Venture Official Release

[phoenixdownita]

What, no take down notice yet?

 

I wonder if it is simply a prank for Sal/Pete/whatchamacallhim etc...., dunno like a giant flying turd in the middle of the screen.

Obviously I have not DLed it yet.

 

NM just read the comment below mine

Edited December 10, 2014 by phoenixdownita

[Marius]

 

Go ahead; don't be afraid...

 

Yeah... I'm pretty sure you'll love it. It took me a lot of time to put all the Venture data into this version.

[snicklin]

 

Go ahead; don't be afraid...

 

But I am!

[_The Doctor__]

oh noes it can't be.... I was venturing and ran into some venture capital... I was willing to spend some of that capital on Venture... but alas one of the partners in that venture made it impossible for me to give the other the capital... now I have no venture but have capital.. as I am a Venture Capitalist I shall have to place the capital in a different venture... imagine the growth on the charts if that venture proves productive.

[HiassofT]

Yeah!

Awesome!

 

But, why in the hell did you release that as a digital download? As we all know nobody likes that, a cart is much better!

 

SCNR,

 

Hias

[+Allan]

Wow I saw the videos of Venture but actually playing the rom of Venture really shows what a great program this is. You must have spent months programming this. Nice job. Now I don't have to buy a cart.

 

Allan

[Albert]

Alright guys, the topic about releasing the game as a binary has been beaten to death many times now, and I'm frankly amazed that Pete continues to post in this thread given how he and others have been attacked about not selling the binary. That is their business, and it's well within their right to sell the game in any fashion they see fit. They know damn well by now that many people don't agree with their decision not to make a binary available. Perhaps with future projects Pete can go about things a bit differently.

 

So, from hereon out, let's please keep this discussion about the game itself. I especially don't want to see any attacks, insults, and/or trolling in this thread. Even if you write up a superb treatise on why the battle against pirates is a futile exercise, I will delete it within 30 seconds of your posting it, boot you from the thread, and nobody else will see it.

 

Thanks,

 

..Al

[_The Doctor__]

PeteyM is a good guy, it's become all in good fun at this point. The problem isn't with him. I know good things are coming from him. He is caught between a rock and a hard place. I've been there before. I have a complete understanding at this point... We should help him in his other projects.

[_The Doctor__]

Technical discussion for Venture will be @

http://forums.atari.io/index.php?/topic/159-peteym5-comes-to-atari-io/

 

Hope his other projects continue here at AtariAge and we can help make them as k*ck *ss as they can be...

Edited December 11, 2014 by _The Doctor__

[Albert]

Technical discussion for Venture will be @

http://forums.atari.io/index.php?/topic/159-peteym5-comes-to-atari-io/

Uhhhh...

[Marius]

Alright guys, the topic about releasing the game as a binary has been beaten to death many times now, and I'm frankly amazed that Pete continues to post in this thread given how he and others have been attacked about not selling the binary. That is their business, and it's well within their right to sell the game in any fashion they see fit. They know damn well by now that many people don't agree with their decision not to make a binary available. Perhaps with future projects Pete can go about things a bit differently.

 

So, from hereon out, let's please keep this discussion about the game itself. I especially don't want to see any attacks, insults, and/or trolling in this thread. Even if you write up a superb treatise on why the battle against pirates is a futile exercise, I will delete it within 30 seconds of your posting it, boot you from the thread, and nobody else will see it.

 

Thanks,

 

..Al

 

Agreed. The reason I created that little thingy was meant as a 'final' anyway, and believe me or not, it was a light-minded attempt from my side, to present this subject in a unique atari 8bit-look-a-like presentation. Not to hurt feelings.

 

I agree with Doctor and you about the good words spoken/written about Pete, and I also wish him -again- all the best with his productions.

 

One last word though: I disagree (I wrote this before already) about the fact that the subject is changed to "digital downloads"... The subject was mainly changed into the fact that there is (or was?) a BUG in this game, and that is impossible for people to help, without anything to test. I think that is pretty ontopic, and like I also wrote before: my actions were mainly meant to help: being a paying customer, being someone even willing to SIGN something, offering help to track down a hard-to-fix bug.

 

I don't understand why a thread derails when people offering help. And I also don't understand why it is now suddenly seen as: "Pete + crew" against the other people (where I probably belong too)? The guy (Pete) even used a second AtariAge account to make his point? And he still has to be taken serious?

 

@Albert: you may lock me out of this thread, fine. Please ban me completely from this forum then.

[Albert]

I'm not trying to shut down any technical discussion about the game, in fact, I'd like to see that continue. And I know that's what Pete wants as well.

 

..Al

[Reds1f14]

I purchase Venture and it runs fine without any problems in Pal video. Brown Atari cartridge. Graphics and Sound are great.

[thegamezmaster]

Deleted .

Edited April 27, 2015 by thegamezmaster

[peteym5]

Here is some news, I am no longer associating with KJMANN on projects. I am continuing to work through Video61 and Atari Sales. All my future games will not be under the Atlantis Games Group banner. Venture and Tempest Xtreme cartridges will still state Atlantis Games Groups and music by Sal Esquivel.

 

I would like to continue technical discussions for my software and avoid the bashing over pricing or how the games being disturbed. I admit this game had its run of bad luck for everyone involved. Like the game had a curse to it. I can tell you about some things that happened during the development history of the game.

 

During the development of Venture, I had concerns about selling it at the same price as Tempest Xtreme, $49.95. I remember even back in 2010, Video 61 could put games onto 16K cartridges and sell them for $39.95 and still fall under his free shipping policy. Venture was originally suppose to be part of a multi-game cartridge, think we were going to put 2600 to 8-bit ports Laser Blast, Chopper Command, and Enduro on an Atari Max cart. Later decided it be better to release each game individually because people will only like 1 or 2 games and complain about spending money for the others they don't like. So I went onto trying to get it to fit into 16K.

 

The first thing that pushed it out of the target size was KJMANN did the RMT music that was almost 3.5K in size plus the player gobbling another 2K. The second thing was KJMANN wanted it to look better than the 2600 sprites so we used missile + player 10 pixel wide sprites. I discovered to do the missile, you have to do the 2 shifted positions but I managed to get it to the same space as 2 players. It does an Bit AND and Bit OR operation when copying to the player/missile area. But each sprite consume 40 bytes times over 100 sprites, almost 4K. So at that point I am already using over half the cart space not including screen data, programming, and a title screen. I remember someone suggesting Inflate, but I pushed it aside.

 

So I started aiming for a 32K cartridge, either XEGS, or use 128K AtariMax cartridges. There was enough room to do a classic "Venture" arcade style title screen. There was an initial release of the game in 2011 but many found the game too easy so we recalled the cartridges and figured out how to make it more challenging. Not sure if anyone still has those. When the game was completed, we had a problem with a supply of XEGS cartridges. We attempted to work with AtariAge to manufacture some and Atari Sales will resale some of them. Something happened and KJMANN pulled the plug on the ideal. I asked Video61 does he have anything else, and I learned he had these tons of these Williams 32K/64K cartridges that had an identical bank switching scheme to AtariMax 128K/1024K. I was able to build Venture image for either XEGS or AtariMax, So all I did was cut the AtariMax version to just use 4 banks. I like EPROM cartridges because they don't get erased and work better. Some people get games on Max carts and they somehow get erased or don't work.

 

When the final game was release in November 2013, I figured my worries be over, I can be freely working on my next game. I was not fully aware about the cartridge board fitting inside the shell and almost right away people started complaining about it. Plus the $49.95 price tag probably did not meet the WOW factor that Tempest Xtreme did. I was starting to play around with Inflate compression for another game project and finally did see it only needed about 1K to work. What was going on with the first couple pages on this thread disturbed me. I sent an email to Video61 and KJMANN in Febraury 2014 asking would it be too late to consider porting Venture to use Inflate and fit it onto 16K cartridge. Both said "DO IT!" I managed to do it in a few weeks and I sent the EPROM image to Video61. It was KJMANNs' decision to hold the release until the Portland Retro Gaming Expo in October 2014, I wanted to scrap the 32K version 6 months earlier.

 

So now we have a better quality physical cartridge selling $39.95 in the Brown Atari Cartridge Shell. I can call that a better bargain. This is also serving a model for future games.

Edited August 13, 2015 by peteym5

[Mclaneinc]

Your 'curse' was Sal...

 

Good luck in the future...

[Marius]

I would like to continue technical discussions for my software and avoid the bashing over pricing or how the games being disturbed.

 

I understand this, and like I promised you already several times it will not happen again, I'm still curious about one thing. Since KJMANN was the one that always shouted that an .XEX/.ATR version of your games would never happen, and since you finally are no longer connected to him, I hope this means in future game releases there is a chance you and Lance decide different. But as promised, no discussion about it... just me expressing -just like you- a wish.

 

So now we have a better quality physical cartridge selling $39.95 in the Brown Atari Cartridge Shell. I can call that a better bargain. This is also serving a model for future games.

 

I appreciated your post. I liked it on the forum.

But this last line seriously made me smile. You do not want to discuss price, but how am I supposed to respond on that last line if you do not want to discuss price? haha

(Don't take this question too serious please)

[+Philsan]

The recent Dungeon Hunt game was sold for $45 in a box using a Steven Tucker’s Atarimax 1MB cartridge, that lets you save game progress:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/235144-dungeon-hunt-cartridge-interest-check/?p=3195032

No more memory problems for your awesome games!

 

Dungeon Hunt has a digital edition too, personalized with your name (I would charge more than $5 tough, perhaps $10 or $20): http://atariage.com/forums/topic/231654-dungeon-hunt-a-new-game-for-the-atari-8-bit/?p=3138086

[peteym5]

During the stages of development of Venture and programming the player/missile multiplexer I noticed something. I can use that part of the program for other things. When I was still a teenager, my friend had a Nintendo Entertainment System and I had my Atari 130XE. He said my Atari would never come close to what the NES did. Of course that opinion changed when we seen ports of Boulder Dash and Pitfall (Super Pitfall) and we both asked "What were they thinking!" Well one game that caught my attention was "Legend of Zelda". At that time I was still using Basic, Basic XE, Turbo Basic, and did a few short machine language routines copied out of magazines. I did not get Mac/65 cart until around 1990 and Atari was heading out of the mainstream, but I did learn some assembly. Well I put the Atari aside when I got my PC and did not come back to it until around 2006. Did some historical research on Atari and came across Atari Age and started seeing all the wonderful stuff people had been doing. Some were sharing their ML techniques, and I learned how to disassemble things in the emulator to see how things got done. My first post was I wanted to do an Atari Game, I was looking to do a 4 way side scrolling pitfall like thing. It was not long after KJMANN12 contacted me. At first he wanted to do an Atari port of Obliterater, then wanted me involved with Outrun. This was when I was still starting to figure out full ML executable games, assemblers, emulators, etc. Well both those thing got abandoned, but the KJMANN called me up and told me no one made a good port of Tempest 2000. I expressed my concerns over copyright issues, but doing that forced me to learn more about how cartridges and bank switching worked.

 

Well Tempest Xtreme got finished and I kept suggesting, can we has some of this programming for other games. He then suggested Venture, I was not a huge fan of that one and did not work hard at it. I am a bigger fan of Zelda and Atari 2600 Adventuret. Of course KJMANN kept on my case to get it done, his health was getting bad and started contacting me less and less. However I started realizing, maybe what is being made here bring me to a long awaited dream of doing a major adventure game. Even before Venture was completed, I copied the Venture multiplexer into a separate project to see what can I do with it. Soon made monocolor, multicolor, and meta missile + player versions of it.

 

Going back to Basic days, I constantly ran into limitations of only 4 players (sprites) on screen at once and that made it difficult to do something like Zelda. I did start a few Turbobasic games, but not sure I finished anything really big. Now I have all this knowledge and programming code and said, why don't I do an Adventure Role Playing type 2D game like Adventure and Zelda for the 8-bit. KJMANN was skeptical, but Video61 was quick to point out no one had done something like that on a large scale on the 8-bit. So that is how Secretum Labyrinth came into existence.

 

Just to let everyone know, since I elected to complete a few games without KJMANN he basicly said I can no longer use his music. So I learned how to use RMT (Raster Music Tractor) my own and ported a few MOD songs. I think in another thread, I posted one of the songs to see if I can get help cleaning things up. The game is now complete and waiting to get the labels and manuals for the cartridge.

[tep392]

The recent Dungeon Hunt game was sold for $45 in a box using a Steven Tucker’s Atarimax 1MB cartridge, that lets you save game progress:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/235144-dungeon-hunt-cartridge-interest-check/?p=3195032

No more memory problems for your awesome games!

 

Dungeon Hunt has a digital edition too, personalized with your name (I would charge more than $5 tough, perhaps $10 or $20): http://atariage.com/forums/topic/231654-dungeon-hunt-a-new-game-for-the-atari-8-bit/?p=3138086

Dungeon Hunt was an awsome deal. I paid $20 for a boxed floppy version with color manual, D.H. flashlight and backup CD's, all personalized with my choice of name. He could have charged twice that much.

[peteym5]

The recent Dungeon Hunt game was sold for $45 in a box using a Steven Tucker’s Atarimax 1MB cartridge, that lets you save game progress:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/235144-dungeon-hunt-cartridge-interest-check/?p=3195032

No more memory problems for your awesome games!

 

Dungeon Hunt has a digital edition too, personalized with your name (I would charge more than $5 tough, perhaps $10 or $20): http://atariage.com/forums/topic/231654-dungeon-hunt-a-new-game-for-the-atari-8-bit/?p=3138086

We were considering putting Venture on an Atari Max 128K (1 megabit) cartridge before I learned Video61 has hundreds Williams boards and cartridge shells. I had 32K XEGS and 128K Max versions working. Since Williams bank is almost identical to AtariMax, all I did was removed the filler to get it to work for emulator testing. Difference is Williams and AtariMax has different bytes you write to expose the RAM mapped under the cartridge ($A000 to $BFFF) and there is no code that sets the flash enable ($55/$AA). Williams can be 32K or 64K but as some of us found out are a tight fit with the EPROM chip + socket. I got my test version together by over tightening a central screw that fit.

 

Issues concerning AtariMax cartridges is that you are paying extra for a bulk of blank cartridges before you flash them, so has to factor into the final cost. An EPROM cartridge will never loose its content. We used AtariMax cartridges for Tempest Xtreme, and some people sent them back because they lost their content. Might be dirty contacts inside the computer, 65XE and 130XE slots are on the back and lean down. If one or two pins loose contact, the content gets scrambled. Any flash memory device is susceptible for its memory being corrupted. I had USB flash drives that went bad on me. People can expect that to happen to any game on a flash cartridge.

 

The 16K ROM cartridge is the final version of Venture for the Atari 8-bit machine.

Edited August 27, 2015 by peteym5

[peteym5]

Atarisales Has many blank 8 and 16k cartridge boards available. like hundreds of them. Venture had been selling better since we put it on a 16 Cartridge board and brown shell. The 32K version is in a tan shell sold out and is no longer available. Venture final price is $39.95 with free shipping. We are saving those for larger games with more to them. I had considered making another version of Venture with more levels, monsters, and challenges, and use compression to pack more into the cartridge. However I chosen to go onto make other games and be done with Venture because of everything I had gone through.

Edited November 19, 2015 by peteym5

[peteym5]

I have been going through old posts and webpages we made up over the years for these games and seen how we talked and shown our games then and now. Something that works now is making Youtube videos with commentary and posting detailed screen shots. I looked through this thread and there was never a screen shot posted by KJMANN12 or myself. Since KJMANN12 left because of personal and health issues, I became more active with the promotion part my production. Something I like to do is make up bunches of screenshots to show different levels and parts of these games. Now here are some screen shots.

Edited December 1, 2016 by peteym5

[rdefabri]

This thread is quite drama filled - what's the Cliffs Notes version? Was it made available to download (seems against author's wishes)?

[peteym5]

No cliffs note version ever mentioned here. I gave a history of what happened during the development of this game in a prior post.

 

I investigated the pay-per-download thing recently for PC software I am developing. I see many sites are charging large fees to the point I won't be able to do things much cheaper. Many of them are geared toward installing software on modern computers like Windows and Mac OS and do things that make it difficult to copy.

 

I also suggested an ideal similar to online streaming services like Netflix, but do it with retro-gaming ROMs. Emulate through the web browser or customize emulator that loads files from the site and yet prevents it from being saved permanently on the clients hard drive. Something like these:http://emulator.online/, http://www.2600online.com/ and add Atari 8-bit emulators. I scrapped ideal after I got some nasty responses.