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TROGBlog

A blog by TROGDOR in General

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About this blog

Blog is not dead which can eternal lie. An Atari 2600 game development blog.

Entries in this blog

Hunt the Wumpus v0.01

This is the first Atari game I ever worked on. The project was started back in October of 2003. This was far too ambitious for a first project, but now that I've gotten more kernel coding experience, I revisited the idea, rewriting the entire program from scratch.   Hunt the Wumpus is one of those games that absolutely belongs in the Atari 2600 catalog of games, and I'm amazed that it's never been implemented. The tough part is displaying the clues, which in this implementation will require
TROGDOR

TROGDOR

7

Labyrinth v0.08

kart_fighter.zip Kenjutsu has mutated into the game Labyrinth.   Labyrinth is a fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight on a quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an evil dragon. You control the actions of a daring adventurer finding his way through the castle of a dark wizard who has enchanted it with treacherous monsters and obstacles. In the mysterious caverns below the castle, your odyssey continues against the awesome forces that oppose your efforts to reach
TROGDOR

TROGDOR

2

Kenjutsu v0.04

Features: kenjutsu02.asm 07/09/06 - Sword swings in full circle. - Added positioning offset to keep base of sword centered. - Cleaned up sword graphics to have uniform width and length.   kenjutsu03.asm 07/09/06 - Added player graphic. - Adjusted sword offset to swing relative to the player.   kenjutsu04.asm 07/10/06 - Added joystick support. Joystick controls movement of the player, and rotation of the sword. To move the warrior, push the joystick in the desired direction. To swin
TROGDOR

TROGDOR

2

Corinne Marilyn Collins v1.00

What kind of geek dad would I be if I didn't mention the birth of my child in an Atari blog?   Corinne Marilyn Collins was born on July 1st at 7:26 AM at Chandler Regional Hospital in Arizona. She weighed 8 lbs, 2 oz, with a lot of fuzzy brown hair. Mom, dad, and baby are doing fine.     Corinne has an older brother Kyle, who was born in 2004. His birth pre-dates this blog, but I have to give credit where credit is due. Here is a picture of Kyle, completing work on the 2600 game Maste
TROGDOR

TROGDOR

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The Battle of Midway v0.15

Features: tbom14.asm - Added Akagi aircraft carrier. The left difficulty switch determines which ship is displayed. A=Yamato B=Akagi. Press reset to see the selected ship. - Fixed bomb loop error. When the bomb is droped, an offset is added to the X position. On the right side of the screen, this can result in a value larger than 160. I was checking for X=160 to wrap. Now I'm checking for X>=160. - Multiplexed machinegun fire in with explosion sounds. - Added shorter and higher pi
TROGDOR

TROGDOR

17

The Battle of Midway v0.13

After another 12 hours of development, here's version 0.13:   Features: tbom11.asm 6/15/06 - Added machine gun sound, multiplexed in with engine and bomb sounds. - Fixed bullet code to prevent Gorf-style bullet retrieval.   tbom12.asm 6/16/06 - Added gun overheat. If the machine gun is fired continuously without allowing time to cool, the gun will overheat. If the gun overheats, it will be inoperable for 4 seconds while it cools down. - Bomb can now be dropped to the left or the rig
TROGDOR

TROGDOR

2

The Battle of Midway v0.10

Hi all,   I haven't posted in a while, but I've been doing some work behind the scenes.   I got bogged down in the Stellar Fortress code, working on more kernel tweaks and hacking at the AI. Normally I enjoy AI coding, but implementing AI on an 8 bit system with a few bytes of RAM left is painful. So I decided to take a break from that game and revisit The Battle of Midway.     The first thing to point out is that after using it for 2 years, I've finally bid a fond farewell to PCAEWin
TROGDOR

TROGDOR

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The horror. The horror.

I was sitting down to do some more development on Stellar Fortress tonight and decided is was time that I check the current ROM and RAM usage. Not good. ROM only had one page left (256 bytes), and RAM only had 16 bytes left, and that's including the space reserved for the stack.   So I was forced to postpone development and instead start code optimization. A quick check of the code showed that 50% of the ROM is currently used for logic, and the other half is data tables. Fortunately I made
TROGDOR

TROGDOR

9

Stellar Fortress v0.17

There is an old adage that says "It's not a video game until you can shoot something." Well, now you can shoot something.       New Features: v0.16: - Added thrust soundfx. - Added shot to shield collision detection. Sections of the shield can now be destroyed by the player's Ion Pulse Cannon. v0.17: - Added Ion Pulse Cannon soundfx. - Implemented BCD score addition routine. - Added scoring for destroying shield blocks. - Implemented supression of leading zeros in score. - Added
TROGDOR

TROGDOR

6

Not dead yet (Stellar Fortress v0.15)

Birthdays, weddings, aniversaries, work, and Runescape are all conspiring against my efforts to complete this game. But there is forward progress, as I'm determined to have this done in time for the 2006 Minicomp. This post combines the last 4 updates to the code, with several new features.       New Features:   V0.12: - Added preliminary score display. V0.13: - Completed programable 7 digit score display with 1 digit reinforcements display. v0.14: - Expanded the ship rotation gra
TROGDOR

TROGDOR

0

Coastal Chaos V0.02

A fundamental rule of Atari development is that you can never have too many projects going at the same time. So from out of the blue comes Coastal Chaos. Other possible titles for this game are Avast Ye!, or Pirates of the South Seas. (Since Pirates! is already taken, and Sid Meier probably has a few lawyers.)This game takes place in the early 18th century. You are a colonel, commissioned to defend a fortress on a small island in the south Caribbean. Your advance scouts have reported that
Guest

Guest

3

The Battle of Midway v0.08

Now that I've spent the last month emersing myself in Atari coding, I'm ready to take up development on The Battle of Midway again. Here's the current state of the game.Features:- Battleship displayed using asynchronous playfield.- Kernel supports both players, both missles, and ball. But it needs to be reworked.- Joystick control: left and right to rotate, down to drop a bomb, button to fire guns.- Sound FX: Engine speed based on angle of flight. Falling bomb whistle.Known Issues:- It's 256
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Stellar Fortress v 0.11

The visuals are similar, so no screenshot.colecovision_price_liet.zipNew Features:- Joystick fire button support.- 2 mutli-frame player shots, using Missle 0. Currently only shoots to the right.- Shot delay counter to prevent player shots from appearing right on top of each other.Todo:- Support for firing in all directions.- 16-bit engine for player shots.- 16 animation postions for player ship.- More sound FX.- Score and re-enforcements (extra ships) display.Development Note: I don't like but
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21

Kenjutsu V0.01

And now for something completely different.I've had an idea bouncing around in the back of my head to make a challenging swordfighting game for the 2600. That game would be "Kenjutsu: Japanese Swordmaster." (Another possible title is "Stellar Wars: LaserSword Duel." ) Here's version 0.01:hack.zipNew Features:- First version. Draws and animates a sword using player 0 missle with variations in width and HMOVE placement.To Do:- Draw player 0.- Anchor sword to player's location.I'll work on th
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Stellar Fortress v0.10

Hi all,I haven't posted in a while, but I've been busy coding. I spent about 12 hours over the past week tweaking the hell out of the kernel. Version .09 was a sanity revision that still needed cleanup. Version .10 is a cleaned up demo of the new kernel.lynxflyer199112html.zipNew Features:- The kernel is now 2-scanlines per pass. But it can still do high-resolution (single scanline) graphics for both player sprites, plus it handles both player missles, the asymetric playfield shield, and a v
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5

Stellar Fortress v0.08

New Features:- Shield collision detection.- Ricochet physics.To Do:- Add player photon cannon and enemy DASMs (Diatomic Anti-Starcraft Missles).- Add sound FX for thrust and shield collision.
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2

Stellar Fortress v0.07

The graphics are the same, so no screen shot this time. However, there are some major new features:New Features:- Added joystick support. Press left and right to rotate the ship. There are 16 rotation positions, but there are currently only 8 animation sprites. The final game will have 16 animation sprites. Press up to fire thrusters.- Added 16-bit physics engine with trig tables to determine position, velocity, and acceleration.To Do:- Collision detection against the shield.- Add player ph
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0

Stellar Fortress v0.06

New Features:- Updated kernel to display player ship on any scanline.- Added horizontal placement routine.To Do:- Add joystick support.- Create physics engine.
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Stellar Fortress v0.05

New Features:- Added Interceptor-Class Battlecruiser (player ship) with 8 rotation sprites.To Do:- Update kernel so player ship can be displayed at any scanline.- Add joystick control.
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Stellar Fortress v0.04

newsf.zipNew Features:- Added the dreaded anti-matter pulse cannon. - GP placement code to position the cannon.- 8 sprites to animate the cannon rotation. In this demo, the cannon rotates counter-clockwise. I may add more sprite positions in the future if extra ROM space is available.- The kernel has been updated to handle player graphics and dynamic background at the same time.To Do:- Add the player's ship.
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Stellar Fortress v0.03

cdk1.zipNew Features:- 5 rotating shield rows implemented.To Do:- Add the player ship and enemy cannon.The shield code is complete. This was challenging and quite fun to work on. The shield consists of 14 rows, with 4 pixels per row. There are 14 columns per row. There are now 5 rings to the shield, and each ring rotates in the opposite direction of its neighbors. The rotation requires a lot of bit shifting. At first I tried to brute-force it, but the code was getting ugly. In the end I u
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1

Hello World

I'm finally doing enough development to warrant a blog. This is the first time I've ever done a blog. Hopefully things will go smoothly...First, a little bit about me. I'm 34 years old, male, and I live in Chandler AZ, USA. I took 4 assembly language courses in college at Arizona State University in the early 90s. Most of the coursework covered the 6800, which is very similar to the 6502 in the Atari. I never used any of my assembly programming skills until I began working on the Atari.I s
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