e1will

Crossposting from the 2600 forum... The Toledo Free Press has a front-page story on Duck Attack! http://www.toledofreepress.com/2010/08/03/tech-savvy-fans-programming-developing-on-classic-console/ --Will

Yep! I'm going to ask my Toledo buddies to stock up some copies for me. --Will

Nathan Strum's awesome Duck Attack! art is on the cover of this week's Toledo Free Press. They did a niece piece on 2600 retro-gaming: http://www.toledofreepress.com/2010/08/03/tech-savvy-fans-programming-developing-on-classic-console/ Enjoy! --Will

I like the idea of authorized digital distribution. Here are my thoughts: 1. Let people download and try your game for free for as long as they like, without any DRM or strings attached. 2. If they love the game and want to reward your effort, but don't have enough money for a cartridge (or don't even have a console to play it on), suggest a donation via PayPal (say, $5) as a way of saying thanks to the developer. It's important to emphasize that this is optional (although greatly appreciated) so that people won't feel ripped off if they paid $5 (or whatever) and then see the binary floating around elsewhere for free. 3. Offer a special digital package for a little extra. For $15, you get a custom, numbered binary with the number of your choice that will display in the credits or title screen, zipped up with an RTF or HTML manual. Each binary is unique, so there'd only be one "#1", one "#2", etc. (Who wants Duck Attack digital edition #1? ) I don't like the idea of random jerks taking my work and putting it on a CD with a thousand other ROMs they found on the Internet and getting cash for it, but I think the solution to the piracy issue is not trying to punish the bad guys by slathering DRM, digital signatures and the like on your work, because you'll just end up irritating and inconveniencing legitimate users, and the DRM will just get cracked by someone anyway. Instead, you should reward the good guys (homebrewers and game players) by giving the game players an easy way to reward the developer, and giving the developer a way to reward the player with special editions. --Will P.S. I wrote an anti-DRM parable a while back that sums up my feelings on the issue: http://willnicholes.com/appleseller.htm

Your timing is perfect... http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/166988-cge-releases-and-aa-t-shirts-available-for-purchase/ --Will

Yep, it's a recent homebrew (and a very good one.) --Will

I think someone best described it as "flickerfest" Would have been in 1983, no doubt. Or even 2009, given the limitations of the time... On topic, I'd never even heard of Juno First as an arcade game, but now it's my favorite 2600 game. --Will

Thanks! I would have loved to have been there myself... --Will

I thought I would see how far I could get playing straight through this weekend (no saves, no cheats) on difficulty B/B. Just over 4 million points. (I do much, much worse on difficulty A/A.) --Will

Yep! This is definitely going forward. I spoke with Craig Pell and he was kind enough to give the thumbs up on the Indenture part of the project, so I'll be working on this alongside a few of my other projects. Whether Indenture + Dragon Attack + Bedraggled gets finished before Facebook Hero I don't know, but I've been working on both lately. I'll definitely post some more bins and screenshots as I get further along. --Will

The Yars Revenge Easter Egg has to be the most irritating Easter Egg I've ever encountered. I remember when I first got the HSWWSH message when I was playing as a kid, and my reactions were: 1. Neat! What's this mean? 2. Wait... my game's OVER? WTF? Why HSW decided to punish the player for discovering it is a mystery to me. Note to self: Hack Yars Revenge sometime to allow the player to keep playing after HSWWSH appears. (Or did someone already do this?) --Will

The Fort-Wayne Journal-Gazette did a piece on Duck Attack! today: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20100725/LOCAL0201/307259917/1002/LOCAL --Will

I talked to Frank Gray at the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette about Duck Attack!, the upcoming Classic Gaming Expo and 2600 homebrewing in general this week, and he wrote up a piece in today's edition: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20100725/LOCAL0201/307259917/1002/LOCAL --Will

To be fair, Scott didn't start this post. And to his credit, when people asked him for technical details, he offered them, and when they asked him for a video showing the gameplay, he posted one. I understand why he's wary of piracy... heck, before Duck Attack! was even finished, somebody grabbed the work-in-progress bins from the homebrew thread and uploaded them to their pirate ROM sites. The key thing for me is that he feels the game's not finished. Once it's done to his satisfaction hopefully he'll want to share it with the world. Finishing a game like that is no small feat, so it makes sense to me he'd want to focus on that before considering a release. And if he truly only wants one copy of the game to exist... well, there's certainly nothing stopping other 2600 developers from making our own version(s) of Star Castle that could be released to everyone. I wouldn't at all be surprised if this thread inspired somebody to do just that. --Will

You're welcome! I just wish there was a cart with a "proper" ending... I know a lot of people here would love to give Alex some $ for the awesome game he's created. --Will

Interesting suggestion. But what about the bubble? When you have that, it's controlled with all four joystick directions. --Will

Nice!

Completing the kill screen is hard, since the right side of the screen is "dark," so you have to know where the dots are. I made it easier on myself by giving myself infinite lives (I just commented out the 2 lines of code that decrement the "lives" count when a ghost gets you.) Levels 257 and up play identically to levels 21-255. I just finished patching a speed-up cheat into the JavaScript. Next I'm hoping to hack the game into Pac-Man Plus, with the disappearing maze, Coke cans, etc. --Will

Nah, I can only get up to the 4th key or so on that version. I tweaked the JavaScript to start the game at level 254. What's interesting is that there's a whole bunch of code in there to handle that level, and one line of the code actually forces an immediate "game over" condition. If you take out that line of code, you can actually complete the kill screen and proceed to the next level (it just continues on to level 256, 257, etc.; it doesn't loop back to the cherry level.) --Will

And if you're wondering what the kill screen looks like... --Will

This sounds really neat, I'm looking forward to playing around with this. --Will

For the record, if Nintendo ever asked me to redo 2600 Donkey Kong for them, I would totally accept. I'd even throw in an Easter Egg, free of charge. --Will

I second all of these. Great games. I've spent way too much time playing Strat-O-Gems lately. Other great games (as mentioned above) are Thrust and Conquest of Mars. --Will

Deja vu...

Thanks!