The Goons

[winkdot]

The Goons

 

You are a Goon on Goon Island and your tribe needs gold.

 

Use joystick to move up and down and left and right.

 

Collect gold for points. Also the number of gold chest you collect will take you too the next level.

 

Avoid everything else as they will cause your death.

 

You have three lives.

 

There are 8 levels.

 

Feedback is welcome!

Version .02 - Minor graphics updates,
tighter platform code
increased up/down controls
Faster movement left/right

Version .03
Did some level balance changes.
Added a castle to each level - Avoid them.

Version .04
Changes to some enemies.
A bit of code cleanup.
Special thanks for info from Muddyfunster

Version .05
Changed goon death so he shows what hit him
Once again increased the debounce for the up and down movement.

Version .06
Updated the player movement

 

the-goons.01.bin

the-goons.02.bin

the-goons.03.bin

the-goons.04.bin

the-goons.05.bin

the-goons.06.bin

Edited May 5, 2019 by winkdot

[+bhall408]

Off to a great start!

 

Here is my quick/off the cuff feedback after playing for 5-10 minutes...

 

Love the title screen... Could use some sound...

 

The font used for the score reminds me of Atari 800 game fonts like you'd find in Preppie, etc (which is nice)

 

The up/down controls feel way too sensitive to me... I far too often pop 2 levels when I meant to only do one.

 

(for what it is worth, I am playing using OpenEmu on a Mac)

 

Left/right controls on the other hand feel too slow...

 

Game over animation is quite nice... Would be great to add a sound effect or tune here too...

[winkdot]

Thanks for the feedback

 

Off to a great start!

 

Here is my quick/off the cuff feedback after playing for 5-10 minutes...

 

Love the title screen... Could use some sound...

 

The font used for the score reminds me of Atari 800 game fonts like you'd find in Preppie, etc (which is nice)

 

The up/down controls feel way too sensitive to me... I far too often pop 2 levels when I meant to only do one.

 

(for what it is worth, I am playing using OpenEmu on a Mac)

 

Left/right controls on the other hand feel too slow...

 

Game over animation is quite nice... Would be great to add a sound effect or tune here too...

Are you using a keyboard for control? I struggled to find the right lag for the controls. On my keyboard I learned to hit it just right (just a tap) but I don't think all keyboards respond the same. I need to try it with a joystick where it could be too slow.

Love the people that make good tunes on the Atari, I'm just not one of them. Think some of it is the Atari is out of tune which sorta grates on my head. Some do amazing songs on the Atari and I respect their hard work though.

I can fix the slow left and right though. Need to test that out.

 

I had to remove some stuff because of scan line issues. There are routines that try and calculate placement of sprites so they are not placed into the same lane (they work most of the time), but it takes a various numbers of cycles to pick the right placement.

Thanks for the feedback

[fluxit]

Playing with a nes pad, I have to agree with bhall408. We need some debounce. About half the time I'm moving two levels unintentionally, and I'm only tapping.

 

I like the concept and graphics.

[Greenfuzz]

Looks fantastic.

[+TrekMD]

Cool, will be checking this out.

[winkdot]

Playing with a nes pad, I have to agree with bhall408. We need some debounce. About half the time I'm moving two levels unintentionally, and I'm only tapping.

 

I like the concept and graphics.

Thanks for the feedback. There is debounce there. I backed some of it off. Will look at it again.

[+bhall408]

Thanks for the feedback. There is debounce there. I backed some of it off. Will look at it again.

 

What I would try is this...

 

If you detect an up/down, wait for another 500ms of that direction before deciding to do the 2nd (or more) movement, and perhaps consider it a "repeat" each 250ms that the stick stays in that position after the first 500ms.

 

If you detect an up/down, then center, then up/down again, you could process them as fast as the player can do those inputs.

[StanJr]

Yeah, I'm with everyone else on the slippery controls. I'm using a game pad with Stella and I'm almost always going up or down two levels. Love the theming!

[winkdot]

Version .02
Minor graphics updates,
tighter platform code
increased up/down controls
Faster movement left/right

Give it a run and see if it works better.
Thanks

[winkdot]

Version .03
Did some level balance changes.
Added a castle to each level - Avoid them.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Some observations on the new build:

 

- The up/down movement is getting better but I'm still finding myself moving two spaces when I only meant to move one.

- I've found that I only need to move horizontally once there's a castle above or below me, other than that I can always get out of the way of things by just moving up and down.

- You could put the clouds with the lightning above other enemies so that there are two obstacles on the "same" horizontal space and then strike the lightning down if it passes over you.

 

Looking forward to playing it on the livestream in a few weeks!

 

Version .03
Did some level balance changes.
Added a castle to each level - Avoid them.

 

[winkdot]

Version .04
Changes to some enemies.
A bit of code cleanup.
Special thanks for info from Muddyfunster

[+TrekMD]

Excellent! Thank you!

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

We'll be featuring The Goons LIVE on tomorrow's (Friday) ZeroPage Homebrew stream on Twitch at 12PM PT|3PM ET|8PM GMT! Hope everyone can watch!

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

Games:

- Adventures of the 50-foot-tall Stalk of Celery (WIP) by Chris Read aka atari2600land
- The Goons (WIP) by Ed Riley aka winkdot
- Tron (Arcade Port) by orange808
- Astronomer (Patch Challenge) by Alex Pietrow aka Coolcrab

 

[StanJr]

Hate to broken record here, but I'm still moving 2 tiers at a time in version 4. Otherwise, I'm liking everything else.

[winkdot]

Version .05
Changed goon death so he shows what hit him
Once again increased the debounce for the up and down movement. Let me know if it's better for you.

[+bhall408]

Debounce is definitely better since last time I tried (v3)!

[winkdot]

Debounce is definitely better since last time I tried (v3)!

Thanks for testing it! Is is good enough?

[+bhall408]

Thanks for testing it! Is is good enough?

 

 

Not one to complain, but if you are up for it, I think it would benefit from one more round of improvement.

[Arenafoot]

Thanks for testing it! Is is good enough?

on the first round, the double guys have a flicker when they approach the left side of the screen as they go off the screen using Stella 6.0

 

the up and down movement has a little too much hesitation to it now IMO

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

I have to concur on this, it seems like you added a hesitation when first pressing up/down which sometimes doesn't register movement when I press quickly in a direction. At the same time I'm still accidentally going two spaces instead of one, probably made even worse now by having to hold it longer to get the guy moving.

 

the up and down movement has a little too much hesitation to it now IMO

[+Karl G]

Instead of a delay, I would recommend using a repetition restrainer which will prevent any further motion in that direction until the joystick has been released. The bB commands page has an example for restraining the fire button, but the concept is exactly the same. You can use the same restrainer bit for both directions, unsetting it when !joy0up && !joy0down

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#repetition_restrainer_for_fire_button

[winkdot]

Thanks guys will take yet another look.

[winkdot]

I tried the repetition restrainer method but never got it to work well. Not sure why. Likely me.
So I did some more adjustment to how I was doing it.

Version .06 has this change. As always it is in the first post. Let me know what you think.