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New Game: Assembloids 2600


enthusi

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I am back from the superb Silly venture party in Gdansk and the prototype of the game took part in the mixed gamecompo.

Not sure about the final results, it should have become the second or third place.

 

It even was shown for some seconds on the polish television :-D

 

ass_tv.jpg

 

A big thanks to xeen, adam and string (the makers of the superb Atari XE/XL version) for checking out the game on the party and signing the console.

It was nice seeing you in person.

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I am back from the superb Silly venture party in Gdansk and the prototype of the game took part in the mixed gamecompo.

Not sure about the final results, it should have become the second or third place.

( . . . )

A big thanks to xeen, adam and string (the makers of the superb Atari XE/XL version) for checking out the game on the party and signing the console.

It was nice seeing you in person.

 

"Assembloids 2600" came third in Silly Venture game compo, being the only game representing Atari 2600.

http://atarionline.pl/v01/index.php?ct=nowinki&ucat=1&subaction=showfull&id=1384421551

The game is great and it was great meeting you, Fratzengeballer/Slator :)

 

Adam

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  • 3 weeks later...

Huhu Albert?

Are you around :) I have a hard time contacting you...

I hope you're fine and all is good (without too much seasonal distress).

Assembloids 2600 is ready to go - box artwork will be done by ptoing soonish and we intend to launch a charity auction (doctors without borders) for the prototype cart on atariage.com soon as well :)

Best wishes,

Martin

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi everyone!

As Assembloids2600 was presented at the Silly Venture 2013 Atari party I assembled a playable demo version (PAL only)

with a few limitations.

Find it attached to this post. Below is the description I sent along with the binary for the party :)

Assembloids 2600

The game is based on a flash game by Photonstorm (Quartet).
I ported that to C64 with gfx from the original artist iLKke
for a 16KB competition by RGCD who later released the game
as a boxed version.

For the Atari 2600 I needed a fully new approach.
A single face of the C64 version would not even fit
properly into the 128 Byte of RAM there.

Yet, the challenge was to stay within the limit of 4k to stay
as original to the Atari 2600 as possible.
During the process, Sven 'Ptoing' Ruthner stepped in and gave the
simplistic visuals of the game a general overhaul, requiring much
much more and new code and really changed the game to the better.
I used to work with him before on other C64 related projects and it
was great fun discussing (pseudo)limitations of the Atari 2600 with him.

The goal of the game is to score as high as you can :)
Scoring is achieved by completing faces in the 4 windows
around the central one. After each move a new face-tile is
placed in the center and can be moved to the four
adjacent windows in case that particular part of the face
is still free. Moving to occupied fields costs you a life
and the game will slow down considerably to give you better
chances next time.
There always is a valid solution to place the central tile, so
you are the only one to blame....
Once you managed to complete a face it will be cleared and you score
according to how how mixed it was.
A complete face in a single color scores 300 points, with a
single mismatch in color you still score 100 points. 40 points
if your face consists of 3 colors and a mere 10 points for a
fully mixed face.
If you manage to clear the complete board, you gain additional
whopping 500 points and an extra life (up to 9 lives in store are
possible).
After every successfully set tile, the pace of the game increases
and it will be harder and harder to make a smart move before
the timer runs out and you lose another life.
While the timer counts down, the timer bar decreases and changes color.
Furthermore 3 alarm beeps will ring before time is out.

Every 1000 points you are awarded with a new face gfx
(there are 8 different types + 1 additional special face if you
reach particularly high scores :).

There are 8 game modes available. Select them via SELECT in the Title.
Game 0 is considered for kids only (!), here the timer bar
reduces very slow and there is no speed up at during gameplay at all.
For all the other modes 1-7 the speed up per set tile increases with game
mode.
Note, that the full 8+1 faces are only available in mode 3-7.
If you start a game in a new mode, the old highscore will reset.
Otherwise the current highscore is displayed in the title screen
and after game over.

After a couple of seconds, the game will switch into attract mode
and start to play a couple of automatic demo moves. This is indicated
by an A for automatic in the lives counter. The speed up per tile
in demo mode is related to the selected game mode, though it does start
faster than interactive game play.

For the DEMO (which you can identify in the title screen)
the game is limited to a certain number of moves and you start with
fewer lives without the option the gain additional lives by a
cleared board. Also only four out of the eight faces can be
seen. To provide some additional motivationr, you reach a new face
every 200 instead of 1000 points here!

Enjoy and watch out for the game at Atariage.com :)

Some technical details:
The faces are realized as player-gfx set to 3 copies.
Similar to common the 6 digit score trick, the 2nd player
gfx is also set to 3 copies and positioned right next to it.
So the left side of all faces correspond to player 1, while
the right side is playe r2.
There is just enough CPU time left to change the colors of
the gfx inbetween the 3 faces of the central row every scanline.
To allow for all of the 9 faces, only one half of them is stored,
the other one is mirrored.
The information on the color and type of tiles on the playfield are
updated every frame and in part use the same memory locations as the
current score display at the bottom as a consequence of the RAM limit.
The lives counter gfx are actually holes in the playfield and the
background color is set cycle exact around that hole so the other
playfield gfx cover its start and end up.
The same applies for the highlights on the windows which provide the
subtle 3d effect. You can easily spot that in the stella emulator
on the demo when you toggle the playfield or enter debug mode.
For the smooth decrease of the timer bar I overlay colored backgroudn gfx
with a ball gfx which moves with single pixel resolution at the speed
set by the current game pace.
The offset playfield gfx which stands 'out' of the gfx are asymmetric
and required some more careful timing. Their height varies between
the PAL and the NTSC version, allowing both version to fill the screen
properly. Reappearing graphical features are put into individual routines
that are then called on spot to save further ROM.
Since 4k is a harsh limit, most routines were rewritten numerous times
to realize smaller code and/or more efficient data storage.
As the Atari 2600 has no display buffer, all gfx have to be read and
written in real time as they are being displayed.
The digits of the live counter, i.e. are stored with maximum overlap to
free up more space.
The effect of the title screen requires the data to be stored in raw
format.
As one of the playfield registers is only 4 bit wide, the remaining
nibbles
were used to store almost all of the sound-fx data and for example the
moves
of the attract mode.

I hope you enjoy playing the game as much as we enjoyed making it :)

Martin 'enthusi' Wendt

sv_assembloids2600_demo.bin

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Great stuff, this auction. All the best for a good result.

 

Quick question (maybe redundant, but I'm too lazy to read the whole thread): Will there be physical copies of the game available here in Germany? I always wanted to get my hands on a homebrew or two, but shipping over the pond and customs kills all the fun for me.

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  • 2 months later...

This is the final Assembloids2600 PAL binary represented as 64x64 pixel (=4096 Bytes ;-) Image, hehe.

You can spot some repeating code and gfx patterns in there, also some smoother color-transitions i.e. from the game's logo color-table.

And the reset-table.

post-28604-0-98194300-1395069875_thumb.png

Edited by enthusi
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  • 8 months later...

Loved playing this game at the Classic Gaming Fest in Austin. There were many more complicated games but none held my attention more then this simple beauty. Probably should have tried it on a higher level as I hogged that station for 20 minutes. Other then those game tournament titles Fall Down and Space Rocks, this was the only game I came back to try again.

 

The new cartridges got mixed around a bit as kids would grab and try whatever was laying about. But the Atari Age people were nearby to keep the people in line and helped with game play. A few games were tough to figure out as some controls were tricky. Sadly I saw a lot of clones that were just remakes of old standards with some new twists.

 

Great to hear this is a charity cartridge as I have been attempting to get one started myself but don't have the skills or resources for such a big project. Put me on the mailing list for when it is available for sale. Good job!

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  • 11 months later...

Just an looong overdue update:

we have not abandoned the game ;-)

On the contrary, with other games in the making we now finish up Assembloids.

Assembloids 2600 is ready, last touches to box art being applied right now (and for 3 years but this time for real! ;-)

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Oh, I made this for PAL and NTSC right from the start. No worries ;-)

I chose a slightly different color scheme for NTSC.

So if the Title-Logo has green tones in it, it is NTSC ;-)

Since I crammed the game incl. AtariVox code (thanks Thomas!) into 4k, the game is either PAL _or_ NTSC, not both on the same cart.

And via AtariAge.com, of course!

Albert was and is most helpful with that :)

Edited by enthusi
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  • 2 weeks later...

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