Chris2600

December 19, 2019

On 12/18/2019 at 5:54 AM, Omegamatrix said:

Hello Chris,

Thank you for enjoying the new version. I hope you keep trying as I would like to see you get all the treasures!

I will consider the firebutton option, but as it stands right now this would be trickier to implement than it seems, and the design of it is actually how I intended it. However, I will consider it more.

Hi Omegamatrix,

I improved my score but completing the quest is a true challenge for me (I'am an average game player).

Anyway playing this game is very fun! ?

I know few things about VCS 2600 programming but i know how much difficult it could be to modify a Kernel, just to add some instructions due to the CPU and TIA cycles counting (and problably much more things I've no idea about).

So, keeping the same idea to press the fire button while the treasures screen is displayed and trying to make easier to implement this functionality , won't it be possible to check if the fire button is held down only at a particular time: for exemple when the introduction music has just ended and just before the Winky animation sequence starts (when Winky moves to get the bow, and down the stairs)?

If this would be possible it could be a nice compromise: having only half time to wait for the player and maybe it would be easier to code this for you... just a thought.

fun note: Each time I see the skeletons' moving animation, it make me think how much they have the same way of walking than Charlie Chaplin (this is only my point of view). ?

Cheers.

December 16, 2019

On 12/15/2019 at 12:16 AM, Omegamatrix said:

Venture Reloaded release candidate 3 is now live, and available in the first post of this thread.

Thank you Omegamatrix for this release.

This new version is amazing: a true Masterpiece, congratulations!

I made the best score I ever done so far, and I'll keep going on trainning.

I've got one suggestion:

Will it be possible to have the ability when the treasures screen is displayed to press the fire button to go back immediatly into the action?

This is not really a big deal, but when playing for a long time and when restarting the game again and again, having to wait before entering in the game is a little bit frustrating.

Maybe this question may requires a poll?

Thank you,

Cheers.

December 15, 2019

Thank you for the info!

Cheers

December 15, 2019

6 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

Good to hear.

Just so you're aware, DASM and the machine-specific headers have moved.

See

Hi Andrew,

Great, I just added the new link to my bookmarks.

Thanks.

December 14, 2019

Hi Andrew.

Thank you for your answer.

I've got to apologize for my lack of relevance.

The header files I used previously were outdated so I downloaded the lastest versions of vcs.h and macro.h you imported here : https://sourceforge.net/p/dasm-dillon/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/machines/atari2600/

The game compiles and works perfectly now (i'am using the ET source file created by Dennis Debro (July 18, 2006)).

Thank YOU!

December 12, 2019

Hi all,

I installed Visual Code Studio and the awesome Atari dev studio extension.

I was able to compile and run many games without any problem like adventure or defender, but got issues

with E.T. where I had the following error message:

Quote

Starting build of ET.asm...

ET.asm (2474): error: Unknown Mnemonic 'BOUNDARY'.

ET.asm (2862): error: Unknown Mnemonic 'BOUNDARY'.

ET.asm (4208): error: Unknown Mnemonic 'BOUNDARY'.

ET.asm (4720): error: Unknown Mnemonic 'BOUNDARY'.

ET.asm (5016): error: Unknown Mnemonic 'BOUNDARY'.

ET.asm (5556): error: Unknown Mnemonic 'BOUNDARY'.

ET.asm (5835): error: Unknown Mnemonic 'BOUNDARY'.

ET.asm (6086): error: Unknown Mnemonic 'BOUNDARY'.

ET.asm (6324): error: Unknown Mnemonic 'BOUNDARY'.

Unrecoverable error(s) in pass, aborting assembly!

Complete.

Is this problem related with bankswitching?

Any adea about what I can do to make it to compile and run properly?

Thanks in advance for your help,

Cheers

November 25, 2019

Hi,

I didn't expect so many great dev environments.

Thank you all!

November 22, 2019

Hi all,

Does a development environment to program the VCS 2600 in assembler (not in batari Basic) exist for Windows (like C64Studio to program the Commodore C64 which allows to type code in Assembler, compile and run executable on the fly on an emulator)?

Thanks.

November 16, 2019

Thank you!

It looks like christmas time. ?

November 15, 2019

4 hours ago, NostAlgae37 said:

The top one does look slightly better. Isn't it just one pixel difference at the top tip?

Yes, Exactly.

I should have post larger picture; the difference is more obvious when enlarging the screenshots.

November 15, 2019

Hi all,

I've got one minor graphics suggestion, I would prefer if the question marks look like this:

rather than that, where they seem to be somewhat 'flattned':

It is only a matter of personnal preferences, there's no critistism here.

What is your point of view?

Cheers

November 12, 2019

Hi,

My first test of Venture RC2:

I had a lot of fun with the game, I collected only 19 treasures and found no bugs so far.

The music sounds better now.

I especially loved the Cyclops room special event.

Awesome job!

November 12, 2019

On 11/11/2019 at 2:18 AM, Omegamatrix said:

Hello Chris,

Thank you for your feedback. The file I made was what we call a "PAL60" version. It is meant to play on an international TV. There are several hacks made for PAL60, more can be found on PAL60 roms here:

Thank you! I didn't know the PAL60 format.

Now, I understand why it didn't work, so I plugged my VCS to my old CRT TV which is more tolerant on frequencies and it works like a charm.

Here is what the game looks like in SECAM (8 colors palette):

I assume converting the game to PAL 50 Hz should be a lot of work? Or maybe that is just impossible depending on the way it is programmed (I mean for technical reasons)?

Anyway I'll try the RC2 as soon as possible

Thanks again for your work!

Cheers

November 10, 2019

Hi,

I tried the game (the Pal rom file) with my Pal 7800 and my Secam 2600 (which requires pal carts) using the Harmony cartridge.

First comment: Thanks a lot for this nice job, the gameplay is awesome!

On the 2600: The display is rendered in b&w as shown below... usually this kind of things occurs when running a NTSC file or files with odd number of scanlines. But as I said, the problem occurs here when I'am using the pal file.

On the 7800: The screen was rolling vertically and I had to adjust the TV vertical alignment but finally I got the game running in colors

Such roll can occurs too when using NTSC roms or when the number of scanlines is odd.

So I made a comparison using the NTSC version of the file: the picture rolls the same way (which is normal here for a NTSC file) but the colors were different (of course).

I hope these informations will be useful.

I can't wait to see the final version.

Thanks & Congratulations!

Chris

July 29, 2019

11 hours ago, John Saeger said:

If you ask me, this is actually a hard question. The problem is there are 3 different platforms and 4 ways of doing things. I used to like using the z26 startup directory because that was the most like the DOS version. Simple and easy to understand. One problem with that is the mac version. A mac "app" is a directory full of stuff and the startup directory is in a fairly inconvenient place. Personally I use linux a lot of the time so the current working directory might be a nice place to start looking for roms on that platform. On linux I like to put the executable somewhere in my current path without having to reconfigure my path variable. Then I can wander around in my command line prompt, run z26 and get a list of the files wherever I am. The other option is specifying a directory path and there's something to be said for that, but it takes more code. It's not super hard or anything, but it's just more code and something else to do before you can run games. Sure I can make it different on every platform. Startup directory on windows, current working directory on linux and home directory on the mac because that's about the only thing that makes sense on the mac for a default place to start looking. Of course now that I can put the executable on the desktop on my current linux system, that's probably where I'll put it and just start it from there.

So yeah, the home directory is a compromise. But there's something to be said for having it the same on all platforms, I guess. Me personally, I put a directory called 0-roms in my home directory and that's where I start looking for things on my system. It comes up at the top of the list so it's easy to get going. Not a great solution but that's what I'm doing for now.

Thanks again for your suggestion. I'm happy to discuss it and hear anybody's opinion. But it's funny how the simplest thing can be so complicated that I can't really figure out the best thing to do.

Hi John,
Thank you for these explanations.
I understand now why the multiplaform side of this particular question makes the things more complicated.
I really appreciate your work and I can't wait to see the upcoming versions.

All the best.
Cheers

July 28, 2019

On 7/24/2019 at 10:06 PM, John Saeger said:

These are good suggestions. You are not the first to ask for a rom path, and I agree it would make things easier. For now though, I'm still "pruning" the code to make it as simple as possible. For me this is something I like to do before adding more features.

Thanks!

Thanks for your answer John.

I understand your point of view and we'll be patient about the extended features.

In first intention, merely introducing the first suggestion (displaying the z26 directory content instead of the user directory) would make the life easier imho (and it's only a couple of lines of code in c).

All the best!

Cheers

July 19, 2019

Hi John, thanks for your work.

I'am using windows 10 and there is a problem because the interface doesn't allows to navigate to the extra hard disks (my roms directory is located on hard drive E:)

Starting from the user directory I can move through the local disk hierarchy but there's no drive letters available from the root dir to access other disk drives.

Suggestions:

- When launching the program will it be possible to display the content of the z26 directory instead of the user directory?

- or Will it be possible to give a rom path as parameter to z26 (i searched ino the cli.c file but found nothing about it).

Thanks

October 4, 2018

Hi all,

A new demo version (2018-10-04) is available:
- Screen resolutions issues fixed:
All screen sizes from 960 x 540 and above are now supported.
- The window mode is now resizable (with aspect ratio preserved)
- Key bindings added in menu (press esc for menu)
- As suggested, Fullscreen option added in menu
note: entering or exiting fullscreen can take 1 to 2 seconds to apply (dev engine built-in function)
- some minor bugs fixed
- demo restriction: 1 player only / 1 live / 4 levels are playable
note: 1 Yar earned when the Swirl is destroyed in mid-air

Enjoy!

Windows 10 64 bits:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=15OH1a-mRDoyZdjw_JByvZhm0UtggzhSx

MacOS:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1E8_04UTSpK2JooF2BrxpwoydP4QjpSR_

virus free - checked with https://www.virustotal.com/#/home/upload

Feedback is welcome.

September 30, 2018

Because you clearly need that level of detail for an Atari 2600 port.

Simply because it's not only a simple port as mentioned above in the dev notes: what I planned for the advanced features is to use a 49 x 27 tilemap with 32 x 32 pixels tiles ( = 1568 x 864).

This is maybe oversized, maybe not, I've got to check this point.

September 29, 2018

For me I can't see all the screen and became unplayable, my resolution 1366x768 and I can't change to a greater one. (Win10 x64)

I could navigate and shot, the response is very good, but since I couldn't see the enemy didnt progress.

Hi,

Thank you for the feedback!

This is the same problem than mentioned above. The native resolution I was using is too much high.

I started to change the code to support dynamically lower resolutions (I wanted the minimal to be 1600 x 900). Anyway I tried compiling using yours sreen size and it seems to work partially as show below: ;-)

As we can see on the pic, this is far to be perfect: the game items need to be resized but everything is displayed on the screen.

I'll have a lot of work. :grin:

Thanks! :thumbsup:

September 27, 2018

1 - Spider Fighter

2 - Defender (it hurts the eyes but I love this version)

3 - Phoenix

4 - River Raid

5 - Centipede

September 27, 2018

Thank you for your answers Karl!

Changing resolution doesn't give me numeric resolution values on my MacBook, but I went one step higher than the default, and the game appeared normal when started from that higher resolution.

As far as I can tell, F12 isn't bound to anything on my system. Can you try adding the switch between full screen and windowed mode to the menu? That way I can see if it is likely related to the key used or if it's likely another cause.

Ok, I think I figure out what is going on about the display issues on lower resolution.

In fact the native game resolution is 1920 x 1080 as I told previously and if enlarging the display to fit the screen is not a problem on the contrary, it is not possible to shrink the graphics below the native resolution, this is the reason why the right part of the viewport is missing on the screenshots you took (in fact, the right side of the viewport exists on coordinates which can't be visualized).

Making a lowest resolution version will fix the problem.

I'll add the toggle fullscreen/ windowed mode to the menu, this is a good idea.

Oh, and I suggest the command button instead of control for the Mac port.

ah ah, just the key I don't have on my PC :grin: ... half kidding, a look into the documentation should give the answer.

Please expect the next version to be released within 7 to 10 days, depending the free time I will be able to spend for programming.

Thanks a lot Karl!

September 27, 2018

It looks like a great start overall. The Mac version has a few issues, however. One is that the aspect ratio seems wrong. I'm guessing that it tried to switch to a certain resolution that wasn't supported, so it defaulted to another one. The end result is the right side of the screen is cut off. Additionally, F12 to switch from full-screen to windowed mode doesn't work.

Finally, you will probably want to use a key other than Control for firing, since the OS has window management keybindings associated with Control-Up Arrow and Control-Down Arrow.

Thanks a lot for these precious informations!

The game resolution is 1920 x 1080. Does the graphic issue occurs if you start the program directly using this resolution?

Anyways, I've got to dig into the dodumentation related to the Mac display modes.

Regarding the toggle fullscreen function, I have no idea, unless F12 is a special key for Mac?

I'll check the system documentation about fullscreen mode too and try to bind this function to another key.

and finally, please tell me which keys you'd like to use to control the yar (directions + fire), I'll use them in the next Mac version (until I wrote a key binding module).

Thank you very much! :thumbsup:

September 27, 2018

Hi all,

I didn' find a way to edit my previous post so I'm posting all the links and complementary infos here.

The updated windows 10 - 64 bits version is available here (no installation required):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Cjy7o4krZfZjMBxScZS8kk0k-b12Dtz_

The MacOS version is available there (un-tested version):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ia7m0J1kYinjWi6S7r2QUAq0bLpkmwe2

Here are some screenshots:

Please give me some feedback if ou can, I'd be glad to know if the MacOS version works fine too.

Enjoy!

September 23, 2018

Hi, Thanks! ;-)

The windows 10 - 64 bits version is available here (no installation required):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jtxjvOxeJP33O76ae5Q-TyhsNaZkpx7-

The archive file is virus free - tested with:
https://www.virustotal.com/#/home/upload

For safety, please check the files with your own antivirus before to launch the game.

Dev Notes:
The game development will take place in two steps:
- Recreate the original game in the 16:9 format with some minimal modifications required to keep a dynamic game experience.
- Extend the original game mechanisms with new features (mines, stealth missile, guardians...)

Demo limitations:
- 1 player mode only
- only 2 levels are available
- the game starts with 1 live intead of 4

Demo specifications (level 1 / level 2):
Qotile and shield speed = slow, medium
Swirl precision = average, average
Swirl speed = slow, medium
Missile speed = slow, medium
* reference speeds are [very_slow, slow, medium, fast, very_fast]

Keys:
Menu: Esc
Quit to desktop: F4
Toggle fullscreen: F12
Yar Controls : Keys:

Arrow keys = moves
Ctrl = fire
or PC Joystick (tested successfully with a XBox 360 controller)

Menu options:
Bouncing Cannon : If the Ultimate Yars mode is enabled (watch below), once the cannon has bounced, it can be safely catched by the yar to get 4 trons.
If the Ultimate Yars mode is disabled, the yar/cannon collision is fatal even if the cannon has bounced.
Heavy Missile: When enabled, if a missile/cannon collision occurs, bothes are destroyed.
Neutral zone: Toggle the neutral zone.
Ultimate Yars: When this mode is enabled the zorlon cannon can be activated on the left side of the screen (if the yar has collected at least 5 trons.)
Please refer to the original vcs 2600 game manual for more informations.

OS note:

I can compile the demo for MacOS and Linux too but as I don't use these OS I won't be able to test them, sorry.
Despite this, if someone wants one of these versions, please tell me.

Please report bugs-

Questions, ideas and suggestions are welcome too.

Enjoy!

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