Super Circus AtariAge (new WIP)

[BigO]

Thanks guys!

 

Ok, from the comments posted above, here's what I plan on doing:

- Remove the 'Drop' powerup; it makes the game too hard (Progressive mode go bye-bye)

- Add a powerup to increase the speed of the *player* (as close as I can get to the 'Gravity' thing) Heavier gravity, faster speed... sort of

- Add second set of platforms (like the arcade)

- More sampling of the driving controllers (to get the speed up)

 

I am going to use Pokey for the sounds (which is why I haven't implemented any yet).

 

BTW, did you know that the original Circus Atari used Vertical Position Tables (i.e. not calculated) for the vertical motion of the clown? I stole those exact tables and modified the first one (where you don't hit any balloons) only.

 

Re: the paddles - the problem is the fact that we cannot measure the cap discharge accurately (i.e. by raster line) like the 2600 does. For this game (as an example), I have a DLI every 16 raster lines so the paddle discharge can only get checked 12 times; nowhere near enough to get an accurate reading. I need those 16 lines for the balloons.

 

Re: clown graphic gore - I have asked espire8 for the clown graphics - let's see what he comes up with

 

@Greg2600: What do you mean by 'stuck'? It seems to work for me ok... I'll post a Driving Controller binary soon.

 

Thanks Guys!

Bob

I'm curious to see how much the driving controllers have to be cranked to effectively move the teeter board fully across the screen. 1 full turn yields only 16 state changes if I remember correctly. My gut feeling is that the control will be significantly different than the 2600 version. If that's the case, I probably will probably want to build a controller with a different encoder so something like 1/4 turn will result in full travel across the screen.

 

 

I played the binary on an emulator the game looks great.

 

(It does, exactly as I remember, completely suck to play Circus with joystick type controls. )

Edited August 11, 2010 by BigO

[Greg2600]

by stuck I mean when I try to move left or right, it often doesn't respond, or will sort of stutter. I think it's the gamepad I'm using though.

[+SpiceWare]

Re: the paddles - the problem is the fact that we cannot measure the cap discharge accurately (i.e. by raster line) like the 2600 does. For this game (as an example), I have a DLI every 16 raster lines so the paddle discharge can only get checked 12 times; nowhere near enough to get an accurate reading. I need those 16 lines for the balloons.

couldn't you check the paddles on every scan line starting just below the balloons, there's not much going on there

[tremoloman2006]

Bob,

 

Kick ass work as usual! I'm very excited to see support for the driving controllers! I prefer driving controllers over paddles myself.

[PacManPlus]

BTW - here's the bin for CCII users (standard 32K cart)

 

@SpiceWare - Originally I had the balloons dropping a level when you caught the 'D' powerup (progressive mode) but now that it's being removed... Hmm... I'll have to look into that; not sure how to handle the clown going from 4/8 line zones to 16 line zones but I might be able to figure that out. Good thought, thanks!

 

Bob

[mimo]

so if the 7800 can use the track ball (in trackball mode) why can't it use paddles?

[GroovyBee]

so if the 7800 can use the track ball (in trackball mode) why can't it use paddles?

 

Paddles need a software timer for the finest granularity. The timer increments every video scan line. This method works fine on the 2600 but on the 7800 some jitter occurs. Jitter causes the see-saw to wiggle around when its supposed to be static on screen.

[tep392]

so if the 7800 can use the track ball (in trackball mode) why can't it use paddles?

 

Paddles need a software timer for the finest granularity. The timer increments every video scan line. This method works fine on the 2600 but on the 7800 some jitter occurs. Jitter causes the see-saw to wiggle around when its supposed to be static on screen.

 

Could the jitter be filtered out? Maybe just a simple averaging of current and previous value.

[GroovyBee]

Could the jitter be filtered out? Maybe just a simple averaging of current and previous value.

 

Tried that. My code took four samples acquired over consecutive frames, threw away the highest and lowest and averaged the middle two. The result still had jitter.

[PacManPlus]

All is not lost on the paddles - GroovyBee and DEBRO are helping me and I think we may have more than one possible solution here.

 

BTW, regardless if we get the paddles working or not, there will be a choice of controller (Joystick, Driving, and if working, Paddle). So you can use whatever you have available. I may try and make it 'remember' the type of controller used by storing the selection in the High Score Cart.

 

The game options will be:

1 - Restore Balloons per line, or only when the entire playfield is cleared

2 - Difficulty (i.e. how fast the clown moves at maximum speed)

3 - players (1, 2 alternating, 2 simultaneous)

4 - Controller type

 

I will probably add more as I think of them (or if anyone has some that I can use).

 

To answer Bakasama's question from a number of posts ago ( sorry ) - I'm going to be using Pokey, so most likely the sound will not be the same - but I am going to try for a more 'wet' sounding 'splat'.

 

Bob

[Shannon]

Cool.. a classic game gets an update..!!

 

Clown blood splattering on crash would be great!

 

Yes I know I'm sick..

[Douglas patton]

Nice looking game.

[eightbit]

OH MY GOD IVE WAITED MY WHOLE LIFE FOR THIS!

 

Another CIRCUS ATARI I just can't believe it!! THank you so much for making this!

 

 

Agreed! One of my favorite games of all time is "Circus Atari" or "Clowns" (as it was known in the Vic). This *needs* to be in cart form and store through the AA store. I will buy it immediately

[GrandviewCoin]

Cool.. a classic game gets an update..!!

 

Clown blood splattering on crash would be great!

 

Yes I know I'm sick..

 

 

No, its a good idea. In fact I really love and like games that give animations to the smallest character! Typhoon Thompson on ST, and Jumpman jr, Boulderdash! give all the basic lil man idea, character due to little animations. Such as deaths, completed rounds, intermissions.. Look at the tragic falling in jumpman! hilarious! Keep it simple though.

 

Maybe a little back story as to why these guys have to pop balloons? Whats going on at that circus?? Monkeys? Bratty kids releasing all the balloons, Angry circus owner???

 

Possibly a ground based character? Music grinder with pet?

 

3 ring circus background? Trapeze artists popping balloons? Maybe the power ups need to be circus themed?

 

Hope any of this helps. God I wish I knew how to program!!

[iratanam]

Excellent Update! I have found though after all these years...I still SUCK at Circus Atari

[PacManPlus]

Wow:

 

OK Guys - you don't know what a serious disaster I almost had. Hy hard drive crapped out last night, and unfortunately with all of the house dealings going on, I neglected to back up since March.

 

I thought I lost everything...

 

But, being that I don't give up that easily, I was able to take the drive that would no longer boot, connect it to my wife's (Ms.PacManPlus) computer and get Windows 7 to scan and repair the bad boot sector when I couldn't even get to read it with an external USB adapter earlier. THANK GOD!!!!

 

Needless to say, I won't be using the hard drive any more - but at least I was able to get the more important stuff off of it.

 

It's too bad; Western Digital used to make very solid drives (at least in my experience with computer repair / building). But this drive is only 2 years old (500Gb) and it crapped out.

 

Anyway - I also have good news:

 

WE NOW HAVE PADDLE SUPPORT!

 

A BIG thank you to DEBRO for pointing me in the right direction. I will be trying to keep all controls as an option.

 

 

I'll be back to this once I get everything re-installed on this computer.

 

Thanks,

Bob

[eightbit]

Cool! Making a cart for those of us that want to play on real hardware?

[+Propane13]

So, what's the secret to get paddles to work?

 

-John

[VectorGamer]

 

WE NOW HAVE PADDLE SUPPORT!

 

 

[+swlovinist]

Is there plans to putting this on a cart?

[Marc Oberhäuser]

Usually when it's done...

[KevinMos3]

It's too bad; Western Digital used to make very solid drives (at least in my experience with computer repair / building). But this drive is only 2 years old (500Gb) and it crapped out.

I've been repairing/building computers for the past several years and I used to like Western Digital also. It has seemed to me that as soon as I started seeing drives go SATA and 500GB or more, (actually 250GB too), Western Digital became unreliable. You would not believe how many SATA WD drives I've had to replace that were less than two years old -- and most of those were less than one year old. I haven't explored all the factors that play into this.

 

I've always stressed how important it is to back up important data, but I don't trust magnetic storage at all anymore. Last year I had a "new" 320GB Western Digital MyBook drive that I was using for archiving. The problem was that I foolishly decided to temporarily move some things over to this backup drive instead of keeping copies elsewhere. After about TWO MONTHS, this WD drive died and died hard! Again, the drive inside that MyBook enclosure was SATA. I lost everything but I've wanted to find another of the exact model to swap out the controller board and see if I could recover anything. Unfortunately, it's been hard to find that particular model since WD discontinued them quickly, (I can see why).

 

However, I've never seen IDE drives of similar size go bad so quickly. I haven't looked into why that is.

 

 

 

BTW, congrats on the paddle support.

[Wickeycolumbus]

OK Guys - you don't know what a serious disaster I almost had. Hy hard drive crapped out last night, and unfortunately with all of the house dealings going on, I neglected to back up since March.

 

I thought I lost everything...

 

But, being that I don't give up that easily, I was able to take the drive that would no longer boot, connect it to my wife's (Ms.PacManPlus) computer and get Windows 7 to scan and repair the bad boot sector when I couldn't even get to read it with an external USB adapter earlier. THANK GOD!!!!

 

Needless to say, I won't be using the hard drive any more - but at least I was able to get the more important stuff off of it.

 

It's too bad; Western Digital used to make very solid drives (at least in my experience with computer repair / building). But this drive is only 2 years old (500Gb) and it crapped out.

 

 

Same exact thing happened to my Western Digital hard drive last year, also only a few years old. Glad you were able to get everything back!

[potatohead]

After losing the source code to Ooze! from a similar thing, I have a habit of e-mailing source code to my online Gmail account. It's not very large, and it's easy to keep revisions. Just zip the project up, slap a revision on it, done.

 

(That was a WD drive that bit me, BTW)

[jwierer]

If you have a hotmail account you have access to 25GB of free storage on skydrive.live.com. I drag all my source code there after making any changes.

 

-Jeff