FloB - teaser

[Mq.]

Bump!

 

We have yet a few physical copies of the FloB for sale.
If someone else want to buy, please contact me.

[Beeblebrox]

Go for it people - amazing game, especially to own!!!

 

I had a good impromptu session on it (running the latest version release quickly off my SIDE3 cart on my recently returned from the dead 130XE).

 

Soooo addictive! Only meant to play it for 5mins................nearly 1hr later......

 

 

ps BTW I am just a big fan of this game - not involved in any way with the production, etc. 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Still waiting by the mailbox for my physical cart to arrive!

 

[Mq.]

@-^CrossBow^- It was shipped a few days ago, so be patient

[+-^CrossBow^-]

49 minutes ago, Mq. said:

@-^CrossBow^- It was shipped a few days ago, so be patient

Yes I know, I was only stating my excitement to receive my copy of the game.

[patjomki]

Hmm. I cannot get the avgcart version running.

I have AVGCART ver: d021 but whatever I do after the tgs and workshop logos screen gets blank and nothing happens.

 

The standard .car version 1.0.3b is running fine though.

[tmp]

7 minutes ago, patjomki said:

Hmm. I cannot get the avgcart version running.

I have AVGCART ver: d021 but whatever I do after the tgs and workshop logos screen gets blank and nothing happens.

 

The standard .car version 1.0.3b is running fine though.

dd21 or later is needed, d021 is older, get 0021, that's final (all those firmware versions that have any letter in version are beta/test/prerelease versions of 00XX. confusing? sure, but that's me)

Edited October 22, 2021 by tmp

[patjomki]

Just did an update to firmware 0021 and now flob 1.0.3b avg cart version is running fine.

 

Thank you!

 

And yes, I have to admit that your versioning is the most confusing thing ever. ?

[spspspsp]

I've been enjoying playing FloB. It's a neat game, and the music and art style is unlike any other Atari 8-bit game I've played. Very charming.

 

Humorous too--I beat level 6 last night and the ending had me chuckling to myself.

 

I'd like to know how the statistics screen is unlocked. What conditions need to be met? I was hoping that would appear after having completed the game. As I continue to look for slimes and secret areas I think it would be fun to be able to check on stats from time to time.

 

Also, If it's okay I'd like mention a few problems I had.

 

One is that on CRT displays, the in game text is quite difficult to read where the font is only a one pixel wide. I've tried three displays, using both composite and S-video, and this was an issue on each one no matter what brightness/contrast settings I tried. Most pieces A8 software I own use fonts in which vertical portions are are at least two pixels wide, probably for this reason. One exception I can think of is Donkey Kong, and it has always bothered me that the text was so difficult to read.

 

Also, I got stuck in the observatory room in level 6. After collecting the key card I fell into the crack directly to the left of the card and couldn't get out. I ended up starting the level over.

 

Another minor thing is that in level 6, to me "firm evidence" would be more natural than "strict evidence." Not a big deal.

 

Finally, during the first roll of the ending credits, the screen kept on showing flashes of glitched graphics. This only happened the first time through the credits, so I couldn't get a photo, and in any case the glitches are only for a few frames each time, but they are there.

 

I was playing on a cart loaded with version 1.03.

 

I am happy with this game--and I keep going back trying to find secrets. It's somewhat maddening that I can't find any of the secret areas in the "Suburbian Parkour" level though. I can't figure out what I'm missing!

[bocianu]

Hi @spspspsp!

 

First of all, thanks for playing my game  I'm very glad you liked it.

 

To unlock statistics screen, you need to "touch" computer in first secret on first level: "Escape from the Lab".

First secret is located under the bench on second screen of the game.

When you get it unlocked you can turn on stats on title screen using Option key, until you restart the game.

 

I was not aware of the font problem. I was testing it on my philips crt via svideo cable and the font was readable.

I know that one of the testers also played the game purely on CRT and was not reporting such kind of problem.

Are you using PAL or NTSC system? 

 

Yes, there are some places in the game where you can got stuck. I tried to eliminate as many as I could,

but I surely missed couple of those. But you do not have to start the level over. When you press ESC key

and keep it pressed for half of a second you got respawned in last position where you had safely landed.

When you do it twice in a row, you will be thrown to main menu. It is described in manual, but yes I know,

nobody reads manual

 

Glitches on credits screen are also something new for me. I will try to investigate it.

Are the credits ok, when you launch them using Help key on title screen?

 

Secrets on Suburbs are really tricky. One is opened when you crawl into one tight place.

To unlock second one, you have to spend more than 20 seconds in one of the rooms to see the... something

 

If you will give up, you can find all secrets on youtube.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

I hope you will get as many achievements as possible

 

regards

 

bocianu

[spspspsp]

Those small hints helped me find both secrets in level 3. I was worried the "something" would kill me so I had been avoiding it, and I just hadn't wiggled far enough into the small space.

 

I am playing on an NTSC system, if that helps. I can read the fonts when the text/colors are strong enough to induce NTSC artifacting, but depending on the foreground/background color combination, and seemingly more importantly, the brightness of the text (white text is much more legible than grey text, for example) legibility varies. I am using UAV-board derived video signals. I wonder if the cleaner video output actually is making text more difficult to read.

 

Also, I am playing on an Atari 800 with the incognito board installed, and so lack a "Help" key. I can't check on the credits screen from the intro screen.

 

I'm not even going to attempt some of the achievements, and others may be beyond my abilities (the ninja achievement in the silver mines level) but I've got about 20 already. Perhaps I'll see how close I get to the "42 achievements" master achievement.

 

And I did re-read the manual eventually--and now won't ever forget how to reset a room. That's also a potential time-saving trick in some levels.

[BIGHMW]

Hoping she'll read on my Ultimate Cart (it takes and prefers .car files) and my 64k stock US/Canada-market XEGS as I would love to try her out.

[Mq.]

FloB works on stock XEGS, and all of XL/XE series in PAL/NTSC.
Ultimate cart should work, because as I know, it runs maxflash *.car images.
But remember it will not save the achievements to the *.car image. Achievements saveing is able on original FloB cartridge (still available for purchase), and Maxflash 8Mbit cartridges (or compatible), and AVG cart (with proper firmware), and on emulator ofcourse.

[zbyti]

8 hours ago, spspspsp said:

I'm not even going to attempt some of the achievements, and others may be beyond my abilities (the ninja achievement in the silver mines level) but I've got about 20 already. Perhaps I'll see how close I get to the "42 achievements" master achievement.

Achieve "Ninja" in the Sliver Mines is really, really hard but doable, I did it without cheating after many attempts 

[Beeblebrox]

5 hours ago, Mq. said:

FloB works on stock XEGS, and all of XL/XE series in PAL/NTSC.
Ultimate cart should work, because as I know, it runs maxflash *.car images.
But remember it will not save the achievements to the *.car image. Achievements saveing is able on original FloB cartridge (still available for purchase), and Maxflash 8Mbit cartridges (or compatible), and AVG cart (with proper firmware), and on emulator ofcourse.

@Mq. @bocianu Would it be possible to at some stage in a future revision be able to run Flob, save progress/achievements to SIDE3? (I am guessing this will tie in with FJC's amazing FATFMS he is curerntly developing). I do most of my gaming, etc on the SIDE3.

[Mq.]

It doesn't depend of us.

Saving the cartridge images is a matter of multicarts designers/programmers, not a game programmers, but I think it is problematic to define when the cart image should be saved to a SD card and do it in safe way without losing the data etc.
Ask multicart authors insted of us. I think if they would like to implement saving function, they should to do it in universal way for any cartridge of specific kind (like maxflash).

[Beeblebrox]

4 hours ago, Mq. said:

It doesn't depend of us.

Saving the cartridge images is a matter of multicarts designers/programmers, not a game programmers, but I think it is problematic to define when the cart image should be saved to a SD card and do it in safe way without losing the data etc.
Ask multicart authors insted of us. I think if they would like to implement saving function, they should to do it in universal way for any cartridge of specific kind (like maxflash).

@Mq.  Thanks for clarifying. I misread a few months back as thought Bocianu had released a tweak to the flob version to allow Atarimax to work with Flob and also save progress.  So I assume the same would need to happen for SIDE3. I must have misunderstood.

[Mr Robot]

2nd placed homebrew of the year, congratulations! well deserved win

 

[Mq.]

Thanks a lot!

[bocianu]

15 hours ago, Mr Robot said:

2nd placed homebrew of the year, congratulations! well deserved win

 

 

Yup! I'm really proud of my sliver medal.

Thanks for all your votes and warm feedback.

 

I hope you are still having fun playing FloB

[Beeblebrox]

@bocianu  Well deserved. This past year has been fantastic with some truely amazing, high quality A8 games, Flob being right there with the best!!   

Edited February 13, 2022 by Beeblebrox

[yorxs]

I successfully got FloB running on the 400 mini noticed it says the game supports optional stereo Pokey. When the game loads it indicates Mono sound. I checked the .cfg file created for the game, but I did not see any options relating to sound. Also I could not find anywhere in the PDF manual where it discusses sound. Does anyone know how to enable the optional Pokey sound on the 400 Mini?

[woj]

On 11/15/2021 at 1:17 PM, Mq. said:

Achievements saveing is able on original FloB cartridge (still available for purchase), and Maxflash 8Mbit cartridges (or compatible), and AVG cart (with proper firmware), and on emulator ofcourse.

Wait a second - is my interpretation that AVG emulation of AtariMax carts supports "flashing" into the CAR image correct?

[_The Doctor__]

54 minutes ago, yorxs said:

I successfully got FloB running on the 400 mini noticed it says the game supports optional stereo Pokey. When the game loads it indicates Mono sound. I checked the .cfg file created for the game, but I did not see any options relating to sound. Also I could not find anywhere in the PDF manual where it discusses sound. Does anyone know how to enable the optional Pokey sound on the 400 Mini?

The 400 mini is an underpowered emulation box in a nifty case, it is not an 8 bit per se' ... I'd check out the 400 mini section tagged incorrectly at the top of the page, click on that and ask 400 mini emulation questions there.

[_The Doctor__]

1 minute ago, woj said:

Wait a second - is my interpretation that AVG emulation of AtariMax carts supports "flashing" into the CAR image correct?

it does save the data