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Can I post my first game here?


matzieq

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Hi there, I'm Maciej, from Poland, and I'm new here. Recently, I began programming (or better: trying to program) the 2600. I have just finished my first attempt of making something playable: a little game called AOTM AFOS - Attack Of The Mighty Aliens From Outer Space (this is not meant to be funny, just a kind of title that people invent at 3 A.M. trying to make the 2600 emulator play music :-)

It works fine with the z26. Of course, it's code is probably nowhere near efficient, and full of mistakes and things I could do better. But still, it works.

 

I was wondering if I could post the .bin or source code here. I'd be extremely grateful if some more experienced people would look at it and give some comments.

 

Is this the right forum? If not, where could I post it?

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Hi there!

 

Here is a good place for discussing the games content, playability, ideas, concepts and other things, so feel free to post the binary here. (Note: You need to ZIP it.)

 

Also, the best place to have 2600 targeted code discussed and reviewed, is the [stella] mailing list.

 

Normally you'd get there around here:

 

http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/

 

But the list seems somewhat unstable for the last 3-4 days and I don't even see a working subscription link at the moment :ponder:

 

Hope its working soon again...

 

Greetings,

Manuel

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This is no hack, I've written it alone, basing on Kirk Israel's and Andrew Davie's tutorials, the SPG and Assembly In One Step. So watch it and please, don't laugh :-) I'm just a beginner...

 

And another note: on the stella for windows it doesn't work properly. Don't know why, perhaps it's a bug of some kind. I tried to make it PAL, but I could misscount the scanlines somewhere...

 

Maciej

aotmafos.zip

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Actually, I have thought of bigger enemy missile, but when I did it this way, the code checking if objects are visible didn't fit into 2 scanlines! This code definitely needs optimization. Anyone could tell me how it is made "professionally"? I use the "playerbufferstuffer" method, mentioned by Kirk Israel in his tutorial.

 

Maciej

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well done Maciej!

 

Just found this thread- congratulations on your first game attempt. This really gives the rest of us *potential* homebrewers the motivation to continue.

 

Do you plan any enhancements to the game? and what will be your next project? :D

 

BTW the game seemed to work OK in Stella, except for not displaying the score (top of screen cut off) but this always seems to be a problem with Stella.

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Actually, I have thought of bigger enemy missile, but when I did it this way, the code checking if objects  are visible didn't fit into 2 scanlines! This code definitely needs optimization. Anyone could tell me how it is made "professionally"? I use the "playerbufferstuffer" method, mentioned by Kirk Israel in his tutorial.

 

Maciej

 

Cool game!

If you held that joystick lower, we wouldnt allow that avatar :P

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I've managed to make the enemy shot a little bigger (I just had to throw away one stupid STA WSYNC - shame on me!), also I made player missile another color, and colored the ufo. Yes, I can see, that it still needs a lot of work. On the other hand, the vblank and overscan are completely filled with code (inefficient is my second name). I will think it out and maybe sometime... I thinked of a 'bonus stage' - some meteor shooting, or something like this. I still need to dig through the stella archives and these forums to find out how all this magic is done ;) Does anyone know where can I find information about 'reusing' the sprites? (I mean, making 234234 aliens just by using two players).

 

Anyway, what do you people think of it's difficulty? Isn't it too difficult? I've never scored over 414 or something... but I don't want to make it too easy, after all who enjoys easy games?

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Haven't been able to keep up with the forums since my move. :ponder:

 

Anyway, the game shows that some of the games I've been thinking about are indeed possible from the tutorials! Now if I can just find the time to apply it. Great game tho, keep at it!

 

From what I do know (Conceptually at least!) for reusing the player sprites to create 'infinite' enemies is to just make sure they don't cross over each other's vertical scanlines. There are ways to do it while letting them cross, but that adds flicker which is preferably avoided! For identical enemies moving together you can set the sprites to display multiple copies (like how it's done in Seaquest for instance)

 

--

Mord

Must... finish... setting up.... dasm... on... new(er)... comp.

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  • 2 months later...

czesc maciek!

 

good effort, i'm just trying to read all the tutorials to make my own game. my programming expierence, some ATARI 8bit BASIC adventure games written in my primary school, wouldn't allow me to give you any advice of code optimization ;) but i will try to do some code and then maybe you will have some advice for me :)

Edited by mika
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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 year later...
  • 2 years later...

Welcome back - your game plays well, though a bit more variety in the aliens would be welcome. I'm hoping that you will be returning to your Chronicles of Airata project at some point soon, as it was looking very promising?

 

Chris

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