peteym5 Posted October 29, 2014 Share Posted October 29, 2014 (edited) I would like to make it official that I am releasing "Secretum Labyrinth Kings Gold" for public release today. It is the game to be included in my Secretum Labyrinth games series. This is an executable game designed to showcase the Action Adventure RPG programming I am developing for the Atari. I can say this is a beta demonstration for future games that will be sold on cartridges sometime in the future. No dates had been set yet because work is ongoing at this point. I would like to get the ball rolling with beta the programming and promote the Secretum Labyrinth series. I am also looking to attract other interested parties that are looking to do this top down style of Adventure type game. I can say what I am doing here has some elements similar to the 2600 Adventure and The Legend of Zelda. I did try to make it unique and there are a vast number of differences. This executable version has less rooms and monsters compared to what I am planning to put into the cartridge base games. I also watch what was going on with "Adventure II" for the 5200 and avoided duplicating what they where doing and make my stuff different. What I need tested is how things behave on real hardware. Is the SuperIRG an issue on PAL TV and monitors in Europe? How bad is the flickering from the multiplexing of multicolored sprites? The game requires 64K main memory and loads parts under the OS ROM so it won't work with SpartaDOS or on an Atari 800 with 48K. If you run on emulation in Altirra, make sure you have "frame blending" on. Edited October 29, 2014 by peteym5 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 (edited) Just thought, I already know this type of game, there was something similar published at AA some time ago. Today I found out why and where... http://atariage.com/forums/topic/218207-secretum-labyrinththe-legend-adventure-rpg-style-game-for-atari-8-bit/ http://atariage.com/forums/topic/207972-role-playing-adventure-game-cartridge-in-the-works/ http://atariage.com/forums/topic/193468-adventure-rpg-demo/?hl=%2Brpg+%2Badventure&do=findComment&comment=2492911 Looking good ! Hope to see the finished game (cart.) soon. Thanks for all your work and contributions for the A8 Pete !! Edited October 30, 2014 by CharlieChaplin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 Obviously this software has been in the works for awhile and has gone through changes over the years. The final plans for the cartridge are changing all the time. I am trying to work with KJMANN12 to do a nice music sound track for the game, may have different music play in different regions of the game. Been experimenting with inflate and other forms of encrypting the data to fit into smaller spaces. I might do 2 cartridge games within the Secretum Labyrinth series. "..The Legend" 1st being geared to a smaller 64K cartridge. 2nd cartridge geared toward a 128K bank switching cartridge. As always the decision to make a 2nd Cartridge depends on how well the first Cartridge does. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted November 5, 2014 Author Share Posted November 5, 2014 Here is an update to Secretum Labyrinth:Kings Gold. I am debugging some things myself as I investigate for causes. I hope some people out there can help me find these issues and I want to put out a great game that many people will enjoy playing. I hid a few things inside Secretum Labyrinth to pay homage to other popular adventure video games during the '70s and 80s. The challenge now is to see if anyone can find and name them. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted November 7, 2014 Author Share Posted November 7, 2014 (edited) Here is the update for November 7, 2014. It has some changes. This version of Secretum Labyrinth is designed to be a free game that can run on an Atari computer with only 64K of ram. It has a 100 room map and 18 different monsters. I changed a few things to make it easier. There are only 10 skill levels, level 10 has the max hit points set at 99. The cartridge versions will have larger maps, more monsters, treasures, skill levels, because the ROM space maps only 8K of memory at any one time. This software is evolving as I debug and develop new programming for it. I hope it will be a great game for many people to enjoy. Edited November 7, 2014 by peteym5 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted November 7, 2014 Share Posted November 7, 2014 I hope to get a chance to try this on real hardware - unfort work has me tied up to get a chance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie_ Posted November 7, 2014 Share Posted November 7, 2014 loading the xex from ASPEQT, basic disabled, hangs at 85% on my 130xe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted November 7, 2014 Share Posted November 7, 2014 Hmmm, the version from Nov. 7, 2014 crashes under Altirra and Atari 800 Win, when running for a while. After loading, you see the title screen and the "press START" message at the bottom, as well as the first text screen. Variant a: Wait a while (without pressing START) and you see the second text screen, wait some more seconds and you see the third text screen. Patient as you are, you wait some more seconds - and suddenly you see text garbage on the screen and the emulator crashes. Variant b: Since we know that the emu crashes in the text screens after a while, we press START immediately and the game starts. But after playing a few seconds, the emulator also crashes, no clue why... tested with: Altirra & Atari 800 Win, XL-OS, Basic off, 100% speed, SIO-patch off, 1088k RAM (extremely awful / annoying OS on the PC is Vista atm., think I am gonna re-install WIN XP tomorrow) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted November 8, 2014 Author Share Posted November 8, 2014 This should fix several issues with the title screen and attempting to fix issues while starting the game on real hardware. It starts on my 800XL and in emulation, but hangs on my 130XE. Appears to be some issue going on with initializing the VBI, DLI, and IRQs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted November 8, 2014 Share Posted November 8, 2014 The Tail of beta lyrae plays on xl but not 130xe as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted November 9, 2014 Share Posted November 9, 2014 Finally got a chance to play this - nice, fast, colorful - I had the title screen issue as well with the Nov 7 release. My initial feedback: I presume some balancing of the monsters and such would be done before final release? Feels like a more complex Shamus type game (If thats what you were after). The monsters to me seemed to behave in a very similar manner except the bats - once I got the bow I could corner and kill most foes from a distance - the bats were harder. I also found the puzzles some what disconnected. After running through a variety of rooms and getting the grey key I couldnt progress any further. I found the 'blue thing', pushed a column, and finally got the pyramid to make a noise when I walked over it but didnt see any real change and couldnt progress (or figure out) where to go next. Their either needs to be more visual clues (ie, I see a different 'brick' in this one wall) or written clues as to how these elements go together. Running back and forth through the maze to see if something 10 rooms away changed gets tiresome and some rooms continue to have 5 or 6 monsters bouncing around all the time. It would also be nice if you could produce a slightly bigger protagonist - I know the limitations of the 8bit PG's, but all the monsters are big I played this via emulator. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted November 11, 2014 Author Share Posted November 11, 2014 There is a blue cube idol that heals your hit points. The Yellow Pyramid idol checks your experience points and advances your skill level. Have more hitpoints and become a better warrior. I know there are limitations with using player/missile graphics and the only way to make some bigger is quad width that does look blocky, unless its an image that has a bunch of horizontal lines or squares. So I just have them set at single and double width. The mulitplexer routine copies 8 sprites that are 20 pixels tall in a single loop. All the sprites are a fixed height, any programmer who played with this stuff can say that is just about the lowest CPU usage at the beginning of the VBI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted November 13, 2014 Author Share Posted November 13, 2014 Here is a bug fix to Secretum Labyrinth. Discovered something was going on while setting and changing VBI entry addresses. This changes for title screen, game, pause, and onscreen messages. I am in the process of extending the planned abilities of the cartridge version of Secretum Labyrinth. Working on making it have a map with 256 rooms vs only 100 room map for the executable version that runs on 64K machines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted November 14, 2014 Share Posted November 14, 2014 (edited) Found a problem. You probably recognize the room from the screenshot. I think it's the room where the northern wall opens when you kill all the enemies in the room. I killed them already, and proceeded north. When I returned... well, you see the result. Edited November 14, 2014 by MrFish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted November 14, 2014 Author Share Posted November 14, 2014 I knew I keep forgetting to do a few things with this. I had to run it in emulator in debug mode for about an hour before it changed the status of that room and wall. Actually it was inflate overwriting the room status area for its table and messing things up for the game. This should correct that problem. Hope it works better. Thankyou for finding this bug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted November 14, 2014 Share Posted November 14, 2014 Seems to be working right now. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+therealbountybob Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 I can't get the ATR to load on my 130XE - tried from 1050 drive & APE. Seems to go into an endless loading loop text on screen, blank for a while, repeats. While you're at it could you fix the Tempest Extreme demo to work on real hardware too. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 Same here on my 800XL and a 1050 drive, the 141114 version of SLKG does not work. The XEX works with direct loading under Atari 800 Win, when copied onto an ATR image, that ATR crashes while loading (tried with some gamedos versions and bootloader versions, but no luck so far)... Think there were two playable demo versions of Tempest Xtreem, one version worked on the XL/XE when loaded from DOS (but not from gamedos or bootloader), the other version did not work on the real Atari (only as a XEX file under emulation). Kept only the demo that worked on the real A8 - and bought the full cart. version... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 @ therealbountybob Tempest Extreme Demo 2 ways real hardware(tested myself), don't know what's different about em but maybe a bug fix? both worked with apeloader mirror on 800XL and 130XE. Both are .xex Tempest Xtreem.xex TmpstXtreem11.xex 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted November 25, 2014 Author Share Posted November 25, 2014 I removed the ATR and only including the XEX. Not sure what is going on with creating an autoboot but it seems not to be working. May need to figure which memory locations those bootloaders use. A few bugs have been corrected. I did an adjustment with range weapons like hammer, bow and arrow, and wand. The reshoot rate is lower than swinging a sword or mace. This also gives another reason to advance in skill level, as the reshoot speed is faster in higher skill levels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted November 26, 2014 Share Posted November 26, 2014 Hmmm, since the 20141124 version still does not boot from ATR image (tested with Atari 800 Win) or real disk, I think you are using some memory that is partially used by the bootloader or gamedos. Just leave $0700-09FF free for the bootloader or the gamedos, other than that I have no clue. Or does the demo require some DOS routines to be present/available and I should load it from a DOS ? (Tried it with DOS 2.5 but this also did not work.) Or should I use XBIOS by XXL (have not tried this) ?!? Tried PicoDOS (bootloader), Nanodos (gamedos) and MyPicoDOS (gamedos) but none of them could load the XEX from an ATR or real disk... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+therealbountybob Posted November 26, 2014 Share Posted November 26, 2014 Agreeing with CC above... If it's any help the Tempest demo didn't run from mydos with mypicodos menu, but did run directly from mydos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted November 26, 2014 Author Share Posted November 26, 2014 Try this one on real hardware. I rearranged some of the memory locations being used by the loader. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+therealbountybob Posted November 29, 2014 Share Posted November 29, 2014 Thanks Pete, that one worked on my 130XE and 800XLs - I tried the ATR on my 1050s. Firstly I want to say that I really like the game The speed and movement are good and the creatures look wonderful. Music is good too. SKLG is a bit like Shamus; speaking of which I wonder if you can implement an in-game map as this having to map things is what puts me off Shamus, otherwise you can spend ages going backward as forwards to find things. The superb Shamus Case II had the map built automatically as does the new Dungeon Hunt game Some feedback that might be useful re PAL/NTSC: I played on my 130XE PAL CRT screen and like I mentioned before flicker to the point of being unplayable, however you may be able to adjust things to help. I've taken some screenshots as some patterns cause problems - the middle bit and the bluey columns: Screens like this were fine: I've recently acquired an NTSC 800XL and on this things were much better! Perhaps you can have an option to turn off or replace certain patterns on PAL systems? Sometimes a guy gets stuck in the margins but this is kinda fun so you might want to make it a feature. An indication of being hit (sound effect) would be nice One of the Cats "Jasper" seemed to like the game too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted November 30, 2014 Share Posted November 30, 2014 (edited) Yep, I can confirm that the 20141126 version of SLKG now loads from an ATR image under Atari 800 Win and from a real disk on the A8. - better do NOT use autofire, as this will crash the game sooner or later (garbage and crash happened to me several times with activated autofire)... - not only the "guy" gets stuck on the margin, this also happens to other creatures like the snake, the dragon, etc. When the snake got stuck on a margin, it doubled or tripled but after a few seconds it was "free" again (and the clones/copies disappeared). - some flicker is there on my PAL Atari and PAL tv, but I can tolerate it (it is not as annoying as in some other games, e.g. Space Harrier, The Wall/Tetris, Gemdrop, etc.) Have to do some more play-testing in the next days... Edited November 30, 2014 by CharlieChaplin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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