Super Mario 2600 Entire World 1 Demo!

[Andromeda Stardust]

I'm defiinitely exited about the updates to this game. I haven't had an opportunity to test it yet, as we are in the process of remodeling my house, and my Atari is packed away. As for the copyright issues, just change the name of the game, label, and manual to "Atario", but leave the graphics alone. Anything other than "save the princess" will do for a backstory. That will re-classify the game as a "Mario parody", which is protects it legally under fair use laws. I haven't had the opportunity to watch the Bowser Jr vids yet, as I'm on my 3DS. As for some people complaining that world 1 is too difficult, you need to guage the difficulty so that World 1 is easy, world 2 and 3 are medium, and save the difficult platforming tricks for world 4. In the original Mario bros, world 1 was easy, and they got progressively more difficult from there on. Someone suggested changing the brick colors on the underground levels to blue. I'm not completely sure exactly how you've got the bank-switcing laid out, but if it is solid 4kb chunks, then you likely have the entire game engine copied multiple times throughout the ROM. If you group the overworld, underworld, castle stages, etc together into separate banks, you could tweak the colors and music tracks, as well as remove the code for certain game elements that aren't needed. For example, you probably don't need thwomp code in the overworld banks, or underworld and overworld music scores programmed into the castle banks. Also, you may consider doing a midnight-blue background instead of black for the Overworld. The contrast would still be dark enough for the sprites to show up brightly, but the blue hue would really provide some differentiation from the underground/ castle areas. Just a thought. Also, I completely would understand if the task is unsurmountable, but it would be neat to provide an under-water area, maybe somewhere in world 2. The water area would probably need it's own bank with a modified game engine and inclue code for cheep-cheeps and Bloopers. If that is too much to ask, I completely understand. The fact that you fit a complete Bowser Jr fight into the game rather than just a Koopa bridge is nothing short of a miracle. And it's always three hops to defeat Bowser Jr/ Koopalings, not six. Keep the updates coming. I look forward to owning a cart of the completed game someday.

 

You have some really good suggestions and ideas. I really like the Midnight Blue background idea too. If you think world 1 was kind of difficult, you should try 2-1. It's even harder. I have a trick that you must do with a koopa to get past it. The trick isn't hard to do but a must. I know about levels getting progressively harder as they go along. That's why there are few pitfalls and obstacles to get around. 2-1 is where you start finding more pitfalls, more obstacles, tricks, and things you gotta do to pass a level. The first world you can just run through if you want while only battling a few enemies. Pretty simple stuff.

As for a water world. Can't do it. Not enough ROM left to program water levels. I don't have enough ROM to make a final Bowser battle (will have to be Bowser Jr.). I'll be lucky to have enough ROM left to have an ending sequence of some sort.

I've done a lot of shuffling and right now things are this way:

Bank 1 - Mario graphic routines, level scrolling routines, Mario collision detection and handling routines, screendraw.

Bank 2 - Enemy and Object Routines, Enemy and Object sprite and color data, screendraw.

Bank 3 - Mario Controls, level routines and handling, checkpoint routines, special item routines, fanfare & completed level routines, and some more enemy routines that I couldn't fit in bank 2, plus the 3rd screendraw for one game cycle.

Bank 4 - intro screen graphics and routines,level preperations and initialization, Boss battle routines, game over screen and music.

Bank 5 - World 1 & 2 Data and read routines.

Bank 6 - World 3 & 4 Data and read routines.

Bank 7 - All Music Routines and Music Data.

Bank 8 - Where the BB engine goes and all the table data. Thwomp routine is here because I ran out of space in Bank 2. Title Screen and Ending Sequence will most likely go here as I still have about 800 bytes left to work with in this bank.

 

Bank 1-6 (once I have all the level data in it), only have anywhere from 50-200 bytes left in each.

Bank 7 still has about 500 bytes left, but I plan on using the remaining space for the end tune. This is also why Bowser Jr. doesn't have his own music and world 1-4 uses the standard underworld music.

 

And as for six jumps instead of three, three was way too easy. Bowser Jr. actions are not only dictated by a sequence, but some timing elements as well. He'll walk around until those timing elements strike and then he'll jump, do his shell thing and when the timing elements strike again he'll pop back up, stay there for a split second and do it all over again. I found that he walks around for quite a bit (unless you shoot at him for a while first) at first before he does his first jump, but when does that first jump he starts doing it more often. By the time he does that first jump you can get 3 or 4 jumps on him. So get to him early while you can because getting those final few jumps gets more difficult, like it should. An end boss that gets progressively harder as it goes along. Something you don't always get.

Wow, you've really got those banks stuffed and pretty well optimized already! I didn't know it was possible to divide so many different game elements into all of those banks and draw them all onscreen simultaneously. The game engine must be bank-switching constantly, even during the screen draws! It's definitely not like NES Super Mario 3 MMC3 mapper where you have like 16kb of ROM for the game engine/ physics, and another swappable 16kb for all of the level data, and then have little swappable chunks of graphics tiles for different world backgrounds/ enemies/ Mario powerup suits. I've still got a lot to learn about Atari VCS. The Atari graphics are so "raw" compared to the NES, it just blows my mind that people can program the kind of games they did with only 128 bytes of usable RAM.

 

I downloaded the ROM file, and will play-test on my Atari later tonight. Sorry, I'm not gonna attempt to record it on my computer like last time: no more crappy grayscale video captures, LOL!

[Sprybug]

I'm defiinitely exited about the updates to this game. I haven't had an opportunity to test it yet, as we are in the process of remodeling my house, and my Atari is packed away. As for the copyright issues, just change the name of the game, label, and manual to "Atario", but leave the graphics alone. Anything other than "save the princess" will do for a backstory. That will re-classify the game as a "Mario parody", which is protects it legally under fair use laws. I haven't had the opportunity to watch the Bowser Jr vids yet, as I'm on my 3DS. As for some people complaining that world 1 is too difficult, you need to guage the difficulty so that World 1 is easy, world 2 and 3 are medium, and save the difficult platforming tricks for world 4. In the original Mario bros, world 1 was easy, and they got progressively more difficult from there on. Someone suggested changing the brick colors on the underground levels to blue. I'm not completely sure exactly how you've got the bank-switcing laid out, but if it is solid 4kb chunks, then you likely have the entire game engine copied multiple times throughout the ROM. If you group the overworld, underworld, castle stages, etc together into separate banks, you could tweak the colors and music tracks, as well as remove the code for certain game elements that aren't needed. For example, you probably don't need thwomp code in the overworld banks, or underworld and overworld music scores programmed into the castle banks. Also, you may consider doing a midnight-blue background instead of black for the Overworld. The contrast would still be dark enough for the sprites to show up brightly, but the blue hue would really provide some differentiation from the underground/ castle areas. Just a thought. Also, I completely would understand if the task is unsurmountable, but it would be neat to provide an under-water area, maybe somewhere in world 2. The water area would probably need it's own bank with a modified game engine and inclue code for cheep-cheeps and Bloopers. If that is too much to ask, I completely understand. The fact that you fit a complete Bowser Jr fight into the game rather than just a Koopa bridge is nothing short of a miracle. And it's always three hops to defeat Bowser Jr/ Koopalings, not six. Keep the updates coming. I look forward to owning a cart of the completed game someday.

 

You have some really good suggestions and ideas. I really like the Midnight Blue background idea too. If you think world 1 was kind of difficult, you should try 2-1. It's even harder. I have a trick that you must do with a koopa to get past it. The trick isn't hard to do but a must. I know about levels getting progressively harder as they go along. That's why there are few pitfalls and obstacles to get around. 2-1 is where you start finding more pitfalls, more obstacles, tricks, and things you gotta do to pass a level. The first world you can just run through if you want while only battling a few enemies. Pretty simple stuff.

As for a water world. Can't do it. Not enough ROM left to program water levels. I don't have enough ROM to make a final Bowser battle (will have to be Bowser Jr.). I'll be lucky to have enough ROM left to have an ending sequence of some sort.

I've done a lot of shuffling and right now things are this way:

Bank 1 - Mario graphic routines, level scrolling routines, Mario collision detection and handling routines, screendraw.

Bank 2 - Enemy and Object Routines, Enemy and Object sprite and color data, screendraw.

Bank 3 - Mario Controls, level routines and handling, checkpoint routines, special item routines, fanfare & completed level routines, and some more enemy routines that I couldn't fit in bank 2, plus the 3rd screendraw for one game cycle.

Bank 4 - intro screen graphics and routines,level preperations and initialization, Boss battle routines, game over screen and music.

Bank 5 - World 1 & 2 Data and read routines.

Bank 6 - World 3 & 4 Data and read routines.

Bank 7 - All Music Routines and Music Data.

Bank 8 - Where the BB engine goes and all the table data. Thwomp routine is here because I ran out of space in Bank 2. Title Screen and Ending Sequence will most likely go here as I still have about 800 bytes left to work with in this bank.

 

Bank 1-6 (once I have all the level data in it), only have anywhere from 50-200 bytes left in each.

Bank 7 still has about 500 bytes left, but I plan on using the remaining space for the end tune. This is also why Bowser Jr. doesn't have his own music and world 1-4 uses the standard underworld music.

 

And as for six jumps instead of three, three was way too easy. Bowser Jr. actions are not only dictated by a sequence, but some timing elements as well. He'll walk around until those timing elements strike and then he'll jump, do his shell thing and when the timing elements strike again he'll pop back up, stay there for a split second and do it all over again. I found that he walks around for quite a bit (unless you shoot at him for a while first) at first before he does his first jump, but when does that first jump he starts doing it more often. By the time he does that first jump you can get 3 or 4 jumps on him. So get to him early while you can because getting those final few jumps gets more difficult, like it should. An end boss that gets progressively harder as it goes along. Something you don't always get.

Wow, you've really got those banks stuffed and pretty well optimized already! I didn't know it was possible to divide so many different game elements into all of those banks and draw them all onscreen simultaneously. The game engine must be bank-switching constantly, even during the screen draws! It's definitely not like NES Super Mario 3 MMC3 mapper where you have like 16kb of ROM for the game engine/ physics, and another swappable 16kb for all of the level data, and then have little swappable chunks of graphics tiles for different world backgrounds/ enemies/ Mario powerup suits. I've still got a lot to learn about Atari VCS. The Atari graphics are so "raw" compared to the NES, it just blows my mind that people can program the kind of games they did with only 128 bytes of usable RAM.

 

I downloaded the ROM file, and will play-test on my Atari later tonight. Sorry, I'm not gonna attempt to record it on my computer like last time: no more crappy grayscale video captures, LOL!

 

It's been QUITE the undertaking. Whenever I start on a programming project I always say, "Oh this shouldn't be too hard..."

And at that point I should know better, because any programming project I've done has always turned out to be something like this. Yep, there are no duplicate routines being run, even in the boss battle the routines from banks 1-3 are still run as in normal level operation mainly to use the mario routines. My enemy/object type variable when set to Bowser Jr.(I=64), shuts down some of the enemy related stuff to give the Bowser Jr. routines control in bank 4 and it also shuts off the scrolling element. I'm not familiar with how the NES does it's bankswitching and why, but the reason for the bankswitching on the Atari is basically just to get more ROM since you have 4k max at one time available to you. There are a few other types that use bankswitching to use such things as included RAM in a cart. And of course the better you organize it, the better it can work for you. There is plenty of bankswitching that goes on in this game in one game cycle. Depending on what is going on, some times more than others.

[Sprybug]

Yeah go ahead and post the pdf. I have Photoshop 7, so hopefully it'll be compatible with that version.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Well, I played through to the end of World 1 tonight. I must say, the game is a little challenging at first, probably because it's not quite the same physics as Mario. I guess the physics are to the point where it definitely feels like Mario, but just off enough that it throws you off a bit with the timing whenever you make a jump. Part of the issue with the game, which probably cannot be helped, is that you slip a total of 4 pixels, or (1/2 the width of your character) every time you tap the joystick, instead of just one pixel (1/16 the width of your character) like on NES, so you have to handle the joystick (or Genesis D-pad) very, very lightly in order to nudge Mario without falling off a platform. At first I thought I just sucked because I'm not used to playing Mario with a joystick. But I have built custom arcade controllers for both NES and Atari, and can play Super Mario Brothers fairly well on a joystick. Then it clicked: I first learned how to play Atari games using my right handed joystick movements with the cruddy VCS controller, but I play NES games with my left hand. So I switched to left-handed joystick movement (my custom arcade Atari controller is an 8x8x4 inch plywood block with a switchable 4-way/8-way joystick and two red buttons wired in parallel for ambidextrous operation) and all of a sudden, I went into "Mario Mode" and my "joysticking" skills improved immensely. I managed to play all the way to the end of 1-4, though I kinda wished you could make some dungeon music so that it feels more like a "castle" stage. It kind of surprised me when I just dropped into the Bowser Jr battle. I must say, Bowser Jr looks freakkin awesome on the Atari! I was able to multi-bounce on Jr's head but unfortunately, I died while jumping on top of Bowser Jr. I was on my last man, too. It must have been that "rare" bug like you said where you take damage while jumping on Jr. Anyway, I'll have to give this game another whack with the Genesis pad. I could probably 'school any Mario game with a real D-pad...

 

Speaking of D-pads, you should also really do some research into programming the game to read from the analog paddle pin so that Genny pad users will have access to a second action button in addition to using D-pad "Up" for running and fireballs. With the Genesis controller, one of the paddle inputs will be held high and only go low when an additional Genesis action button is pressed (I forget whether it's "A" or "C"), but with a VCS joystick or no controller, both of the paddle inputs are disconnected and always low. Because the paddle pin is normally high with a Genesis controller (ie, when the "second" button is not pressed) and always low with a VCS controller, you'll need to run a subroutine on start-up to test if this signal is "high" (Genesis controller connected) or "low" (VCS or no controller connected). The subroutine could set a flag on one of the bits in system memory to determine whether the analog paddle input is used or ignored by the game engine. I have no idea if you have any spare bits in memory to work with, or if you have enough room left somewhere in the ROM to insert such a routine, but it would add a nice touch and feel more like a traditional "Mario" game to allow that extra button with the Genesis controller, sort of as an Easter Egg. If coded properly, the game could auto-detect the presence of a Genesis controller with no user intervention required.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Will there be a Princess in the final ending? I made a simple Peach sprite that I think would work on the VCS:

[bomberpunk]

^ needs some hair, otherwise it's a dude in drag with a burger king crown.

[exo]

^Are you saying that that's a bad thing?

[Andromeda Stardust]

^ needs some hair, otherwise it's a dude in drag with a burger king crown.

It's pretty hard to do hair when you can only have one color per scanline. Mystique managed to pull it off in Beat 'em and Eat 'em, though. I believe the hair was done by layering up both hardware sprites. Maybe Peach is a cancer survivor? Or maybe Mario likes dudes? Who knew?

 

EDIT: I fixed Peach. She has hair now and she's 4 pixels taller (8x24). Also, the legs looked dumb, so I deleted them and added trim to the dress:

Edited September 6, 2012 by stardust4ever

[Sprybug]

^ needs some hair, otherwise it's a dude in drag with a burger king crown.

It's pretty hard to do hair when you can only have one color per scanline. Mystique managed to pull it off in Beat 'em and Eat 'em, though. I believe the hair was done by layering up both hardware sprites. Maybe Peach is a cancer survivor? Or maybe Mario likes dudes? Who knew?

 

EDIT: I fixed Peach. She has hair now and she's 4 pixels taller (8x24). Also, the legs looked dumb, so I deleted them and added trim to the dress:

 

That does look better! I may take that and change it up a little (add some color gradients on the edges, redesign a little to match the style design of the SMB series, etc). I'll find a place for her. She might not get animated because as you know I'm runnin' outta room. 24 pixels is fine, because when mario is super, he's that tall too. I love all the suggestions you guys are giving me, but I gotta take it one thing at a time or else I may never finish. I'm going to continue and design/make/test all the levels first then add a title screen and end sequence, and if I have the room I'll try to add Genesis controller support, but as I said one thing at a time. I am strongly considering changing the name to Atario and some of the graphics for legal reasons. I've been getting a lot of cart requests and if those things get circulating around online, I don't want Nintendo come knocking on my door one day. As for Bowser Jr. Sorry to hear about that. Did you die jumping on top of his head? If you jump on anywhere but the top, it will hurt you. For example jumping into the side of his head doesn't count. Also if you are in the air and he pops up from his shell, that hurts you most of the time too.

[Andromeda Stardust]

^ needs some hair, otherwise it's a dude in drag with a burger king crown.

It's pretty hard to do hair when you can only have one color per scanline. Mystique managed to pull it off in Beat 'em and Eat 'em, though. I believe the hair was done by layering up both hardware sprites. Maybe Peach is a cancer survivor? Or maybe Mario likes dudes? Who knew?

 

EDIT: I fixed Peach. She has hair now and she's 4 pixels taller (8x24). Also, the legs looked dumb, so I deleted them and added trim to the dress:

 

That does look better! I may take that and change it up a little (add some color gradients on the edges, redesign a little to match the style design of the SMB series, etc). I'll find a place for her. She might not get animated because as you know I'm runnin' outta room. 24 pixels is fine, because when mario is super, he's that tall too. I love all the suggestions you guys are giving me, but I gotta take it one thing at a time or else I may never finish. I'm going to continue and design/make/test all the levels first then add a title screen and end sequence, and if I have the room I'll try to add Genesis controller support, but as I said one thing at a time. I am strongly considering changing the name to Atario and some of the graphics for legal reasons. I've been getting a lot of cart requests and if those things get circulating around online, I don't want Nintendo come knocking on my door one day. As for Bowser Jr. Sorry to hear about that. Did you die jumping on top of his head? If you jump on anywhere but the top, it will hurt you. For example jumping into the side of his head doesn't count. Also if you are in the air and he pops up from his shell, that hurts you most of the time too.

I wasn't sure, but Atari Pixels kinda look squarish enough if you make them two scan lines tall. Feel free to tweak my Peach! I finally beat Bowser Jr earlier tonight, and the game just froze after he went into his shell and left the room, meaning it still displays the boss chamber and the score, but the game no longer responds to any swithes or inputs. Other than that, the entire boss battle looks quite professionally well made. Is it supposed to just stop, or loop back to 1-1, or what? I know it's not finished yet, probably the bug is just the fact the ROM is unfinished and in a state of midway development? IMO, Genesis support probably isn't a priority, but it would be pretty cool to include it. But if it came down to getting an actual ending with fanfare music versus 2-button Genesis support, I would say scrap the Genesis two action button idea. Also, I forgot to mention, the Thwomps look really awesome! As you were saying, after more experience playing the Bowser Jr battle again, I realised what went wrong the first time: After several failures getting to 1-4, I finally managed to make it to the Bowser Jr fight with three lives left, and if you try to continuously multi-bounce on Bowser Jr, he will jump up in his shell and do damage. But man, Jr's sprites looks awesome! I wish I could simply pause the game just to stare at him! And kudos to you for putting in the twin Goombas! Another issue I encountered, if you hop on a Koopa shell to stun it, then take a running leap into the shell instead of hopping or kicking it, it can cause damage if you land on it a certain way. I also figured out that the shell travels whichever way Mario Atario is facing, rather than which side of it you jump on like in Super Mario.

 

As for Copyright, I think just changing the name to Atario is enough. I'd hate for you to spoil the work you did creating the wonderful sprite art. The Cartoon Network put some pretty spot on claymation caricatures of Mario and Peach in a couple of Robot Chicken episodes I saw on TV a while back. And I believe the days of frivolous lawsuits by Nintendo over stuff like Giana Sisters in '86 are a thing of the past. They even got a DS release! Plus homebrews aren't really commercial releases in the corporate eye anyway, since even if you make a little dough off of it, you're not really a target worth pursuing. I'd love to see "Atario" come to the Atariage store in the 2600 Homebrew section. I wouldn't think twice about plucking down thirty dollars or so for a cart version.

[+Random Terrain]

Can't use Atari in the name or they will sue your pants off, so you'd have to use Jumpio or Stario or Maherio or . . .

[Sprybug]

Alright I just added Genesis Controller support tonight and works great! Just have to set Stella to use the Sega Genesis Controller. Of course on a real Atari, you just have to have a Genesis controller plugged in. It also autodetects it and hardly used any extra code. So the next release will have that support. Compared to the NES controller the button mapping is backwards (B jumps and C runs/fire), but it's going to have to be that way since the fire button on the atari is jump (B for Genesis).......unless I remap both buttons in the program when using a Genesis controller, but I'm not sure if I have code space left in that bank for it. It's already under 100 bytes! We'll see on that, because I would prefer it being mapped the same way the NES controller is.

 

As for kicking the turtle, I originally tried to make it so it kicks depending on what side mario was on, but there was an issue that made it hit mario when kicking. I would prefer the kick to go depending on which side Mario is on and I may revisit it to see if I can get that working instead, so for now, yeah, it depends which direction Mario is facing.

 

I've got Beetles and Bullet Bill on 2-1. I decided to make BB double the size cuz he looked too tiny otherwise. Redrew the sprite and it looks pretty cool. Thwomp and Bowser Jr. also uses the double sized sprite hardware, which helps give them the look that they have. Thanks for all the compliments on their look. For the Thwomp and Bowser Jr. I used several game sprite references and tried to make it look as good as I could on the Atari.

 

The getting hit by koopas and koopa shells always had a bit of a bug that I was never quite able to figure out. I use the collision detection hardware provided by the TIA for pixel perfect detection, but if you hit them a certain way (usually somewhere on the edge), it hurts you. Still trying to figure that one out. I'm finding out that it's happening with Bullet Bill too.

 

 

[Sprybug]

Can't use Atari in the name or they will sue your pants off, so you'd have to use Jumpio or Stario or Maherio or . . .

Thanks for letting me know about that. Hmmmmm. This is something I'll have to visit when I get close to the point of finishing this.

[Andromeda Stardust]

"Super Jumpman" 2600 - Jumpman was a generic name that Nintendo of Japan assigned Mario during developement of the original Donkey Kong arcade game, and the name I originally suggested before another forum member suggested "Atario". In fact there was a quite blatant Donkey Kong ripoff for the C64 called "Jumpman". The name "Mario" was originally assigned to the main character of Donkey Kong by Howard Lincoln of Nintendo of America, named after the landlord of the warehouse where NOA assembled the DK arcade cabinets. So, I believe the generic name "Super Jumpman" would be an good title for this excellent homebrew effort, without incriminating on anyone's IP, and it isn't a completely retarded-sounding name, either, because "jumping" is what "Super Jumpman" does best!

 

EDIT: I didn't realise this, but there's actually a whole series of "Jumpman" games, originally created by Randy Glover and released on the Atari 800 by Epyx.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpman

 

I'm not sure if they hold any kind of claim on the name "Jumpman" or not. However, since "Atario" is actually a portmanteau of "Atari" and "Mario", it's technically a new word which is created based on characters common to both words, namely "Mario" and Atari". I'm pretty sure Atari didn't sue the creators of "Batari Basic" for using the character string "a-t-a-r-i" contained within it's letters. I'm no legal expert, but I'm pretty sure "Atario" would be considered a parody under "fair use" clause. If Sprybug were to actually seek legal counsel regarding the creation of "Atario", he would probably be told by the lawyer to change all graphics so that they didn't resemble Mario characters and enemies, then change the game mechanics so that it didn't copy mario physics. But if he did that, it would still probbly be a good game, but it wouldn't have that same "Mario appeal" that all the fanboys (like myself) crave. Likewise, any number of homebrew/repro/fanart/etc projects that are available, not only at Atariage but elsewhere, probably have potential legal issues, but the fact of the matter is, nobody really cares anymore. For example, Atariage has commercial ROMs available for download, but no C&D letters have been issued so far. I have even seen T-shirts at Hot-topic of a Mario head smoking pot. Nintendo, Atari mainly goes after large-scale commercial operations using protected IP, such as "TV game" systems being sold at Mall Kiosks which contain pirated ROMs, or widespread sales of DS flashcarts in Asian markets. It's simply not economically feasible to pursue small frys sticking a few freshly burned EPROMS into old cartridges. And I commend Sprybug for creating a band new homebrew game entirely from scratch, unlike most similar projects which are really just ROM hacks of existing games. Whatever the final name of the game, I certainly hope the wonderful graphics are preserved to some extent.

Edited September 7, 2012 by stardust4ever

[Andromeda Stardust]

Unrelated subject, hence a separate post, but given the difficulty factor, when you finally get more worlds programmed into the game and are gearing up for a final release, it would be nice to have an option to restart at level 1 of the last world attempted. For instance, if I make it to world 2-3 and lose my last man, you could provide a hidden "continue" option to restart the game on world 2-1 by holding "up" on the joystick and simultaneously hitting the action button. This would be equivalent to pressing A+START on the NES to restart stage 1 of the last world attempted, and would also make the gameplay less monotonous and a little more fair to players by allowing continues.

 

Also, to the best of my knowledge, the difficulty switches are currently sitting unused in your ROM. The left difficulty switch could be used to select between 3 and 5 lives. A lot of old arcade games had dip switches that behaved in this fasion, and I always believed that 5 lives felt more balanced, even though the vast majority of quarter-hungry arcade operators set them to 3.

[+Random Terrain]

I'm not sure if they hold any kind of claim on the name "Jumpman" or not. However, since "Atario" is actually a portmanteau of "Atari" and "Mario", it's technically a new word which is created based on characters common to both words, namely "Mario" and Atari". I'm pretty sure Atari didn't sue the creators of "Batari Basic" for using the character string "a-t-a-r-i" contained within it's letters. I'm no legal expert, but I'm pretty sure "Atario" would be considered a parody under "fair use" clause. If Sprybug were to actually seek legal counsel regarding the creation of "Atario", he would probably be told by the lawyer to change all graphics so that they didn't resemble Mario characters and enemies, then change the game mechanics so that it didn't copy mario physics. But if he did that, it would still probably be a good game, but it wouldn't have that same "Mario appeal" that all the fanboys (like myself) crave. Likewise, any number of homebrew/repro/fanart/etc projects that are available, not only at AtariAge but elsewhere, probably have potential legal issues, but the fact of the matter is, nobody really cares anymore. For example, AtariAge has commercial ROMs available for download, but no C&D letters have been issued so far. I have even seen T-shirts at Hot-topic of a Mario head smoking pot. Nintendo, Atari mainly goes after large-scale commercial operations using protected IP, such as "TV game" systems being sold at Mall Kiosks which contain pirated ROMs, or widespread sales of DS flashcarts in Asian markets. It's simply not economically feasible to pursue small frys sticking a few freshly burned EPROMS into old cartridges. And I commend Sprybug for creating a band new homebrew game entirely from scratch, unlike most similar projects which are really just ROM hacks of existing games. Whatever the final name of the game, I certainly hope the wonderful graphics are preserved to some extent.

 

Atari just sued me for reading that.

[Sprybug]

Unrelated subject, hence a separate post, but given the difficulty factor, when you finally get more worlds programmed into the game and are gearing up for a final release, it would be nice to have an option to restart at level 1 of the last world attempted. For instance, if I make it to world 2-3 and lose my last man, you could provide a hidden "continue" option to restart the game on world 2-1 by holding "up" on the joystick and simultaneously hitting the action button. This would be equivalent to pressing A+START on the NES to restart stage 1 of the last world attempted, and would also make the gameplay less monotonous and a little more fair to players by allowing continues.

 

Also, to the best of my knowledge, the difficulty switches are currently sitting unused in your ROM. The left difficulty switch could be used to select between 3 and 5 lives. A lot of old arcade games had dip switches that behaved in this fasion, and I always believed that 5 lives felt more balanced, even though the vast majority of quarter-hungry arcade operators set them to 3.

 

Good suggestions there. Actually when I was going to finish world 2, I was going to add the ability to start off at the world you lost all your lives on, so if you lost all your lives on 2-3, you'd start again at 2-1, which is much better than having to start all over again. I didn't even think of using the difficulty switches as "DIP switches". That's kind of a nice idea. It'd only take a line or two of code to do something like that and I'm pretty sure I got room for that one option.

[Piggles]

Sprybug! I love you! This is fantastic!

[KevinMos3]

I thought I'd provide a picture of what having a midnight blue background would look like. Also, these have playfield colors tweaked to what I thought might look a little more like SMB.

 

Colors are hex followed by decimal in parentheses, in case you use that instead of hex.

 

Overworld

• Blocks: $32 (dec 50)
  
• Special Blocks: $18 (dec 24) - just tried a little darker than $1A (dec 26) to balance out a bit.
  
• Ground: $24 (dec 36)
  
• Midnight Background: $90 (dec 144)
  
• Face a little pinker with $3E (dec 62) instead of $FE (dec 254) - BTW, if playing on real hardware (especially with a CRT), $3E, $4E, etc will be almost white. You may want to play with the color a bit once you have everything settled to see how the TV reacts to surrounding colors. Depending on other colors, it's sometimes necessary to go more toward a $36, $38, or $46, $48 to get a skin tone that's not completely bleached out. On black you should be fine with a lighter color, but if you use something else you'll just need to test a bit.
  

Underworld

• Blocks: $A4 (dec 164)
  
• Ground: $A2 (dec 162)
  
• Pipes: no change ($C6) (dec 198)
  

 

[LidLikesIntellivision]

I don't know if the blue sky is better...

I liked very much the underground in blue!

But the castle is white...

 

Is it possible to use both colors? The original black sky for night, blue walls for underground and white for castle?

[RevEng]

• Face a little pinker with $3E (dec 62) instead of $FE (dec 254) - BTW, if playing on real hardware (especially with a CRT), $3E, $4E, etc will be almost white. You may want to play with the color a bit once you have everything settled to see how the TV reacts to surrounding colors. Depending on other colors, it's sometimes necessary to go more toward a $36, $38, or $46, $48 to get a skin tone that's not completely bleached out. On black you should be fine with a lighter color, but if you use something else you'll just need to test a bit.
  

 

Agreed. I generally stay away from the highest and lowest luminance values. On a lot of TVs they read as white and black, irrespective of the chrominance value.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I'm not entirely sure if I like World 1-1 more with or without the blue sky. Both screenshots look nice. I'd have to try it on my Harmony and see how it looks on a CRT TV. It would add much needed variety to the backgrounds, though and differentiate the overworld levels from under. World 1-2 does look a little better with the blue bricks. Either way, I'm starting to wonder if we're beginning to focus more on nitpicks than actual gameplay. If you change the overworld to blue, some people will like it better, others not so much. Anyway, keep up the progress; it's a great little game and I can't wait to try World 2.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Double post, sorry...

Edited September 9, 2012 by stardust4ever

[Sprybug]

I thought I'd provide a picture of what having a midnight blue background would look like. Also, these have playfield colors tweaked to what I thought might look a little more like SMB.

 

Colors are hex followed by decimal in parentheses, in case you use that instead of hex.

 

Overworld

• Blocks: $32 (dec 50)
  
• Special Blocks: $18 (dec 24) - just tried a little darker than $1A (dec 26) to balance out a bit.
  
• Ground: $24 (dec 36)
  
• Midnight Background: $90 (dec 144)
  
• Face a little pinker with $3E (dec 62) instead of $FE (dec 254) - BTW, if playing on real hardware (especially with a CRT), $3E, $4E, etc will be almost white. You may want to play with the color a bit once you have everything settled to see how the TV reacts to surrounding colors. Depending on other colors, it's sometimes necessary to go more toward a $36, $38, or $46, $48 to get a skin tone that's not completely bleached out. On black you should be fine with a lighter color, but if you use something else you'll just need to test a bit.
  

Underworld

• Blocks: $A4 (dec 164)
  
• Ground: $A2 (dec 162)
  
• Pipes: no change ($C6) (dec 198)
  

 

 

This is really nice. I really like the color changes. I was trying the midnight blue already on the x-3 levels since the levels take place in the sky. Also for the x-2 levels I was trying a very dark grey ($02), but now that the color has changed there to a4 (i'll make these color changes tonight), I wonder if it'd work anymore. I may change that back to black. I left the x-1 & x-4 levels black too. Thanks so much for the color updates!

[KevinMos3]

This is really nice. I really like the color changes. I was trying the midnight blue already on the x-3 levels since the levels take place in the sky.

Thanks! I was playing around with several variations on my Harmony cart tonight. I was surprised to find that even lighter shades of blue did not look bad on my TVs. It seems because of the RF output, there's almost a shading or outline that takes place between objects that you just don't get with a crisp (unfiltered) emulator. $92 looked good, so I tried $94, $96, and even $98. All seemed acceptable (although they don't look good in stella). This is where you'd really need to play around with multiple combos and see what suits your taste.

For blocks, the $32 I mentioned earlier looked fine, but it was very red. I tried $34 which seemed to fit a bit better with some of the variations.

 

Also for the x-2 levels I was trying a very dark grey ($02), but now that the color has changed there to a4 (i'll make these color changes tonight), I wonder if it'd work anymore. I may change that back to black. I left the x-1 & x-4 levels black too.

If you'd care to share your bas file with me, I would be glad to test color combinations on my Harmony cart and report back with what I think might be suitable (along with pictures of a couple TVs). That might save you some time. So far, I've just been using the level 1-1 bas file.

 

Thanks so much for the color updates!

You're most certainly welcome!

 

 

edit:

I've been playing around with the filters in Stella to try and get it to look like the RF output of real hardware to my TVs. Although not exact of course, I've got it pretty close.

Here are the settings I'm using:

 

Contrast: 94

Brightness: 42

Hue: 50

Gamma: 50

Sharpness: 50

Resolution: 51

Artifacts: 42

Fringing: 42

Bleeding: 42

 

Intensity: 18

Interpolation: Yes

 

Here are what screenshots look like with these filter settings in Stella:

The name of the files in parentheses are the background color first followed by the playfield blocks in hex.

Edited September 10, 2012 by KevinMos3