TORNADO BLAST (Atari 2600 2k Homebrew)

[+Gemintronic]

Keep on truckin' through a tornado! Use your joystick to navigate the road. Press FIRE to accelerate. A life will be decremented each time you collide with debris or other trucks. After losing a life the difficulty will reset. If all three lives are used up the game is over. The tornado can be touched but falling debris cannot! Oil slicks from other trucks will sometimes appear. Contact with oil slicks will slide your vehicle. As you progress more debris will fall and oil slicks will become longer. The current high score is retained until system is shut off.

 

This requires the modified batari BASIC files from Gate Racer 2k to compile.

tornadoblast.bas

tornadoblast.bin

[+Random Terrain]

What is this extravagant 2k crap? That's 1k more than anyone needs!

[+Gemintronic]

What is this 2k crap? That's 1k more than anyone needs!

 

It may be possible. I just don't know how to safely trim the bB files like Atarius Maximus. Hmmmn..

[+Gemintronic]

The Tornado uses two tricks to look like it is using multiple shades of black.

 

Using the first bit of the counter variable the Tornado sprite moves up one frame then down another. This adds volume and produces half tones. Where there are pixels on both frames despite the jumping a solid black is rendered.

 

Using the forth bit in counter we also reflect the sprite for animation purposes.

 

 

if counter{0} then goto odd_frame
player1y = player1y - 2
goto draw_event

odd_frame
player1y = player1y + 2

draw_event
NUSIZ1 = $27
if counter{4} then REFP0 = 8 : REFP1 = 8
drawscreen
goto main

 

 

 

Basically, the start of many of my games always looks like this:

 

dim counter = a

 

main

counter = counter + 1

 

 

Using a variable for counting up by one is infinitely useful. Not only can it be used as described above but it can seed rand and even replace calls to the rand function entirely.

[+Gemintronic]

Tornado Blast got a shout out on the Retro Revisited YouTube channel. His only comment was "Yes, this was the best quality screenshot I could find!"

 

I guess it doesn't help that it's a 2k game.. or that the enemy trucks look rather phallic

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=K83lNiPdOCQ#t=357

[GroovyBee]

Good start! Just had a quick play in Stella. Some thoughts (as always ) :-

 

- Good use of sprite duplication for oncoming trucks.

- Player needs to be a darker colour or the road needs to be a darker grey.

- Score needs to go up faster. There isn't much sense of player achievement at the moment because the score remains low for too long in my opinion.

- Trucks seem to appear from nowhere at the top of the screen. It'd be nice if they scrolled on.

- An animated crash when you hit something would give the player a few seconds down time before throwing them back into the game.

- It doesn't wait for fire button to go up after you die and were accelerating.

- A "GAME OVER" screen would be a good addition.

- It'd be nice if debris could be animated.

- Some of the trucks don't have enough contrast compared to the road colour.

- Multicoloured trucks would be nice.

- Truck animation kinda looks like they've got short legs and not wheels. Although making a good, top down view, animated truck is gonna be hard.

- How about adding more variety with trucks, cars and motorbikes?

- More sound effects (other than when you are accelerating).

 

Although, I guess you're maxed out on space with it being a 2K game.

[+Gemintronic]

Awesome feedback from an awesome developer! All those observations make sense. Too bad my code doesn't!

 

- Player needs to be a darker colour or the road needs to be a darker grey.

 

Since I'm using that trick where I stuff the same value into multiple variables I just can't change ONE value. The code becomes longer when I add unique values - not just more lines of BASIC.

 

This is probably reason #1 why the great masters of olde went crazy. Bug fixes and feature requests meant literally rewriting perhaps unrelated code to fit in the changes.. 2k is NOT for the feint of heart

[GroovyBee]

2k is NOT for the feint of heart

Make it a 4K game then .

[+Gemintronic]

Make it a 4K game then .

 

I was thinking of entering the bacon based shmup or lawn care genre instead. Both seem to be popular with the kids these days!

[+Gemintronic]

Sorry to bump my own topic. I've got one person who tried to put this on cart. He says the tornado stays at the very top of the screen and only follows the player horizontally. Also, the trucks never show up.

 

I've tried this on my 7800 via Harmony and no problems. I've even tried building it as a 4k game and no problems.

 

Has anyone else had any weird experiences with this game? Why would it make a difference on an actual cart?

[PFL]

I just tried it out on my Harmony and 2600 Jr and it played fine.

 

PS: Please continue work on this. It's a nice concept but it needs some polish.

[+Gemintronic]

I just tried it out on my Harmony and 2600 Jr and it played fine.

 

PS: Please continue work on this. It's a nice concept but it needs some polish.

 

Not much polish can be done in 2k. Ya think I should rewrite it and stay 2k or expand it for the polish?

[PFL]

If it was me (and I could code!) I'd expand it. I'm not that precious about ROM size constraints. 2k's fine as an intellectual exercise but these days it doesn't really make any difference whether it's 2, 4, 8, 16 or even 32k in any real world sense... Especially if it's just staying in ROM format and just going on a Harmony cart.

 

I say, if you've got it, flaunt it!