Adventure II XE demo and testing

[eegad]

Don't  know my time for game 1, but I think it was pretty long because I was messing around.  But game 2 time was just under 16 minutes.  Damn,  so close! 

 

Also just remembered something I wanted to mention.  More than once I had a game where the sword started on an inaccessable area.  The screen near the start where you go up into a water area... Fountain to the left,  island off in the water to the upper right. 2 or 3 times the sword started on that upper right island.  But..... Without the sword you cant chop wood to build the paths to get to it,  right?  Well unless you are using the crab icon or something.  But I was playing with the standard solid square icon.  Each time I just restarted when I saw that. 

 

[+Cafeman]

Thanks for the feedback. I haven't heard much but I'll use feedback to decide if I need to tweak settings.   

 

Yes, the sword can be hidden on an island. You need the magnet to get the sword in those instances.  It shouldn't be an unwinnable game but you will have to work a bit more. Rrrandom! The magnet should be reachable in Kingdom 1 or 2, even if you need to use the bridge (or Troll, if you are playing Intermediate or higher) to get the magnet, which can be tricky because the magnet starts to attract the bridge once you grab it.  

 

I purposely put an x next to some of the stats that would earn a bad ranking to explain to players why they got that ranking.   The time limits are there to add a small extra layer of challenge to getting the best ranking. But the only thing it affects is your ranking, you can still of course finish the game.  I've played a lot of rounds and the time limits of 10, 15, and 20 minutes seems fair on average.  At first it might seem impossible, but after playing a few rounds you will start to beat the game quicker and quicker. 

 

To illustrate play times, when playing as the bat, I've gotten the highest ranking and beat Game 1 in around 2 minutes.   I think I got all 3 Bat Eggs too. Playing as Square, I've beaten Game 1 in under 5 minutes and still got the highest ranking. 

 

[eegad]

15 hours ago, Cafeman said:

 

Yes, the sword can be hidden on an island. You need the magnet to get the sword in those instances.

 

And having been playing original Adventure for 40 years I feel really REALLY stupid right now. I just got so used to chopping wood and building bridges at the start of each game that I totally forgot about the magnet. Oh well.

 

[+Cafeman]

Yeah, don't forget the useful magnet exists!   You don't necessarily need to build the wood bridges every game.  But I often do, it doesn't take long and can save hassles later.  You can also use the bridge sprite  to cross the broken islands one at a time, just kill the dragon before you venture out there.  

[leech]

1 hour ago, Cafeman said:

Yeah, don't forget the useful magnet exists!   You don't necessarily need to build the wood bridges every game.  But I often do, it doesn't take long and can save hassles later.  You can also use the bridge sprite  to cross the broken islands one at a time, just kill the dragon before you venture out there.  

Wait, you can build bridges?  I need to play this more...

[+Cafeman]

From the 5200 version manual: 

 

 

For the 02-05-2020 demo: 

 

[+Larry]

Post removed (double post)

[+Cafeman]

On 2/5/2020 at 8:59 PM, Cafeman said:

Update - https://atariage.com/forums/topic/213695-adventure-ii-xe-demo-and-testing/

 

 

I posted a new DEMO of Adventure II XE on the 1st post of this thread.   Enjoy!   Feel free to report feedback to me!  The game is pretty much finished except for any needed last-minute tweaks or fixes. 

 

It has been 1 month since I posted the release candidate demo for Adventure II XE.  If there is any other constructive feedback before I call it final, now is the time to speak up!    There have been well over 100 downloads of each of the various demo file formats, but only a handful of comments.  So either people really didn't play it much, or everything is fine.     

 

Question 1 - did anybody play Dark Mode? Comments? 

Question 2 - did anybody get all 3 dots and find the secret screen? Comments? 

Question 3 - anybody familiar with the 5200 version and have comments about this enhanced port? Just wondering. 

 

My next plan of action --  I'm going to look into addressing these things based on feedback: 

 

1. Distinguishing Keys (mostly yellow vs green)   - I will either make the Yellow/Gold key to use an Orange hue (I'll see how it looks first),  and /or I might just make the yellow key it's own graphical image/bitmap.  I'm not sure if I want to keep the color cycling of the keys or not.  I made the keys "glow" or "pulsate" so I could clearly tell which key it was (I've described this problem a few posts back).  I might slow down the cycle or eliminate it altogether, but if we can't easily distinguish the key colors on various screens, I'll have to leave it in , in some way.   I've only heard 1 person comment on this so far. 

  ==> 03/07/2020 10:30 PM - see a few posts down. I slowed down the KEY color-cycling, and also gave each of the 4 keys their own unique bitmap.  Perhaps i dont need the keys to cycle colors anymore. 

 

2. PAL -- I will look into making a PAL -specific version, with modified colors and I might speed up the music a bit to sound better in 50Hz PAL.  (vs 60Hz NTSC). 

 

3. Collision issue / getting stuck at bottom of a Kingdom1 plant - I can duplicate this too so I'll fix it. I believe I've only seen it happen with the Helmet Knight icon, due to his helmet tassle/graphics and having both left/right images - when he is bounced back after a collision, I think the engine reverse the image too, causing you to get stuck in the graphics more easily. 

          ==> 03/05/2020 9:30 PM - FIXED! 

 

thanks all,

 

c(_)  

[leech]

Promise, I'll set up the 130XE again tonight (been trying to hook it up to the 1084S-D1 and testing on that).  I did play through a game on easy, and everything seemed fine.  The only thing I miss from the 5200 version is the ability to push a button on the joystick to flip the direction of the object you're holding, which I know you can't really do with only one button on the joystick.  It is loads easier to play it without the analog stick though!

[+Cafeman]

23 minutes ago, leech said:

Promise, I'll set up the 130XE again tonight (been trying to hook it up to the 1084S-D1 and testing on that).  I did play through a game on easy, and everything seemed fine.  The only thing I miss from the 5200 version is the ability to push a button on the joystick to flip the direction of the object you're holding, which I know you can't really do with only one button on the joystick.  It is loads easier to play it without the analog stick though!

 

leech,   for the XE version, tap the button briefly to flip the direction of a held item.  Hold the button for a moment to drop it.  1-button control.  Once you get used to it, it is just as effective as the 5200's 2-button controls. 

[leech]

3 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

 

leech,   for the XE version, tap the button briefly to flip the direction of a held item.  Hold the button for a moment to drop it.  1-button control.  Once you get used to it, it is just as effective as the 5200's 2-button controls. 

Awesome!  I'll give that a shot during the play, that's fantastic! 

This is the game I've looked forward to the most, weirdly probably more so than Half-Life: Alyx

[+Cafeman]

I fixed the problem with getting stuck on Plants when you are Helmet Knight.

 

On the subject of the color-cycling of keys ... I slowed it way down first of all. So each key holds its default color a lot longer, then a brief cycling / strobing within the same hue, then another 2- or 3- second wait, repeat.  Its not as distracting as before IMHO and still offers some clues to what hue the yellow or green key is.  Jury is still out on all this. 

 

I also experimented with just making the Yellow key double width .. I don't like it, personally: 

I also experimented with a different bitmap just for the Yellow Key. Maybe this will make it easier to distinguish? Comments?  Maybe I should reverse the image for the Yellow key. Anybody want to draw me a new key bitmap within the same size limit? 

 

 

 

[leech]

32 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

I fixed the problem with getting stuck on Plants when you are Helmet Knight.

 

On the subject of the color-cycling of keys ... I slowed it way down first of all. So each key holds its default color a lot long, then a brief cycling / strobing within the same hue, then another 2- or 3- second wait.  Its not as distracting as before IMHO and still offers some clues to what hue the yellow or green key is.  Jury is still out on all this. 

 

I also experimented with just making the Yellow key double width .. I don't like it, personally: 

 

Yeah, I agree, the double width doesn't look great.  Game plays awesome, though I'm curious, is it supposed to go really fast, then you start blinking and then it slows down?  I was playing with the Rapidus configured to 21mhz, so wasn't sure what was going on.

[+Cafeman]

4 minutes ago, leech said:

  Game plays awesome, though I'm curious, is it supposed to go really fast, then you start blinking and then it slows down?  I was playing with the Rapidus configured to 21mhz, so wasn't sure what was going on.

 

There are power-ups in Adventure II. When you kill a dragon, or other things, you are sometimes awarded with SPEED as a powerup. Your color flashes right before the power-up wears off. Other power-ups are SHIELD and FLIGHT.  

 

Also, I edited my post before your question with a 2nd trial solution for distinguishing keys - a new bitmap for the yellow key.  Check back 2 posts everyone. 

[leech]

5 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

 

There are power-ups in Adventure II. When you kill a dragon, or other things, you are sometimes awarded with SPEED as a powerup. Your color flashes right before the power-up wears off. Other power-ups are SHIELD and FLIGHT.  

 

Also, I edited my post before your question with a 2nd trial solution for distinguishing keys - a new bitmap for the yellow key.  Check back 2 posts everyone. 

I REALLY like that, a square key end looks great, I guess depending on color, you could do circle, square, triangle, not sure how good an x would look though.. ha, hopefully Sony doesn't sue

[+Cafeman]

I posted a video of the latest version. I play quickly through game 1. You can see the new Key cycling and bitmap. 

 

 

[TIX]

5 hours ago, Cafeman said:

I also experimented with a different bitmap just for the Yellow Key. Maybe this will make it easier to distinguish? Comments?  Maybe I should reverse the image for the Yellow key. Anybody want to draw me a new key bitmap within the same size limit? 

 

I didn't expect for so many combinations to exist in the tiny space !

The four at the bottom have the fist letter of their name to be double sure 

 

 

[leech]

6 hours ago, TIX said:

I didn't expect for so many combinations to exist in the tiny space !

The four at the bottom have the fist letter of their name to be double sure 

 

 

Ha, is there an option in the menu for these, like for the Icons?  I still haven't played with the icons yet, there's just something to be said about roaming around in a game as a square!  Love it.  the RGYB is great for people who are color blind. 

[+Cafeman]

8 hours ago, TIX said:

I didn't expect for so many combinations to exist in the tiny space !

Holy smokes! That's a lot of keys! 

 

I will have to review some of those new key designs. I think it would be visually interesting to have a unique key bitmap for each of the 4 keys. But the engine is hard coded to assume each key has the same bitmap. I have to be careful not to add too many cycles for override code to get each key to point to its own bitmap in RAM.  AND i have to add code for the new data and load it into a free section of RAM.   The draw sprites routine uses pointers into RAM hence I need to insert any new images into RAM for the engine to use.   I already did all these steps to get the 1 new key bitmap in, as a test. I don't want to  multiply using resources 2 more times, so I'll have to maybe recode a thing or two to be less hard coded and more efficient. Such a little thing , adding 3 new key images , but inserting into finished code can snowball into more work or problems than you might think! 

[eegad]

Definitely like the idea of having yellow key have slightly different shape to distinguish from green key.  

 

To answer your questions,  no I have never played through dark mode.  I have won games 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7. Have gotten all 3 bat eggs,  entered secret room and won games 1, 2, 6 and 7 so far.  Only tried playing a vast maze game once so far and got hopelessy lost in one of the mazes and quit after 20 minutes or so. 

 

Overall,  really love the game.... Pretty much what I was hoping Atari would release back in the mid 80s. 

[Shannon]

Just to be sure.  The only version available to test is the release for 02/05/2020 without the latest fixes?

 

[+Cafeman]

9 minutes ago, Shannon said:

Just to be sure.  The only version available to test is the release for 02/05/2020 without the latest fixes?

 

Yes.  Once I finalize Key shapes and colors, I will post a new set of demos in all the formats. 

[Shannon]

1 hour ago, Cafeman said:

Yes.  Once I finalize Key shapes and colors, I will post a new set of demos in all the formats. 

 

OK.  Thanks.  I only did just a quick test ( will try out more later ) but I was playing as the animated (walking) knight icon and he got stuck in some shrubbery?  I forget what it was but I was in the maze carrying the goblet when it happened.  I'll try to pay attention more next time.  But it was bedtime and I was in a hurry.

 

[+Cafeman]

13 minutes ago, Shannon said:

 

OK.  Thanks.  I only did just a quick test ( will try out more later ) but I was playing as the animated (walking) knight icon and he got stuck in some shrubbery?  I forget what it was but I was in the maze carrying the goblet when it happened.  I'll try to pay attention more next time.  But it was bedtime and I was in a hurry.

 

Well, I cant tell what screen or situation  that could be based on the description, . You don't have to test if the big knight gets stuck at times, because he will. He is much larger than the square which the game was designed around.  You either try to back off which he often can wiggle free, or hit revive button to go back to a checkpoint.  He is actually the most challenging icon to use due to his big clunky size, but I enjoyed the sprite so much (from Ye Old Adventure II contest ) that I just had to include him!   

 

The fix I put in recently probably reduced the chances of Blue Knight getting stuck.  Since he has 4 frames of animation, I have found that the different pixel placements help him to get free if he gets tangled up.   

 

The thing I could fix is if you can repeatedly get stuck in a certain situation and can't get free.  A screenshot would be very helpful. If you watch the gameplay video from a few posts back, I got stuck changing screens with Helmet Knight, but I backed off to the prior screen and entered the new screen a few steps to the left where no log was. That isn't a glitch, it's part of the design of navigating the mazes and obstacles. 

 

[+Cafeman]

I chose some new Key designs from TIX.  Each key is unique now. Moving on.