New title for ColecoVision: Robotron 2084

[zyzzle]

Absolutely astounding! A couple of suggestions, if I may

 

1. Make shooting grunts be worth 100 pts each. Progs 500 pts, etc (x10 your current point levels).

2. Collecting humans should be worth 1000, 2000, etc up to a max  of 5000 for 5 or more

3. Reduce number of "zeroes" in the score display. Start with a score "00" and expand from there. Having too many zeroes isn't flattering to the game. You keep looking at all those "zeroes" and they distract from playing the game!

 

Else, everything looks perfect! I simply can't wait for this game. You've accomplished the impossible, a great ROBOTRON port on the CV!

[AnalogKid]

14 hours ago, zyzzle said:

Absolutely astounding! A couple of suggestions, if I may

 

1. Make shooting grunts be worth 100 pts each. Progs 500 pts, etc (x10 your current point levels).

2. Collecting humans should be worth 1000, 2000, etc up to a max  of 5000 for 5 or more

3. Reduce number of "zeroes" in the score display. Start with a score "00" and expand from there. Having too many zeroes isn't flattering to the game. You keep looking at all those "zeroes" and they distract from playing the game!

 

Else, everything looks perfect! I simply can't wait for this game. You've accomplished the impossible, a great ROBOTRON port on the CV!

To reduce character collisions I made the human score strings fit within a single character and three digits was all I could fit.  Because of that I scaled the other scoring down accordingly.  It would look odd if a grunt or spheroid walked across half the score and turned 1000 into either 100, or worse 000.  Plus, with two characters it wouldn't be centered and that would trigger an OCD twitch in me    Using characters as sprites is a real pain, let me tell you.  The scale-up/down math is annoying enough, what's worse is having to clean up their tracks as they move, as you can't safely rely on getting the background and restoring it, as character sprites can cross each other's paths.

[AnalogKid]

A teaser demo ROM is available for download: Robotron Demo ROM

[ColecoGamer]

On 4/21/2022 at 2:19 PM, AnalogKid said:

A teaser demo ROM is available for download: Robotron Demo ROM

Thank you!

 

Can you say how much work is left on Robotron before its release?

[AnalogKid]

On 4/30/2022 at 10:25 PM, ColecoGamer said:

Thank you!

 

Can you say how much work is left on Robotron before its release?

It's actually now ready for me to hand off the ROM image to beta testers

[AnalogKid]

Ok guys, it's beta time.  First off, my thanks to everyone for being patient.  It has been an interesting odyssey, learning assembly,  moving up to SDCC4, diving into cvlib source to convert it and also make more specific and optimized versions of functions, then diving into bios source and doing the same, learning the CV hardware, learning how SDCC thinks and figuring out how it wants me to code, etc. etc.  

 

So now, I could use a few beta testers.  Ideally I'd like someone to run the ROM on original CV hardware and someone to run on the Phoenix.  For playability I'd like to hear from people using dual-stick options as well as people using single-stick.  I found the single-stick is still very playable because of being able to use the second fire button to fire backwards while evading.  The keypad mode is there too but that's more for those using 3rd party sticks with better keypads.  At the arcade skill level the pacing is still a bit more forgiving than the arcade version partly because you have almost 50% less vertical play area, partly being character based the grunts can speed up only so gradually, and partly because I want people to be able to at least make it past the first tank wave successfully and maybe see the grunt-mob.  Dual stick players will have an advantage and I want to hear if I need to ramp up the action more when into the 20-30 level area.  I've been playing the game for three months now so I'm an expert, I don't want to put out a game that is frustratingly hard.

 

I'm going to do another round of experiments with how much I can put on the screen without loosing the race with the nmi, now that I've completed yet another round of optimizations, so it should be possible to ratchet up the action a few more notches.

[Tekman]

39 minutes ago, AnalogKid said:

So now, I could use a few beta testers.  Ideally I'd like someone to run the ROM on original CV hardware and someone to run on the Phoenix. 

Please consider having someone with an ADAM also beta test. The poor ADAM is often forgotten at this important stage of testing.

[Pixelboy]

1 hour ago, Tekman said:

Please consider having someone with an ADAM also beta test. The poor ADAM is often forgotten at this important stage of testing.

I second that. I speak from experience when I say you can definitely encounter surprises when you test on the ADAM: Joysticks don't work quite as expected (which is usually easily fixed), etc. even though your game works perfectly on the ColecoVision.

 

[phattyboombatty]

7 hours ago, Tekman said:

Please consider having someone with an ADAM also beta test. The poor ADAM is often forgotten at this important stage of testing.

I have a decked out Coleco Adam, and I would love to use for beta testing!

 

7 hours ago, AnalogKid said:

Ok guys, it's beta time.  First off, my thanks to everyone for being patient.  It has been an interesting odyssey, learning assembly,  moving up to SDCC4, diving into cvlib source to convert it and also make more specific and optimized versions of functions, then diving into bios source and doing the same, learning the CV hardware, learning how SDCC thinks and figuring out how it wants me to code, etc. etc.  

So now, I could use a few beta testers.  Ideally I'd like someone to run the ROM on original CV hardware and someone to run on the Phoenix.  For playability I'd like to hear from people using dual-stick options as well as people using single-stick. 

My Adam rocks. It’s my main machine since most of my CVs are OOO.