D.K. VCS

[MadZiontist]

Very impressive work! I hope you make this into a full game - you clearly have quite a talent for 2600 coding!

 

Chris

 

Yep. I couldn't believe my eyes after I loaded up the ROM! I really do hope you finish this as well.

[Joe Musashi]

Joe,

I've been following this thread since it started and kept mostly in the background.

I hoping for three things:

1. You hang in there and finish this GREAT project.
    
   
2. You release it in cartridge form
    
   
3. You make the final product available for download to play on the Harmony Cartridge
   

Many thanks for all your efforts so far,

StephenJ

 

Well, one should never give up hope .

 

This project has a couple of more months to go. Though ROM space is now starting to get tight, so there will be a natural end to it eventually, but it should be enough to have all enemy types.

 

I plan to release the source, which means there will also be a BIN release.

[Joe Musashi]

The new enemy control is still buggy and there is no telling how long it will take to fix it, but I guess I could already post a few teaser pictures:

 

[xybot67]

Looking great! Thanks for the update and pics.

[BigO]

Dude, it seems like no matter how much work you put into this you still can't manage to make it look like a 2600 game. You're clearly not trying hard enough.

Edited April 16, 2013 by BigO

[Joe Musashi]

Absolutely. You should see how the barrels bounce back when they hit the floor. Too much like the arcade, but its too hard for me to get rid off... Well, we will have to live with it

[PacManPlus]

I cannot stress enough how cool this looks. You've did such a superb job on this, everyone who owns a 2600 should get this when it's finished. It's amazing work.

[Andromeda Stardust]

The new enemy control is still buggy and there is no telling how long it will take to fix it, but I guess I could already post a few teaser pictures:

 

These screenshots look awesome! Any chance you'll be releasing another WIP binary soon? I'd love to see the imporvements first-hand.

[Joe Musashi]

I cannot stress enough how cool this looks. You've did such a superb job on this, everyone who owns a 2600 should get this when it's finished. It's amazing work.

 

Thanks, Bob. Let's hope the gameplay can be made interesting enough with the available resources.

 

These screenshots look awesome! Any chance you'll be releasing another WIP binary soon? I'd love to see the imporvements first-hand.

 

Yes, there hasn't been an update lately. Adding new code broke some of the old. But I'll see what can be done.

[tep392]

If you have any questions about enemy A.I., just PM me. I've read thru the arcade code and have it pretty much figured out.

[Joe Musashi]

Will do. Thanks Perry!

[Brian O]

Will do. Thanks Perry!

 

 

That's "Agent P" to you...

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I love the screenshots above. They look great.

 

Except that IMO too much vertical height is scarified for the player, score, level and bonus display. Does the game really require to have them all on the screen at once? I understand that the counting down bonus should be there. But the score needs only to be displayed when it changes. Same, but even less relevant are the player and level display.

 

So how about displaying player and level only at the start of a level/life for a few seconds? While the game is running, only the bonus is displayed. Except when the player scores, then the score is displayed for 1 or 2 seconds instead.

 

That way about 2/3 of the current height needed for the stats display could be used for the game itself.

[LS_Dracon]

I was testing sloped girders changing the color on the fly. It's possible only on half of the screen, There is no time to change assimetrical playfield plus bg color change on the fly (mirrored PF require changes for PF2 exactly at @48). Also no time for players and others stuff, sadly. I'll post here anyway, just for curiosity.

The PF are masking BG colors changes, don't know why I did this way, it's same effect for change PF colors. I still have some ideas but very much will not work.

girders.bin

[Andromeda Stardust]

Sloped girders may or may not be possible. Yes, someone posted a separate demo with sloped girders, but if 100% of resouces are devoted to rendering playfield graphics, then what is left for enemy physics and collision detection? IMHO, sloped girders would be nice, but if it requires playfield flicker or other trickery to pull off, then I don't want it.

 

As for the vertical resolution, the working area is small but the game engine scrolls the levels quite nicely. I would rather have pertinent game info displayed rather than hidden. For instance, If I'm trying to farm points by jumping over barrels and waiting until the last minute to climb the ladder to the roof, I'll need to be able to see the score and how much time is left on the timer.

[sqoon]

I vote for sloped girders if it is possible.

[KevinMos3]

Here's something else to consider when weighing between sloped or straight girders:

 

The color difference of the girders will be barely noticeable on a CRT TV. If the game is intended only for emulators and VGA or digital monitors, that's one thing, but if the game is intended for real hardware and good ole television sets, (as it should be in my opinion), then having hardly noticeable two-tone girders just doesn't outweigh the importance of having the sloped girders that has defined Donkey Kong.

 

Also, using a single color for girders on the 1st level is nothing to be afraid of. Every home version of the game that I can think of uses a single color, including the NES. (The new 7800 version is the only exception that I know of at the moment). This game is so far beyond what we could ever expect from a 2600 version of DK, that two-tone girders on the 1st level just aren't necessary.

 

This is sure to draw some strong opinions/arguments, but to re-iterate: the color difference will hardly be noticeable on a CRT anyway and IMO is greatly outweighed by the sloped girders that to me, defines the game.

[raindog]

This is sure to draw some strong opinions/arguments, but to re-iterate: the color difference will hardly be noticeable on a CRT anyway and IMO is greatly outweighed by the sloped girders that to me, defines the game.

 

I agree. The two-tone thing is spit and polish, a nice touch. The sloped girders are an important part of gameplay in the first level (in that some ladders take longer to climb than others) not to mention the reason for the opening animation.

 

It's Joe's game, though. We can express our opinions, but even without either effect on the girders, it's a tremendous achievement.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

As for the vertical resolution, the working area is small but the game engine scrolls the levels quite nicely. I would rather have pertinent game info displayed rather than hidden. For instance, If I'm trying to farm points by jumping over barrels and waiting until the last minute to climb the ladder to the roof, I'll need to be able to see the score and how much time is left on the timer.

You will see both. The score after you scored and else the timer.

 

BTW: Is there some audio when the timer is running out (e.g. like the last 10 seconds in Boulder Dash)?

[LS_Dracon]

BTW: Is there some audio when the timer is running out (e.g. like the last 10 seconds in Boulder Dash)?

I think no, just the timer number colors change to red IIRC.

 

Well, never say never when you're code to Atari 2600.

 

I keep on mind two things : It will looks good? Or it will be practical in game?

 

Here's the multicolored sloped non-flicker girders. Despite some pixels errors (not much perceptible on TV) it looks good.

 

But not practical in game as there's no time to update players graphics.

 

Don't want to spam Joe's thread, just want to share my tests to, perhaps, can be useful in some way.

girders_no_flicker.bin

[Joe Musashi]

Very nice idea using mid-line color changes! Looks like it performs 4 PF writes and 3 COLU writes. That would be a bit much for my kernel as I can do at most 8 writes. It would be interesting to use this in a DCP+ kernel, though.

[Joe Musashi]

You will see both. The score after you scored and else the timer.

 

BTW: Is there some audio when the timer is running out (e.g. like the last 10 seconds in Boulder Dash)?

 

Yes, like in the arcade version the music changes when the bonus timer goes below 1000.

 

But I won't remove the timer . I always missed it in the Coleco version (yes I know that the display switches between time and score).

 

I would add another floor to the playfield if I could, but that would require another 19 bytes of ZP RAM and 10 bytes of SARA RAM, which I don't have. Even if it would be possible to free that much RAM, one would have to change a huge amount of code.

[Joe Musashi]

This is sure to draw some strong opinions/arguments, but to re-iterate: the color difference will hardly be noticeable on a CRT anyway and IMO is greatly outweighed by the sloped girders that to me, defines the game.

 

That is true. It's even hardly visible in Stella when the BLARGG filter is on, but this is only for the current color combination in stage 1 and 3. Many colors were autogenerated from MAME output and may need some tweaking anyway.

 

A perfect DK conversion for the 2600 cannot be done ( not even solidcorp can do that ), there will always be trade-offs, one way or another. Here, I intentionally wanted to make different trade-offs than have been made before.

 

All I can say is that I'm doing some experimentation with slopes, and if I should find something I like and is practical I may use it.

[Joe Musashi]

Seems I haven't posted a new version for two months now. I wanted to wait with that until stage 1 is almost finished, but since I probably won't be able to work much on this project for some time to come, I think I should release it in it's current state.

 

New features include:

• Brand new enemy AI system ( stage 1 only for now ).
  
• Barrels are now thrown by Kong and roll down the girders.
  
• The Fireball on the second floor got a bit more aggressive.
  

It is still very easy to get to the top of stage 1. Difficulty progression will be added in a future version, though I think I will not make L=1 more difficult so that also kids can play it.

 

Have fun!

D.K.VCS_130423.bin

[tep392]

This latest versions looks great. Animation is very well done. My only suggestion would be to implement some kind of bounding box collision detection. It's gets frustrating quickly when getting nicked by one pixel kills you. The arcade version is actually very forgiving when it comes to collision detection and allows quite a bit of overlap between Mario and the enemies.

 

Great work so far!