Thelbane

Amazing, amazing work, Andrew and Thomas. You guys are rockstars. Congrats on the licensing and producing a mind-blowingly authentic Boulder Dash experience for the humble 2600. It's a technical marvel, not to mention one of my favorite games growing up. I really miss you guys from the old list. -Lee

But I _just_ (we literally unloaded the truck today) moved to Austin. Tell me you're not leaving town! -Lee

Hey everyone, Thanks to a couple of last minute enhancements and bug fixes (and a super busy December), I'm pushing the release date for Reflex out to sometime in January. Based on the incredible feedback I've gotten here, it should be worth the wait. Or at least I hope so! A playable binary can still be found here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=75014 -Lee

Scrubbing through code and comments, here's what's different between the posted ROM and the "gold" ROM: Improved responsiveness of driving controllers Extra life rewarded every 2000 points Fire button sets the ball in play between lives/levels Ball swaps positions in two-player modes New level designs, including player-submitted designs And, yes, the plan is to have the cartridge available on AA before Christmas! -Lee

Amidst the drama and brutal honesty in this thread, I think there's an opportunity here. You couldn't buy a more solid statement of direction than what's been posted here the last couple of days. While it seems that (to many) vgXpo has turned into a less-than-perfect venue for this community, there could be overwhelming support for a show that: 1. Targets existing and prospective classic gaming hobbyists 2. Draws in fresh meat through relevant communications instead of vacant, broad-interest lures 3. Doesn't incur a lot of unnecessary overhead (hey, aren't older hotels right in line with the whole "retro" theme anyway?) 4. Isn't tied to the restrictions of large sponsors thanks to lower overhead 5. Is principally concerned with the welfare of the hobbyist community by promoting healthy participation and encouraging people to spend their hard-earned money on some great retro swag At least, that's what it sounded like your expectations were. The above certainly sounds like something I'd like to be a part of. -Lee

That's funny. Ms. Pac-Man was the first game that popped into my mind when the thread turned to extra lives. Probably because it's one of the (very) few games that practically hands you an extra life on a silver platter right out of the gates. Anyway, I appreciate the feedback so far. I'll try to implement something and have another ROM out soon. I've been ultra-busy at work... In fact, I'm at work right now... On a Sunday... at 7PM... -Lee

Hey Godzilla, there are some recent screenshots on the development page. If you're able to, give it a try in an emulator and tell me what you think! Regarding the score for extra lives: My hope is that the difficulty setting will make the game appealing to both novice and expert players. A variable extra life score shouldn't be necessary because novice players should be able to achieve that score without too much trouble, and expert players will actually need those extra lives at regular intervals to survive. The real challenges are to 1) tune each difficulty setting to suit novice and expert players, and 2) find a single score that "works" at each of those settings. Suggestions on how to achieve those things are more than welcome! -Lee

Good suggestion and it's something that I've been considering for a while. If you've played a few games... can you recommend the "extra life" score? I'm leaning towards every 10000 pts or so, but I can barely get past 3000. Maybe every 5000 pts... -Lee

So, you didn't like the competitive/cooperative two-player modes already in the game? Your suggestion gives me an idea for another two-player variation where you take turns controlling both paddles... The paddles would start blue and player 1 would have control... when ball hits a paddle... both paddles turn red and player 2 would have control... etc... (Isn't this a game variation for some other breakout-type game or even the original Breakout for the Atari?) I might be able to implement it without too much pain. -Lee

It doesn't? I was actually concerned that it was too hard... I can barely get through three levels without losing all my lives! Try flipping the left difficulty switch. This doesn't affect initial ball speed, but it will accelerate faster (fewer paddle hits before it speeds up). Changing the difficulty level affects the next game started, not a game currently being played. Thank you for the good criticism. (Finally!) -Lee

You give me too much credit, Kirk! Where would so many new developers be without your tutorials, references and utilities? I also owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the development community as a whole for its support and encouragement throughout the development process, especially in the early stages. So, thank you! -Lee

All the positive feedback is wonderful and maybe a little overwhelming. I don't know what to say! Thank you! And for those interested, I'm looking into having a cart published, hopefully by Philly Classic in November. -Lee

Hmm... I hadn't been tracking the hours, but that represents about a year-and-a-half of on-and-off coding. Most of the work was done in the first two months, when I was feeling the rush... learning as much as I could in as little time possible. Sometime into development, I hit a couple of walls on stuff that wasn't as much fun to code, so I put it off until the Stella 2.0 alphas started getting released with it's wonderful integrated debugger. That was only a couple months ago and the momentum has built up again since. But early on... I would say I was easily putting 25 hours a week into it... learning and coding at the same time, losing sleep, etc. These days it's settled down to more like 10 hours a week. -Lee

What great responses in such a short time. Thank you! Thomas, I hope I didn't break too many netiquette rules by linking back to this topic from the homebrew section. That section is pretty far down the list, which is why I missed it the first time. As always, thanks for helping a n00b stay on track. -Lee

Sorry for the cross post and the confusion... this area was probably a more appropriate home for this discussion. http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=75014 -Lee

Oh, I forgot to include a link to the level editor. I had posted this to the Stella developers list and since I'm finally using this to generate levels, I thought I'd post it here. Please note that this tool is only for contributing levels for possible inclusion in the finished game, not generating custom levels for a hacked ROM (sorry). If you disagree with the disclaimer on the editor page, please don't submit your level. Thanks! http://www.ioyu.com/io/atari/reflex/level_index.asp -Lee

Greetings programs, Here's my first posting of Reflex in the AA forums. I hope you all enjoy it and I'd appreciate any feedback you might have... Particularly about the gameplay/difficulty and the driving controller support if you have the required hardware. But all comments are welcome! This is a breakout-like game where the objective is to clear all the bricks and avoid letting the ball go out of bounds. The big difference is that in single-player mode, you control two paddles that move around the bricks instead of just under them. The two-player variations of this game play similar to PONG, except there are bricks between you and your opponent's paddles. Some quick info: SELECT cycles through these game modes: Joystick - Single player Joystick - Two player (competitive) Joystick - Two player (cooperative) Driving controller - Single player Driving controller - Two player (competitive) Driving controller - Two player (cooperative) RESET starts a game RESET (multiple times) changes levels TV TYPE cycles through these video modes: NTSC (default) PAL 60 PAL 50 Holding SELECT or RESET during power up starts the game in PAL 60 or PAL 50 mode, respectively Enjoy! reflex99a.bin -Lee

Perhaps I was testing my own driving controller too harshly or I hadn't cleaned the controller as well as I thought, because I was able to make it mis-register fairly often. It just doesn't seem like it would be too hard to spin it too fast... it would take only an eighth of a turn in one-sixtieth of a second to mis-register. Either way, I'll do some exploring and see if I can make any improvements... either to the game or to my controller. I'm really glad you were able to adapt and enjoy the game with the driving controller. Do you think having some technical knowledge of the hardware helped? If I can't improve the speed/reliability of the driving controller, I may add a blurb in the documentation about its limitations and maybe even include a "playing tip" about "dialing" the knob with your finger... which, by the way, sounds vaguely naughty. But like Thomas said... this is going OT... I'll kick off another thread with the ROM for some serious playtesting. Hopefully I'll be able to do that tonight. Thanks for the great comments. -Lee (Wait a minute! "Bruce" and "Lee" having a conversation... I have a screenshot of "Bruce Lee" as my photo... Coincidence? I think so!)

I don't think I've said it aloud yet, but my inner monologue pronounces it ICK'-SEE-ON. -Lee ...oops... wasn't paying attention ...again... mojofltr already posted that.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. As Bruce mentioned, the driving controller is capable of registering only 16 distinct positions in a single rotation, but it does so in a peculiar and somewhat error-prone way. If you turn the controller too fast, it can potentially register a rotation in the wrong direction or even an ambiguous (could have gone either way) value... This being my first game (let alone my first game using the driving controller), I too found myself somewhat disappointed in its performance and have worked a bit to mitigate its shortcomings... still, I've put the question out to the Stella developer list and I'll put it here... Should I drop driving controller support and use the space for more levels/features or is it "good enough" to keep as an alternative control scheme? -Lee

Any updates on how the expo is going? How's the turnout so far? -Lee

I also have a colleague who's been looking forward to this one. So, no pressure! And since this is my first post ever in the AA forums... Allow myself to introduce... myself. My name is Lee Fastenau. I've been moderately active on the Stella list since early 2004 and am nearly finished with my first Atari 2600 game, Reflex, which Al has graciously offered to demo at vgXpo. I live in San Antonio and wish I could go to Dallas this weekend in the worst way! A friend of mine said he will visit the AtariAge booth in my stead (actually, he was going to Dallas anyway to visit another friend, so it's really a bonus that he chose that weekend to go.) I'm currently being pummeled with Flash work by my employer, which I guess isn't such a bad thing to be pummeled with, eh? So that's what I'll be doing this weekend. So that basically sums it up... (Let's see: used Austin Powers quote to break ice, lives relatively close to Austin [the city, not Powers], rubs virtual elbows with coding virtuosos on Stella list, looking to publish a cart, on a first name basis with Al, has cool "San Antonio is too small for me" friends, gainfully employed at a company cool enough to need mad Flash skillz, procrastinator... yep, it's all there... except...) End of line (... the Tron quote)