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Dragon's Cache - Vs. Puzzle Drop Game - Now Available for Purchase!!!


Revontuli

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54 minutes ago, Revontuli said:

If anyone can check to make sure the score saving still works on the SaveKey/AtariVox/etc. I would be grateful.  It *should* be fine, but I've made some silly mistakes with small fixes in the past.  The carts are being assembled, and I *hope* this ROM image (or one in the next day or two) will be the final build to "print."

Uploaded to the MCP DevCart, then AtariVox+ plugged into second port.  Played a quick bunch of games : 4 Gems (Default), 5 Gems, and 6 Gems.  Some with Retry, others with Title after entering high score; some others with powering off and powering back on the console.

 

All scores new and old retained and experienced no freezing at anytime at end of game, entry of high score, or navigation through menus at any juncture.  Appears rock solid.

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Just now, Trebor said:

Uploaded to the MCP DevCart, then AtariVox+ plugged into second port.  Played a quick bunch of games : 4 Gems (Default), 5 Gems, and 6 Gems.  Some with Retry, others with Title after entering high score; some others with powering off and powering back on the console.

 

All scores new and old retained and experienced no freezing at anytime at end of game, entry of high score, or navigation through menus at any juncture.  Appears rock solid.

Awesome - thank you for testing on short notice!!!  One can never be too careful, even with small fixes!

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I just played 6 games in a row on my Concerto with no lockups or freezes after any game. Each time I was able to go to the High Score table, enter my initials and then continue back to retry or the title screen as expected. Looks excellent on my end. Thanks!

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On 2/3/2021 at 11:44 AM, Revontuli said:

Yes - not with the Concerto itself, but hardware like the AtariVox and the SaveKey can save your scores and will load them back into the game when you power on the 7800 later.  

 

Ah okay, interesting. Does anybody know, if there is a A7800 software-emulator, that can emulate something like that savekey?

 

Would be cool, then this would also work in the emulator. Okay, users could make a savestate when they had a highscore and later reload this, but that's not as good, as having the highscores directly saved and later automatically loaded in again.

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40 minutes ago, AW127 said:

 

Ah okay, interesting. Does anybody know, if there is a A7800 software-emulator, that can emulate something like that savekey?

 

Would be cool, then this would also work in the emulator. Okay, users could make a savestate when they had a highscore and later reload this, but that's not as good, as having the highscores directly saved and later automatically loaded in again.

The A7800 emulator supports the HSC cart. 

For 7800basic games, if SaveKey saving is enabling, so is HSC. 

It can be utilized via Command Line as follows:

a7800 a7800 -cart1 hiscore -cart2 myfilename.a78

Or selected through the GUI:

 

image.thumb.png.709d842f6bd3632095f2f8f83a62af35.png

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  • 3 weeks later...

Ugh, I had planned on adding this to my cart with the order I just placed, but somehow missed it...  I'll catch you next time...  Hopefully Arkanoid and Wizard's Dungeon will be out soon too.  That would make for a great set of 3 carts to order!  ?

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  • 1 month later...

Had a thought today while playing around with my hardware Atari systems and emulators...  Dragon's Cache really plays nice on keyboard controls in emulated 7800.  I bet it'd play real nice if ported to the 8-bit computer side with keyboard support...  I'm sure it's a non-trivial exercise of course, but just throwing that out there.  :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
30 minutes ago, Albert said:

I now have the labels for all the new games and I'm furiously building, testing and labeling as fast as I can!  Just finished the Dragon's Cache carts and they look great!  Love the artwork @Cabbage created!!  :)

 

DragonsCache_Carts_02.jpg

Now I'm really kicking myself for failing to add that to my cart.  Beautiful labels!  Next order for sure!  :)

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On 4/3/2021 at 7:20 PM, nadir said:

Had a thought today while playing around with my hardware Atari systems and emulators...  Dragon's Cache really plays nice on keyboard controls in emulated 7800.  I bet it'd play real nice if ported to the 8-bit computer side with keyboard support...  I'm sure it's a non-trivial exercise of course, but just throwing that out there.  :)

Would also be cool to play on the never released, Atari-produced keyboard for the 7800!

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  • 3 months later...
16 hours ago, nadir said:

OK, I was going through the 7800 games in the store and I'm not seeing Dragon's Cache in the list.  I can get to it from the new games link, but I don't see it listed under 7800.  Am I losing my mind?  A bug in the store?

You're right, I made a mistake when assigning the primary category for the game when I added it to the store.  I just fixed this, so it's now listed in the 7800 -> Games category.  Thanks for pointing this out!

 

 ..Al

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  • 2 years later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Glad folks are still playing the game! 

 

I've decided it's been long enough that I'll reveal a little secret - this starts the player at Level 9 in single player mode.  Obviously a disadvantage for scoring, it's mainly used for practicing higher level play without having to work your way up normally, and largely there as a little easter egg:

 

Spoiler

In the 1 Player Game Mode screen, where you can choose between the Dragon of Storms and the Dragon of Embers, hold left on the Player 1 Joystick and right on the Player 2 Joystick.  You will have a new dragon selected, setting the level to 9 on the Score and Race modes.

 

Edited by Revontuli
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17 minutes ago, JagChris said:

The instructions don't list the scoring. As far as I can tell its one point for each gem regardless of whether its horizontal/diagonal etc except cascades are higher points. How much higher? Double points? Triple?

Sort of - every time you place gems the game evaluates the board and looks for matches of 3 - does a gem have 2 neighbors (any direction) of the same type?  Each "match" of 3 gems starts at 3 points, but then a multiplier is incremented, so the second match is 6 points (x2), the third 9 points (x3), etc.

 

This means that a 4-in-a-row is technically 2 matches (2 gems in the row in have 2 matching neighbors), so 9 (3 + 6) points, and a 5-in-a-row is 3 "matches" or 18 (3+6+9) points on its own.  The multiplier does cap at x8, or 24 points per 3-match, although you can imagine that still adds up if a cascade gets some 4,5, or 6+ gems in a row.

 

You want cascades.

 

To elaborate: In scoring, you generally want to combo as much as you can early on - levels increment by the number of total gems removed, and not the score itself, so the more valuable each gem is, point-wise, the higher score you'll get before the game speeds up to where you can't manage (or if you're good/fast enough, start the endurance test that is level 9).   Someone who gets to level 9 by just matching 3 after 3 will have a much lower score than someone who has been chaining.

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