José Pereira Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 (edited) Hi to all. Me and Xuel want to kindly show you our game contribution for this year ABBUC software contest. We didn?t had much time to create a totally new game but we still had much work in having this working. The original game comes from BBC/Electron in the 80s but their version was all done in bitmap mode similar to ours GR.15 so we decided that to give A8 justice we should use our charmode GR.12/ANTIC4 5colours, DLIs, ours PMGs so we had to: Ported the BBC Micro 6502 code for the game and the OS?s sound routines to the A8; Create a new status bar; Redesign some enemy pixels and changes their bit-pairs so that they look different and coloured different from eachother(s); All levels have different colours and the terrain distinguish from the buildings; Hi-Scores screen new text and coloured text; Added ABBUC and PMGs to coloured the loading screen and add a white losding progress bar; (?) So many new things and ended up in many/most of the game code and gfxs had to be redesigned. Lots more we could say but most important is that you like it. Here?s some screens by now: Xuel is preparing a video but he?s busy now working with the final small things in the code to send ABBUC?s the game. Soon you?ll see it? Best regards. P.s.- Ah! And this year the game is FINISHED! (O.K. maybe we do some music after the contest that we hadn't time now) Edited August 31, 2014 by José Pereira 15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Looks good - I've never played it so have no idea how it works, I'm guessing he just jumps all the time and there's certain places you can't land and he has energy so can survive a certain number of collisions? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xuel Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Game play video: Blog post here. Original BBC Micro game description here. The trick to this game is that you can't control your vertical movement, so you have to move horizontally and time your weapon usage to avoid as many baddies as possible. 15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Great work guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8Bitjunkie Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Cool :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poison Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 looks great! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grevle Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Nice . I tend to like games with Jumping in it, hehe. Original Concept Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 i played the C64 version quite a bit back in the 1980s... it's tough, but a lot of fun so i've got my fingers crossed for when i play this. =-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
José Pereira Posted August 31, 2014 Author Share Posted August 31, 2014 Don't know what happened to the Beebs and C64 version videos, maybe something I did on some Edit. Here they are again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu0WKcM-ipo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA7L1_wkW4M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxl Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Nice! I'm looking forward to playing this game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 (edited) Glad you got it ready in time for the competition! Well done to all. Edited August 31, 2014 by Tezz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+therealbountybob Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Glad you got it ready in time for the competition! Well done to all. I'm glad there were a couple of top secret entries, I was a getting concerned there would not be enough games this year. Now we wait for the disks to pop through the letter box in a few weeks [or download]... consider joining abbuc everone , there are some very decent games here... which are well worth the small charge alone ... and one from me 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 1, 2014 Share Posted September 1, 2014 Well done! at least another finished and released project (looking ashamed to the floor knowing that Gridrunner is still on the HDD)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pseudografx Posted September 1, 2014 Share Posted September 1, 2014 Well done! at least another finished and released project (looking ashamed to the floor knowing that Gridrunner is still on the HDD)... Not to mention your Diablo-like RPG project... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 1, 2014 Share Posted September 1, 2014 yeah... but Beyond Evil is more unfinished. Gridrunner is actually done... only putting Tezz Screen together with the game and I had one bug with Miker's samples. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sack-c0s Posted September 1, 2014 Share Posted September 1, 2014 I'm just gutted that my BBC time was spent on Grannys Garden and Frogger instead of this. Looks like fun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted September 1, 2014 Share Posted September 1, 2014 OOOH.... I am so happy with my Abbuc Membership. Can't wait to play these awesome contributions again. I must say that I'm playing a lot of those Abbuc contest games. A few of my favorites are: 1. Ocean Detox 2. Rolltris 3. Yoomp 4. Assembloids XE 5. Eckn (still love this simple, but very addictive game) 6. Battle Eagle 7. Ridiculous Reality 8. Mighty Jill Off 9. Jewel Bits 10. Animal Party It's GREAT! Thanks for all contributions, and this new one! Marius 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fratzengeballer Posted September 1, 2014 Share Posted September 1, 2014 wow, that looks like fun to play, pretty fast action. looking forward playing this. thanks for this contribution and good luck in the compo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 Have been playing this game for a while... and I can only say one word: OUTSTANDING!!!!!! This is certainly one of the cooler games for atari 8bit! Great work guys! Thanks for re-creating this awesome title. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted October 18, 2014 Share Posted October 18, 2014 I agree. Viewing screenshots and video I underestimated it. Now that I can play with it I can say it's a great game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xuel Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Ransack executable: ransack.xex Thanks to ABBUC for hosting this fun competition again this year! Some notes for NTSC: The game auto-detects NTSC and skips updating the screen every 6th frame to adjust the speed back to PAL. You can toggle this by pressing OPTION which might make the game smoother but it's really fast. On NTSC, the game often bogs down in the title screen when you press SELECT due to a timing bug. It will eventually fix itself after several seconds. You can fix it a little quicker by holding down trigger or START. A tip: You have to bounce off of the large moving ship on the bonus stages to stay alive and get the bonus points. Reminder on input (from my blog post): Space - Start / Bomb Trigger - Start / Fire Joystick - Left / Right Escape - Leave current game S - Turn on sound (hiscore screen) Q - Turn off sound (hiscore screen) Keyboard - Hiscore Entry 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IndusGT Posted October 25, 2014 Share Posted October 25, 2014 Playing now thru a MyIDE II awesome game!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8Bitjunkie Posted October 26, 2014 Share Posted October 26, 2014 Thank you for this cool game :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+therealbountybob Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 Thanks again guys for creating the Atari version of Ransak Some feedback: I wasn't sure about the game at first but the more I play the more I like. Nice sound and graphics. The levels having the same patterns means you can learn them and the controls are good - you can pick off the baddies nicely after a while. The three difficulty levels are all playable, perhaps on easy the bonus stage is a bit tricky. The skill is to get the best weapons and keep them often by destroying other weapons. Having the joystick right next to the space bar is a must for bombs (sorry to my 130XE!) whack! The scrolling base seems too fast to enjoy it. Did you conisder having him fall down the gaps like in Robix? - perhaps this happens on the higher levels? How many levels are there? I thought I noticed the game had keyboard control too - return for fire & z/x for left and right. Minor niggles(!) How about a bl***dy pause key guys It's hard to tell when you are damaged, the sound is lost in the sound of the baddies exploding - perhaps a colour change or more noticable sound would improve this. Sometimes you seem to run out of energy for no reason - does it just deplete or is there something aon the floor that causes damage? Not sure about the graphic for the lives, what is that?! I think on another year Ransack may have won the contest. Ransack offers some long term play and will feature in the HSC soon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xuel Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 (edited) @therealbountybob Thanks for the feedback! First, I should say that all credit for the the game play must go to Peter Scott since this A8 version uses the exact same 6502 code for the game play as his BBC Micro version. That being said, there are some subtle timing differences. The drawing code on the Beeb mostly attains 50FPS but slows down when there are lots of enemies on screen and in the bonus stage. I optimized the code a lot to get a consistent 50FPS on the A8 so the game is actually a little faster in some spots. There are eight levels. I agree that it seems like your robot "AI" should die if you fall in cracks. There are several levels where it looks like you are supposed to jump over voids and hit small platforms to stay alive. Perhaps that feature was removed after play testing found it to be too difficult or it was just never implemented. I didn't find any vestiges of such a feature in my disassembly and annotation of the source code. You're right that there are keyboard controls that mimic the control system on the Beeb but I should have used Shift and Control for fire and bomb so that they could be detected independent of the left/right keys. Currently as soon as you hit Return or Space, you stop moving left/right since the Atari keyboard can only detect one key at a time. Apologies for the lack of a pause feature. The Beeb version has it but I didn't hook it up in the A8 version. Here's a new version that uses P/O keys for Pause/Unpause: ransack.xex There is a subtly different sound for receiving damage vs. enemy explosions but I agree that it can get lost in the shuffle sometimes. Any section of the terrain that alternates between black and light colored pixels is "electrified" and will drain energy from your robot if you hit it. Examples: Some sections will only sometimes drain your energy if you hit them while moving left or right: The number of lives graphic is supposed to be a miniature version of the robot. Edited November 1, 2014 by Xuel 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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