Ed Fries Posted December 14, 2013 Author Share Posted December 14, 2013 This interest you? Here's a new build with the your logo. (oops, I meant to post this last night and forgot to hit "add reply") Rally 131213.bin 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Fries Posted December 14, 2013 Author Share Posted December 14, 2013 Also, I tried to draw the car in diagonal, looks good but it's out of 8x8 pixel boundaries, I'm sending the cropped version, perhaps if you display in 2 or 3 frames only this will not be perceptible. Another suggestion is paint the car with $86 or $88 (brighter than $82), looks better to me. My sprites are actually 10x8 (10 high) but I'm not using the top or bottom byte since the car needs to look the same going right and going up. Perhaps that could help during rotation though? I originally had the car(s) brighter but when they are too close in brightness to the background color (currently $2A) it was hard to see them on one of my displays (a projection screen) when running on actual hardware. Maybe I went too far though in taking them all the way down to $x2. I'll play around with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LS_Dracon Posted December 14, 2013 Share Posted December 14, 2013 Glad you liked the logo. The yellow background contrast with car's blue. A bit brighter blue maybe work. Early Atari 2600 games hardly used dark colors for sprites, also light blue kind of blend the original dark blue + white stripe. Yes! 10 pixels height helps a lot, here's the data : diagcar.s Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted December 17, 2013 Share Posted December 17, 2013 You obviously have 4 way scrolling down. Next level challenge: "Rally +" (Isometric view) ~_^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godzillajoe Posted December 28, 2013 Share Posted December 28, 2013 Wow, this is looking great. I was never a big fan of the arcade game, always found it too difficult to waste quarters on but would play the hell out of it at home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Fries Posted December 29, 2013 Author Share Posted December 29, 2013 (edited) I finally have a new stable build to post. I had a nasty bug that took me a while to track down. This build has lots of changes and improvements including "challenging mode" on level 3 and each 4 after that. I moved the score to the top and made it visible on the title screen. I added a display of how many cars you have left. The red cars now collide with each other and with rocks. Most of the rest of the work has been behind the scenes with big changes to try to get my cpu usage within budget during vertical blank and overscan. Still on my to do list are randomizing somewhat the rock locations, free life at 20K, and fixes to several known bugs. Then I need to come up with more than 100 bytes if I want to add a third map. If I can do that, I probably won't add the intermediate car rotations. If not, I probably will. As always, your feedback is appreciated. -EdF (oh, and I'm on vacation so I couldn't test this on real hardware. Sorry in advance if there are problems.) Rally 131229.bin Edited December 29, 2013 by Ed Fries 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted December 29, 2013 Share Posted December 29, 2013 Very nice. You should try to fix the scanline count. At the title it is 262, during gameplay 267 and sometimes a timer seems to overrun and the screen flickers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ransom Posted December 29, 2013 Share Posted December 29, 2013 Nice work. Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WildBillTX Posted December 31, 2013 Share Posted December 31, 2013 (edited) Using the smokescreen uses up a lot more "gas" than it does on the arcade game. If I use the smokescreen more than 2 times, there's a good chance I'll run out of gas before completing a full course. The car speed on the challenging mode is too fast and very hard to control! Saw a couple of enemy cars go through rocks. Just found another glitch, pressing the fire button after the game is over restarts the game but doesn't reset the score. Otherwise its a lot of fun to play! Edited December 31, 2013 by WildBillTX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Fries Posted January 1, 2014 Author Share Posted January 1, 2014 The car speed on the challenging mode is too fast and very hard to control! Just found another glitch, pressing the fire button after the game is over restarts the game but doesn't reset the score. Here's a new version with quick fixes to these two bugs and also a (mostly) constant scanline count of 262 for Thomas. How did I miss that score reset bug? Too much eggnog I guess. I plan to redo fuel anyway (right now it's based on time, not distance, which is wrong and makes the faster levels easier rather than harder) so I'll look into your smoke issue then WildBill but I think it's pretty easy to run out on the arcade machine if you use even a little smoke. Thanks, please keep the bug reports coming. -EdF Rally 140101.bin 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 I only played the arcade version once or twice, so I don't remember the flag situation. Wikipedia says that the "rocks are randomly distributed throughout the maze, increasing in number as levels are advanced" but it doesn't say much about the flags. Are the flags supposed to be placed using controlled randomness or is it the same pattern every time or are there a couple of set patterns that are randomly selected? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WildBillTX Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 I only played the arcade version once or twice, so I don't remember the flag situation. Wikipedia says that the "rocks are randomly distributed throughout the maze, increasing in number as levels are advanced" but it doesn't say much about the flags. Are the flags supposed to be placed using controlled randomness or is it the same pattern every time or are there a couple of set patterns that are randomly selected? From what I've seen, there's no set pattern for flags or rocks on the arcade version. There's always 10 flags (8 flags on Ed's version) with one a bonus flag that doubles your points with every extra flag you get. Here's a new version with quick fixes to these two bugs and also a (mostly) constant scanline count of 262 for Thomas. How did I miss that score reset bug? Too much eggnog I guess. I plan to redo fuel anyway (right now it's based on time, not distance, which is wrong and makes the faster levels easier rather than harder) so I'll look into your smoke issue then WildBill but I think it's pretty easy to run out on the arcade machine if you use even a little smoke. Thanks, please keep the bug reports coming. -EdF Thanks for fixing those little bugs. Another suggestion if you can squeeze this in: a different theme or a on-screen notice to tell the player its the challenging stage. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Fries Posted January 10, 2014 Author Share Posted January 10, 2014 Hi guys, Here's the latest version. This is getting kind of close to being done. It fixes all the bugs I know of, adds random rocks for, err, Random, a challenging mode indicator for WildBill, plus better (and easier) fuel management and gets rid of the last scanline glitches for Thomas. I darkened the road a notch which, in my opinion, doesn't look quite as good in Stella but looks much better on my CRT with a light sixer. This build also gives a free life correctly at 20K points. How high can you score? I've been up around 50K a couple times using Stella and the keyboard but I think it's a bit harder on real hardware with a joystick. I did a bit of code compression work but have a lot more to do if I'm going to squeeze in the third track. I have a few ideas but finding more than 100 bytes is going to be a slog. Thanks for all your help and please keep up the suggestions and feedback. -EdF Rally 140109.bin 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
purduecrum Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Random thought/recommendation... could the control of the car be more like that of Targ/Universal Chaos? I think it would be an interesting twist to the gameplay. Enjoying what I see so far! Thanks for your efforts!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RetroFiends Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Based Ed Fries making superb 2600 titles, can't wait to give this a go. On a side note, I showed my friend Halo 2600 yesterday and I finally got to legendary mode, and we were cracking up at how damn slow the chief walks across the screen. Genuine good times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 This is really excellent! I can't say I'm very good at it, but it's fun to play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 It feels like the controls have improved over time.. am I imagining this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Better get the time travel machine warmed up. It's almost time for you to leave. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Better get the time travel machine warmed up. It's almost time for you to leave. Looks like Eric has sprite mutiplexing down. It might be time for an improved Time Pilot! UPDATE: ..wait, you're saying there's somewhere else on the Internet besides AA? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WildBillTX Posted January 11, 2014 Share Posted January 11, 2014 (edited) I tried out your new beta but i didn't see a challenging mode indicator anywhere. The randomization of flags around the track seems predictable. I keep seeing them in the same places over and over. I agree it's harder to play on a 2600 Harmony cart than it is on Stella. The Joystick control doesn't seem as quick and responsive as using the arrow keys. And if you get close to an enemy car its very easy to crash into them when you make a turn. It seems your car slows down but they dont. The last high score I got was around 31200. Edited January 11, 2014 by WildBillTX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Fries Posted January 11, 2014 Author Share Posted January 11, 2014 I tried out your new beta but i didn't see a challenging mode indicator anywhere. The randomization of flags around the track seems predictable. I keep seeing them in the same places over and over. I agree it's harder to play on a 2600 Harmony cart than it is on Stella. The Joystick control doesn't seem as quick and responsive as using the arrow keys. And if you get close to an enemy car its very easy to crash into them when you make a turn. It seems your car slows down but they dont. The last high score I got was around 31200. In challenging mode your car flashes like crazy (like the special flag). You didn't notice that? There are only 2 flag patterns right now. The rocks are a bit more random than that but still can only appear in certain positions. I can easily add more rock positions but the flags are much harder (has to do with the fact that they show on the mini-map). Right now I'm working on shrinking the code to add the 3rd track so this won't change for a while. Tip: Your car goes the same speed as the enemy cars, but... if you hit a wall and autoturn, rather than turning BEFORE you hit the wall, your car will pause slightly and lose some ground to the enemy cars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WildBillTX Posted January 12, 2014 Share Posted January 12, 2014 (edited) In challenging mode your car flashes like crazy (like the special flag). You didn't notice that? There are only 2 flag patterns right now. The rocks are a bit more random than that but still can only appear in certain positions. I can easily add more rock positions but the flags are much harder (has to do with the fact that they show on the mini-map). Right now I'm working on shrinking the code to add the 3rd track so this won't change for a while. Tip: Your car goes the same speed as the enemy cars, but... if you hit a wall and autoturn, rather than turning BEFORE you hit the wall, your car will pause slightly and lose some ground to the enemy cars. I just discovered the flashing car, I was looking for an audio or off track notice, sorry for complaining about that. I wish you could make the code randomize the flags like the arcade game does. Having 2 or a couple more flag patterns makes the game easy to master when you already know where the flags are. Keep working on it Ed, it's impressive the way it is, I just feel I'm nitpicking little things here and there.. (I've been playing too many Spiceware games!) Edited January 12, 2014 by WildBillTX Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JrPac Posted January 27, 2014 Share Posted January 27, 2014 Very, very impressive, great work. I've been waiting for somebody to port Rally X in some way to the 2600. I would likely purchase a cart if these were made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam242 Posted January 27, 2014 Share Posted January 27, 2014 Awesome! I just found out about this... Rally-X is one of my favorite nostalgia trips, and I've been hoping for a good home version for an Atari platform. I've been pretty bummed since the 8-bit port was abandoned a while back.. Just had a quick play on Stella at work. Looks and plays great! Can't wait to try it on my Harmony at home tonight. And count me in for a cart when they become available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JrPac Posted January 27, 2014 Share Posted January 27, 2014 (edited) I just tried this on real hardware via Harmony. Works great and is just a fantastic work, though a few things were noticed. The enemy cars become very difficult to see when two or more (or so, just going off what I believe the numbers were) are on screen or with a rock due to the flicker. Perhaps make the enemies a darker color or background lighter to be seen better? After death from anything, the screen rolls once while drawing the screen. It's a bit bothersome could be gotten used to after a while. The second track is a little hard to see with the red and orange, along with the flickering enemies. Again, perhaps lighter background or darker walls? Just what I found, note that I am no programmer. WIll be checking back for updates! Edited January 27, 2014 by JrPac Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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