Papa

I'm getting verklempt..

I clean my cartridges with Nevr-dull and then give them a once over with q-tips and over 70% alcohol with no oils in it. I usually don't have to do any more than that, but I did win a lot of cartridges on eBay (Rayman and Wolfenstien I didn't have yet, but it also came with extras of Trevor McBush and the Crescent Pubis and Raiden) that had one game that just wouldn't work! So I cleaned the crap out of it with Nevr-dull then cleaned that up with q-tips. I inspected very closely and found a couple of the contacts to be blackened with some substance (possibly black tar heroin), so I got in there with a razor and scritchy-scratched all of that black S#it off until each black-gummed contact was cleared! I then did the cleaning regiment all over again and it worked flawlessly and has since. Nevr-dull is sold in automotive parts stores for removing anything from rims or metal work on cars..and I mean ANYTHING! I also have used it to remove stickers from my lightsabers (the pawn shop jumped the gun and stickered them before I came in to get them out..) and it worked perfectly at shining them up and removing all the gunk!

I think it looks like two fingers pointing up "number 1" signs, or possibly getting ready to goal for a game of paper football! Does anything look normal around here? Anything?

Great game! Reminiscent of Kirby with an exciting background. Very cool.

What could possibly go wrong!?!

This game is excellent! It's Ninja Gaiden without the hack and slash. Very well executed game!

ZIPPY! Great concept, cool execution. I like the old school Atari blur inducing speed of the scrolling. The game is pretty challenging. Nice!

FUN! If it's any consolation, the Atari VCS library of pinball games (all 2 of them being Midnight Magic and Pinball) are not known for their dynamic real-world pinball physics! You're game is very fun, and extremely good! I like that the balls are big and there is a good arcade look and feel to it. I got a pretty good score the first and second time I played it! Sweet!

I like the floaty flying effect when jumping. It's like a cross between Flappy bird, Giana Sisters, with a little Dr. Mario (badguys remind me of that) mixed in.

Oh, I'm sure it keeps regular most of the time. It plays fine on the actual systems and in Stella without the debugger in front, so I'm not too worried about it. I use the debugger to check on my game and am aware that it goes about at the regular scanline count most times, yes.. ..I use the Fast, on the Fly way. Stella has been an extremely useful tool in creating games with this system. I couldn't have done it without her! I have, however, considered doing all of this work in DOS.

Yes, there is a jitter or two on a couple of screens (I think three screens..two on level 5 and one on level 3) due to the timing being taxed rather heavily. I have worked out a couple of these and am figuring out ways (other than an earthquake sound effect) to bust the jitters. I have thoroughly tested this game from the beginning on a Fat Sixer, a 4-Switcher, a 7800, and, more recently, a Gemini. Also on Z2600 on an XBOX, and Stella. I have noticed that this is a timing issue and has happened even before I put the yellow damage flash effect in the game. My wife likes the yellow flash. It used to be a longer duration and the character was knocked down longer (like in the game over screen), but I thought it chopped up the playtime and so I sped things up a bit. I think it's possible that a couple of clear-screen commands may help to pick off the small amount of jittering I've seen on those couple of screens. If you've seen more jitters than on the two screens before the giant stone bat or during the lava stage then please point them out to me! There are also rare instances where right after you defeat an enemy it will accelerate you to the next screen automatically. I am also working out that bug, as this is Beta! Thank you giant banana!

I like your health box sprite, too! When I first designed the levels I wanted there to be no real indicators as to health or status, but placed the generic binary representation to have something to follow as I tested the game. A health bar sounds like a great idea, though!

I personally think my game looks WAYYY better than Satans Hollow! Just my opinion, of course, but there is no framed animation, there are sprites hovering around, mirroring each other, and a missile! I like the background and how much detail there is, but I don't think that having lines or double pixels sets back my game at all! All it really does is free up RAM so more can be put in. Of course I was referring to BB games with DPC+, but honestly.. my game is totally different than most Atari style games. It's not the dot, it's how you use it. I think that DPC+ has it's merits, but I still see that all the extra sprites are copies (still can be done with other kernels), and that every sprite flickers when intersecting the same horizontal line as another sprite. I would not consider Princess Rescue to be infamous due to it's BB design, or several other games I've seen using this delightful programming environment. I've tried using mirroring and found that the flickering offsets the graphics of the enemy to a degree where it seems off. I like that there is a sense of one-on-one warrior combat in my game and that there is no flickering. These were things I was looking for when designing my game. THANK YOU SO MUCH KIWI!! I was wondering if anyone here has ever played a game like Golden Axe to compare it to mine! Thank you very much for your kind words! I had considered using the healthbox you suggested or omitting the health bar altogether, as it adds a bit of mystery as to how things are going as you progress!

Show me one single game for the 2600 that has graphics as big, as colorful, or as animated as this one! I am seeking praise, criticism, and possibly some advice from people who enjoy this type of game. If you already don't like these types of games I don't see how it should matter to me! If your not going to play or buy it then it's just a gripe and sits low with my considerations. How many games have you seen written in DPC+? DPC+ isn't really that much better than 32K bankswitched, in my opinion. You have to locate and define your sprites, regardless. You can make similar effects without DPC+! I have done demos showing all of the characters from Titan Axe at once on the screen with considerable flickering. If I wanted to show a character explode with DPC+ I would have to locate the sprite and single it out as an explosion animation, whereas with one enemy character at a time the sprite is easily replaced. The game wouldn't really look any better graphically with DPC+ unless I went up to 64K or higher (this would allow for more sprites only, and their look, size, and colors would still have the same limitations) and that would limit my ability to put the game on a cartridge! I've considered all of these things before programming. My original Titan Axe used much larger enemy sprites and I ran out of memory rapidly! Enemies are now zoomed using the hardware to squeeze in as many as are there to begin with. To mirror enemies too many times will cause flicker no matter what kernel you use, as will more exclusive sprites, regardless. I plan on playing around more with DPC+ in the future, but I don't find the fact that it doesn't allocate a specific x,y for the extra sprites (which are really mirrored memory) to be very helpful for the type of game I'm making. The need to locate the sprite to effect it's animation costs more RAM. DPC+ uses the entire first bank and is harder to put on a cartridge than 32K bankswitched, plain and simple! If I'm going to program from assembly up, I'll probably use a system like the Coco3 or something like that. One of my favorite games, and one of the best games ever designed for the 2600, Princess Rescue, was made with Batari Basic and helped to inspire me to program using this method. It's plenty good for programming excellent games!

Here's the vid..I'll consider making a way to turn off and on music.. http://youtu.be/TnAgjC150bU ..also, I know the music is a bit heavy, but I don't think there are any other 2600 games with a five song soundtrack (and no custom chips). I like to just turn on the title screen and push and hold a direction to hear a song. The title song (through several levels) is my favorite, though. The reason for not using DPC+ is that I have read it is harder to get onto an actual cartridge. I want this game to be able to be produced as an actual Atari game. Most of my games will be 32K bankswitched! This game has 64 screens (nine levels), several animated backgrounds (a waterfall, lava falling, a giant flying eagle, a giant turtle, a huge Mayan styled head with blinking eyes, a pyramid with an all seeing eye blinking, etc..), a five song soundtrack, two playable characters, fully animated sprites, two interchangeable difficulty levels, a pause feature with zoom and music, full screen animated 'summon' attacks, and you get to free cute little fairies!!

I am currently uploading a brand new video of this game to my Youtube account which I will then link here for you all to get a better idea of how to play it and possibly spark some interest!!

Yes. I sent it to Albert here at AA and he said it looked great! Minor changes have been made since then, but it looks basically the same. I'm hoping to publish the finished game here in the Atari Age store. I may need to post a video of it so people might get an idea of how to play it.

I love the giant Space Rabbit statue on Mars.. that's fun!

One thing celery can do (other than make you lose weight rapidly by costing more calories to chew/digest than it actually contains) is absorb colors and change colors, much like a chameleon, only a vegetable!! Mayhaps a color change by jumping in a pool or possibly a puddle of purple Space Rabbit blood could do this, if only for a short time! I understand what you mean now, about the head chopping thing. Only minor instances of vampire celery regrowing parts have been documented as far as I know.. ..It doesn't hurt too bad to derail a thread where the only comments are by people ,who don't even like the genre of the game in question, belittling and badgering it for minor cosmetic devices when it is obviously one of the best looking 2600 games of all time (*TOOOOOOOT of one's own horn!!) (*patta pat pat on ones own shoulder)! I love my own game and play it a LOT!

Thank you Atari2600land! And, I like your movie. I wonder, is he's fixing his hair in the mirror or sprouting horns? I noticed afterwards he goes on the offensive and actually begins to retaliate against the Space Rabbits! I like how the programming is being used for another medium other than gaming, and it's to good effect. When I download things it goes into a folder called "downloads" and I then put it where I want. It has been this way for a long time and was how the browser was to begin with. I have never had a download open an emulator from a web page!?! Sounds weird to me! I do all of my programming on a system that is never online and have programmed several games with around ten in the beginning phases and four or five in a beta stage. I think the animation in my game is extremely good and if someone compares it to a game from system-16 or the 68000 in general I guess I should consider that a huge compliment. Although relating it to Golden Axe is obvious, I would like to solidify it as it's own adventure. Remember that Thor is the god of thunder and summoning dragons is not exclusive to Golden Axe alone. It is meant to be like Golden Axe with a Sonic twist, where you free fairies from a mechanical contraption that runs off of their life force. In the end (on hard mode) a castle explodes revealing the trapped Fairy queen in shackles.. The Dwarfs name is Thuryan The Amazons name is Walkarya

When I tested the download (once) it downloaded to my computer. There is no way AA is watching my Stella emulator, or my Harmony cart. Your talking like everyone just runs Stella right off of the download button. How can you know that all the other users do this?

..also..there have been 26 downloads, so far! This doesn't mean that the game has been played 26 times by one or two people, it means that it has been downloaded TWENTY-SIX times! If someone is downloading it over and over again that is redundant, and this website is likely not tracking how many times the game is being played on Stella, or your Harmony Cart on your 2600 in your living room!

So you're wanting Player0 to be single color and have colors for Player1 and still have "no blank lines" enabled, right? If that's the case then you could just change which sprite your are controlling with the joystick and whatever effects to that particular sprite. What I meant by changing the colors to match is that if you have lines in your playfield that you don't want then change the background to that color and they will disappear. In Titan Axe use this method to eliminate much of the lines in the playfield by blending it in with the background color.

..Again..I don't think that background-less games that flash are very attractive. I think that my game is extremely attractive. It's not really Golden Axe for the 2600, though, as you are freeing fairies from robots and it's only one player. It borrows elements from Golden Axe, Sonic, and some other popular games. If you thought, "Oh, it's Golden Axe for the Atari." and moved on then that might be shallow. And there are people, myself included, that are not bothered by minor color cycling in games, and are not getting high with our friends, so it does apply. There is not an "If your not, but you still like occasional flashy graphics.." to balance out the obvious attack on programmer method.

Well, I like it, so that's why it's there! I don't find that kind of effect bothersome. You must really be bothered by a LOT of games if that's your gripe. I made this game for Hack & Slash fans, so, again..your opinion is far less valuable to me than that of someone who enjoys these kinds of games. You said the "Flashing screens" bothered you, though. A flashing screen is not just ONE FLASH that happens when you are struck! And a camera does flash, but it's not a flashing cube, is it? No, it's a flash cube. I take it you're bothered by cameras, too? You should go on a quest to end clearer pictures and more detailed photography while your at it. I'm actually rather insulted by your page that insinuates that flashing screens are made by people who "get high with their friends.." like anyone who would use an effect like this is endorsing drug use!! I don't use drugs and my only friends are my wife and kids, so it's a tad hurtful to attack programmers for method.