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The Lady, ABBUC Software Contest 2020 game


Philsan

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I introduce The Lady, an ABBUC Software Contest 2020 game.
I am happy to have partecipated in such an old competition organized by the club of which I am member.

 

It's a simple game with very good graphics and tunes.

 

The Lady (2020)(Philsan, TIX, Miker, Dmsc).xex

 

TheLady-Screenshot-1.png.12613abbc6793900209d03dc7bc61e08.png TheLady-Screenshot-2.png.f94347e258ff6f1cb08ea2178579e33b.png TheLady-Screenshot-3.png.8a4aa15938c9db3b8001ea3ab196aa3b.png

 

 

704405811_ABBUCMagazine.thumb.png.3371f639927e089558751aa2f29cb8bc.png

 

Instructions
A strong female gunsliger, known as the Lady, must fight and defeat three outlaws to survive. Press the right key before enemy shoots.

 

Development
Two years ago I noticed a nice C64 homebrew game called Tombstones (2017) by Megastyle. I liked it and I tought I could do something similar.

 

Atari 8-bit computers are 2.5 years older than C64 but nonetheless have some strenghts that I could have used, even considered the fact I am not a skilled coder.

 

Thanks to 16 shades of one color graphics mode 9, I decided to make the game look like old black and white western movies and I designed a smooth background.


Taking advantage of A8 widescreen and overscan features, there's a "cinemascope" screen and duelist enter from sides.

 

Atari sprites have a limited horizontal width but unlimited height. Therefore I asked @TIX if he could design tall characters.
Konstantinos made ninety awesome 16x64 pixels 3 colors animation frames and smartly solved the problem of the deaths, not easy because of narrow sprites.

 

Regarding music, I asked @miker to make Ennio Morricone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly main theme.
He always wanted to do it for Atari and in fact the result is really good.
Recently the Italian composer, one of the greatest and most influential film composers of all time, passed away and we would like to honor him.
Michal made victory (Johnny Cash Ballad of a Teenage Queenand death tunes too.

 

The game was programmed with @dmsc's FastBasic.
Not only Daniel made an awesome new language, but he helped me when I was stuck.

 

Sprites were designed with @playsoft Atari Player Editor and tunes were composed with Raster Music Tracker (RIP Radek Sterba).


The game ajusts speed for PAL and NTSC machines.

 

This was a relaxed project, without deadlines, started on February 2019.  On May 2020 the game was nearly finished therefore I decided to enter ABBUC Software Contest 2020.

 

The project would never have been possible without AtariAge 8-bit computers forum, thanks @Albert!

 

The game will be available for free at the end of ABBUC Software Contest 2020 (November 14).

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  • 1 month later...

A very cool and different game. I'm a huge fan of Sergio Leone's spaghetti-westerns, even the ones made without Clint Eastwood. I love the music, it sounds great, but it makes me also think of how good it could sound using dual Pokeys and combining voices for 16-bit, as well as stereo gun-shots. I only loaded it up, and tried to play using the joystick, but nothing happened (from the ABBUC floppy-now I know why, I would have read the text file eventually), so I'll have to give it another go. Is the background graphic screen the only one? I think it would be cool to have a different background for each shoot-out, maybe one with a western town fading into the background for example. I clicked the link to Tombstones and I do prefer the graphic style of The Lady...

 

Anyway, I'm off to go play it again now...

Edited by Gunstar
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Very nice. I enjoy playing it. I was thinking on a old Favorite of mine, the Gunfighter game for Videopac/Odyssey 2 console. Just imaging have that old game with these very nice sprites and graphics style. Could perhaps be like a evolution, like the lady gunfighter 2. hehe...?

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Thank you guys, I am glad you liked my simple game but with good graphics and tunes.

 

As you can read on the first post, I wanted to show some A8 strenghts: tall sprites, 16 shades of grey, overscan.

 

@Gunstar, the game is very easy, press any key to start and press the right key before enemy shoots.

To have 16 shades of grey, graphics mode 9 was necessary. I designed a background perfect for that mode.

For a town or a cemetery background I would need graphic mode 15 with some DLI to have 8 shades of grey not a problem.

Stereo shots would be possible, I have and like double pokey, but I have no idea on how to do it.

I am glad you liked the style of the game, my idea was to make the game look like old black and white western films on cinemascope.

 

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4 hours ago, Philsan said:

Thank you guys, I am glad you liked my simple game but with good graphics and tunes.

 

As you can read on the first post, I wanted to show some A8 strenghts: tall sprites, 16 shades of grey, overscan.

 

@Gunstar, the game is very easy, press any key to start and press the right key before enemy shoots.

To have 16 shades of grey, graphics mode 9 was necessary. I designed a background perfect for that mode.

For a town or a cemetery background I would need graphic mode 15 with some DLI to have 8 shades of grey not a problem.

Stereo shots would be possible, I have and like double pokey, but I have no idea on how to do it.

I am glad you liked the style of the game, my idea was to make the game look like old black and white western films on cinemascope.

 

I was imagining mode 9, still, myself, as I think a town (or cemetery) background would work well being similar to your "high-chaparral" natural stone monuments and rolling desert hills. Just abstract silhouettes of buildings or tombstones/crypts fading into the distance.

 

As far as playing the game, I understood your initial description here, and, in fact, I played it for about 20 minutes last night, taking me about a dozen games to finally win one. I can type fast, if I know what I want to type, but seeing, comprehending and responding was tough to do in time by the third shoot-out. It's just the first time I loaded the game, was off the ABBUC disk without bothering to read the accompanying text/info file first, and assumed joystick use, but gave up quickly, planning to try again later after reading the file. But I learned from you here, before I had a chance too. It's quite fun and lovely looking. But I do spend half the time just listening to the cover tune on the title screen.

Edited by Gunstar
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