Pig Perambulator

[NAveryW]

A couple of nights ago I decided I wanted to make a Flash game in the style of an Atari 2600 game. While doing research on resolution, palette, etc., to make sure I was making the game as accurate a facsimile as possible, I came across bB. I had always read that the Atari 2600 was one of the most difficult systems to program for, since you had to write everything in assembly language, so I had stayed away from it in the past. But after looking into bB, I realized that making this as an actual Atari 2600 game may be almost as easy as making it in Flash would have been. So I spent the past couple of days working on the first version of my first ever 2600 homebrew, Pig Perambulator. The game features two characters from a Flash animation series I'm working on called Enthalpy.

 

Nicholas as he appears in Enthalpy

 

His archenemy Piggly Oink as he appears in Enthalpy

 

The two characters as 4-bit sprites

 

You play Nicholas. The object of the game is to pace back and forth, touching the left side of the screen, then the right, while avoiding the missiles that Piggly Oink fires at you. If you get hit by a missile, your game ends.

 

Except wait a minute, this game isn't much fun at all! Not so much, no. Though I could hypothetically consider the game finished if I didn't care at all about making it good, there are many more elements which I wish to implement in future versions. These are:

 

-A background that isn't so utterly bland (Expected difficulty: very easy)

-Music for the title screen and sound effects for the main gameplay (Expected difficulty: I haven't tried yet, but it doesn't look that hard)

-A flashing background when you get a game over (Expected difficulty: very easy)

-A walk cycle animation for Piggly Oink (Expected difficulty: very easy)

 

I also want the speed to gradually increase as you gain more points, since it's way too easy to avoid the missiles at this point. I have absolutely no idea how to do this, but I feel it's essential to keeping the gameplay from being ridiculously boring. If I increase the movement variables from 1 to 2, the speed doubles instantly, and I can't make objects move a number of pixels that isn't an integer. I really hope someone's able to help me with this, or the game will be nothing more than a quick gag. (YES, I'M SPECIFICALLY TALKING TO YOU.)

perambulator.bas

perambulator.bin

Edited February 19, 2009 by NAveryW

[Impaler_26]

I also want the speed to gradually increase as you gain more points, since it's way too easy to avoid the missiles at this point. I have absolutely no idea how to do this, but I feel it's essential to keeping the gameplay from being ridiculously boring. If I increase the movement variables from 1 to 2, the speed doubles instantly, and I can't make objects move a number of pixels that isn't an integer. I really hope someone's able to help me with this, or the game will be nothing more than a quick gag. (YES, I'M SPECIFICALLY TALKING TO YOU.)

Try using Fixed Point Variables .

[+atari2600land]

Why is Nicholas's archenemy a pig? Has he been raping them? Anyway, this really needs to be more than one screen. Maybe the pig could follow Nick and shoot missiles at him as he jumps and stuff in a multi-screen platformer game.

[yorgle]

How about adding the ability to fire missiles at the pig with a randomly moving obstacle (a haywagon, perhaps) floating between you and the pig that could block shots.

[NAveryW]

I also want the speed to gradually increase as you gain more points, since it's way too easy to avoid the missiles at this point. I have absolutely no idea how to do this, but I feel it's essential to keeping the gameplay from being ridiculously boring. If I increase the movement variables from 1 to 2, the speed doubles instantly, and I can't make objects move a number of pixels that isn't an integer. I really hope someone's able to help me with this, or the game will be nothing more than a quick gag. (YES, I'M SPECIFICALLY TALKING TO YOU.)

Try using Fixed Point Variables .

Thank you, that helps a lot!... sort of. I added a fixed point variable called "celerity" and made the speed dependent on that. I set the celerity to go up by 0.2 every time you score a point. However, the actual speed only goes up once the celerity variable becomes an integer. Which I suppose still works, but wasn't what I had in mind. If it's possible to do it the way I originally intended to without having to rewrite a lot of code, I'd still prefer to go that route.

 

 

Why is Nicholas's archenemy a pig? Has he been raping them? Anyway, this really needs to be more than one screen. Maybe the pig could follow Nick and shoot missiles at him as he jumps and stuff in a multi-screen platformer game.

Nicholas is eleven years old, so I don't really think his reproductive system works well enough for him to be a rapist yet. =P I love your T&P game, though, and would buy it if it were still available... and if I had an actual Atari 2600. I've been trying to get one for quite some time, but so far have been unsuccessful. Anyway, Nicholas and Piggly Oink's history is a long and convoluted one that spans stories I've been writing since 2001. Piggly Oink himself isn't just a pig, but a hybrid with the DNA of a pig, a human, and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

 

More than one screen, eh? That might make it a bit more interesting, but would defeat the purpose of my initial idea. The concept was to make this silly little game in which Nicholas is just trying to pace back and forth in a small area, but this ends up being rather difficult, as Piggly Oink is firing missiles at him. I'm planning to make more elaborate games once I finish this one, though.

 

 

How about adding the ability to fire missiles at the pig with a randomly moving obstacle (a haywagon, perhaps) floating between you and the pig that could block shots.

Again, I just wanted this to be an evasion game. You score points by perambulating, not by defeating enemies.

 

Well, I've implemented everything I wanted to now except making the background more detailed and adding sound. And, as I said, I'd like to make the speed change a bit more gradual if I can figure out how to do that. As it is, here's the nigh complete version of the game.

perambulator0.bas

perambulator0.bin

[+atari2600land]

Nicholas and Piggly Oink's history is a long and convoluted one that spans stories I've been writing since 2001. Piggly Oink himself isn't just a pig, but a hybrid with the DNA of a pig, a human, and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

I've been writing and drawing (crappily) issues of a comic book since I was 12 years old in 1994. Right now, I'm working on issue #428. I'd like to hear the story of how Piggly Oink got injected with the DNA of the Pillsbury Doughboy. That sounds interesting.

[NAveryW]

I'd like to hear the story of how Piggly Oink got injected with the DNA of the Pillsbury Doughboy. That sounds interesting.

I first wrote the story of Piggly Oink's origin back when I was eleven (2001). Dunlap Pig Farm invented an "instant pig spray". It was a can full of pig DNA and some sort of substance that crystalized the biomatter into a fully grown pig once the spray was released. This criminal named Evil who had just escaped from prison was about to eat the Pillsbury Dougboy, and covered him with an "unsaturated superyeast" which caused the Doughboy to expand rapidly, eventually exploding. Dunlap Pig Farm was nearby, and some of the dough, along with one of the criminal's teeth, landed in the container of pig biomatter. The result was Piggly Oink.

 

So, about this game. I added all of the sound effects except for the opening music. I'm not sure if I'm going to do anything with the background or not. I suppose I'll add some one-pixel-high clouds. I still want to find some way to make the speed increase more gradual (halp pl0x), and I've encountered a couple of glitches:

 

-I use player0 and player1 to write out the text "GAME OVER" at the end. Player1 is occasionally flipped for a fraction of a second when the text first displays, and I can't figure out why, since I never flipped the sprite anywhere in the code.

 

-To make Piggly Oink occasionally switch directions halfway across the screen, I made him have a ~50% chance of switching direction when his x value is 75. However, once he reaches his final speed, there's a chance he'll skip right over 75 every time he crosses it. I'm guessing there's a number around there that's a multiple of whatever his speed is, but I haven't found it yet. Piggly Oink automatically goes right if his x value is less than or equal to 18, and he automatically goes left if his x value is greater than or equal to 136. Can I calculate a number from that?

 

So yes, I feel the game is now nearing completion, assuming I can figure out how to fix those bugs. If you're reading this, I'd like to know how fun you think it is.

pera1.bin

pera1.bas

[NAveryW]

I didn't really like Piggly Oink's movement at all, as it turned out to be rather predictable, thus if the player were to figure out the pattern, he'd be able to traipse all over the place without getting hit. Therefore, I gave Piggly Oink a bit more sense about him by having him move right if Nicholas is to his right and move left if Nicholas is to his left. I also made him only do this every other frame, so his speed is not the same as Nicholas' and thus he's not constantly on top of him.

 

Unfortunately, this, too, ends up being rather predictable. I'll probably add a ball bouncing around the playfield which you also need to avoid so as to keep the game from being too monotonous. Maybe I'll only have it appear once you reach a certain score.

 

Ideally, I'd want Piggly Oink to move like the dragons in Dragonfire. I have no idea how to make him do that, of course. Furthermore, I still haven't figured out how to make the speed increase more gradual.

 

No attachments this time since I'm continuing to change more things right away.

[NAveryW]

I feel kind of bad about triple posting, but from my adventures in lurking that seems to be OK here as long as you have an update whenever you make a new post.

 

I've finished what will be the final version of Pig Perambulator unless someone will help me make the speed increase more gradual. And maybe I'll add some title screen music once I've experimented more with that.

 

Instead of attaching the .bin, I'll link you to my webpage where you can play the game in your browser here. Aside from graduating the speed change, if you have any other suggestions that might enhance the gameplay please let me know.