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AMOKBOTS soon to be released


peteym5

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This is AMOKBOTS, the latest game that had been written by Peter J. Meyer and extensively beta tested by Micheal Allard, Lance Ringquist, and Steven Peck. The video was made from an earlier beta version of AMOK BOTS cartridge. I did one update since the video was made to fix a minor glitch with the sounds. Everyone was surprised that the game was almost flawless for the first version to be beta test. I personally spent a little extra time checking it myself before sending the game to Video61.

 

The teaser video had been spliced together with different video segments with the texts fading in and out. You will hear the narrator state it was tested on 64K NTSC machines and was not sure it will run on other machines. This is a part of the 16K cartridge for 16K RAM series of games that leave the possibility to port over to a 5200. It is compatible with the 400/800 OS and able to run on 16K machines.

 

I cannot quote a time of release date yet, but I am hoping it will be available within the next month.

 

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I do not think I am extremely prolific, but a few things happened to where I am able to complete a surge in the number of games. Many of these games been in development for years. Secretum Labyrinth and Tempest Elite were started early 2012. Delta Space Arena, Megaoids, Amok Bots, Laser Blast were all started right after I ported Venture onto a 16K ROM cartridge in 2014. What I did was drawn up some sprites and fonts so I can do some quick concepts for KJMANN12 and Video61. They provide input and make suggestion which one to focus on next. What caused delays was months gone by without any word from KJMANN12 and he wanted help as long as he was in control. As we know his declining health issues made him less active with assistance. I eventually started putting my foot down and said I am going to see what I can do to complete the work myself. So I had several games with some of the work already completed and I am going through them and finishing up the work.

 

I cannot say copy and paste or using "save as" are a trade secrets because anyone who works with text editing software on theirs PCs do it all the time. If several games use like Trigonometry math, it would be easy to just pre-calculate a sine/cosine tables and re-use them over several games. Many people had been using RMT for music and sound for their games, that saves everyone a ton of work when it comes to sound.

 

I experimented with Player/Missile multiplexing when I was programming Venture and I made several versions of the code to meet the demands of whatever game that will use it. Like Multi-Color, using the 4 missiles as a 5th sprite, combining the missile + player as a 10 pixel wide sprite, etc, etc.

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I was not aware that I publicly released a copy of my sprite multiplexer. There are a few things I do that are trade secrets beyond what most other multiplexers already do.

Most of the stuff I do just a little complicated to explain and sorta confuse many other programmers.

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The Atari Player/Missile graphics are limited to only 4 players and 4 missiles inside of each of these zones that registers are changed with a DLI. You can optionally combine the 4 missiles into a 5th sprite by setting 4 in PRIOR that make the missiles the same as the 3rd play field color (711), you still need to position of the 4 missiles next to each other. When designing a game you have to ask yourself what is the most sprites you really need on screen at once. I know trying to put 20 in the same row would flicker a lot.

 

I know there are some tricks of resetting the ANTIC/GTIA registers at the middle of each scan line and using WYSNCs, but this uses up a a lot of CPU cycles and not practical for games that have lots of fast moving objects.

 

I thought about using the interlace, 480i method that doubles character pixel height, but try to alter PMBASE, Player positions, Missiles, colors instead of CHASE and see what happens. I need to research on exactly that interlace method works.

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I enjoyed playing Krazy Shoot out over Berzerk, with it's better playability.

 

I don't have anything against simple graphics - and thought some of the designs/animations worked, whereas others didn't - and hope they'll be tweaked better.

 

I'm quite happy to play around with animation until it gets to the stage whereby it is finished.

I'm not into the programming side and like to assist programmers who appreciate the extra help.

 

I think some animation in the playfield can be helpful where suitable.

 

Just like with Venture - I felt some of it was done very well - but other parts just did not fit in, and need that extra reworking so that the whole project appears final.

 

Don't take my comments too harshly - I like to see projects done to the best they can be.

You are doing a good job, no matter what I say.

 

Harvey

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