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Touchdown Challenge


Atarius Maximus

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After playing Kickoff on my iPhone it insipired me to make a similar, simple football game. The object is to run past the defenders and score a touchdown. The pattern changes when you score. Most of the players run slowly down the field, but there is one who will relentlessly chase you. If you get tackled, the score resets. It needs a lot of polish but is very playable and kind of fun.

 

Version 2 fixes a gameplay bug. The update removes the bottom goalpost and allows for all opposing players to enter the endzone, it was possible to sit and wait at the bottom of the screen without getting tackled and easily score. I also added some simple audio for running, getting tackled, and scoring.

TouchdownChallenge.bin

post-2143-0-45821400-1401473660_thumb.jpg

TouchdownChallenge.txt

TouchdownChallenge2.bin

TouchdownChallenge2.txt

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Speaking of football, now that we have the DPC+ kernel, maybe somebody can make a single-player version of M Network's Super Challenge Football for the Atari 2600.

youtube.com/watch?v=COnzRdw1nKg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COnzRdw1nKg

I love how the player tells each guy what to do:

atariage.com/manual_html_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=530
.

Before each play, when the teams are lined up on the field, program the 4
linemen.  Before being programmed, each lineman faces the quarterback. 
After being programmed, each lineman faces the opposing team.  Now choose
one of five running patterns, and program all 4 linemen.  Here is how:

  Push red button, without moving joystick: designates the actual pass
  receiver.  (Only Program one actual receiver!)

  Push up: offensive player will block upward

  Push down: offensive player will block downward

  Push* toward quarterback: offensive player will block straight ahead

  Push* toward other team: offensive player will go out for a pass as decoy
  receiver

  * push left or right, depending on field position.


DEFENSIVE PLAY CALLING

Before each play, when the teams are lined up on the field, program the 4
defensive linemen.  Before being programmed, each lineman faces the
linebacker.  After being programmed, he faces the opposing team.  Now
choose one of four defensive moves, and program all 4 defensive linemen. 
Here is how:

  Push up: defensive player will rush up then go for QB

  Push down: defensive player will rush down then go for QB

  Push* toward other team:  defensive player will rush offensive player
  straight on then rush the QB

  Push* toward linebacker: defensive player covers offensive counterpart
  going out for a pass

  * push left or right, depending on field position

.

I still don't know if it's possible, even with 10 sprites. Might have to be done on the Atari 7800.

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I still don't know if it's possible, even with 10 sprites. Might have to be done on the Atari 7800.

 

M-Network football was a great game, but being 2 player only I didn't play it much. I think it would be possible with bB, but there'd be lots of flicker. I hate flicker. Even with this simple little football game there was no way to avoid it with all the sprites on screen. With that said, I'd love to see a sports game attempted with bB and I don't think that's been done before. Sports games are what I play most often on modern consoles.

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M-Network football was a great game, but being 2 player only I didn't play it much. I think it would be possible with bB, but there'd be lots of flicker. I hate flicker. Even with this simple little football game there was no way to avoid it with all the sprites on screen. With that said, I'd love to see a sports game attempted with bB and I don't think that's been done before. Sports games are what I play most often on modern consoles.

 

Have you started using the Atari 7800 version of BASIC (that was based on bB) yet?

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I only spent about ~4 hours on this game as a proof of concept, I may give it a little more development time as I've had fun with it. Playing Kickoff on iOS inspired me to try and pull it off and without some kind of motivation or inspiration it just isn't fun to make a game. :) After playing for a while I found that there's an easy way to cheat. I disabled collision detection in the bottom endzone so the goalpost wouldn't tackle you. If you wait in the endzone the player that chases you will make it down to the bottom and can't tackle you, giving you plenty of time to just sit there and wait for the right opportunity to race up the screen. I guess the easy thing to do would be to remove the (unneeded) goalposts.

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. . . without some kind of motivation or inspiration it just isn't fun to make a game.

The main thing I like is trying to create sound effects that I haven't heard a million times before on the Atari 2600. The second thing I like is just seeing what I can do. Can I make something that is fun to play? Can I make something that I want to play? Can I make bad guys that seem to be alive, seem to think, and seem to have emotions? Can I create sprite animations that don't suck? Can I make something original? All of that and more can help to keep working on games fun.

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Those are the same questions I ask myself, RT, and those are big challenges. I suck at audio and usually wait until the very end to even bother. Most of my games I work on when I'm at work and it's impossible to work on audio in a sea of people in giant area of cubicles. :) Someone else did the sprites and animation for me in my only AA released game Cave In. I've tried and failed to come up with anything remotely close to an intelligent AI in a game. It's still fun to work on something when you have an idea that motivates/inspires you... I just start on it and see what happens.

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224. Even without using the cheat, I found that since only the chase player can enter the end zone, luring him to the far left then moving back across the end zone and shooting up the right sideline worked almost every time. A neat little game though.

 

I'd definitely like to see some more sports games for the 2600, especially a good baseball game.

post-5573-0-89782000-1401676462_thumb.png

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224. Even without using the cheat, I found that since only the chase player can enter the end zone, luring him to the far left then moving back across the end zone and shooting up the right sideline worked almost every time. A neat little game though.

 

I'd definitely like to see some more sports games for the 2600, especially a good baseball game.

 

Yep, I noticed that too. I made an update that removes the bottom goalpost and allows for all opposing players to enter the endzone. I also added some simple audio for running, getting tackled, and scoring. This version is closer to what I had in mind for the game's difficulty, but certain patterns of players may require some tweaking. I'm not quite done with it yet.

TouchdownChallenge2.bin

TouchdownChallenge2.txt

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I'd definitely like to see some more sports games for the 2600, especially a good baseball game.

 

I forgot to comment on that. Agreed, I'd love to attempt a baseball game and have thought of that before, but it would be difficult. I'm definitely thinking about a sports game as a project. No one has really attempted one with bB as of yet.

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Wow. Now that I've played around with RevEng's 7800 basic you'll find me posting over there for a while. This game is on hold while I work on a 7800 demo. :)

 

Once I start using that, it will be hard to go back, but I hope to make games for both consoles, even if people will only just play the games using an emulator.

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Once I start using that, it will be hard to go back, but I hope to make games for both consoles, even if people will only just play the games using an emulator.

 

Agreed. I'm not going to abandon 2600 bB, but I'm excited to try out the 7800 version. The big difference is graphics. The playfield and sprites are all bitmapped and your best bet is to be well versed with Gimp based on what's been posted so far. Making sprites and playfield tiles that are compatible takes some effort/knowledge. I spent a great deal of time today just figuring out how to make a sprite import correctly, but did get a demo working.

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Agreed. I'm not going to abandon 2600 bB, but I'm excited to try out the 7800 version. The big difference is graphics. The playfield and sprites are all bitmapped and your best bet is to be well versed with Gimp based on what's been posted so far. Making sprites and playfield tiles that are compatible takes some effort/knowledge. I spent a great deal of time today just figuring out how to make a sprite import correctly, but did get a demo working.

Last time I checked, there was at least one free BASIC program for the PC that let people make games and useful tools. It would be cool to make a drawing program tool just for making stuff just for 7800BASIC. It could be a sprite tool, an animation tool, and a tile creation tool all in one. Once one of us knows enough about the graphics stuff, a useful program like that could be made.

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There's of course many more differences than graphics, and I haven't even begun to dive in yet. Collision detection is much different too and it looks challenging, as MARIA has no hardware sprite collision detection. Either way I'm looking forward to the challenge, even if I fail miserably it'll be fun to try.

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Last time I checked, there was at least one free BASIC program for the PC that let people make games and useful tools. It would be cool to make a drawing program tool just for making stuff just for 7800BASIC. It could be a sprite tool, an animation tool, and a tile creation tool all in one. Once one of us knows enough about the graphics stuff, a useful program like that could be made.

 

That would be very useful. The problem I had was creating an image that matches the 7800 graphics option that you choose and having an image editor that supports it. Gimp is the only free editor that will do it (that I know of). Anyone can of course go read the 10+ pages in the 7800 forum, but the challenge is creating an indexed image with the correct number of colors, if it's not perfect it won't compile. There are also palette options that can be imported that were posted by other AA members. I suggested to RevEng in the thread that he started that more info on how to create compatible images be added to the manual.

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I wasn't aware of it's existence, been away from the forums for a while. I'll definitely check it out.

 

I had some time to play around with 7800basic today and Mike has done an amazing job. I made a nowhere near complete 7800 demo version of touchdown challenge today and posted it in the 7800 programming forum. There's a big learning curve in how to do graphics and you'll have to learn how to use Gimp (if you want a free way to make graphics) along with creating the correct 13 color indexed color palette, but it's certainly not impossible and there's a post explaining how to do it. There's no more playfield graphics, the entire background and sprites (up to 24 on screen at a time with no flicker!) are all bitmapped. The graphics I modified from the examples aren't the actual colors you see when you use them in the game, the colors are modifiable in the code. Took me a bit to figure that out but it works great.

 

If you're very familiar with bB you can learn 7800basic easily and I highly recommend checking it out. I've only done very basic testing with it but so far it's rock solid. I'm going to attempt to finish up the football game and then try and tackle a more advanced project, I'm excited about diving in to it.

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+1 for a new 2600 baseball game - although Pete Rose and Super Challenge are pretty damned good. Be cool to see if something along the lines of Championship Baseball could be done.

 

 

I would love to see a new baseball game!

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I would love to see a new baseball game!

 

Me too. I may attempt that on the 7800. I'm not sure how hard it'd be until I'd actually start, though. :) I just got the 7800 version up to the same level of playability as the 2600 version, and the 7800 version looks a whole lot better. :)

post-2143-0-18277000-1402094922_thumb.png

post-2143-0-09275700-1402094923_thumb.jpg

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