Something else I'm working on

[TrekMD]

One word: AWESOME!

[GroovyBee]

A few quirks :-

 

- On the opening screen the 2nd row of bricks is brown in PAL and red on NTSC. You might want to change to a colour in the 0x30-0x33 or the 0x40-0x43 range for PAL. The PAL brown is also a darker shade than the other bricks too.

 

- There is a quick screen flash of "junk" in the lower half of the screen when the "ROUND 1" text is displayed.

 

- You "fire the ball" to start the game using the right fire button when most 7800 games would use the left.

 

It looks much better on a PAL machine with the correct colours.

[DracIsBack]

Any chance Arkanoid might come back to life someday? :-)

[Albert]

Any chance Arkanoid might come back to life someday? :-)

 

I want to second this.

 

..Al

[Blue Azure]

I want to second - the second. Arkanoid is/was a great game. Love the trap door on the lower right to skip through to the next level. Best breakout game I've seen, by far.

[The Usotsuki]

There is one better: Arkanoid 2. XD

[KevinMos3]

I'd love to see this completed, but I'm more anxious for Get Lost. Hopefully Arkanoid will get attention once the other's finished. There's also Steam Tunnel Bob that I'm hoping gets finished someday and Marble Madness which was looking amazing.

 

In the meantime, here's an Atari style label I whipped up for this:

 

Edited January 5, 2013 by KevinMos3

[The Usotsuki]

Digging that label. xD

[thursday83]

If Propane13 doesn't release this game, I'm going to do the old "make your own cartridge" option at the AtariAge store and get my own, with the latest bin from 2011 and KevinMos3's artwork so I can play this, now. Propane13 - what's the latest? I'd rather buy it officially so Propane13 makes money, but it seems this project fell out of interest. I know it would sell cartridges if it was released.

 

Who's with me. I know that's a gay saying, but these games need to get out there.

[KevinMos3]

Well, it plays really slow on real hardware and I think there was an issue with the sound if I remember right. It's definitely a great work in progress, but there's more to be done before it gets released on cartridge. I think the best option is to continue to show support for this and John's other projects so that they may be finished. Playtesting with useful feedback and constructive critiques may also be encouraging.

 

I dunno where these projects stand right now, but with just the projects mentioned in my post above, (this one, Get Lost, Steam Tunnel Bob, and Marble Madness), John has a VERY impressive lineup.

[HammR25]

The last build in this thread doesn't have a menu, and as stated above it definitely plays really slow on real hardware. There are also some small collision detection issues with the ball and some of the permanent tiles. The game also starts me out at 48,000 points instead of 0. One or two of the power pills drop but do nothing if caught. I just assumed that meant John hadn't implemented those yet.

 

It's a nice work in progress but not something I'd pay $25 for a cart at the moment. Hopefully John gets back to it eventually.

[Stun Runner 87]

I'd love to see this completed, but I'm more anxious for Get Lost. Hopefully Arkanoid will get attention once the other's finished. There's also Steam Tunnel Bob that I'm hoping gets finished someday and Marble Madness which was looking amazing.

 

In the meantime, here's an Atari style label I whipped up for this:

 

Marble Madness?

[Jinks]

 

Marble Madness?

nah..its all a dream..

[Stun Runner 87]

nah..its all a dream..

This is madness!!!

[+Propane13]

Hello all,

 

I've been away awhile, and I'm sorry about that. I do lurk here a few times a week, passively, but I've been away for a little bit.

Sometimes I just need a break. I seem to be kind of manic-depressive with these sorts of projects-- I put in a LOT of time, and then take a LOT of time off.

Right now, I just changed jobs and states, so I'm dealing with the transition, which is a little terrifying, and yet exciting. It's possible I'll have some time to look at some of these projects again; honestly, I just don't know at the moment. We'll just have to hope. I would like to express my gratitude for those that are always so supportive.

 

The notes about Arkanoid are correct; it was buggy when I was working on it, and I never did quite get the collision detection right.

I wanted to come back to it, but the collision detection drove me nuts.

 

In case anyone missed the link in the thread itself, Marble Madness Atari 2600 has a demo here (it's for reals):

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/143390-beyond-castlevania/page__st__175#entry2221409

I got pretty far, but had 2 issues I couldn't figure out-- the first was how to add enemies, and the second was how to allow the screen to scroll for more than the practice race (there's a page boundary issue I didn't have an ability to solve). But, you can play the practice race for fun.

 

Steam Tunnel Bob 2600 is here:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/125621-steam-tunnel-bob-a-new-2600-homebrew/#entry1528637

That got a little boring after a time, although my first love is the 2600. I had issues on the "mine car screen" that I wanted to write.

 

And, of course, there's Get Lost.

I need to consider if I need to make some tradeoffs (music vs. an in-game save option), but I also need to solve the hardware bugs.

I now have a CC2, so I can try to look into it, but for now, it's stuck.

 

I hate to say it, but when programming, there's usually a list of small challenges that must be overcome to keep going and stay motivated.

When the problems get big, I tend to get stuck, and try a bunch of things to solve it. When they stop working, interest goes away really, really fast for me.

I wish that wasn't the case, but eventually, if you don't have little accomplishments, it takes away a little of the fun.

 

That's just where I'm at, at the moment.

 

Anyone can burn anything I've posted to cart if they want to play them in their current form-- I have no objections to that. Just know that some day, your cart may be out-of-date, and a more final version may come out "officially". But, if you'd like to make your own copy to tide yourself over, be my guest. My hope is to come back one day (Froggie's designer totally did), and finish the job for these if I can. On the bright side, I just bought and am playing BattleKid 2 on my NES. When I bought BattleKid 1, playing it inspired me to get off my butt and start working on Get Lost again. So, we'll see if the same thing happens here; here's hoping it does. If I can find a small problem to solve, and enjoy doing it, I can start the ball rolling again on some of these. We'll just have to see.

 

-John

[AtariBrian]

To bad about the bugs . The idea of a save option would be great but music would be cool also. Hope the bugs get figured out someday !

[PacManPlus]

John - I don't know if these will help, but remember I posted the source code to Crazy Brix. If taking a look at that might help with the collision detection issues, go for it. Ask me whatever you need.

Also, about Get Lost, I'm finding out things about the Display List that I never thought you could get away with... http://atariage.com/...ine-takes-help/

[Marc Oberhäuser]

Thanks for the update, John. MM is technically very interesting, but I have always suck at this game and so I am not the biggest fan;) Steam Tunnel is very original, just like Get Lost and I really hope you manage to finish them someday.

[Trebor]

John,

 

The status update is really appreciated and certainly there is an entire community cheering for you. When you decide to return to the games, perhaps set limits to how much time you spend on something before it drains you. Hey, like you stated Froggie came back to life and was finished. I am confident all your games will too, on your timetable of course

 

Thanks and best of luck,

Robert

[Joe Musashi]

In case anyone missed the link in the thread itself, Marble Madness Atari 2600 has a demo here (it's for reals):

http://atariage.com/...75#entry2221409

I got pretty far, but had 2 issues I couldn't figure out-- the first was how to add enemies, and the second was how to allow the screen to scroll for more than the practice race (there's a page boundary issue I didn't have an ability to solve). But, you can play the practice race for fun.

 

I had a quick glance at the code, and it seems to me that those two issues wouldn't be too hard to fix.

 

Playfield:

 

It looks like the line drawing code exists twice. Once for dark lines (blue, orange) and then also for bright lines (white). So it draws a dark line then a bright line and then loops. Using absolute indexing this means there can be 256 bright lines and 256 dark lines, which gives a 512 lines high playfield.

 

Now, to have a bigger playfield, one could simply extend this scheme and use the line code four times (even dark line, even bright line, odd dark line, odd bright line), each time with different base addresses. This would then give a theoretical maximum of 1024 lines (this is all that would fit in a bank, because 4*1024=4096). Three pages per PF register would probably be enough in practice. The second race is only about 700 lines high.

 

Players:

 

I haven't counted, but the line kernels seem to have a couple of free cycles (particularly when using a circular kernel and removing STA WSYNC). This may be enough to add a skip draw routine. Since there's probably no time to do this for both players, one could use double line players and write GRP0 and GRP1 in consecutive lines.

 

There would still be a limit of only one enemy per screen, but it may be ok if one would cleverly switch between different enemies.

 

Well, anyway I hope you return to this project some day. This is one of the games where people would tend to say it wouldn't be doable on the 2600.

[Synthpopalooza]

Just played the Arkanoid bin on ProSystem ... looks awesome, hope you can get it finished.

 

When it comes to doing the music ... I would strongly suggest you use 16-bit pokey (AUDCTL=$50) for a bass channel. That is, you combine channels 0 and 1 using the $Ax values in AUDC1 ... this lets you get into the deep bass notes which are in the original title music and opening level music.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Synthpopalooza

[Trebor]

Some really great development work has been done thus far, and it would be awesome to see this game come to full fruition. Arkanoid brings a number of combined gameplay elements that are most welcomed to see under the 7800.

 

Hoping more progress is possible for this great title.

[+Propane13]

Cool to see all of the enthusiasm in this thread! Thank you everyone for your encouragement.

 

For this project's status, I'll have to put it in the "we'll see" category for now. I've only just barely started peeking at Get Lost again, and am trying to carve out some time for it.

Getting that game out the door would get priority over anything else. After that, I'd have to take a look at all of the abandonware I've made and see what's next.

 

Thanks for the follow-up!