Chainclaw

You've forgotten to attach them. Oops, looks like I missed a step. For some reason after choosing a file you have to click a few more buttons? I think I fixed it? HoverRacer.zip HoverRacer.zip

I've realized that I'm probably not going to get around to putting any reasonable work into this game for a long time, so here's what I have so far if anyone wants to check it out for any reason. This is a two player top down racing game, with multiple tracks. At the title screen you can press up / down to change what track you race on. What track you select is based on the color of the score. Blue is Track 1 Easy, green is Track 2 Medium, red is Track 3 Hard, pink is Track 4 Random Short Easy, lighter pink is Track 5 Random Long Easy, teal is Track 6 Random Short Hard, and Track 7 is Random Long Hard. Pressing fire begins the race. Most tracks are 3 laps long. The players each move their ship with the joystick. Going off the course over the grass brings your hovercraft to a stop. The higher up you are on the screen, the faster you go, but the tougher it is to see ahead. The score provides a timer of how long your race was, in case you want to do a single player time trial. This game would be best described as "First Playable". I have a proof of concept up, but the game is not fun yet, and is light on features. Here's my TBD list: -Fire button does nothing. I was thinking about using it as a "boost" or power up activator, and potentially littering the track with power ups. -Collision with environment and grinding to a stop isn't fun. The best way to handle this would be to slow the player down slightly, and slide them towards the track. -When in random mode, both players get their own track, and neither player can see the other player to know who is farther ahead. -Interface for track selection is unusable. At the very least the score should display the track number, at the best each track should have a title displayed to the screen. -Track layout and design needs a few passes. Tracks could be made much more fun, and difficulty ramping of tracks from easy / medium / hard could be cleaned up. -Tracks currently need to be individually mirrored. It would be nice to provide the player with tracks that are not mirrored for variety. -Selectable ships and ship colors would be great, even if it is purely cosmetic. -Sound -Music -Lap counter goes up when the starting line loads, lap counter should increase when the player actually crosses the finish line. -Car syncing feels broken, but it is due to the non-smooth movement of cars, moving one "tile" up at a time. -I'm sure there was way more, but I haven't even looked at this code in like a year, unfortunately. Attached is a compiled binary runnable in Stella, and the source.

Dropped the price on some things, $35 for the 5200 bundle, and $40 for the Colecovision bundle.

Hey, I want to clear out some space in my apartment, so I'm getting rid of some of the stuff that is either duplicates, or I never play. I've setup a google spreadsheet for this (it's for sale on multiple forums) https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AsdSKeTJ72u7dDZJWnk0VDkyRXU2OVNKZnlEcVBuWnc&hl=en&output=html If you e-mail me at the address in the spreadsheet I will respond faster, but I'll still check up here. Prices do not include shipping, I will not ship internationally. Highlights include: 50 Atari 5200+games+controllers(wonky)+power supply Pac-Man, Defender, Star Raiders, Berzerk, Football, Super Breakout, Qix, Galaxian, Space Invaders (non-working) 50 Colecovision+games+controllers+power supply Smurf Rescue In Gargamel's Castle, Venture, Space Fury, Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, Donkey Kong Junior, Pitfall, Buck Rogers, Mr. Do, Ladybug, Gorf, Keystone Kapers (non-working) 40 Boxed Intellivision games Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, APBA Backgammon, Astrosmash, Boxing, Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, NHL Hockey, Night Stalker, Sea Battle, Space Armada, Space Battle, Star Strike, Triple Action, Tron Deadly Discs, Tron Maze-A-Tron, Utopia Thanks for looking!

Hey, Visual BB is awesome and I use it all the time, and I finally got around to updating to the latest version. I encountered a bug in VBB and felt I should report it. Every time I access the size of a data using _length, VBB reports it as a warning. Here's a quick example: data tLevel0 %11110000, %11110000, %11110000, %11110000, ... end ... if currentTrack = 0 then worldPY0 = tLevel0_length - 1 I get a warning on that last line, "tLevel0_length is not a valid keyword, known variable, or constant." The code still compiles fine, so it doesn't stop me from working or anything, but it is technically valid. edit: I would also like to point out that the version of VBB I upgraded to (1.0 build 544 from 532) runs much much slower on my netbook.

Thanks, that seems like it might do what I want. I will have to test it when I get a chance to sit down and work on this a little more. My only concern is the 256 array size limit.

tColumn0Level0 is the pointer. This should have the information you're looking for Click Here I read that, and couldn't find what I was looking for. Here is what I want to do: dim currentLevel = a dim selectedLevelIndex = b data tColumn0Level0 some data for the first level end data tColumn0Level1 some data for the second level end if selectedLevelIndex = 0 then currentLevel = tColumn0Level0 if selectedLevelIndex = 1 then currentLevel = tColumn0Level1 rem fill in the playfield with the level data var25 = currentLevel[index] var29 = currentLevel[index+1] var33 = currentLevel[index+2] Is there any way to do something like that?

I am trying to implement a level selection in my current game, and am not quite sure how to do it. I tried making an array like "data tColumn0Level0", and then I wasn't sure how to assign a variable like a pointer to it. I am on my phone, so I did minimal searching but it's really slow to find info

Excellent suggestions, because they would not be that difficult to implement, and would add a bit of depth to the game. The ideas I had for making the game more interesting when I was working on it, were too difficult to do in Batari Basic quickly. I wanted to have one mode where the objects moved around the screen, but I realized that it would be difficult, and take a while to write movement code for the objects that did not make the game frustrating (I wanted to finish this project in less than a day, so how quickly I could add features was important) Maybe I'll do a second pass on this game at some point in the future.

Thanks for kind words, but it's actually not that big of a deal. Like a lot of the homebrew writers here, programming is my day job. This was actually a project meant to be easy and relaxing, my other homebrew game is stalling out a bit.

Any other thoughts on this? It's been half a month.

For older systems, late '70s, early '80s, the 2600 is really easy to collect for in the wild. Colecovision / Intellivision are harder to collect for, but still show up every once in a while. 5200 / 7800 and really tough to find, and Channel F, Vectrex, and a bunch of other systems might show up once every couple years if you are lucky. People are crazy with pricing 2600 stuff in the wild, though. Often times it's pretty cheap because it doesn't move, but you do run into people charging $5 for Combat, or $50 for Pac-Man.

You should be able to find a 32X with no cables for about $5 no problem.

Atari : 2600, 5200, 7800, Lynx, Jaguar Nintendo : NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Virtual Boy, Gameboy Micro (games for vegetable green Gameboy to Gameboy Advance), DS Lite (I own some Wii games, but no Wii yet) Sony : Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PSP (and PS1 games because they play on all 3 systems) Sega : Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, 32X, CD, Saturn, Dreamcast Microsoft : Xbox, Xbox 360 NEC : PC Engine, Turbo Grafx 16, PC Engine CD / Turbo CD (although I'm missing a power supply for the CD) SNK : NEO-GEO MVS, NEO-GEO Pocket (I have a couple AES games, but no system yet) Misc : Colecovision, Channel F, 3DO, Wonderswan Color, Odyssey 2, Tapwave Zodiac (Intellivision games, but no INT yet) Most of my collection is US release titles, but I have about 60 Japanese releases, and one Euro release so far. My goal for new systems for next year are an Atomiswave motherboard, at least one CPS-2 title, the Nintendo 64 DD, and maybe a Turbo Duo or Sharp Twin Famicom. A Vectrex is on my list, but I would not want to risk ordering one over the internet, I can imagine the shipping destroying it. I'll pick up an Intellivision or NEO-GEO AES if they show up cheap on Craigslist.

I don't have a lot of 2600 games yet, here is all I have so far: I recently sorted them by style, and then alphabetically, and I'm really liking how they look lined up now. Under the supercharger, on the left, are 7800 games, and on the right are Coleco games. The 5200 and Jaguar games are on another shelf, but those aren't 2600. I know this isn't all 2600 games, but I didn't feel like cropping the picture.

I needed to take a break from my current project and work on something else. I figured I would attempt to finish a game in less than 24 hours. Started on this last night, and just finished it. It's a simple game called "Roll Up." Think Katamari Damacy, Bubbles, Feeding Frenzy, Flow, and any of those other "eat to get bigger" games. You play as a guy pushing a ball around, rolling it over things to make it bigger. You can only roll over things that are smaller than your ball. The fire button charges up a roll-attack, and when released, the player will dash in the direction held. The purpose of the game is to get the highest score in the time limit. It's pretty simple, and there was a few things I would have liked to get in, but ran out of time for, such as multiple levels, bigger items hurting the player, and moving items. I'm finished with this project, just needed to "finish" a game to get myself the energy to keep working on the other game. If someone else wants to work on this project for some reason, go for it, just try to credit me if you do. RollUp.bas RollUp.bas.bin

I could not think of a good way to make a game out of it once I got the shooting portals and teleporting between them in.

Thanks, that worked.

I've been getting build errors (in the ASM build process, after the Basic build process completes successfully), and it seems to be tied to the number of constants I have. I add a new one, I get the build error, I pull out any constant, the build error goes away. Is there a maximum number of constants I can define? If so, is there a build option I can turn on to have the Batari compiler treat them kind of like #defines when converting to ASM? I imagine this would get around any limitation.

Lots of good info in there. It would be great if someone were to build a modern version of that, with all the homebrew getting written nowadays.

Thanks for the input! A lot of good stuff in there to think about. Especially the part about restarting the game with the action button can lead to missing your high score. I'll have to think of a good way to handle that. Right now I'm thinking only about in-game polish because right now I'm making the task list for my game. Although the other stuff is good to bring up because I'm sure this board and this topic will still be here if I finish the project.

I can't figure out how to get the big metal shield off covering most of the board. Any clues?

This reminds me of one of the features in my game. One of my theories on game design is, it almost always makes your game better if you can integrate sound effects and actions to the beat of the music. Sort of turning a game into a music video in a lot of ways. It applies more to modern games than Atari games, but I still think it can be used to interesting effect on the Atari. The way I've built the sound / music in my current project is, I'm using both audio tracks for music. One of them is the equivalent to drums, the other is the melody. when an action is requested (such as firing the player's weapon), the action does not occur until the game sees that a new note is starting to play in the melody, and then the action happens. The sound effect for the action overwrites the note in the melody. For games on modern systems, with more complicated music and usually delays built into most actions anyways, the delay can be almost unnoticeable. For my project, it ends up rewarding you if you are paying attention to the music as you play the game. If you are familiar with Q Entertainment's work, specifically Rez, they are my inspiration for this. If you've played Rez, everything happens to the beat of the music. For a more recent title, check out Space Invaders Extreme. Although the biggest issue I'm running into with this write now is writing the music for the Atari. So far my interface is typing this directly into Wordpad, which is dumb, and tough to build something that sounds good. data musicSample1Volume 8, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10, 0, 0, 8, 8, 8, 8, 0, 0, 0, 0, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10, 0, 0, 8, 8, 8, 8, 0, 0, 0, 0, end data musicSample1Control 6, 6, 6, 6, 3, 3, 0, 0, 6, 6, 6, 6, 0, 0, 0, 0, 6, 6, 6, 6, 3, 3, 0, 0, 6, 6, 6, 6, 0, 0, 0, 0, end data musicSample1Frequency 14, 14, 14, 14, 24, 24, 0, 0, 14, 14, 14, 14, 0, 0, 0, 0, 14, 14, 14, 14, 24, 24, 0, 0, 14, 14, 14, 14, 0, 0, 0, 0, end data musicSample2Volume 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 12, 12, 12, 12, 0, 0, 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, end data musicSample2Control 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 12, 12, 12, 12, 0, 0, 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, end data musicSample2Frequency 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, 12, 12, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 16, 16, 16, 16, 0, 0, 16, 16, 0, 0, 0, 0, end

I'm trying to get at the features at the point where the graphics and gameplay are more or less done. The extra stuff after that. I know it usually takes longer to put in than it took to build the rest of the game, but it's worth it. I figure once the game is done and on carts, it's done. No one wants to buy an Atari cartridge and see a better version released a few months later. Also, the Atari is over 30 years old at this point, so there isn't any hurry to finish the game. I figure a lot of polish for a finished homebrew title is in the "there is no excuse not to" category, and I'm curious what sort of polish people want and expect for an Atari game. I am far from finished with my current project, but I've made myself a task / feature list to make sure I am making progress, and I would love to get the polish features onto that list.

There are a pile of those polish features that can be added to a homebrew game to make it worth purchasing. In fact, without a few of them, people get offended that someone has the audacity to try and charge for their game. So what polish features can you guys think of that can be added to most any game? What are your feelings on various polish features? Must haves? Nice to haves? Makes the game worse? Here's what I can think of. I don't really have opinions on a lot of them. Sound - I made my first pair of games without sound, and realized that was a mistake afterward. Sound adds a lot to the overall quality of a game, and seems entirely necessary for the purchase of a game. Missing a sound effect (having a player firing sound effect, but not having an enemy hit sound effect) can hurt the game a lot. Visible hit response on multi-hit enemies - For games with combat, sometimes enemies take more than one shot to kill. I've found that when an enemy flashes, or something else helps make the game feel a bit more polished. Title screen - Don't really have a strong opinion on this. Multi-color sprites - Adds a lot to making the game feel like some TLC was put into it. Color / BW Switching - Seems completely unnecessary, what kind of crazy person has a black and white TV, plays the Atari, and buys new Atari homebrews off of the internet? Pause feature - Seems like a decent use of the color / BW switch. Difficulty switches - No idea on the value-add of this feature. Seems like it could be nice for people who find the first five or ten minutes of the game too easy to jump forward. Reset switch - Unless I'm wrong, turning off the Atari and turning it back on does not damage the system or cartridge. So is there demand for a reset feature? Game switch - Sort of implies toggling between different game types / game modes / variations. No strong opinions on this. Post-game functionality - The usual feature seems to be something along the lines of, once the player runs out of lives, leave the score up until the player presses the button, and then restart the game. Something like this is important to me. What are your thoughts on this subject?