you hit a corner. If three bombs explode the game ends.
  
• Mountain. In this game, you have move your crosshair to shoot the bombs falling out of the sky before they hit the mountain. You score one point for each bomb hit. Once three hit the mountain and explode the game ends.
  
• Alley. This is similar in gameplay to Hogan's Alley. You control a crosshair looking at a building with nine windows. Shoot the bad guys, don't shoot the friendly people. You get three lives and score one point for each bad guy shot. You get a few seconds to react, if you don't shoot a bad guy in time you lose a life and if you shoot a friendly person you lose a life.
  

Here's the Apps:

• Tone Toy. It's pretty much exactly the same code that Random Terrain wrote years ago, you can change tones and frequencies to select a sound for a bB game.
  
• Calculator. It's batari's code from his "bB Calc" demo he wrote a few years ago. It works, but I had trouble modifying it to work with pfres set to 32 so the cursor doesn't hover over the numbers like it should.
  
• Paintbrush. I also had a hard time getting this to work properly with the higher playfield resolution. The ball remains pretty close to where the next playfield block is painted, but it's not perfect.
  

Navigating the 'GUI':

 

It's pretty easy - just click on the icon you want to launch, but the one thing that's not so obvious is how to close out of a game or app without resetting the entire program. Hit game select (F1 in Stella) to exit a game and get your cursor arrow back, you can then click on the top right corner of the window to close it and get back to the main desktop.

 

That's pretty much it. It was fun making it and I'll probably spend a little more time on it before I call and done and move on to the next project.

 

Steve

os2600.bin

os2600.txt

[Pioneer4x4]

Cool idea, can you get back to the "Desktop" after you enter one of the "Apps". I will have to give this a try.

[+Atarius Maximus]

@Pioneer4x4, yep, just hit game select (F1 in Stella) to get the pointer back, then click on the top right corner of the window to close the app and get back to the desktop.

[+Philsan]

I am glad you're back Steve!