DaveM

Fantastic! Looks like we're good! We'll go ahead then, and hopefully we'll have a cartridge ready for purchase in the AA Store sometime in the fall!

Responded on the other thread. ? Thanks!

Thanks. I'll make a note of that for future games. The way the code is currently structured, this would be too difficult a change to make at this point. The PAL colors are looking good! The NTSC colors are messed up, but I'm assuming that's expected from playing an NTSC format game on a PAL tv. If you could, just to make sure they're the same colors you're seeing on the CRT. Thanks!

So guess what arrived in the mail today? ? Problem resolved! ?

That would be great! Thank you!

Thank you!

Great! Thanks!

Awesome! Thank you!

Thanks! Forgot about that thread. I should've checked it. That's good to know. I think I'm well past 2 weeks, but I'll go back and check.

Is anyone able to help test out a new homebrew on actual PAL60 hardware? Just need to know if the colors are similar to the NTSC version, and the game's speed is good as well. I've tested it on Stella, and it looks ok there, but would like to get an actual hardware test before we start making cartridges. Thanks! If you haven't some across this game in the Programming forum before, I've attached both the PAL60 and NTSC ROMs below, as well as the text draft of the game manual. The original development thread can be found here: Mr_Yo-Yo_PAL60_FINAL_DIGITAL.bin Mr_Yo-Yo_NTSC_FINAL_DIGITAL.bin Mr Yo-Yo Game Manual_TEXT_DRAFT.docx

Has anyone ordered and received their high score patch yet? I ordered mine a few weeks back, and haven't heard anything. It's no big deal, just $2 shipping, but I was just wondering if anyone has received theirs yet.

Is anyone able to help test the PAL60 version of the game on real hardware? I've tested it out on Stella, and it appears to be OK (see screenshot below), but I'd like to know for sure that it works on the real thing. Need to make sure that the colors are similar to the NTSC version and that the speed is about the same as well. I've attached the PAL60 version below, although it's the same as the attachment a few posts up. Thanks! Mr_Yo-Yo_PAL60_FINAL_DIGITAL.bin

Yes, definitely! Someone testing this on real hardware would be greatly appreciated! I tested the PAL60 version on Stella, and got the colors as close as I could to the NTSC version, but I have no way of testing this on real hardware.

Here's the final digital version of the game, available in both NTSC and PAL60! I've also attached an updated draft of the game manual. Hopefully the game will be available in the AA Store by the end of the year! Mr_Yo-Yo_PAL60_FINAL_DIGITAL.bin Mr_Yo-Yo_NTSC_FINAL_DIGITAL.bin Mr Yo-Yo Game Manual_TEXT_DRAFT.docx

OK, folks, I think this is it! I haven't heard back from anyone saying they've found any bugs in the game, so this will be the final digital version! I've made just a few minor tweaks and adjustments, most of which you probably won't notice. I slightly adjusted the difficulty of the highest levels to make them just a tad less difficult, I removed some unnecessary code, and I think I've fixed the one glitch that I did find. I've also created a PAL60 version of the game, and I've attached an updated draft of the game manual. If anyone spots any bugs, please let me know and I'll go back and fix them. Otherwise, I'll begin work on preparing this game for a cartridge release in the AA Store. The cartridge version will include a couple easter eggs not found in the digital versions attached here. Otherwise, the game play will be the same. I may do a high score patch type of thing for those who find the easter eggs, but I'm just at the start of that whole process and don't want to commit to anything quite yet. I'm hoping the game will be available in the AA Store by the end of the year. Thanks! Mr_Yo-Yo_PAL60_FINAL_DIGITAL.bin Mr_Yo-Yo_NTSC_FINAL_DIGITAL.bin Mr Yo-Yo Game Manual_TEXT_DRAFT.docx

Thanks! I still die a lot. I noticed that you can grab the ladder anytime by pushing up while on the middle gator without having to exit the sideshow. So if I'm not positioned right, or my timing's a bit off, I just grab the ladder and hang there until the gators shut their mouths again, then I resume collecting stars. My problem now is that I run out of bombs. I got up to 62 stars, and wound up on what I think are the back two trucks of the convoy. There's a drone inside one of those cars that you can bomb, but I can't get to it since I ran out of bombs much earlier in the game. I had 5 lives remaining, but had to quit as I got stuck on those last trucks with no way off. I'm not wasting bombs anywhere, so where do I find more?

Crouch down and shoot it, then quickly jump as it deflects your bullets back at you (so shoot from a distance). Hit it with 5 bullets (and jump over the rebounds) and it blows up.

Yes! Set up a brick wall, stand on top of that, and jump for the key. It's a crystal key, which acts as a master key and can open any door. I forget exactly where it is, but it's on top of a white car a little ways into the game. Watch the birds flying by. A group of 3 birds will fly by, then after that, a single bird carrying the key.

Sure, that's fine. If you want to put together a quick condensed version for that, it's ok with ne.

And here's the score to beat...?

For those of you who haven't made it over to the Programming forum, I invite you to check out my first homebrew game, Mr. Yo-Yo! Thanks! Mr_Yo-Yo_B20210325.bin Mr Yo-Yo Game Manual_TEXT_DRAFT.docx

BIG UPDATE TIME! I hesitate to call this a "release candidate," but that's pretty close to what it is. I'm pretty much done with the game, I got all the bugs and glitches out of it (as far as I know), it's clocking along at a constant 262 scanlines with no exceptions (as far as I know), and we'll be starting work on a PAL conversion soon. Attached are the updated game ROM, a zip file containing the game code as well as the various macro files, and also a rough draft of the game manual text. Here's what's new in this release... The game now starts up with a menu screen. From there, you can choose 1-player, 2-player vs., or 2-player co-op, as well as select your starting level. Highlight "Start!" and press the button to start the game. On game over, the reset switch or player 1 joystick button will take you back to the menu. 2-player vs. is your basic 2-player game. It's denoted by the two Mr. Yo-Yo's looking suspiciously at each other. Players switch each time someone loses a life. Player 2 controls a purple Mr. Yo-Yo. At the end of the game, the players' scores will alternate every few seconds. Mr. Yo-Yo's color at the top of the screen will show you who's score is being displayed. 2-player co-op is denoted by the single Mr. Yo-Yo with alternating yellow and purple stripes. One player controls the movement, the other controls the laser fire. These jobs switch each time you rescue a Notely. Mr. Yo-Yo's color shows you who's controlling the movement, the other player fires the lasers. Both players share a common score and life reserve. The level number is now displayed in the lower right instead of the lives remaining while Mr. Yo-Yo rolls onto the screen, and at game's end. This is denoted by an "Lv" icon instead of the Mr. Yo-Yo icon. Remember that each level contains 3 caves, plus a bonus cave. So if you start on Level 1, it won't change to "Lv 2" until after the Bonus Cave (or green cave if you don't qualify for the Bonus Cave). Left difficulty switch now controls enemy speed for Player 1, while right difficulty switch controls enemy speed for Player 2. If a Stunner stuns you, no additional Stunners will spawn while you're stunned. Once you regain control of Mr. Yo-Yo, the Stunners may spawn again. This prevents situations where a player would get stunned, then end up stuck there while Stunners kept spawning and kept stunning the player. I was frozen once for a good 12 seconds because of this. So I made this change to be more fair to the player. Slowed down the default coin speed. They now move at a more normal pace, but will speed up during a Coin Frenzy. This makes them MUCH easier to catch, and allows the player to gradually build up the Notely rescue multiplier, which is more how I envisioned that to work. Capped the lives remaining at 9. I was able to free up a whole bunch of space, so I put this in there to prevent graphic junk from displaying in the lives remaining indicator. I was going to ignore this, but while testing the game, I was able to get to 9 lives in reserve, so I figured I needed to add it. A whole bunch of other bug fixes and tweaks. I threw an extra little goodie in there too. See if you can notice it! What's Next? Fix any further bugs that I haven't found yet. Create a PAL conversion. I briefly spoke to Albert about selling the game in the Atari Age Store, and he was quite receptive to that. I don't want to go into any more details until we have something more concrete in place, but I'll just say that I hope to have the game ready for purchase by the end of the year. Once the game is ready, I'm planning on adding a couple Easter Eggs to the game for the AA Store version. The game ROM - without the Easter Eggs - will be free to download, but the cart will (hopefully) have a couple Easter Eggs on it. I'd like to do a couple high score patches, with one of them requiring the player to find at least one of the Easter Eggs. Tips & Tricks I've found the game is easier for me when I use a controller with a D-Pad, such as a Sega Genesis controller. The larger joysticks make the game more difficult for me, as the extra split second it takes to move the larger sticks right and left cause just enough of a delay in my firing of the lasers to throw my timing off. It's better to try to snipe your enemies one at a time, rather than use the continuous fire. You have much more control over where you’re firing from, rather than relying on the auto-reload of continuous fire. Plus, with continuous fire, you also run the danger of shooting coins and power-ups, where it’s much better to collect them. You also don’t want to get in the habit of quickly bobbing up and down in one location too much. It’s difficult to control Mr. Yo-Yo that way, and he can quickly slam into an enemy just below or above him as he’s trying to shoot an enemy off to his side. Oh, and if you pick up a Power Pod and start a Coin Frenzy, lay off the joystick for heaven’s sake! You’ve got nothing but coins flying at you! Why are you shooting at them?!?!? Keep an eye on your progress meter. If you have only 1 rescue to go, and you’ve picked up that last Notely, it’s better to ignore the enemies and just get to the top, rather than trying to shoot them. Bouncers. Everyone hates Bouncers. But here’s the thing… they’re actually quite easy to get around! If you’re stuck at the bottom, and you’ve got a Bouncer going back and forth above you, just wait until right after he bounces off your string. If the rest of your path is clear, release the button, and you’ll fly right by that Bouncer all the way to the top unharmed! Once you know that, they’re much easier to deal with! On higher levels, I even use Bouncers to my advantage sometimes. When you get those Snippers flying around, sometimes, it’s better for you to have a Bouncer or two on the screen! If you’ve got their timing down pat, keeping a Bouncer around prevents a Snipper from flying across that part of the screen. So sometimes I like keeping a Bouncer going across up top so I don’t have to worry about a Snipper coming along way up there and cutting my string! Level 9 is super tough, but IT IS BEATABLE! It took me forever to do it. I lost track of how many times I tried, but I finally got a bit lucky with a lot of Power Pods, and beat the thing. I couldn't do it before the timer ran out, but I got past it. Level 9 with the difficulty switch set to "A", however, I actually think is impossible. ? If anyone finds any bugs or glitches, PLEASE let me know! THANKS! Enjoy! Mr_Yo-Yo_B20210325.bin Mr_Yo-Yo_B20210325.zip Mr Yo-Yo Game Manual_TEXT_DRAFT.docx

I should have something ready very soon! I'm so close to being "finished", that I'm waiting until I've got everything done before I do my next release. I've been able to successfully add the menu screen, the level select, and the various 2-player options. They all appear to be working good. I've also fixed a few glitches, tweaked a few things, and I've thrown in some extra little goodies as well. That's the issue I'm currently working on. My 2nd bank is just about full. At the moment, I've got just 3 bytes remaining, and that's with me disabling the code for the difficulty switches to get the 2-player modes working. So that's the issue I'm working on now. I'm optimizing some of that code, and I have some code that I'm planning on moving to the 1st bank, where I have plenty of room. Once I do that and re-enable the difficulty switches, I've got some further tweaks I'd like to try, and then I'll be testing the living heck out of it before the next release. I'm hoping that will come this weekend, or at the very latest, sometime next week.

I think this is going to be the final version before I add the menu and game options. Really not much at all new here. Most of the work is behind the scenes stuff, cleaning up messy code and whatnot. Very little will be noticed on the gameplay end of things. I experimented with capping the number of lives remaining at 9, but decided against it. The lives counter at the bottom of the screen can only display 1 digit. If you manage to accumulate 10 or more lives, it shows all sorts of junk down there instead of a number. I know it's probably a bit sloppy to leave that in there, but capping the lives at 9 takes up what are now valuable bytes of ROM, and it's a condition that I don't think anyone will get to anyway. I got 7 in reserve once, but quickly lost them after that. Anyway, I always liked when I found quirky little stuff like this in Atari games, so I'll leave it as is. The enemies now speed up starting on Level 5. Actually, they did that already, but I thought it was Level 4 where they sped up. So I had the idea last night to push that back to 5 so players could get deeper into the game, and when I went to change that today, I noticed it already did that. Not sure if I changed it a while back and forgot about it, or if I accidentally did that when I re-wrote my enemy movement routine, but there it is. Along with that, all enemies now move vertically starting on Level 8 instead of Level 7. I did a bit of an audit of all my variables in an effort to free up some RAM space. I found one variable that I could easily remove, so I gained a byte of RAM. Yippee! If my count is correct, I'm using 112 bytes of RAM, which should leave me enough to implement the 2 player options. Remaining known issues: There's still that small gap between the string and the yo-yo that occasionally appears. But, being as how I have no idea how to fix it, and it only occasionally appears, and it didn't show up at all in my last game, I'm going to just let it be, at least for now. The little alert sound that plays when the Bonus Gem appears in the Bonus Cave on occasion doesn't play. I don't know why, and after staring at the code for a few hours trying to figure it out, I just don't care anymore. It plays most of the time, and that's good enough. I actually think it might get overwritten when something else is triggered on the exact same frame, but I'm tired of trying to fix it. I think everything else works as planned! I've been able to get everything I wanted into the game so far. The next step is integrating the code I've written for the Menu, getting that to display properly, and then work on getting the various game options to work. Mr_Yo-Yo_B20210308.bin Mr_Yo-Yo_B20210308.a

Glad I was able to make it. And we still wrapped up my segment in time for me to catch the Suns/Lakers game! ? While I was away, I played a few games of Mr. Yo-Yo myself, and found a few bugs. I rejoined your show later on that night as you were wrapping up Allia Quest, and you mentioned that I managed to get all the bugs out of my game. Whoops. So, new update today with (hopefully) bug fixes! Found a bug where the Bouncers still managed to get through the string instead of bouncing off of it. I don't think this was a collision detection problem though. I think it was caused by where the code was resetting the Bouncer's position after the bounce. So I think I took care of that. If anyone notices any Bouncers still sneaking through that string, please let me know. I hit a very weird bug in the bonus round, where the round didn't end when I got the gem back to the top. Here's what happened... The time was just about to run out, and I still needed to shoot 2 more targets, and of course, rescue the gem. I hit the targets, the gem appeared, I got it to the top, all within a fraction of a second. But the bonus round kept going. The timer was now out, which normally ends the bonus round automatically, but that didn't happen. So I shot a few more targets, then went to the bottom, and even though there wasn't anything in the bucket at the bottom, it made a sound like I picked up a Notely and Mr Yo-Yo started flashing. I returned to the top, a Notely danced off the screen, and the intermission started up. I tried like hell, but couldn't duplicate this the rest of the night. I figure one of two things happened. Either the variable which keeps track of your progress exceeded it's maximum limit, and/or I both shot and collided with a target on the same frame which caused something weird to happen which required an extra Notely rescue. So I added some code to check for both, and still haven't been able to get that bug to happen again, so let's call it fixed. I noticed that the missiles seemed to pass right through some enemies. So earlier today, I changed all enemies to solid blocks, and the collisions worked perfectly. So no problems with collision detection. What I think was happening is that the missiles were moving one direction, the enemies were moving in the other direction, and the missile simply skipped over a thin portion of the enemy, so no actual pixel collision happened. To help resolve this, I slowed down the missiles. The were moving at 4 pixels/frame, and I lowered that to 3. This seems to have helped quite a bit with improving the collision detection, and I don't notice much change in game play. The slightly slower missiles don't seem to affect my ability to play the game. During all this testing, I had a Bouncer on the top line on the left side. I shot him, which would normally cause him to fly off the screen to the left. Instead, when he reached the left edge of the screen, he seemed to stick there a bit, then he wrapped back around to the right side of the screen, travelled again to the left side of the screen, where he finally disappeared. I couldn't duplicate this, but I wound up moving the left border of the play area 1 pixel to the right, hoping this would prevent such a thing from happening again. Let me know if the slightly slower missiles work just as well as the older, faster ones; or if they cause you problems and make the game too difficult. And if anyone notices any bugs, let me know! Thanks! Mr_Yo-Yo_B20210304.bin Mr_Yo-Yo_B20210304.a