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Rikki & Vikki


TailChao

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On 11/26/2019 at 12:14 PM, Hastor said:

As an owner of one of those controllers from that seller, I will say I was happy with it and it didn't have that cheap 'third party controller' feel. I'd honestly like one for my NES.

They also make a sweet dual pad Robotron controller for 7800 that I love, but it's a bit more expensive as it's all 3D printed. It has a switch allowing it to work with dual stick 2600 games as well (makes button 2 become controller 2's fire button instead).

 

I endorse the game and the controller as great companions!

that's a great controller, I recently got two.  Work great for R&V and pretty much everything else too. Way better than the atari oem "euro pad" controllers which are mushy. These are crisp and responsive, and look great too .be sure to get the version with the woodgrain decal, looks amazing.

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17 minutes ago, MrBeefy said:

Crappy way to lose a friend over recommending a good game.

He said that he didn't want to spend $10 on an old game, and I tried telling him it was an indi game for an old system, but he said "but I don't have $10" so I offered to pay the game, he said that he wasn't interested in playing a platformer, so I asked "you're refusing a free game, Why?" And he told me that he's currently playing super Mario 64 and doesn't want to start another game, so I told him, "how about I buy it and gift it to you to play later" then he gave me some type of noise like " eehhahherrggghhhh" basically telling me "I don't care and would prefer if you could drop the subject" then months later I recommended the game to him again and he said " I don't give a s*** about this game Cole, leave me alone" and blocked me on discord, then later he unblocked me and I asked him why he blocked me and he told me that "I REALLY am not in the mood to talk about this" and because of that whole interaction our relationship as friends weakened (then months later he blocked me for calling his $3000+ epic gamer computer "as fast as an nes" (not a joke, that was the last straw)

Edited by Theallknowingsause
Not an edit, just want to mention he was a baby like this for almost anything inconvent
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1 minute ago, Theallknowingsause said:

He said that he didn't want to spend $10 on an old game, and I tried telling him it was an indi game for an old system, but he said "but I don't have $10" so I offered to pay the game, he said that he wasn't interested in playing a platformer, so I asked "you're refusing a free game, Why?" And he told me that he's currently playing super Mario 64 and doesn't want to start another game, so I told him, "how about I buy it and gift it to you to play later" then he gave me some type of noise like " eehhahherrggghhhh" basically telling me "I don't care and would prefer if you could drop the subject" then months later I recommended the game to him again and he said " I don't give a s*** about this game Cole, leave me alone" and blocked me on discord, then later he unblocked me and I asked him why he blocked me and he told me that "I REALLY am not in the mood to talk about this" and because of that whole interaction our relationship as friends weakened (then months later he blocked me for calling his $3000+ epic gamer computer "as fast as an nes" (not a joke, that was the last straw)

Eh doesn't sound like a big loss. Even if he wasn't interested he could have been appreciative. I gifted my friend it and it only cost 0.99. He was really appreciative of it. Sometimes its the thought. 

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1 minute ago, MrBeefy said:

Eh doesn't sound like a big loss. Even if he wasn't interested he could have been appreciative. I gifted my friend it and it only cost 0.99. He was really appreciative of it. Sometimes its the thought. 

He did have a good sense of humor, but was a baby about everything, it took me years to convince him to play cave story (A free game) and when he ended up playing it, it became one of his favorite games of time

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10 hours ago, CloakandDagger said:

that's a great controller, I recently got two.  Work great for R&V and pretty much everything else too. Way better than the atari oem "euro pad" controllers which are mushy. These are crisp and responsive, and look great too .be sure to get the version with the woodgrain decal, looks amazing.

I modded mine, by replacing the rubber domes with microswitches. It really upgrade is from "passable" to "quite decent" :)

 

I used the Steam Sales to send Rikki&Vikki as Christmas Gifts to several friends of mine :)

 

I also put Rikki&Vikki on display on an expo (private event, that we paid to be part of it, so zero profit/all free advert here!) and people got hooked to the game. They mostly got impressed with the graphisms that they really didn't expected from a 7800.

They couldn't really enjoy the sound tho, both due to the issue with extremely muffled sound of the 7800 Peritel model and the rather high volume of things around (especially from the guy in front of me that ran PacMan... As much as I like the game, most of the time all I heard was the "wahwah" of Pacman idly chomping the air before a ghost would devour him).

 

IMG_3210.thumb.JPG.c62c2395b70946fd1da35d8100e706a5.JPG

 

And I realize I didn't snap any pics of my own stand! So here is a picture of my neighbour's ones, that were Atari fan enough that the guy next to me ALSO had Rikki&Vikki running :) the second one had it too I think but ran other games.

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Reminder, this is the last day of g_Steam.gif 's Autumn Sale.

 

19 hours ago, Jinks said:

This game sold for a inexpensive price. Heck single screen pokey game costs as much or more. Could have charged 79.99 or more. 

But you are a nice guy. :)

Maybe, but I do not feel this price would have been reasonable compared to similar postmortem releases on other consoles (NES, Genesis, etc). Honestly, as a customer I would have bought the Humble Bundle / Standalone version.

 

 

17 hours ago, Shawn said:

I was very happy the serial card was dated on Halloween :)

...yet the box didn't include an expired fruit roll up - too bad.

 

 

13 hours ago, Theallknowingsause said:

He did have a good sense of humor, but was a baby about everything, it took me years to convince him to play cave story (A free game) and when he ended up playing it, it became one of his favorite games of time

In my experience, the majority of the effort is spent just getting someone to try a game - my own or otherwise. Once they start you'll know if they're actually going to enjoy (and likely complete) it within the first five minutes.

 

 

3 hours ago, CatPix said:

I also put Rikki&Vikki on display on an expo (private event, that we paid to be part of it, so zero profit/all free advert here!) and people got hooked to the game. They mostly got impressed with the graphisms that they really didn't expected from a 7800.

...

And I realize I didn't snap any pics of my own stand! So here is a picture of my neighbour's ones, that were Atari fan enough that the guy next to me ALSO had Rikki&Vikki running :) the second one had it too I think but ran other games.

Ah, thanks for the demo!

 

I've been seeing the game show up at a quite few expos and conventions, with similar reactions - all of them outside of the United States. If anything it's encouraged me to invest more resources in localization if another game happens.

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6 hours ago, TailChao said:

I've been seeing the game show up at a quite few expos and conventions, with similar reactions - all of them outside of the United States. If anything it's encouraged me to invest more resources in localization if another game happens.

I can't speak for other people, but as far as I'm concerned and people being there were, the game being in English is absolutely fine. If it was in another language than English, a localized version might be required- or if it was a text heavy game (adventure game or RPG) but the most important thing is mostly that the game behave well on our PAL machines :)

 

Remember most games were in English BITD. Games that were localized advertized it with big letters or even bright stickers!

 

For us European a multilanguage box would be a nice touch, but that would probably be a lot of extra unneeded work to get a back-box translation in 4 languages (though I'm sure people would volunteer to do it and proofread it) It also mean extra hassle to print and ship those.

 

superb15.jpg

Edited by CatPix
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13 hours ago, CatPix said:

I can't speak for other people, but as far as I'm concerned and people being there were, the game being in English is absolutely fine. If it was in another language than English, a localized version might be required- or if it was a text heavy game (adventure game or RPG) but the most important thing is mostly that the game behave well on our PAL machines :)

Having the game behave in 50Hz is a given, but having it behave well is always better. I think we did okay with Rikki & Vikki's PAL support - the cutscenes all have separate timing for 50Hz, and the audio mixing adjustments cover everything outside of the Peritel units. I'm not sure if supporting the Peritel's mixing is actually feasible, it's so botched - but I would have liked full retiming for PAL.

 

But yes, like the additional langues these are all would have been nice things rather than what was deemed necessary and we could afford.

 

 

46 minutes ago, 128Kgames said:

If only we could get Rikki & Vikki on the Astrocade...

If only I had an Astrocade.

...

Nah, I don't need an Astrocade.

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I have to look inside mine but I'm pretty darn sure that the issue with Peritel models is an overprotection of the sound channel. The sounds is very muffled on mine, it does sounds like that more resistors have been added. I gotta decide myself to first do the usual PAL resistor change on mine and see if it changes anything. I think there's nothing you can do about that as it's an issue on the hardware side; I suppose that now that you're aware of the situation your only solution is to warn people about hardware mod being needed for sound enhanced games on the 7800 Péritel.

 

As for the little bits of extra, don't worry. I'm franckly happy enoguh that you decided to make a box and that fine manual. I do'nt get why so many Atari games (mostly 2600 tho) come with no box. I'm ready to pay the extra money for a box. I don't want my shelves to looks like a thrift shop shelf :o

Edited by CatPix
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13 minutes ago, CatPix said:

I think there's nothing you can do about that as it's an issue on the hardware side; I suppose that now that you're aware of the situation your only solution is to warn people about hardware mod being needed for sound enhanced games on the 7800 Péritel.

Pretty much, yes.

 

 

13 minutes ago, CatPix said:

As for the little bits of extra, don't worry. I'm franckly happy enoguh that you decided to make a box and that fine manual. I do'nt get why so many Atari games (mostly 2600 tho) come with no box. I'm ready to pay the extra money for a box. I don't want my shelves to looks like a thrift shop shelf :o

It depends upon the product, but (like most things) print materials need high volumes to drop in price. With ours we tried to match the silver color of Atari's 7800 boxes, which also mandated volume. Thicker cardstock, yadda yadda.

 

Basically if you're doing a run of 600 - 1200 units it's far easier to get better packaging and print materials than 100. But of course, you then need to move all those.

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On 12/4/2019 at 11:41 AM, 128Kgames said:

Everybody needs an Astrocade!  ?

Maybe, but I have enough e-waste at the moment. Unless it's being reverse engineered or actually used, it's gotta go.

 

 

On 12/4/2019 at 4:13 PM, Theallknowingsause said:

When is Rikki & Vikki going to be ported to the Batman family computer 2?

I tried ramming the cartridge in and it didn't fit.

 

By this point our budget for legacy ports was exhausted and I canceled all further research.

 

 

On 12/4/2019 at 4:42 PM, Clint Thompson said:

Just purchased an Atari 7800 lot (finally!) specifically to play and beat this game, can't wait!

...

No mind. It's already here!

Ah, hope you've got two controllers to go with it!

 

 

17 hours ago, Theallknowingsause said:

Hey Tailchao, what was the most funny bug you had to fix while programming Rikki & Vikki?

Most of the game's complexity is in how it handles physics, especially for the boxes - and just picking one of the issues we had in that category is pretty difficult. There were a bunch of problems with solidity around the vertical wrapping border, anything that could pick up or "consume" a box like the Metal Cavern's pipes required numerous of edge cases, all the doors and sliders too, it goes on...

 

I think my favorite bug was a defect in the Steel Simian (Metal Cavern's Cooperative Boss). Any time a box is dispensed from a pipe it transitions between object types and whether or not it can collide with the stage geometry, the pipes usually check for a two-tile window before completely dispensing a box to ensure this can happen safely - if not, the box reverses direction and heads back up the pipe. There's numerous situations where one of these tiles can suddenly become solid - either due to another box being placed there or (in this case) the players closing one of the doors / valves - and the box object will detect it's been rammed into the stage geometry and break itself.

 

There's a one frame window during that fight where you can close a valve right as a box is being dispensed - and it'll break. The Steel Simian has a special case for this - he shrugs and resets the map. But that special case was broken. So during testing we hit the one frame edge case and the boss got stuck in the "what?!" pose until the stage was manually reset.

Edited by TailChao
Clarity
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51 minutes ago, Theallknowingsause said:

So, the selling point of "foxes and boxes on screen simultaneously" was an actual selling point and technical feat for the atari 7800!

This was a gag rooted in light truth, yes.

 

From my experience getting good weight in the character movement and gratifying interactions between objects are the most difficult parts of working with limited hardware, primarily because of the limited space and cycles. What feels right does not always correspond to what's correct, and you need to manually key all of it. Games like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Kirby's Adventure are absolutely stellar in this respect, and it this sort of feel becomes much easier with the resources available in 16-Bit platforms.

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