espire8

September 28, 2012

This one may be related, but it's kind of fun so you might probably just as well leave it in:

When you die, if you hit hyperspace before your explosion disappears, you will still hyperspace, but finish exploding in your new location.

I've experienced the same. It's quite comical to say the least! :lol: I'd leave it in.

February 12, 2012

If anyone has a homebrew idea that would match well with a comic 4 to 8 pages I would be happy to contribute.

I had a short comicbook story idea I started to draft out some 5 years ago for a vcs homebrew game by Spiceware called "Medieval Mayhem". It never got off the ground tho because a boxed game wasn't possible to make a pack-in with. And I was already busy with animating the dragon graphics and designing the label and manual, so there wasn't any time either before it's release.

I just saw your art specs and I do like your style. It looks close to what I did on the label.

I'd keep you in mind to contribute for an 8-page story as I was thinking of revisiting the comic book pack-in idea for a homebrew sequel to MM - if that should ever happen.

January 24, 2012

Speaking of graphics - one thing I'm wondering is if using smaller graphics would make the game play better. Having a shorter humanoid would, in theory, make it easier to maneuver around the maze w/out killing yourself by running into the walls above/below the humanoid.

Hmm.. that sounds like a good approach. The humanoid is presently a couple lines taller than the robots.

Darrell, if you like, I can look into updating the humanoid sheet if you want to do a test build to use that idea.

I'll also see about updating some sheets to use fewer frames if the need arise to have the voice back, - which was the original goal anyway.

I think the size of the humanoid is good as is. The problem for me is the running animations. The player sprite has too much bounce in his step almost like he's leaping forward as he moves. This makes it hard to judge when you're getting too close to an obstacle. If the running was smoothed out, I think it would be much easier to control the humanoid with precision and avoid killing yourself.

A couple of lines do account for the bounce. I'll see about reducing that affect along with Darrell's idea.

December 4, 2011

I've just included a binary of the gfx hack in the first post that you may enjoy the game. Thanks!

November 28, 2011

The demos are cool, but I wish at least just one of the games was a little less secretive. I know that the main reason for this is the "wow factor" on release day, but I've always found that community support makes for better gameplay; I learned that with some of my 2600 projects. And, that's the one thing that's missing for me that would make me buy the XM right out. For now, it sounds like I have to wait until release day, and then see what people say about the games. That's not an issue, but I am hoping that with everything invested, these will be the best playable games possible. If even just one of them is remotely fun to play, I have my money standing by.

Quite frankly, even I don't know how many XM games GroovyBee got going at once. But I can say that you've got nothing to worry about if at least one were remotely fun. There's at least two XM games I know will be a blast to play. I can assure you because two of the games, apart from providing the graphics, I've been able to play test for Mark and you definitely won't be disappointed! The secrecy is to make for a surprise similar to how holiday game carts were released in the past.

November 23, 2011

Thanks KevinMos3. That's a neat thread you put together. I didn't know you were involved with the hack, I like how you kept the eyes on the aliens as two pixels instead of a straight line as I've done. Feel free to use the player ship design in your version too. Nukey has been a tremendous help with how the game has come to be at present compared to when first initiated.

I also like what you did with Adventure Enchanced! Great job! Heh.. :lol: I remember that black bat I did a long while ago for 2600 Adventure 2 - or was it 3?, but never got around to even start it because there were things impossible to do back then that I alone would never have hope for. I think it's awesome other people has taken the game to new heights and I'm happy to see my bat found a place in your hack. I'll have to keep a watch in that thread.

November 22, 2011

Nice!

-B

Thanks!

November 22, 2011

I wanted to try my hand at sprucing up the graphics for this 2600 galaxian hack. It's my attempt to work around the flagship issue Nukey Shay described in his Galaxian-Expanded thread (which I bumped up after missing it for almost a year!). I've redrawn all the aliens including all the in-flight attacking positions and altered the player's ship to better match the arcade.

The left pic is how the graphics looked before worked on. The middle show my alterations. The right is the arcade version to compare.

This is as close as to arcade perfect the alien graphics can be as far as this goes. I've yet to see how the colors look on real hardware connected to a standard TV, so the bottom row of aliens may be too dark, in which case I'll brighten it up if need be. I want to make sure the colors are bright enough to show up clearly even thru an RF signal.

I don't have the binary ready to post yet. I'm presently waiting on a hack request to this game from Nukey so I can include it in the binary with the new graphics before I post it here later.

Update: Here's a binary with just the flagship fix and alternative alien graphic changes. Galaxian-Expanded_gfx-hack_espire8(NTSC).bin

The double-size ship for "A" difficulty is not in this tho. Nukey may post an update if this feature is ever added later.

November 19, 2011

Hi Nukey. I just stummbled onto this old thread. Get hack! I love it!

I was also looking into the issue you mentioned of the flagship and thought I would try to see if I could try some pixel alterations that might help.

Meanwhile, as a hack request, can you have the ship double-sized along with the missile width too? I prefer the narrow shots with the normal ship on "B" difficulty and wide shots and wide ship on "A". Makes a neat trade-off for using wide shots on the enemies while becoming a bigger target as well, like it is done in atari space invaders.

November 10, 2011

It's currently VERY difficult with the size of the new explosions. Also, what about making the last 2 frames of a robot explosion not harm the player? That would help a lot with the difficulty, plus it might be more realistic since a straggling spark or two probably shouldn't kill you.

Is it bigger? I didn't compare my placeholder explosion with espire8's.

Not at all. I used the exact same number of lines and width for the new explosions.

However, as KevinMos3 mentioned, I also noticed how difficult it were while play testing.

As it can't be the size, maybe it's the explosion's duration. There's 13 frames for the new as compared to the placeholder's 4 frames.

The idea of the last 2 frames not harming the player sound good, but those last 2 frames are such a small portion of the rest of the 11 frames that there may not be much of a difference.

I'd propose speeding up the frame rate of the first 4 or 5 frames (2x) and leave the remaining frames at it's current rate (3x) so the explosion won't stay on the screen for a long enough duration that a player won't run into it so often as when shooting at close range.

Point blank range, by the way, always were and will be fatal -.

November 5, 2011

Mighty impressive! As much a leap over 2600 Berzerk as Medieval Mayhem was over Warlords.

Hard to believe that was 6 years ago. And this is only my second time working with Spiceware homebrew. Time sure has flown by. Time to set the clock back an hour!

November 5, 2011

The screen shots look great (guess you're getting tired of hearing that).

Thanks!

StephenJ

Thanks.. those screen shots were from the first draft of graphics I prepared earlier.

The latest binary has a newer revision of the special objects graphics with twice the resolution and more detail which looks far better than the first.

October 21, 2011

You know I played this game quite a bit, and I never saw any issue with the splits, so it is possibly something introduced with the new changes. Still, as long as you think it's fixed now

That could be. I'm not sure about others, but I so much like the new changes thou. But I'll be play testing it more. The only bug I found with the latest build is the title screen when restarting a game. There's 'garbage' where the text should be after I press the button, but the selection still functions as it should - continuing on the same level.

The splits also are working well.

October 20, 2011

okay. Found a possible bug.

On HARD level I noticed sometime I can't split my hand when I have a pair of 3's, 5's or 7's, and at one time a pair of K's as well.

At first I thought it were because I'm supposed to have sufficent money on hand to cover for any insurance or "doubling" or "splitting" which I think is a very good idea. But where I had enough funds, sometime I didn't have the "splitting" option when dealt with a pair of the fore mentioned.

I don't know if this is the case with the other levels (Easy, Med) as I just been playing Hard level. I'll investigate those levels too.

Maybe this can be remedied if you have the option default to "SPLIT" whenever a pair of cards appear, - as was done for any BJ defaulting to "STAND".

And if possible, can a new game be started over at the same difficulty level as the last game were set to? Sometimes at Hard level's "game over" screen, I often mistakenly restart a new game at Petra's EASY level whenever I want to replay the Hard level again.

Also, as a suggestion, I think it a good idea to have the dealers strip completely down only on the HARD level instead of in all the levels.

This should encourage players to play the hard level in order to see the "full ending".

Easy level - Petra always keeps her clothes.

Med level - All the dealers strip only to their bikini.

Hard level - All dealers go top-less.

If possible, you may try having different amounts of money to start with like:

EASY - dealer $500 / player $500

MED - dealer $800 / player $200

HARD - dealer $900 / player $100

I'm sorry for suggesting all this so late in the game when you already are calling it finished -except for bug reports. If there's no more room, maybe these ideas can be used for a sequel.

Anyhow, wonderful job on this game for what it is! -- it's a real keeper!

October 19, 2011

Thanks RevEng! :thumbsup:

This is really awesome! I'm so glad you were able to do this. Now I can just dive right into the game without busting down my account for a challenge. Great! I'll report any bugs from this build should any arise.

October 18, 2011

Just had to relate this..

I recently was trying to find a quick way to deliberately give my bets away to start the game with a low figure. I had about $180 left and wanted to bring it down to 100. So next hand I got delt a pair of 10's and I split them, doubled-down on both. Then got hit with another pair. Spilt and double-down those too. I ended up winning all four hands including a blackjack and nearly cleaned out the dealer that turn!

Heh-heh... seems that I win more often when I'm trying to lose! :lol:

October 18, 2011

Ah..okay. Didn't know space was that tight.

Well, if nothing can be done with the bet amounts, then Instead, how about just making a minor adjustment? $100 as the default starting account for the player, and increasing the dealer's account to $900? That should be doable, right?

I'm not sure if it's just me, but I actually enjoy more the risk of betting with money I "worked" to build my account up with than the free money I started the game with. It's the only way I get this sense of "holding my breath" when I start to bet higher after tactfully winning my way up from a small amount to begin with. That kind of urgency is what makes the game for me, --you know what mean?

I don't get that sensation when I already have $500 to start, and with a max bet limit of $80, which prevents me from taking any risk bets at the start. So I tend to bet at max without a care. I almost never use the low amounts since if I go broke, I know I can start over with another $500 of free money anyway. I feel the reason for even having low bet increments is for starting a game with low money account in the same low bet range that you may "work" your way up to the higher range, when I want to "risk" it anytime there after. Am I making any sense?

October 17, 2011

Hi Bob. Never played Moon Cresta before and tried it out.

This is a fantastic job you have done. I'm getting hooked on this shooter.. Will you be having any more carts available? I know it's a little late for a request but thought it don't hurt to ask.

October 17, 2011

Found this tread recently and had to comment for producing such an outstanding game.

I been playing this last night and had alot of fun with it!

I did beat all 3 skill levels rather quickly though. I wish the game had betting options up to $200 like atari's Casino, or $100 at the least.

Also, I think the game is too generous starting out both the player and dealer with $500 each as I rarely bet with low amounts as a result. I found the game far more enjoyable when I deliberately "bust" to start myself out with between $100 to 60, - just so I feel like it's an accomplishment when I work my way to $500 again and up. But it's such a chore to always have to do every time I start a new game to get that type of challenge.

Are you still open with making some changes for the reasons stated above?

I think Casino allowed up to $10,000 in winnings before breaking the house,- maybe that can be implemented in your game too? I'd so really like to see an option in your game that start's you with $50 or 100 and the dealer with $2000 or 5000 and with bets starting at $10, 20, 50, 100, 200. Or $10, 20, 40, 80, 160.

Anyway thanks for sharing your work , and well done !

October 15, 2011

I thought the death looked too static at one point, but I also like the way it's set up now too. Makes the death look unique every time, which works well for me. It does use no extra space at all where the images are concerned.

September 17, 2011

SCORPION Robots (aka- Tanks) The colors may be a little off but I'm too tired to check now, anyway, maybe they're ok..

Edit: Checked the sheet again this morning and revised it because there were animations that reused some frames. So this sheet has fewer images now (16 instead of 19).

That should help save more space for other graphics.

This should be enough for now. It's been a very productive week for this and other projects I'm helping with.

Glad to have had these done for when you're ready to use them. Special rooms are next on my list, -- but I'm so wiped out with all the pixel work, I'm going to take a break over the weekend and start fresh next week. See you then.

September 17, 2011

I just revised the Berzerk model sheet and replaced the first one in the same post here.

I'll finish the Tank robot tonight so you can have both robots animated as well as update the humanoid whenever you get around to it.

September 16, 2011

Looks good, but I'd decided to do PAL as PAL 60, so it's going to use the same robots as the NTSC version.

That's not a glitch - the "1" digit is only 3 pixels wide vs 7 for all other digits.

Okay, I'll update the sheet for the ntsc.

I think the "1" is off-centered then -because there are large gaps in the score after the 1's which look very odd to me. Is this score font supposed to look like that?

September 16, 2011

The tweaked menu option highlights look improved & the selection is a bit easier now.

Update on the robots:-

I got a BERZERK robot model sheet finished today. Took quite awhile to put together, but I figured it was high time to get that priority graphics part done and out the way.

I used the taller robot image (15 x 8 pixel size) that you mentioned will be used for the PAL version.

Revised the sheet for 14 x 8 robots instead after Darrell informed me the game was going to be PAL60 - which is better.

There's 31 robot images in all for Up, Down, Left, Right movements and Idle w/ rotating eye.

This is an enlarged sample animation using the images from the first model sheet before I updated it. There's not much difference in the details of movement.

I'll work on the Tanks next.

-- Btw, I noticed in the last build I played, something was wrong with the score display. The digits sometimes aren't spaced evenly.

In the screen shot below, the number "2" in my score is too far off to the left. This glitch seldom happens, but every so often it shows up.

September 16, 2011

Found some bugs in the menu.

- After selecting "X" for HOMING in Frenzy mode, and then changing the Maze mode back to Berzerk, the Homing option is no longer greyed out when it should be.

- The selections cycle a bit too quickly and continuously when I hold down the fire button or hold Left or Right. It takes me some effort to stop the selection where I want it.

- The highlighting for the START option has a much better contrast than the highlighting of the rest of the list. Can they be adjusted to match?

The Title really stand out much better with the spacing and under scoring lines. Great work so far. :thumbsup:

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