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Hellway, an Atari 2600 homebrew with love


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Hello, usually I formalize things in the manual and write to the forum, but I will do this post in a very informal way, and then pass this info to the manual in a more structured manner.

I want to dive deeper on each car, not only the stats. When I compare stats on this post, will always be related to the car 0 (default).

 

The first thing is that each car behaves very differently, but I tried to equalize them considering game modes that cycle thought the traffic levels, by making several attempts and comparing my times after cycling all the levels. If you play locked into one level only, it is clear that one car might have advantage over other.

 

No cars go faster than 0xA0 because this breaks the game. You start seeng the border reversing direction, and this would require an alternate sound table, with the gear sounds redistributed accordingly. Also, it is crazy fast, beyond a playable level (at least for me). 

 

The car 0 (with spoiler) is the most balanced. There is no changes to it.

The car 1 (Hatchback) is very good with more traffic, the acceleration is 50% faster. Because of this it also recovers well from crashes. The catch is that the top speed is 20% slower (1 less gear, 0x80), for low traffic levels and for checkpoints (invincibility) this is not ideal of course.

The car 2 (Sedan) is the most unpredictable. It has 25% slower acceleration, keeping momentum is essential! But it compensates it by gliding 4 better. This means you should be overtime sooner, but if played right, you can still cross several checkpoints!

The car 3 (Dragster) Turns with half of the speed. Avoiding traffic harder, sometimes you have to keep it more time aligned with traffic speed to change lines. But it accelerates 50% better and regaining the speed very fast also. He is perfect for checkpoints, which it can reach top speed very fast and take full advantage of it.

 

    - Let's play Hellway?
    - Hellway?! Hell Yeah!!!!!!!

 

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10 hours ago, DeafAtariFromKansas said:

the status still show 1.35 after I downloaded new binary..

Forgot to recompile the code after changing the constant. Fixed, thanks! You were indeed playing v1.36, just the text was wrong.

I am glad people are actually playing the game. The more and more we approach the cartridge release, the more this becomes important.

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15 hours ago, vitoco said:

You are a master. Congrats!

I am not, this game only got to this state because multiple iterations, feedback and ideas from you (community), and no pressure on a release date.

 


Hello AtariAge Community,


I have many people in the community to say thanks. My game only got to that state because of you. Now I am really close to the 4KB, I cannot add anything else to the game.


The cartridge release is coming, so I want to use that time to make sure we have no bugs, and that the game is well tuned. This is an open invitation for you to post highscores or even gameplay videos, also to freely post ideas and feedback. After the game is released, I don't want to change anything else.

 

The Journey has been amazing, thanks!
 

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Version Update: 1.38 (Lets hope is the last one)

 

I recently increased the breaking speed in 20%. While it felt more responsive at top speeds, also caused over breaking a problem, and was not ideal at slower speeds.

What I did was to have different breaks for different speed ranges. Lets consider the old break (before the 1.36) as 100%

Form 0x80 to 0xA0 you break at 120% giving you the extra breaking boost you need to not crash miserable.

From 0x40 to 0x79 you break with 100%

From 0x0 to 0x39 you break with 80% giving you a more fine grained control and making harder to over break.

I kept the heel and toe at constant 60% (half of the max break).

The more important, it feels good, this is a hard feeling to describe...

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2 hours ago, Octavio Pinho Bokel said:

@alfredtdk Gostaria de saber quantos brasileiros tem nos fóruns ...

Estou postando minha pontuação alta como comparação, na mesma configuração.

E tentarei fazer o mesmo para cada pontuação mais alta postada.

hellway.asm_58.png

Of the more than 20 years that the Atariage website has existed, I do not know how many Brazilian members have passed through here and whether it remains active or not in this forum. We currently have Leonardo Santiago with his new project K-Jo Chase and Xan with his bold version of Moon Cresta for 2600. We also have many Brazilians in the Homebrew scene and we see many of his projects being presented to us on the Zeropage Homebrews channel.

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Version Update: 1.39:

 

This is one of the most important changes yet!

 

From the manual:

The time added is of the level you are entering, not of the level you passed (which are the same for fixed traffic intensity modes).


This has deep implications. Before you would get the time for the level you passed. What this resulted in the final part of the game (mostly for advanced players) was that it was almost certain that the timer would run out on the highest traffic level, in a way that was almost impossible to glide your way out.

This would happen because when you completed the last level and went back to the first, this would give you 44 seconds (The max time) for the first level (with less traffic), so it was like you start a new cycle with time in your account, and since you gained the time for the level you passed, you would slowly burn this credit until they would be over on the worse time, on the most traffic intensity, making you a sitting duck. Gliding was very unlikely to happen where it could most succeed.

With the new changes you get the credits before completing your current task (money in advance), so every level has the same chance of being the one your timer will be over. Gliding with less traffic is much easier. For more traffic, the fact that you get more time in the beginning, also means that even if you enter the level with 0 time, you still have the extra (and fair) seconds that will give you a balanced experience, and a much bigger possibility reaching the checkpoint by gliding.

 

I hope I was clear enough, not the easiest thing to explain...
 

Edited by Octavio Pinho Bokel
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Version Update 1.42

 

One final small fine turning on the breaks.

 

Alternating text mode, from the manual:
If game select is pressed during gameplay, it will draw all text alternating between left and right every 4 seconds. Because of hardware constraints, all text in the game flicker at 30hz, this removes the flickering. The main reason is to allow the screen to be captured no matter what combination of camera and monitor you are using by taking two distinct pictures. This also helps with emulators that do not emulate phosphor mode.


This was done because of this picture:
I asked people to submit scores because I wanted to fine tune the game, and in the score screen I have full details of the play session. But then I by @Al_Nafuur picture, that the fact I do a 30hz flickering, might result in some types of TV and fast shutter cameras to not capture properly the score (in this picture still fully readable, but the bottom right is starting to fade)

This allows that even on the most extreme situations, you will be able to capture the score with 2 distinct pictures. Also the fact that the text is not flickering, make the colors stronger.

You can enable this at any time, even while "driving" if the flickering bothers you.

On 4/15/2021 at 12:43 AM, Al_Nafuur said:

grafik.thumb.png.f4f278002cac57e9db65f2bde1eb1b43.png

 

I don't know of many games that use a 10 digits playfield text. I found my solution elegant. It uses only 5 bytes of RAM and score mode to hide half of the playfield each frame. To print stuff, you only have to write the character offset of each digit before calling the routine, which will on the fly compose the playfield bytes from the stored pointers to the characters and display the text. The same routine is called 7 times when the full score is shown, very easy to reuse. The only down side is that it flickers... I don't think it is possible to print 10 digits on the fly, while doing writes midline to make the playfield asymmetrical. 

A proper non flickering solution would take 25 bytes of RAM, and probably more than I have of ROM space. It can be done by directly calculating each playfield final result (Both PF0 could be stored on the same byte, 5 lines, 5 playfields graphics), and only sending this cache while drawing... Unfortunately I cannot afford the price to do this anymore.

 

The solution of making it stop flickering is a compromise, but should always allow capturing the screen. From all my tests, you almost always get readable results with the flickering, this is an edge case, but I want everything in the game to work for every user!

I think the game is now tuned properly. I even numbered the version 1.42 (the definitive answer) and I don't want to change that number. I will do so only in case a bug is found, but try really hard to not do any more new features or tuning. I have 5 bytes of RAM and 80 bytes +- of ROM, and they are non sequential bytes... I am leaving this for an eventual bug fix, or to make possible specials builds with integration with modern tools, like the the PlusCart.

hellway.asm_59.png

hellway.asm_60.png

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I just checked the pictures I took from my CRT (which I didn't post because the scores were too low ?), and they look OK. Only one of them seems to have the same fade effect, but nothing to worry about). This is one I took two two days ago:

 

image.thumb.png.fd12f5ec169641007837a9e5776ea492.png

 

It might be because I had to increase the bright of the screen (making it a bit greenish) when I was playing a game with too many detaisl that was presented on ZPH and I couldn't see some of the spider webs of the playfield...

 

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@vitoco  Better safe than sorry... Other kinds of monitor might have less image persistence. Phone cameras might get better and reduce shutter speed...

 

I just want to have a reliable fallback that could fit in the game without refactoring it all.

 

Probably the flickering mode will just work most of the time, but capturing the score is so important for competitive gameplay, that I did not want to take the risk.

 

Thanks for posting your score!

 

 

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Hello again,

 

I have the pleasure to announce that Hellway will be featured in the next @ZeroPage Homebrew show.

20210420 Let's Play: Talvisota (WIP), Hellway (WIP Update), Ninjish Guy in Low Res World (for 2021 Harmony Games) (LIVE @ 6PM PT | 9PM ET | 1AM GMT)

 

This is probably the last major update to the game, if no bugs are found, the version 1.42 is the final version! 

 

I would like to welcome you all tomorrow. I will be on the live to answer any question and to celebrate :)

 

Here are the updates from the last time:
 

 - Level 3 color change (Brown to purple).
 - CHPT to CKPT (Checkpoint text)

 - Score screen (full status and in decimal)
 - Glide tuning
 - QR code (The landing page will be improved in the future)
 - 4 different cars with different handlings

 - Tuning checkpoint time
 - Time added in the checkpoint is of the level you are entering, and not the one you passed (major implications).
 - Break tuning.

 - Warning sound when time is close to be over.

 - Non flickering mode for text ( Screen capture compatibility )

 - Hidden easter egg ( it was also in the previous version, nobody discovered it yet )

 

I appreciate all support so far!

 

@ZeroPage Homebrew, can you post the official announcement banner when you have?

I am also posting 4 gameplay videos, with each of the cars in mode 0. In average they are quite balanced, but they are all first takes, so there is big variance as expected from low sample rates. It is just a way to post some scores and show that there is much room for improvement, I made several mistakes myself! The car with spoiler is my best score so far, The Sedan and Hatchback are average scores, and the dragster was a bellow average try.

I am waiting for someone to beat me in my own game! Nothing would make me more proud!


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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