Megaoids now available on cartridge

[peteym5]

Megaoids - Blasteroids type game now available on cartridge for $39.95 just in time for CyberMonday. The game was influenced by the arcade Blasteroids game. Instead of lives, you have shield energy that go down everytime you collide with an asteroids or exotic matter. The shield energy gets recharge when making contact with those glowing spinning orbs that pop up after destroying the asteroids. This also has fast moving laserbolts, can shoot multiple bolts at once. The game is full of sound effects, power ups, and exotic matter that redirect, grow, or clone the asteroids.

I made a game many years ago in Turbobasic XL, many years ago around 1990. I decided to rewrite it totally in assembly language. I took the original font from its Turbobasic counterpart and updated it for this machine language version. As many of us know a 100% machine language port can run and play much smoother. There are more things can be done at the assembly language level that is hard to do in Complied Turbobasic. The Turbobasic version ran into limitations and I always wanted to do better. The orbs are now animated and move, no longer have slow downs, have stars in the background, and many more things move at the same time.

The game is available here.

http://members.tcq.net/video61/main.html

 

We have also release Laser Blast X on the same day. Megaoids was originally intended to be release in early October but was delayed due to personal issues with a member of our team.

Edited November 28, 2016 by peteym5

[Mclaneinc]

Nice game with just one downside, the ugly square block shapes when the bigger boulders break up..Sort of cheapens the look..

 

Not one for me as my real Atari is boxed up due to illness and work in my flat but best of luck with this and the other game release by Video 61 today..

[peteym5]

Here are some additional screen shots from the last build of Megaoids that is used for the Cartridge ROM. There were some slight changes to the asteroids to make them appear more colorful. The shapes are created randomly each time a new asteroid is created. There were several changes in the game play during the last build to enhance the challenge and action.

Edited November 29, 2016 by peteym5

[+Larry]

What level or speed is your video showing? How many levels does it have -- more objects, faster objects?

 

If that is the lowest level, way to fast for me. You would have traded "boring" for you to "frustrating" for me. But the animation certainly looks great.

 

-Larry

[peteym5]

There is no absolute limit in the number of levels as it goes beyond a certain point, it sets up random levels. Megaoids is more challenging and exciting than many of the earlier asteroids type games down on the 8-bit. I made the laserbolts you shoot move much faster so that does help get through the games faster pace.

[Mclaneinc]

I think Larry is just worried that speed won't just make the game harder but ultimately less interesting because it becomes frustrating.

 

At 55 with arthritis my reflexes are already slowed, when it gets too fast I just put stuff down..

 

Obviously I'm not expecting you to cater for a more older audience, there's plenty of young whipper snappers out there with razor sharp reflexes. Also a non level based game can (for some) take away the challenge, the focus to see the end but its fair to say that on the 8bit because of ram games were never ending for the most part because you could not justify an end screen and tune ram wise.

 

Its always a difficult choice, I'm just happy to see people like you producing games!

Edited November 30, 2016 by Mclaneinc

[peteym5]

What is too difficult or too easy is going to be different with each person. Myself and the beta testers were able get past level 20. Megaoids moves a little faster and has more asteroids onscreen than Asteroids. Also has shields that can be recharge by collecting those energies. There is a power ups also help you in the game.

[peteym5]

It is time I bring this up. Something that a few people that were looking for with games like "Tempest Xtreme" or "Delta Space Arena" was support for the 2600 indy driving controller (Also trackball). I decided to experiment with Megaoids by having options to support the driving controller, along with using the paddle or keyboard. The default is still joystick if you plug in the cartridge and press start right away. The issue we have with the driving controller and using the "grey code" is very few people have one. Nobody I, Video61, or any of his beta testers has one of these controllers. I tested it using the mouse set up on Altirra and Atari800Win, so it does move left/right with mouse movement. So if all the documentation is correct about "Grey code" the game should support theses driving controller.

 

I could also adapt the "Delta Space Arena" demo to also have people these this on real hardware.

[gozar]

It is time I bring this up. Something that a few people that were looking for with games like "Tempest Xtreme" or "Delta Space Arena" was support for the 2600 indy driving controller (Also trackball). I decided to experiment with Megaoids by having options to support the driving controller, along with using the paddle or keyboard. The default is still joystick if you plug in the cartridge and press start right away. The issue we have with the driving controller and using the "grey code" is very few people have one. Nobody I, Video61, or any of his beta testers has one of these controllers. I tested it using the mouse set up on Altirra and Atari800Win, so it does move left/right with mouse movement. So if all the documentation is correct about "Grey code" the game should support theses driving controller.

 

I could also adapt the "Delta Space Arena" demo to also have people these this on real hardware.

 

I couldn't let this one pass. Just go to eBay and buy an Indy 500 controller! Get two and the Indy 500 game, invite a friend over and have fun. I recommend Tag or Kick the Can, two great games. Even if you never use the driving controllers for anything else, Indy 500 is worth it.

[peteym5]

I did not want to invest in the driving controller and checked with Video61. He said, support it if I wanted, but we are talking about less people having those than having a 16K only machine right now. Only one person in sent me a private message to support it for Tempest. As long I default to joystick, it should still be good.

[peteym5]

I am glad many people do like Megaoids and enjoying this game. We recently had someone test the driving controller with Tempest Elite and Megaoids and reported it worked great. It also works with the paddles and keyboard. If you want to use a trackball, you will need to set it to joystick mode and play it with the joystick setting. Over 90% of the people play games with the joystick. A few people made requests for games to have a "driving" controller option for games like "Tempest" and "Asteroids." Many of my future games will have options to play with different controllers.

[peteym5]

Just for fun, here is a combination spliced video showing the 2 different versions of Megaoids. Level 1 is starting with the 1990 TurboBasic version, then switches to the 2016 all machine language version.

 

 

Hey here is the original TurboBasic version of Megaoids I made around 1990. To distinguish the cartridge version from the TurboBasic version, I am calling it "Megaoids 2016." the label art has a little 2016 under the "Megaoids" and the title screen has "Copyright 2016" under the title.

 

The Turbobasic version serves as the demo for this game and for something for people can download. I know it is not perfect, the ship looks squished, has delays, and probably has a few bugs, but that was written back when I was just learning machine language and before I left the Atari for a few years. The 2016 All Machine Language Version is only available on cartridge from Video61 at www.atarisales.com. This time I applied the 14 pixel high player/missile images to the ship that makes it look proportional. The game runs on Atari 400/800, XL, XE systems. Has been beta tested to make sure it runs solid and no glitches has been reported to date. No special internal hardware supported, like VBXE or Dual Pokey.

 

Other features of the cartridge include the ability to play with Paddle, Driving, and Keyboard. It will play with the ST trackball with the driving controller selection.

 

The TB version requires 64K of RAM since Turbobasic using RAM under the OS ROM.

PetesGames.atr

Edited January 10, 2018 by peteym5