espire8

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!

Thanks RevEng! 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.

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!

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?

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.

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 !

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.

Hey! Neat idea.. I like what you did with the paddles.

Hmm.. perhaps I should do a larger size sample for the scorpion as with the traditional tank.

Maybe you should try again. Perhaps it 's a bug since the forum's been upgraded.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Oh my. You beat me to it. I were about to send you a revised menu mockup. Anyway, thought I suggest a 2-page title screen instead of a single page screen with all the listed options overpowering the title itself. I'll post you the mocks anyway for you to look at shortly since you plan to do more revisions.

How about adding an option for number of lives to start with (1, 3, 5) and bonus life option (every 1000; 2000; 5000; and no bonus). I'd like to see a continue feature option as well (on/off). To let players continue on the last ramped up difficulty setting before the last game was over, and with the score reset to zero too. The last option I were thinking of: since the tanks will have homing missile option, how about giving the humanoid a special move option (on/off)? I don't know what kind of special move yet. Maybe an evasive roll by holding the button down while double tapping forward or backward? Or be able to "lock" your aim? ie: the last aim the player had while stationary before letting go of the fire button will be the same fixed aim when firing while running in any direction. Just some ideas.

I have 2 questions: As the 3200 combo controller will only sport only a singe paddle for each side, will the 3200 controller ports support using the standard paddles that have two on each side for playing 4-player 2600 paddle games? And.. will the new console have support for any future 7800 homebrew games that would feature 4-player paddle control, like warlords? (again with the standard paddles)

Yeah, I think getting screen shots from mame is a good idea. Watching the posted videos, I noticed in coleco's version it has different art for the central computer than the arcade. The case may be with the robot factory too. But I never got that far playing in either version, so I really don't know if they do look different.

Nice big Otto, and multi-coloured too! Now I know the power plant and central computer will look just as cool.

Ooo.. that's a whole lot smoother than the atari version! Very cool.. I'm gonna have to animate Otto's bounce!

Wow! great job! That all sound nice and clear. The slower, deeper voice got a good heavy robot feel to it and sound best to me.

Hmm.. I personally would perfer at the very least the 2 words "Intrudrer Alert!" instead of eliminating the samples and no voice at all.

I guess the phrases i mentioned above can be concidered for the AtariVox version then? I can see 5 simple phrases from out of the 5 words you're currently going with: "Get the humaniod" "Get the intruder" "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" "Alert!" "Chicken!" That's a good enough alternative for people w/out the AtariVox. True, the game don't need the voices to be enjoyable. However, instead of concidering to eliminate the voices altogether, you should at the very least keep the two words "Intruder alert!" for when Evil Otto appears - which I think is very much a help and part of the game play to warning the player. I know it's not essencial, but it does help the game play in a small way. And maybe keep the word "Chicken" too, because it's not a random in-game phrase, but rather it's a triggered comment to the player, lowering his esteem for actually chickening out of a fight.

Cool! At least we figured something out by experimenting! If you can save nearly 500 bytes that way, then maybe combining the words "must" and "not" will help further. (1115 + 1003) - 494 = 1624? And the words "like" and "a" as well. It's worth a try. Here's another try. I have 3 combined words in this new list. maybe still workable. Sample 1 ["Alert!'] 1204 Sample 2 ["Chicken!"] 1271 Sample 3 [..escape!"] 1433 Sample 4 ["Got..] 1139 Sample 5 ["Get the..] (998+842) - 494 = 1346 Sample 6 [..humaniod!"] 1894 Sample 7 [..intruder!"] 1764 Sample 8 [..like a ] (1133+836) - X = ? Sample 9 [ must not] (1115+1003) - X = ? Sample 10 [..robot!"] 1514 Sample 11 [Fight] 1144 Some phrases it can have: (combined words are underlined) "Intruder alert! Intruder alert!" "Get the humaniod!" "Get the intruder!" "Chicken!" "Fight like a robot!" "Got humaniod! Got intruder!" "Humaniod must not escape!" Robot shot by player's bullet from off a wall: "Alert! Intruder got robot!" "Human got robot!" Robot shot by robot's bullet from off a wall: "Alert! robot must not fight robot!"