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Ski-It - entry for the abbuc Software Contest 2018


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I will release the game after the contest has finished (that's the rules!)

 

Here are the instructions (much better than the game) and should win an award of their own

skiit_dox_final.pdf

 

Ski-It has turned out pretty well in the end but there are a few Bugs lurking around so please report anything you find. I'm concerned there is a serious memory leak that may cause it to crash :-o There are a few minor things that I will fix and release an update after the contest; some others can go under the heading of "features" and do not spoil the enjoyment!

 

Ski-It II - Who wants to design some courses or have a go at the graphics, can be several of you?

Here is my MAP disk:

SKI-D5-MAP FNT DAT files.ATR

Here are some notes on the Envision Utility I use and what is what:

SKI-IT Envision Info.txt

 

Screenshots - random selection, some from emulation and others from my camera and the CRT screen so excuse the lines!

 

Have fun :)

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Hello Jason,

 

thanks for your fatastic new game - I played it yesterday. The 3 different play modes make it very interesting, but I have difficulties to understand the game:

 

1) The manual says the flags indicate in which direction the next gate is. But the 2 flags at each gate point in opposite directions?!?

 

2) What are these 2 numbers in the upper right corner? The manual says they show my longest/total jump distance - but they are always zero? Except for round 4 in Skiquest, but here the numbers go up and down, e.g. 65 is shown, then 45, then both numbers are zero?!?

 

3) What must I do to complete the challenges "Land Ski Jumps", "Jump distance" and "Longest Jump"? In round 4 I made a jump of 65, i.e. 65 is shown in the upper right corner, but at the end this "longest jump" didn't count?!?

 

4) In Skiquest round 4 there are strange green/blue stripes (horizontal and vertical). It seems they make jumps longer when crossing them (at least the horizontal ones)? Sometimes a little man behind me is displayed - what does this mean? The manual says something about "mountain ledges" and "landing zones" - what are these?

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Level42: if I understood you correctly you are complaining about no access to files- the files are available for ABBUC members since 4th August on a dedicated site- check out asc 2018 topic on this forum and one of the latest posts by freetz

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Yes the contest games are available for download for abbuc members and will be sent out on disk with the next magazine :thumbsup:

Hello Jason,

thanks for your fatastic new game - I played it yesterday. The 3 different play modes make it very interesting, but I have difficulties to understand the game:

1) The manual says the flags indicate in which direction the next gate is. But the 2 flags at each gate point in opposite directions?!?

2) What are these 2 numbers in the upper right corner? The manual says they show my longest/total jump distance - but they are always zero? Except for round 4 in Skiquest, but here the numbers go up and down, e.g. 65 is shown, then 45, then both numbers are zero?!?

3) What must I do to complete the challenges "Land Ski Jumps", "Jump distance" and "Longest Jump"? In round 4 I made a jump of 65, i.e. 65 is shown in the upper right corner, but at the end this "longest jump" didn't count?!?

4) In Skiquest round 4 there are strange green/blue stripes (horizontal and vertical). It seems they make jumps longer when crossing them (at least the horizontal ones)? Sometimes a little man behind me is displayed - what does this mean? The manual says something about "mountain ledges" and "landing zones" - what are these?

Thanks Stefan it's nice to hear someone is on the slopes already :thumbsup:

OK I said there are lots of features! Usually I go into too much detail in the instructions but this time I kept it short! Here goes...

 

1. Took me a while to fgure this out too but I was sure I'd coded it - look for the pointy (yellow) flag (the other side is a rounder flag), this is harder to see on the Atari than on emulation, follow it L or R. Once you can spot these the game is much more fun. Try using L/R only when steering, you can make sharper turns this way, and you will speed up automatically when not steering, and it will slow you down when you are turning.

 

The Ski-Jumps are different from just pressing fire to jump over the obstacles:

 

2. Only shows the jumped distance, there are no jumps on rounds1-3 so will be 0000. When jumping of a ledge the top number will count up, if you land safely the number will be banked to the total on the line below. After a second or two the top line will then return to show the longest jump distance you have safely landed or 0000 again if you haven't landed any...

 

3. Push up to take off. You may wiggle L/R to extend your distance. Pull down to land safely and KEEP IT HELD DOWN to complete the landing - you can pull down to land sooner to hit a landing zone - you need to be in the middle of them more or less.

 

4. The two green bars are the ski-jump places (shown on the 2nd picture above) usually on the mountain paths. The landing zones are usually above them (they look like a giant set of skis) but not always present (show on the 3rd picture) the little grey man is meant to be your shadow(!) and the gauge above you shows the jump distance.

 

I didn't have enough time to fully optimise all features and quickly set the challenges with only a little testing, there is a lot more that could be done with the jumps and the course design too (see first post). NTSC players I did not have time to play test NTSC much so the scroll speed may be too fast?

 

Hope this helps and you can complete round 4; there are a few ski jump rounds so this is the one to master things on, you can press select to skip a level that is too hard but where's the fun in that :)

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Wow! It looks like something inbetween Olympic Skier and the slalom event in White Circus.

:thumbsup: I figured apart from both of our favourites (carlsson is a regular High Score Club player) "Mogul Maniac" that "Olympic Skier" is the best skiing game we have, I thought if I can get something close then I'd be happy. All was going well and I shoud have got the game ready and had a few months off but then ski quest happened and the game changed into this beast :-D

 

I liked the tasks ideas from recent abbuc games Rain of Terror and New Atari Game and I used to enjoy the Xbox games NHL Hits 2003 (the funny characters one) and Project Gotham which both had things to do and achieve. I'm 100% Atari 8bit only these days of course :P

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Thanks Jason, that helps - I completed now Skiquest round 6 (playing with a freezer). What a great skiing game! The 3 different playing modes are outstanding! ;-) :thumbsup:

 

Regarding the flags - the right one seems to point in the correct direction always, regardless of its shape (see Skiquest round 5) ?!

 

Long jumps - got it now: A long jump is only successful if you pull up and down AND land on a landing zone. If you don't land there, the width is shown in the upper right corner, but not added to the total width - and the jump doesn't count at the end. You need luck to cross the ledges, since there is no indication where the next is, and they are placed a bit random. And landing zones are not always behing the ledges.

 

The little man (the shadow) also occurs, if I just move on the ledges without jumping and in some other cases also. Is this a bug?

 

Some suggestions for improvements:

 

a) The highscore list and the challenges list are a bit hard to read (on a TV set). One of the blueish colors is too dark and the characters are rather unclear/obscure. A better readable char set would be nice. The bottom line is difficult to read, especially the score (see screenshot). Also some lines in the two lists are cut at the bottom (the bright lines in the screenshot).

 

b) The 2 flags at the gates should both point to the same direction, i.e. the direction of the next gate. So it's clear, in which direction they are pointing.

 

c) It should be possible to select the Skiquest round in the title screen. So you can try later challenge rounds without playing the first rounds again and again. Maybe the challenges should be easier, they are rather difficult from the beginning on.

 

d) There should be an option to abort a game. Pressing Space, then Start as the manual says, doesn't work.

 

e) At the bottom of the screen there's room to make the display list longer and place the ski jumper more at the bottom. So you can see earlier, what is ahead of you.

 

In Skiquest round 6 and 7 challenges list, the displayed number of "challenges required" is one to high, see the screenshot. (But the game logic is correct.)

 

Thank you for this fantastic game, Jason :!: This time you'll make the 1st or 2nd place at the ABBUC contest, I think. :thumbsup:

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Edited by StefanD
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Thanks Stefan, some great feedback :thumbsup:

You have found a few of the bugs: the skier shadow one, the false jumps, the total # of challenges one - yes will still count if you don't fail any. Press Start to abort your go in play - not when paused (this will abort the entire ski-quest / zero any credits remaning). The challenges/hsc display list glitches are something i've had to work around, there might be more I can do there. I think the display list is as long as it can be? - I've used the same length on my other games, think I did look at that before. Will consider all the comments for the updated version :)

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Oh, sorry, I misunderstood the manual - yes, Start without Space aborts the game!

 

In the display area, there are 9 blank lines at the top and 36 unused lines at the bottom. So you may use e.g. 24 more lines, i.e. 3 more ANTIC mode 5 lines at the bottom. (I checked it with Altirra - press F8, then click in the Display area with the Shift (or Alt) key pressed to display the current scan line number. The

display area starts at line 8 and goes down to 247.)

 

The current course design of Ski It is perfect - I like it!

 

@The Doctor: I can read it, but it's a bit dark IMHO.

Edited by StefanD
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  • 2 months later...

OK folks, hold on to you bobble hats... SKI-IT v1.1 is here!

SKI-IT-v1.1.ATR

See the first post for the instructions and more details ;)

 

Note: I've renamed skiit.exe/xex to autorun.sys so the disk will boot directly.

I think I've fixed all the bugs apart from the logs counting more than once depending on how you jump them. I've made a few tweaks and changes since the abucc version but there's more to be done so there may be another update when I get some time. I've not checked all the challenges are possible either :-o

 

The current High Score Club Round welcomes any scores for this or the other abbuc 2018 entries; it's a good time to join in as round 20 will be a catch-up for the season with the new season starting mid January :waving:

 

Have fun - feedback welcomed :D

 

p.s. v1.1 map disk for anyone wanting to change the course (see 1st post)

SKI-D55-NEW MAPS.ATR

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Thanks for releasing this version. I have played the ABBUC version, but I stink at it. I will have to practice at it more. :-)

 

Bob C

That's great :thumbsup: Tell me what you want changing / even small things / what would make it more playable as I will be doing another update. I'd be interested to see if you find much difference between the two.

 

Load/Save Scores: Remember to load the score tables at the start of each session. If anyone can confirm this works on other storage devices please post (if it dosn't work tell me the 4 numbers on the bottom right of the screen). I've only tested on my 1050 drive and emulation.

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SKI-IT v1.1 If anyone was thinking the jumping over the logs etc is a bit twitchy you are right - in v1.1 I've screwed up the logic so it sails over the obstacles and then degrades the jump, this means you can't actually crash into a log or fence but means you can shoot off at a funny angle! Also noticed the time bonus reluctant to give you all your hard earned points. The chest is also working too well and dishing out too much ski cash!

 

v1.2 is coming in a few days with these fixed and some other improvements to the layout, and hopefully the challenges will be slightly easier :)

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Hello Jason,

 

thanks for this update. I played it yesterday thoroughly. All the bugs I found in the ABBUC version are gone. Good work! :thumbsup:

 

But why did you make Skiquest more difficult compared to the ABBUC version? As I wrote, in my opinion the ABBUC version is already a bit to hard to play. Here is a comparison of the Skiquest challenges:

 

Skiit 1.0 (ABBUC version)
Round 1: 3:30, 10 logs, 10$
Round 2: 3:00, 1 fence, 5 $, 30/43 gates
Round 3: 2:30, 1 fence, 1 watch, 3 $, 30/42 gates
Round 4: 3:30, 5 logs, 5 $, 3 long jumps, longest jump > 50
Round 5: 2:00, 5 $, 32/43 gates
Round 6: 2:30, 3 logs, 1 fence, 5 $, 35/42 gates
Round 7: 2:00, 12 logs, 3 watches, 10$

 

Skiit 1.1
Round 1: 3:30, 10 logs, 10$
Round 2: 2:50, 1 fence, 5 $, 35/46 gates
Round 3: 2:10, 1 fence, 1 watch, 3 $, 36/41 gates
Round 4: 3:30, 5 logs, 5 $, 3 long jumps, longest jump > 50
Round 5: 2:00, 5 $, 40/46 gates
Round 6: 2:00, 3 logs, 1 fence, 5 $, 38/41 gates
Round 7: 1:50, 20 logs, 5 fences, 1 watch, 12 $

 

Rounds 1 and 2 are OK, maybe 3 and 4 also. But for 5 and 6 you now need a lot of luck: Since you must pass almost all gates, you can't go for the cash and therefore you can collect it only if it's on your way through the gates. Moving slowly is also not an option, since the max time was reduced (in round 6). And

Round 7 is imho now way to hard: 20 logs and 5 fences and 12 $ in only 1:50 min?! The best I achieved after 10 trys or so is 2:15, 18 logs, 3 fences and 8 $ with a lot of luck..

 

So please restore the values from Skiit 1.0 or make the new ones easier (especially significantly more time and less gates) - in this version Skiquest is definitely to hard to play.

 

Apart from this, Skiit is a fantastic game - I like it very much. Especially the steering of the skier works very well. :)

 

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What I love about this game is that it is very much like a top-end 80's game. It's got the 80's feel to it, but the modern quality.

 

I'm not too good at the game, but nothing that a bit more practice couldn't help with.

 

I did a reasonable time on the first round (that seemed good enough for the board) but didn't qualify on the 2nd for the 3rd, is it supposed to not add my time into the board for this?

 

Improvements, for a game like this I don't think that many more could be added, you've crammed a lot in. Maybe some rain if you have a spare player or missile and enough DLI time to update it's position??

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  • 4 weeks later...

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