Sprybug Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 So, earlier this year I decided to embark on my new game called Robot Zed. The first level is about 2/5 of the way finished. Once I finish the introductory/tutorial level, I'll post it here as the demo to the game for you guys to try. The game is like a mix of Mega Man and Kirby with some new game mechanics that you're starting to see with indie developers. It uses an upgraded version of my Princess Rescue Engine. This upgraded version now includes several scroll/screen modes and longer levels with an auto scroll to the next new section. Plus it'll have my own original music! Since I want this first message to contain the files once they are ready, I'll post another message with a few things to show. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted November 9, 2015 Author Share Posted November 9, 2015 (edited) So here's a few screenshots: I've been musically inspired lately, so I'm also going to include my freshly finished song that I will think would be perfectly suited for "SkyLand". Music_Work_2.bas.bin 8K???? Yeah. The data for the music is nearly 4K ALONE. This is going to be at least a 64K game like Zippy. Maybe larger. Edited November 9, 2015 by Sprybug 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 I had a chance to see this at PRGE, and I must say, it's going to kick ass when it's done! I look forward to watching your progress. ..Al 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 It's going to be more than 2k? Not interested! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mountain King Posted November 9, 2015 Share Posted November 9, 2015 I love the music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariBrian Posted November 10, 2015 Share Posted November 10, 2015 Looks and sounds great ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neotokeo2001 Posted November 10, 2015 Share Posted November 10, 2015 (edited) Looks good! I can't wait to play it. Edited November 10, 2015 by neotokeo2001 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperboy Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 Rocking stuff once again!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Papa Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 Best Atari music award goes to... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted November 13, 2015 Share Posted November 13, 2015 Regarding the best Atari music, would you consider options?I would like options to choose: 1. No music, just sound effects. 2. Drop lead channel. 3. Drop bass channel. 4. All music, no sound effects.If that goes against your vision, I understand.Sometime when I'm playing I wonder what it would sound like if the lead keeps playing and the bass cuts in and out.P.S. Great tune. Better than I've done with yours having percussion and fade outs. I don't think I would have been able to compress 8000 bytes of data into 800 bytes if I were doing percussion and fades. My Mappy tune has ragtime repetition but it is a routine to do the repeating, the notes that are too short aren't affected. Actually that was a brilliant accident. I was attempting to fade out long notes and instead it repeated them! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mountain King Posted November 13, 2015 Share Posted November 13, 2015 Regarding the best Atari music, would you consider options? I would like options to choose: 1. No music, just sound effects. 2. Drop lead channel. 3. Drop bass channel. 4. All music, no sound effects. If that goes against your vision, I understand. Sometime when I'm playing I wonder what it would sound like if the lead keeps playing and the bass cuts in and out. P.S. Great tune. Better than I've done with yours having percussion and fade outs. I don't think I would have been able to compress 8000 bytes of data into 800 bytes if I were doing percussion and fades. My Mappy tine has ragtime repetition but it is a routine to do the repeating, the notes that are too short aren't affected. Actually that was a brilliant accident. I was attempting to fade out long notes and instead it repeated them! I was going to ask how you pulled off the "vibrato" sound in mappy. I agree, it was quite brilliant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted November 16, 2015 Author Share Posted November 16, 2015 I had a chance to see this at PRGE, and I must say, it's going to kick ass when it's done! I look forward to watching your progress. ..Al Thanks Albert. I just got those trampolines in the game that I was talking about working tonight. It's fun just to watch him bounce up and down on them. I also got the life bar working correctly, although for some reason it goes black for no reason at all (looked through all my code and in the Stella debugger the ram location for the bar color gets set to 0 for no reason). However in my renderscreen routine I set that color through every screendraw, so if it goes black it'll only go black for 1 frame before being reset. Not sure why it's doing it though. I also figured out all the power-ups. Ground Shot, Shield, Targeting Shot, Fuel for Foot Rockets for Flying, Platform (Playfield) Block Builder Power, Invisibility (for stealth), and the last 2 I might change but for now it's fire shot and ice shot. The Ice shot is to turn water into solid ice so you can walk on it and the fire shot is to melt certain blocks away. There's one other issue, and this happened with Zippy too. When I use a custom font (which is how I get the Zed head in the score as with the power icon), sometimes a few stray pixels show up next to the last digit depending on the sequence of numbers that are in there. In Zippy it happened when one of the ring icons in the rotation sequence showed up (which is why those few pixels flicker), where as here in Zed it's always there and it really makes that second number hard to read. This isn't anything in my code, so I think it's some bug in Batari. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted November 16, 2015 Author Share Posted November 16, 2015 Regarding the best Atari music, would you consider options? I would like options to choose: 1. No music, just sound effects. 2. Drop lead channel. 3. Drop bass channel. 4. All music, no sound effects. If that goes against your vision, I understand. Sometime when I'm playing I wonder what it would sound like if the lead keeps playing and the bass cuts in and out. P.S. Great tune. Better than I've done with yours having percussion and fade outs. I don't think I would have been able to compress 8000 bytes of data into 800 bytes if I were doing percussion and fades. My Mappy tine has ragtime repetition but it is a routine to do the repeating, the notes that are too short aren't affected. Actually that was a brilliant accident. I was attempting to fade out long notes and instead it repeated them! I actually like this idea. A menu option to have music on or off, the sound effects on or off, and if they are on, which channel they occupy. This would use 3 bits of RAM to store the options throughout game play, and once again I've pretty much reserved all my RAM usage and am down to my last two bits. However, never say never. My memory configurations can change throughout the development. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted November 16, 2015 Share Posted November 16, 2015 (edited) You could use the console switches, Difficulty A/B, B&W, or reconfigure joystick port 2 to act as 4 bits of RAM. (Just make sure to mention leave joystick port 2 empty of controllers and AtariVox+.)I still don't know how Byte Knight and I did most of the important features of D.K. and we still have 2 RAM locations unused.P.S. We do use the DPC+ Kernel special stack storage to preserve the 3 parts of the score in order to have the countdown bonus timer, then pull the score back out of the stack when the level is finished, but that is only using 3 locations out of the 256 available. Edited November 16, 2015 by iesposta Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted November 17, 2015 Author Share Posted November 17, 2015 You could use the console switches, Difficulty A/B, B&W, or reconfigure joystick port 2 to act as 4 bits of RAM. (Just make sure to mention leave joystick port 2 empty of controllers and AtariVox+.) I still don't know how Byte Knight and I did most of the important features of D.K. and we still have 2 RAM locations unused. P.S. We do use the DPC+ Kernel special stack storage to preserve the 3 parts of the score in order to have the countdown bonus timer, then pull the score back out of the stack when the level is finished, but that is only using 3 locations out of the 256 available. Console switches. That's a great idea. I didn't even think of that. One could be for music on/off, one could be for sound on/off, and the B&W switch can be for audio channel. I'd have to find out what the most common console switch settings are for the average user and make that the default. (Music On, Sound On, Sound on channel 0) I have no uses for the console switches, unlike Princess Rescue that added 2 more lives with one of the difficulty switches. One of these days I'm going to make a game that uses the AtariVox....maybe I should for this one? I mean, I was planning on having a password system, but this game would be good for it. Instead of a password system, it could use saves and then I can do robot voices with it too. Perfect for this kind of game. Thanks for the suggestion! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted November 17, 2015 Share Posted November 17, 2015 Of course the most common are Color, B, B. The "Color" on the 7800 is pause and it is momentary so it always bounces back to "Color". Although between both Difficulty Switches you have 4 possible combinations. BB, BA, AB, & AA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted November 17, 2015 Author Share Posted November 17, 2015 Of course the most common are Color, B, B. The "Color" on the 7800 is pause and it is momentary so it always bounces back to "Color". Although between both Difficulty Switches you have 4 possible combinations. BB, BA, AB, & AA. True that like a 2-bit value, but I don't want to over-complicate something as simple as console switch toggle settings for the average user. Let's say I assign the color switch to be the one that controls which channel the sound effects play on. This would probably be the most ideal of the three settings because if this is played on a 7800 and the switch is only momentary, I'd rather have that happen on the channel selection rather than the strict on/off for the music and sound effects. So, if you don't get to decide one of the three because of the system you're playing it on, I'd rather have it be for the channel selection. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 17, 2015 Share Posted November 17, 2015 Console switches. That's a great idea. I didn't even think of that. One could be for music on/off, one could be for sound on/off, and the B&W switch can be for audio channel. I'd have to find out what the most common console switch settings are for the average user and make that the default. (Music On, Sound On, Sound on channel 0) I have no uses for the console switches, unlike Princess Rescue that added 2 more lives with one of the difficulty switches. One of these days I'm going to make a game that uses the AtariVox....maybe I should for this one? I mean, I was planning on having a password system, but this game would be good for it. Instead of a password system, it could use saves and then I can do robot voices with it too. Perfect for this kind of game. Thanks for the suggestion! Amazing! Better yet if you could get the Vox to talk or moan as supplementary sound effects. I'm always up for another game to support the 'Vox... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted November 24, 2015 Share Posted November 24, 2015 How about also using a password system for those of us who don't have an AtariVox? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted December 2, 2015 Author Share Posted December 2, 2015 How about also using a password system for those of us who don't have an AtariVox? I will have at least that. If I find it too much of a hassle to include the AtariVox, or I don't have enough space to do both, etc, then I will at least have a password system. At best I will have both. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted December 2, 2015 Author Share Posted December 2, 2015 Rocking stuff once again!! Thanks, BTW, WTF is your icon from? I couldn't stop laughing. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Zeptari Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Geeezzzz.... Zippy's not even on my doorstep yet and your showing off your next game!! Your awesome!!!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Thanks, BTW, WTF is your icon from? I couldn't stop laughing. That's 1926 Reddy Killowatt, spokesman teaching kids about electricity generation for 7 decades, unfortunately living 15 miles from Three Mile Island I associate it with teaching us about safe, clean nuclear electric plants, so that sombitch nearly did knife me dead in March 28, 1979. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 That's 1926 Reddy Killowatt, spokesman teaching kids about electricity generation for 7 decades, unfortunately living 15 miles from Three Mile Island I associate it with teaching us about safe, clean nuclear electric plants, so that sombitch nearly did knife me dead on March 28, 1979 when the reactor had a meltdown. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperboy Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Thanks, BTW, WTF is your icon from? I couldn't stop laughing.Reddy Killowatt This guy made a lasting impression on me ever since seeing him in a school PSA a long ass time ago. I think Mr. Yuck is his bastard son but I could be mistaken.. The following avatar I have used was also a favorite 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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