KevKelley

Plus this game idea is just amazing to look at.

I might be interested. I had been playing around with some of the music programs as well as try making my own rhythm codes using little space.

This is what I was wondering. I feel that they still haven’t quite figured out the retro market. I think they got the cash grab part but not the other half to make things more sustainable and interesting. I do wonder if this is what those other developers were hinting at when they had discussed 2600 versions of their games. I will probably pick this up as a curiosity but I wish the newest Atari released Atari game would have been better. Like Champ Games good or any of the others you had mentioned. Even some newer bB games would have been cool.

Nice sleuthing @ZeroPage Homebrew Didn’t the Atari release claim this got its start as a 2021 homebrew? Personally I think the release is cool, as I had hoped this would be a direction Atari XP would go in (I always compare the VCS and Amico development to that of the Evercade and their focus on physical media and “curated” titles). I think the price at 60 is somewhat reasonable, although a bit on the high side. I would hope to see more titles develop. And personally I would love to see more things like colored cartridge shells or lights. I hope they look into more in-depth releases. I wonder what made them settle on this title and not some of the other titles out there that the many home brewers are working on. And also as a side note, I know there was some point of contention between home brewers and “pro brewers,” like Audacity. I wonder how people will view these releases, especially since this iteration of Atari can sometimes receive some hate for whatever they do.

I have played around with the stack in one of my last projects - Beyond Parsec. I had found it as a nifty way to use a a single variable as several. Now I was told using the stack vs a variable does use more cycles than using a regular variable but I imagine one could cleverly push and pull variables to extend their game.

Oh. I know. What I intended on doing was try to power it by the cart so one could plug RF out from the console into the cart and then from the cart to the audio source. Just to reduce cables and make things all-in-one. Best analogy can think of is the Compumate cart plugging into the cartridge ports.

NOW WITH LESS POOP AND MORE BIRD PUNCHING! So after some thought and messing around with various settings (mainly the bird) I think I came up with a solution. After some testing and feedback it did look as maybe the bird swooping down made things too difficult, especially when paired with the poop and electricity and trying to get all three balloons, etc. etc. I toyed with having the bird swoop differently or only hit the player on the swoop. But instead I landed on punching the bird! So now much like grabbing a balloon, if the bird is in close proximity to you, by pressing left or right and fire you can punch the bird away. I thought this adds a little more frantic gameplay. You have to time the punch and balloon grabbing. Also provides a little risk/reward for hanging out in the vicinity of the bird. I updated the first post with this test binary. If you wanna test punching the bird, press the second joystick fire button.

I revisited this today to see what I can fix. I haven’t updated the .bin yet but I made a change to the computer opponent, as when you have the ball he would still run to you and snatch it out of your hands. I now changed it up to where he will kind of anticipate your toss, back up, and follow you up or down. I also changed a couple things up a bit to use up less cycles so it isn’t constantly running unnecessary code for the computer. I also noticed in the Field Draw setting, the players wind up drawing the opposing side so Player 1 basically draws his own targets. I now have each player place their own cones. I did not get any scanline issues from this most recent edit. My tablet was running low on battery so there was a bit more I wanted to change, like the colors in Field Draw so the player colors match when in game. I guess when I made this I wasn’t thinking so I made everything match, which is probably why the cone placement was backwards. I still want to tweak the computer a bit and the only other thing I saw is respawning still seemed a bit funky… but then I forgot about the changes I made last so I probably just didn’t know what I was doing.

I had downloaded Dev Studio not too long ago to get my feet wet. I really like it and I noticed with longer code it works a lot smoother. I especially love having code side by side while working on sections. The only thing holding me back is that I got used to the VbB interface first so it got a hold of me. But I sometimes have them side by side, especially since it seems it loads Stella faster in VbB.

I meant if you wrote some bB code and got the assembly for it (doesn’t Visual Batari Basic have the ability to view the assembly for what you write?) Then save that in its own file to include.

Would it be possible to maybe assemble the parts of your program separately and then have a main file with all the includes? It may be an extra step but it could make for some cleaner programming?

Oddly my children wanted more poop. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I had been extremely busy these last couple months with work and getting side tracked with various other projects, like my Atari Drum Machine and Beyond Parsec, that I had found myself not being motivated to wrap up loose ends in games like Lineman. I picked this one up today for the first time in 4 months to fix some nagging little issues. Today I was working on reducing the frequency of poop. In playtesting I had found that the bird just poops way too much. I found myself getting pooped on to the point that as difficulty progressed I either just had to take the poop and hope for an extra life toolbox or slide down the pole and miss a balloon. I think with the less frequent poop it allows the other obstacles to shine, like the swooping bird or the hole in the sidewalk. I also fixed the floating arm glitch. This would happen occasionally if you were reaching for a balloon and would fall. Your arm would stay in the air while you dropped back to the ground. I also added a slight animation for the Balloon Boy when he is standing still, making the balloon sway a little bit. I am also looking into the code of the swooping bird to maybe dial back the difficulty a little bit. I may also swap when this occurs. Right now it is second to last obstacle, with the last being the balloons changing directions. I may switch those two. I may also make these obstacles appear sooner to make things progress at a quicker pace. I am also considering changing the point structure if possible making balloons caught on the outside poles worth much more, since they do possess greater risk.

So I am not sure if this is possible at the scale I am trying. I am using Superchip but am not opposed to using a different method but essentially I was using the playfield to draw a waveform that would essentially be about 20-30 playfield pixels high and as wide as the screen. The user would be able to toggle between 4 screens and essentially customize the waveform on each screen. The only solution I could think of is perhaps shorten the length of a waveform and split the screen into 1/4ths so I don’t have to “load” a screen. I had seen this thread that said drawing using pfpixel on DPC+ was possible but had not tried, as I thought that was a no go from the start. But if that was possible then I could split the screen horizontally and not have to worry about changing screens. The only other thing I would then have to figure out is how to best “read” the waveform, as I would have to check the peaks of each line and have it play each frame. None of this may be doable but this just got my brain working a bit this morning…

This looks like a cool blend and perfect for the 2600, or at least the gameplay and some mechanics utilized.

I think part is cost of chip. Part is cost of labor to make the larger game. And part is the return on investment. I had read how some games, like Fatal Run at 32k was larger than some NES games but as we see with those systems and games, size doesn’t always matter. I think what makes the Atari special with all the homebrews is that programmers have figured out how to leverage the Atari’s strengths and utilize newer technology to make amazing games… but had this technology existed 30 years ago those games probably would have been ridiculously expensive. That didn’t work for systems like the Neo Geo so I doubt Atari would have been able to swing it.

Thanks! I try to do something different.

Thank you @ZeroPage Homebrew for testing this out. I looked it over today and I think I found a way to make grabbing boxes off the first shelf a bit easier and less likely to cause rage. Before I checked the coordinates of the arm and the box but that was a bit unforgiving, as if you were a pixel off from part of the arm the box wouldn’t be taken despite touching. Hopefully my changes make it a bit easier. I also looked at changing the timer to see if more time is needed per level but haven’t started changing the counter until I see if the new shelf grabbing works. As for that part where it just cut to the title screen, I have no clue. I will have to watch the video and see what exactly happened because at first I thought I had some broken goto statement but didn’t see one when I did an audit in VbB. The only way I got a similar action was if I pressed the second joystick fire button or a directional. If I somehow pressed that and was pressing something on the first joystick it kicked me back to the main screen instead of the game over or next level screen. Maybe one of the cats did something lol… Hopefully I find out the cause. I guess I’ll downgrade this game to 98% complete.

Testing the unit with an Arturia Beat Step Pro sequencer since it has 8 separate drum gates. Initially it would trigger as soon as it was plugged in. I attached a 10k potentiometer in addition to the sensitivity dial to test if that made a difference. It kind of but the controller still didn’t trigger when a step had a sound programmed. I was hoping on the off chance I wouldn’t have to do much to get it operational. I’ll have to look at the output of the sequencer and figure something out. I think I had read that the gates are 10-12v vs the 5v for my pads and triggers.

I use a small keyboard that came with it. It is an older Dell tablet. Surprisingly responsive and functional.

Part of what pushed me to do more Atari programming was that my desktop decided to upgrade to the newest Windows. I actually preferred the new version vs the one I had before but I wish I would have known. It completely screwed up the drivers for all my audio recording and I got frustrated trying to fix it so I bought a small tablet to do my game development instead.

I can see I had an extremely basic view of paddles. This is some good info I need to keep in mind.

I would imagine you would have to find out what the sound outputs at (I would think a couple volts) and then read it like a paddle input and have the screen act. This is just me riffing on what you wrote. I had similar thoughts for a project to compliment my drum controller.

Realized that this controller would also be compatible with the Quiztari program I made if using Joystick mode.

Some may know that I had been working on a controller for the Atari that plugs into either a drum pad, trigger, or pedal. it had occurred to me that the controller I had made - found here - is actually compatible with Quiztari if you do not use the Quadtari attachment. One would need two Drum Controllers, one for each controller port. Plugged into the controller a team could use any kind of buzzer or pedal with a 1/4” jack. This would be very similar to units like a Judge system.