Sprybug Posted March 27, 2022 Share Posted March 27, 2022 Hello everyone! I finally got around to finishing a demo version of the full game for you guys to play. The demo version allows you to play a level of your choosing. You can't make any progress in the game, but it'll allow you to play each level and boss battle. Genesis Controller HIGHLY recommended. Controls: Left/Right - Move this way Fire/Genesis B Button - Jump Up/Genesis A Button - Fire Down & Fire/B But - Change Power For those who haven't played this before, you can gain the power of certain opponents by defeating them and obtaining the power up capsule. For new capsules you get 10 Power Points, and for ones you already have you get 5 Power Points. Some enemies with drop Health Point capsules too (which are white). Each power you use requires power points to use. You run out and you will return back to normal Zed mode. Once you're out of health, that's it, the demo will start over, same with defeating a level too. Special case with the red/shield power. Doesn't require any power to use, but when you get hit by a projectile, it will take some Power Points and 1 Health Point. The shield does NOT protect against running into an enemy or explosions. This is just a demo, so there might be a few thigns tightened up and added in the final version. Enjoy! RobotZed_33_Demo.bas.bin 13 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donnerkuh Posted March 27, 2022 Share Posted March 27, 2022 very good sound Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bentastic64 Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 There seems to be an incompatibility issue with either this build or newer versions of Stella not able to run it correctly, when I tried playing this build on the latest version of Stella (6.6), I wasn't able to fire at all, I could only move left and right, jump, and crouch down. I decided to test this build on many different versions of Stella, and it turns out that versions 6.0.2 and older allow you to fire, but versions 6.1 and newer don't. is there a way you can fix this to where you can fire on newer versions of Stella? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Karl G Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 7 hours ago, Bentastic64 said: There seems to be an incompatibility issue with either this build or newer versions of Stella not able to run it correctly, when I tried playing this build on the latest version of Stella (6.6), I wasn't able to fire at all, I could only move left and right, jump, and crouch down. I decided to test this build on many different versions of Stella, and it turns out that versions 6.0.2 and older allow you to fire, but versions 6.1 and newer don't. is there a way you can fix this to where you can fire on newer versions of Stella? It is probably detecting a Genesis controller, so you will also need to use whatever the second Genesis button is mapped to in your Stella to fire (right shift on my system, but I don't know if I customized it previously). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bentastic64 Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 3 hours ago, Karl G said: It is probably detecting a Genesis controller, so you will also need to use whatever the second Genesis button is mapped to in your Stella to fire (right shift on my system, but I don't know if I customized it previously). thanks for the info, I was able to get it to work after changing my input settings. the "left booster top booster button" input is what's used for fire in this game. I was confused at first because the previous builds of this game would let me fire on default settings using the up key, but this also does make it a little easier to play using two keys instead of the spacebar 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted March 29, 2022 Author Share Posted March 29, 2022 (edited) 10 hours ago, Bentastic64 said: thanks for the info, I was able to get it to work after changing my input settings. the "left booster top booster button" input is what's used for fire in this game. I was confused at first because the previous builds of this game would let me fire on default settings using the up key, but this also does make it a little easier to play using two keys instead of the spacebar That's interesting. I just look at my code to see if I had temporarily hardcoded it just for Genesis, and nope, I still have the Genesis Controller auto detect in place. If INPT1 is high then it thinks a Genesis Controller is connected. I wonder if there's a configuration setting in Stella that automatically does this or something. Edited March 29, 2022 by Sprybug 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Karl G Posted March 29, 2022 Share Posted March 29, 2022 9 hours ago, Sprybug said: That's interesting. I just look at my code to see if I had temporarily hardcoded it just for Genesis, and nope, I still have the Genesis Controller auto detect in place. If INPT1 is high then it thinks a Genesis Controller is connected. I wonder if there's a configuration setting in Stella that automatically does this or something. I believe Stella detects if the game supports Genesis, and then has the game default to using a Genesis controller if it does see that code pattern in the ROM. That may well be the difference you are seeing in earlier vs later Stella versions. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gamefan123 Posted April 6, 2022 Share Posted April 6, 2022 As Patrick Star said one time "I love you" Cannot wait to try this! ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LatchKeyKid Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 This looks very impressive! I was curious what style of Mega Man/Ghosts and Goblins side scrolling/screen scrolling action games the 2600 was capable of and someone suggested your's. How did you code it? (Assembly, bB, etc?) I see that it's a full 64kb and I'm curious how much (obviously estimated/best guess) of that is intro/selection vs gameplay vs code vs music. I'm curious if you had added more color what you think the trade off would have been elsewhere to fit it in the 64kb limit. Sorry to pick your brain but as a complete n00b to 2600 homebrew I figured asking would be a good first step. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 52 minutes ago, LatchKeyKid said: This looks very impressive! I was curious what style of Mega Man/Ghosts and Goblins side scrolling/screen scrolling action games the 2600 was capable of and someone suggested your's. How did you code it? (Assembly, bB, etc?) I see that it's a full 64kb and I'm curious how much (obviously estimated/best guess) of that is intro/selection vs gameplay vs code vs music. I'm curious if you had added more color what you think the trade off would have been elsewhere to fit it in the 64kb limit. Sorry to pick your brain but as a complete n00b to 2600 homebrew I figured asking would be a good first step. Sprybug can provide a complete answer but in the meantime.. batari BASIC was probably used as Sprybug has previously made a Super Mario homage written in bB. I'd check out the link below as it has source code so you can see how things are allocated. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/201426-super-mario-clone-world-1-1-playable-demo/ I've also made a primitive side scrolling engine that can only scroll forwards. It might be an easier starting point. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/201771-s3-the-sensational-santuci-sisters-cancelled/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LatchKeyKid Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 1 hour ago, Gemintronic said: Sprybug can provide a complete answer but in the meantime.. batari BASIC was probably used as Sprybug has previously made a Super Mario homage written in bB. I'd check out the link below as it has source code so you can see how things are allocated. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/201426-super-mario-clone-world-1-1-playable-demo/ I've also made a primitive side scrolling engine that can only scroll forwards. It might be an easier starting point. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/201771-s3-the-sensational-santuci-sisters-cancelled/ Thanks and I will take a look! I think I've seen video of the SMB game under Princess Rescue on youtube but it'll be nice to see how it was coded. Just from a quick play of his demo, I really love the sprite work. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fort Apocalypse Posted May 14, 2022 Share Posted May 14, 2022 (edited) This is great! I can't fire in Stella, and the turtle kills me, but the music, looks, and gameplay are awesome! Edited May 14, 2022 by Fort Apocalypse Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted May 22, 2022 Author Share Posted May 22, 2022 On 5/14/2022 at 2:21 AM, Fort Apocalypse said: This is great! I can't fire in Stella, and the turtle kills me, but the music, looks, and gameplay are awesome! Is this Princess Rescue? You can't fire until you get the fireflower. In Stella you need to have Genesis Controller enabled to use the 2 button control. One for Jump and the other for Fire/Run. If you don't then you have to press up to fire. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted May 22, 2022 Author Share Posted May 22, 2022 On 4/26/2022 at 3:12 PM, LatchKeyKid said: This looks very impressive! I was curious what style of Mega Man/Ghosts and Goblins side scrolling/screen scrolling action games the 2600 was capable of and someone suggested your's. How did you code it? (Assembly, bB, etc?) I see that it's a full 64kb and I'm curious how much (obviously estimated/best guess) of that is intro/selection vs gameplay vs code vs music. I'm curious if you had added more color what you think the trade off would have been elsewhere to fit it in the 64kb limit. Sorry to pick your brain but as a complete n00b to 2600 homebrew I figured asking would be a good first step. Well, I can answer that for you! Since I wanted to have a different song for each level, that ended up taking quite a bit of space! Even when I made a change to the music format to take less info for the music and have the player do a little more work to offset it, it still was quite a bit in the end. But if I didn't do that, it would have been a lot more space and would not have been able to fit all the songs in. So, the level data is taken up by a little over 3 banks. I couldn't fit it all in 3 banks, so I used a 4th for 3 more level sections that I couldn't fit in there. So that was a little over 12K right there just for the level data. The music took up almost all of 4 banks, so that's nearly 16K just for the music data. The player itself is approximately about 2K. Hard to say what that intro screen took up, but I'm going to approximate it around 1.5K. The sprite data easily is about 4K. I had to leave space for the sound effects and its player, along with the ending sequence. After all is said and done, I would say around 24 to 28K is the code to make this all happen. I use Batari BASIC, so there are trade offs depending on what I want to do. When I first started coming up with the concept of the game, I decided to let the limitations kind of dictate what to do, instead of trying to find some way around them. I was okay with using single solid colors for the sprites, because I was going to use the color to act as what power you were using. Originally I was going to have multi-level colors, as you could see with the early demos, but I changed my mind on that when I started experimenting with background coloring, and thought it would be neat to do things with the background colors instead to have some sort of impact on the level. Such as water in Sea Way, or the clouds in Sky Way, for example. You can't have both multi color foreground and multi-color background, so I had to make a decision there, and though just having single color playfield blocks would suffice for the game. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LatchKeyKid Posted May 27, 2022 Share Posted May 27, 2022 Thanks for the detailed rundown. The music really adds to the game so I can see why you gave it that space as do the other elements. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ZeroPage Homebrew Posted October 30, 2022 Share Posted October 30, 2022 INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS SPRY (Sprybug) AT PRGE 2022 Chris Spry @Sprybug 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freshbrood Posted April 2, 2023 Share Posted April 2, 2023 I'm very interested in the Bataribasic sound engine you were implementing for this game. Did you ever finish that? Is there a release of it I can download? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted September 18, 2023 Share Posted September 18, 2023 Robot Zed from @Sprybug (Princess Rescue, Zippy the Porcupine) is going to make its debut at this year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo! Here's a render of the box for the game: If you can't make it to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, Robot Zed will be available in the AtariAge Store in November. ..Al 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted September 18, 2023 Author Share Posted September 18, 2023 On 4/2/2023 at 6:01 PM, freshbrood said: I'm very interested in the Bataribasic sound engine you were implementing for this game. Did you ever finish that? Is there a release of it I can download? Oh, I never came across this message until now. Did we ever chat about this outside of this, because I did talk to one person about the sound engine of Zed. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LatchKeyKid Posted September 18, 2023 Share Posted September 18, 2023 Congrats on getting a physical release! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted September 18, 2023 Author Share Posted September 18, 2023 40 minutes ago, LatchKeyKid said: Congrats on getting a physical release! Thanks! I got one bug left to fix, which is driving me crazy because I've looked at my code a million times and even checked the memory with the debugger in Stella and it doesn't make any sense why it's happening only every once in a while. Sometimes it'll take you to the next section of the level before you defeat 4 enemies. I have no idea why it's doing it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devwebcl Posted September 18, 2023 Share Posted September 18, 2023 Kudos for the physical release! This is a great platformer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Karl G Posted September 19, 2023 Share Posted September 19, 2023 22 hours ago, Sprybug said: Thanks! I got one bug left to fix, which is driving me crazy because I've looked at my code a million times and even checked the memory with the debugger in Stella and it doesn't make any sense why it's happening only every once in a while. Sometimes it'll take you to the next section of the level before you defeat 4 enemies. I have no idea why it's doing it. Let me know if you need another pair of eyes to try to help figure it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ZeroPage Homebrew Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 ZeroPage Homebrew presents... Sun Dec 17, 2023 @ 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 8PM GMT WATCH LIVE: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/ WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/ On Sunday December 17, 2023 ZeroPage Homebrew will be interviewing the developers of every single new physical release coming to the AtariAge store! Join us LIVE on Twitch while we unbox all the new Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar and Lynx games and talk with the incredibly talented Atari community members about their games! Get your questions ready for the devs and following along in the Twitch chat as we pop in each of the 22 new releases into our Atari consoles! NEW GAME RELEASES Atari 2600: Berry Fun!, Bot&Tom, Caramujo, ElectroBall, Game of the Bear 2 Much To Bear, Immunity!, Penult, Quantum Tunnel, Robot Zed Atari 5200: Scorch Atari 7800: A.R.T.I., Death Merchant, E.X.O., Harpy's Curse, Millie and Molly, Oozy the Goo - Gaiden, Plumb Luck DX Atari Jaguar: Defender of the Crown, Novagen Volume 1, Rocket Ranger Atari Lynx: Growing Ties Deluxe, Odynexus 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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