Dr. Flin and His Pills

[+atari2600land]

This is a game I'm making. In it, pills are coming from the right of the screen to the left. What you do is make sure the pill color matches the hole color it goes into. If not, or it touches the sides, the pill hole becomes smaller. There are four colors of pill: red, yellow, blue and green. The green pill should be destroyed by smashing it into the wall. If a green pill gets into any hole, all three holes will become smaller.

Right now there are a few bugs which don't make sense. Like this one:

If a pill is on the bottom part of a hole (if the pill's bottom is one pixel above the hole), it won't clear. I don't know why, because it should.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the game. I'd like to try to keep this at 2k. I have 280 bytes left, so I have plenty of room for changes.

drflin.bas.bin

Edited October 9, 2015 by atari2600land

[+atari2600land]

Here is a version that has added sound and doesn't jump on real hardware.

drflin2.bas.bin

[gauauu]

Cool game, keep up the good work!

 

That being said, I think it may be more fun if it was a little faster -- at this point, the only difficult part is trying to avoid that off-by-1-pixel bug.

[Arenafoot]

is there any way to make the holes smaller during gameplay? maybe after 2 or 3 in row correct?

Edited October 15, 2015 by Arenafoot

[+atari2600land]

Perhaps. Maybe if I used pfheight. I don't know if it would fit in 2k, but I'll try.

EDIT: No, I can't. I can only define pfheight once since I'm also using pfcolors. Perhaps I can try something else...

Edited October 15, 2015 by atari2600land

[Jinroh]

Cool concept definitely gonna give this a try. :3

[Mountain King]

I like the concept as well. I do feel that the game needs to move faster and it gets to the point where it's impossible to get the pill in the right slot. When the openings reach about 3/4 across the screen the game becomes almost pointless.

[+atari2600land]

A few changes:

+ I made the game go a bit faster once you reach 10 points. I can change this to, well, anything below 256 points.

+ Once a pill is in its correct slot and you press up or down, it does not penalize you for touching the sides. Instead, it bounces up and down until it gives you a point.

drflin3.bas.bin

drflin3.bas

[Arenafoot]

what i meant to ask, was if you get 3 or 4 right in a row, could the holes retract (go back to the left)???

[+atari2600land]

I'll see.

[+atari2600land]

Updated.

+added Arenafoot's suggestion. Get three in a row right and the hole gets smaller.

drflin4.bas.bin

drflin4.bas

[Arenafoot]

Updated.

+added Arenafoot's suggestion. Get three in a row right and the hole gets smaller.

sweet! Thanks!

[+atari2600land]

A little change. I made the pills' speed increase at 25 points instead of 10. I also wrote a little text describing the game. I played a game to test it. I got 180 points.

By the way, I think this is my best 2k game so far. I've wanted to make a non-timed 2k game. I think I finally did it. (Well, not counting Virtual Dieter I did a few months or so back.)

 

drflin20151016.zip

[Jinroh]

Finally got to play! Great!

 

Very addictive, but I should have read the instructions first because I was like, "Green Pill! THERE'S NO GREEN!" xD

[ZeroPage Homebrew]

We'll be featuring Dr. Flin and His Pills on the ZeroPage Homebrew stream tomorrow on Twitch at 6PM PT/9PM ET! Hope everyone can tune in to watch us play!

Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.t...ropagehomebrew/

Games Tomorrow:
Gyvolver (WIP) (2016) by Duane Alan Hahn (Random Terrain)
Sheep It Up! (2018) by Dr. Ludos
Wal-Rush 2: Tick Tusk (2018) by (JWalrus)
Disk Donk (WIP) (2018) by BJ Best (bjbest60)
Dr. Flin and His Pills (2015) by atari2600land

 

EDIT: Here's the YouTube archive of the show!

Edited November 12, 2018 by cimmerian