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Hunchy II


cd-w

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The main reason that I wanted to remove it was my own dissatisfaction with the finished product

 

 

I totally understand this. There are a number of games in the store that I created labels for that I'd like to not only re-do, but track down every last copy sold and heat-gun the old labels off. ;)

 

But I ultimately decided just to learn from them and do better next time. Nobody's complained about them, and having them in the store reminds me of how much I've learned since then. Even if I cringe when I look at them.

 

Also, it would be a lot of work tracking down all those carts, and I don't want to put that kind of effort into it. :)

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I totally understand this. There are a number of games in the store that I created labels for that I'd like to not only re-do, but track down every last copy sold and heat-gun the old labels off. ;)

Which are? (I can't think of any I don't like)

 

And you can always contact the developer and create new ones for the future. ;)

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How many 4Ks are actually in the store?

To me, 4K will always stay special. It is where the fun (and the VCS) came from.

I have my very own opinion on extending and upgrading the/any retro hardware to reach new or simpler goals.

In any case, the Atari 2600 is also an important piece of history and game development history. Limiting yourself in such a way is (again, to me) the very point of the fun.

Personally, I find it more interessting to see what people can achieve in 4 or 8K than in 32K/ARM.

Not judging which is 'best', just making a point that 4k is a category all on its own. And it does not mean that those games are less fun.

Quite the contrary (quite ofte, I believe) as you put so much more effort and what you REALLY need for your game. What is essential to the game play, etc etc.

We all know that while modern PC/Console games hardly lack in the graphics these days, some seem to forget what the actual game is about.

A brawler needs excellent controls, an adventure smart(!) puzzles a dungeon game either clever or at lest diversified rooms and so on and so on.

Assembloids2600 is 4K and not because I couldn't think of yet another byte :)

I wanted to write a 4k game under the same restrictions as almost 40 years ago (incredibly simpler development because of modern crossdevelopment and emulators aside *g*).

In my book, 4k are a hard limit.

8k another, maybe 16K mere ROM, too. All above becomes fuzzy.

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I totally understand this. There are a number of games in the store that I created labels for that I'd like to not only re-do, but track down every last copy sold and heat-gun the old labels off. ;)

Which are? (I can't think of any I don't like)

 

And you can always contact the developer and create new ones for the future. ;)

 

 

 

There are only a few I wouldn't change to some degree. I can always spot something I don't like after it's all finished. Outright re-do, probably just 3 of them because there's a pretty high degree of dissatisfaction. The 2005 MiniGame MultiCart is one of them. If I ever get around to finishing up the blog entries about them, you can read more there about the rest.

 

One of the developers was considering updating their game and it would have been a good time to re-do the label - but that never materialized.

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How many 4Ks are actually in the store?

To me, 4K will always stay special. It is where the fun (and the VCS) came from.

I have my very own opinion on extending and upgrading the/any retro hardware to reach new or simpler goals.

In any case, the Atari 2600 is also an important piece of history and game development history. Limiting yourself in such a way is (again, to me) the very point of the fun.

Personally, I find it more interessting to see what people can achieve in 4 or 8K than in 32K/ARM.

Not judging which is 'best', just making a point that 4k is a category all on its own. And it does not mean that those games are less fun.

Quite the contrary (quite ofte, I believe) as you put so much more effort and what you REALLY need for your game. What is essential to the game play, etc etc.

We all know that while modern PC/Console games hardly lack in the graphics these days, some seem to forget what the actual game is about.

A brawler needs excellent controls, an adventure smart(!) puzzles a dungeon game either clever or at lest diversified rooms and so on and so on.

Assembloids2600 is 4K and not because I couldn't think of yet another byte :)

I wanted to write a 4k game under the same restrictions as almost 40 years ago (incredibly simpler development because of modern crossdevelopment and emulators aside *g*).

In my book, 4k are a hard limit.

8k another, maybe 16K mere ROM, too. All above becomes fuzzy.

My opinion is that something happens that fundamentally changes when you start stuffing ARM code into your game carts. Yes, the Melody games are awesome. Yes, there are awesome 4k homebrews.

 

2600 is very much an evolution that is still evolving.

 

First came PONG and COMBAT. And other games which strictly adhere to the two sprite / 2 missile / 1 ball limitation with symmetrical playfields and solid backgrounds. Then developers started messing with the TIA between scanlines, allowing multiple sprites on screen, changing colors to give the illusion of multicolor sprites. Next came asymmetrical playfields with different shapes on either side, then flickering to increase the sprite count, then SaraSara RAM, then DPC with the TIA audio stuffing, then decades later we have flash carts and full blown ARM code running on Melody boards, offloading most of the computations and setting up a custom display kernel every frame, undocumented Opcodes, you name it.

 

Having read the awesome book "Racing the Beam", I can pick apart the simpler 4k or 8k games and see exactly which programming tricks were employed to draw stuff on the screen. Then I play something like Draconian where I don't have the foggiest notion how the heck the author crammed so much stuff onscreen, only that there's some kind of magical voodoo going on inside the cart that somehow pertains to the ARM chip.

 

If I counted the 2600 homebrews correctly (10 per page, 8 on the last page) then there's 98 in the store - which means 50% of the homebrews are 4K games.

Even sorted by popularity, I see numerous 4k games beating out more complex homebrews. I think there's enough variety for everything to coexist together and everyone can be happy with the games they purchased, whether a simplistic game like bitd, or a fantastical masterpiece that makes you wonder if what you're playing can possibly be considered a 2600 game. :)

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I just tried Hunchy II for the first time and got hooked by it immediatelly :) Imho, the visuals are OK and more than good enough considering that it is 4k (actually, I find that I like the animations of the hunchback, the girl and the bells a lot), but it really shines when it comes to gameplay. It would have been a pity f it had vanished from the store.

Edited by DirtyHairy
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  • 1 year later...

We'll be featuring Hunchy II LIVE on tomorrow's (Friday) ZeroPage Homebrew stream on Twitch at 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 8PM GMT! Hope everyone can watch!

Twitch Stream: http://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:
- Retron 77 (Stella 6 Update)
- Redshirts (2010) by Jarod Kitchen aka jrok
- Arcade Pong (2019 WIP) by David Galloway aka djmips
- Hunchy II (2005) by Chris Walton aka cd-w

 

post-37205-0-42000300-1556855720_thumb.jpg

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Don't try paddle games on R77 with the current beta, they are broken. The good new is, that we might be even able to improve them a bit over the bad original. And there are no settings options yet (next version will have them).

 

BTW: If you have an OTG you can use all kinds of controllers, with 2600-dapter even trackballs are working.

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Thanks Thomas! Searching for my OTG cable right now so I can plug a keyboard in to show how to get to the menu system to change the options.

 

Don't try paddle games on R77 with the current beta, they are broken. The good new is, that we might be even able to improve them a bit over the bad original. And there are no settings options yet (next version will have them).

 

BTW: If you have an OTG you can use all kinds of controllers, with 2600-dapter even trackballs are working.

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Nice!

 

Thanks Thomas! Searching for my OTG cable right now so I can plug a keyboard in to show how to get to the menu system to change the options.

Just a heads up if you use a controller adapter - I had paddles plugged in via Stelladaptor, worked well for Medieval Mayhem. A couple days later I went to play Draconian and the ship would only fly NE, E, SE (the 3 directions to the right). Turned out the paddles were still plugged in and were interfering with the joystick readings from the built-in ports.

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We'll be featuring Hunchy II LIVE on tomorrow's (Friday) ZeroPage Homebrew stream on Twitch at 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 8PM GMT! Hope everyone can watch!

Twitch Stream: http://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:

- Retron 77 (Stella 6 Update)

- Redshirts (2010) by Jarod Kitchen aka jrok

- Arcade Pong (2019 WIP) by David Galloway aka djmips

- Hunchy II (2005) by Chris Walton aka cd-w

 

attachicon.gif20190503-Let's Play.jpg

Watched the Twitch Stream re-run, tried the Hunchy ROM and liked it so much that I just placed an order for the cart :)
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That's awesome! It's a really well made game with great controls and really astounding it all fits into 4K!

 

Watched the Twitch Stream re-run, tried the Hunchy ROM and liked it so much that I just placed an order for the cart :)

 

Here's the YouTube Archive of the Stream:

Edited by ZeroPage Homebrew
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That's awesome! It's a really well made game with great controls and really astounding it all fits into 4K!

 

Thanks for featuring my game, and for the positive comments! Hunchy II was the first full-size homebrew game that I wrote for the 2600 (after a few minigames). It doesn't have the same level of polish/sophistication as my later games (Juno First, Chetiry, Star Castle Arcade), but it's good to know that people are having fun playing it nonetheless.

 

Have you featured Chetiry in any of your shows yet? It is now fully playable with Stella (6.0 or later) including the music, so should work with the updated Retron77. See http://atariage.com/forums/topic/282280-chetiry-2600/for Stella-compatible ROM images.

 

Cheers -

Chris

Edited by cd-w
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You're so welcome Chris! Hunchy II is such a great game in that has a perfect balance of challenge and fun. One of my favourite genres is plaformer and I'm always excited to play one I haven't played before on the Atari 2600! There were so few put out in the initial run of the system and there's a healthy bunch of them now.

 

I haven't played Chetiry on the show yet because the cartridge is on my 'to buy' list and was sadly out of stock last time I placed an AA store order. Also, I didn't want to show the game without the music as it's such a big part of the game.

 

Thanks so much for the update, it's so awesome that it's now playable on Stella with the full music, I'll give it a try later today on the Retron77 to see if it works! I'm guessing that there isn't a version that can be played on a Harmony Encore cart because of the way the music is done? I just tried to play the new 'Stella' version but it didn't recognize the file type sadly. Looking in Stella it's file type CTY (60K) so that's probably a very specific format recognized just by Stella.

 

I'll put it on my to-play list for an upcoming ZeroPage Homebrew stream and either play it through Stella, Retron77 or on cart if I get to put in another order soon! :-) Looking forward to it!

 

- James

 

 

 

Thanks for featuring my game, and for the positive comments! Hunchy II was the first full-size homebrew game that I wrote for the 2600 (after a few minigames). It doesn't have the same level of polish/sophistication as my later games (Juno First, Chetiry, Star Castle Arcade), but it's good to know that people are having fun playing it nonetheless.

 

Have you featured Chetiry in any of your shows yet? It is now fully playable with Stella (6.0 or later) including the music, so should work with the updated Retron77. See http://atariage.com/forums/topic/282280-chetiry-2600/for Stella-compatible ROM images.

 

Cheers -

Chris

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I just tried to play the new 'Stella' version but it didn't recognize the file type sadly. Looking in Stella it's file type CTY (60K) so that's probably a very specific format recognized just by Stella.

 

Need to be using Stella 6.0, I just confirmed the 60KB ROM chetiry_NTSC_STELLA.bin works with music on both my Mac and R77.

 

 

 

 

December 23, 2018

 

Stella release 6.0 for Linux, macOS and Windows is now available.

  • Note: because of major TIA sound changes, the state file format has changed, and old state files will not work with this release.
  • ...
  • Added preliminary support for 'CTY' bankswitching scheme and recently released 'Chetiry' ROMs. Special thanks to SpiceWare for adding music support to this scheme.
  • ...
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