The Southsider

Nice! I like how the rings "power up" when the next round starts

Nice! I like how the rings "power up" when the next round starts

 

Thanks - that is a happy side-effect of the way that the rings are drawn, rather than a deliberate feature!

 

Chris

Thank you, wow!

The attention to detail is phenomenal. It can only get better from here on out.

So, where do I deposit this $32,000 I have waiting for someone to develop this?

Happy side-effects are always welcome

I like so much the vector-ish looking of the text

 

The biggest issue remaining is the sound effects. I'm not very good at manipulating TIA audio, so if anyone can produce a closer match to the arcade effects then I'll be very grateful for the help!

 

PM sent

'Wow' is the best way to describe...! This is fantastic!

Now let's please get that Harmony version.

Regarding the sound.. Is it possible to hear the regular background sound and the engine thrust simultaneously? Or is this a limitation of the hardware? I know asteroids behaves this way when firing.

Just seems stuck on 'get ready' with stella. :/

Just seems stuck on 'get ready' with stella. :/

Which version of Stella are you using? Does it get past the "Get Ready" message if you press fire?

Regarding the sound.. Is it possible to hear the regular background sound and the engine thrust simultaneously? Or is this a limitation of the hardware? I know asteroids behaves this way when firing.

The 2600 has just 2 sound channels, so it isn't possible to play more than two sounds at the same time. I have some sound effects set to one of the channels and some on the other. The engine thrust and background hum are indeed on the same channel, so you will only hear one at a time.

Ok, Just updated Stella and it plays just fine! Awesome!!!

 

It gets real hard as soon as it starts shooting back!!! LOL!!!

Ok, Just updated Stella and it plays just fine! Awesome!!! It gets real hard as soon as it starts shooting back!!! LOL!!!

 

The arcade game gets really hard after just the first castle, so balancing out the difficulty in the 2600 version will be tricky. On the one hand, you don't want it to be so hard that it puts people off from playing it, but on the other hand, you don't want to bore fans of the arcade version either.

Great job!

 

Maybe its time to start thinking about game variations to increase replay value. E.g. different levels of enemy response and aggressiveness, auto repairing or faster rotating rings, varying frictions, deadly when touched rings, different starting levels... something like that.

 

BTW: Not sure if that's a cheat, but if you position your ship very close to the outer ring targeting the center and then start shooting as fast as you can, you quite easily get through all three rings and kill the enemy.

I have some sound effects set to one of the channels and some on the other. The engine thrust and background hum are indeed on the same channel, so you will only hear one at a time.

How about a sound priority system? So each sound can use any of the two channels if his priority is higher than the currently played sound.

As for difficulty levels. Speed and thrust power of your ship is a good thing to change. Number of shots, auto-fire, wrap-around. Speed of overall game. Things like that.

 

Early Atari published games had tons of variations, Missile Command had more than 30 and Asteroids and video olympics more than 50 each. It seems many 3rd party games have few if any variations. This applies to corporate-produced pro games BITD, and more recent individually programmed games.

 

Perhaps it was an Atari-only thing to have billions of variations per game?

Not sure if that's a cheat, but if you position your ship very close to the outer ring targeting the center and then start shooting as fast as you can, you quite easily get through all three rings and kill the enemy.

 

Not so much a cheat, as something that needs to be tweaked. Chris has made the sparks (the little guys) come out sooner, which has helped with that some, but really they don't become much of a threat until after Wave 5. In the arcade game, they come out sooner, and get really aggressive by the second wave. They also seem to get more aggressive the longer a wave lasts.

 

Right now, I'd save Wave 5 is about equal to Wave 1 in the arcade, and Wave 10 is about equal to Wave 2. But I'm not a very good Star Castle player, and I suppose it also depends on which ROM set you played in the arcade.

 

I like the idea of adding more options. Don't know what the kernel will support though. (I can tell you it won't support alternating ring directions. )

I created a FA2 bankswitch file and posted it to the Harmony forum so you can concatenate it with the SC binary to create Harmony versions with a .cu extension.

 

Let me know if there are any issues.

I created a FA2 bankswitch file and posted it to the Harmony forum so you can concatenate it with the SC binary to create Harmony versions with a .cu extension.Let me know if there are any issues.

Many thanks - I was going to PM you as I had forgotten how the CU format works.

Chris

Great job! Maybe its time to start thinking about game variations to increase replay value. E.g. different levels of enemy response and aggressiveness, auto repairing or faster rotating rings, varying frictions, deadly when touched rings, different starting levels... something like that.BTW: Not sure if that's a cheat, but if you position your ship very close to the outer ring targeting the center and then start shooting as fast as you can, you quite easily get through all three rings and kill the enemy.

 

Thanks for the suggestions - I'll see what I have space left to implement. The enemy aggressiveness and ring rotation speeds do already increase on later waves. I probably need to increase the speed of the mines/sparks a bit to prevent this cheat from working.

 

Thanks,

Chris

I like the idea of adding more options. Don't know what the kernel will support though. (I can tell you it won't support alternating ring directions. )

Would less rings work? E.g. no inner or outer ring?

I don't think it's a problem to be able to sit there and rapidly fire and take out the castle without thrusting in the beginning levels. Am I missing something?

It's been a long time, but I seem to recall being able to do this in the arcade version, at least during the first wave.

 

P.S. Found the black & white version, love it! Thanks for including it.

In case you missed the posting in the Harmony forum, I discovered that the .cu format must be padded to 32k or it will not load. Or, rather, I think I already knew about this but forgot.

It wouldn't work on my machine - just sat there at "Get Ready" and if I hit reset it just sat at "Paused"