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RealSports Curling Release Thread


Ryan Witmer

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Curling is about to get REAL on your Atari 5200 SuperSystem!

 

Hear the roar of the stones as they slide down the ice! Experience the tension of sweeping the final shot of a critical end! Do you go for the tricky takeout, or do you take the safe play to blank the end? "Chess on ice" comes to your living room and now the decisions are yours to make!

 

RealSports Curling features a true analog aiming system that takes advantage of the advanced design of the Atari 5200 joystick. Only the SuperSystem could provide this level of control! The sweepers aren't left out, as the 5200 joystick becomes the curling broom you always knew you wanted. Sweep too hard and you'll ruin the shot, not hard enough and you'll wreck on that guard!

 

Several exciting play modes await you! 2, 4, or even 8 human players can test their skills against each other (some modes require a 4 port Atari 5200 SuperSystem). Cooperate with your buddies or just play solo against a skilled CPU opponent! You can even watch the SuperSystem play against itself!

 

Customize your team with extensive options, including left and right-handedness, hairstyle, color choices, and even Norwegian style curling pants. The possibilities are limitless!

 

RealSports Curling features:

  • Selectable game lengths. Play anything from a quick 1-end game to a full 10-end contest!
  • 0, 1, 2, 4, and 8 player modes! (The 8 player mode and some 4 player modes require a 4 port system)
  • True analog control that unlocks the power of your 5200 joystick!
  • Norwegian pants!

END SALES PITCH

 

This is alpha release number 3. I believe this release fixes the last of the collision bugs. I'm now head-down on implementing the CPU player. This is the last remaining feature.

 

This earlier post offers some instructions on how to shoot. If you don't know the rules of curling, you can find those online quite easily.

 

The download includes not just the ROM, but the complete assembly source, if anyone is interested in that.

rs_curling.zip

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Is there a good 5200 emu that would work on a Win7 32-bit PC???

 

I've been waiting for this one for a long time - now I need and working 5200 emu!

Use atari800 win. It has always provided perfect emulation for me. Put it in 5200 mode.

 

Or Altirra!

 

 

To Average Software, it's great for you to support the 5200 with a new unique sports game. Thanks!

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Is there a good 5200 emu that would work on a Win7 32-bit PC???

 

I've been waiting for this one for a long time - now I need and working 5200 emu!

 

I'm a Linux guy, so I can't help you there, but you seem to have some good suggestions from others.

 

I will warn you though, if my embellished "press release" didn't make it clear enough, that this game requires analog control, and some emulators don't handle that very well at all. I have never gotten it working very well in Atari++, which is the one I use for development. Naturally, this made my work extremely difficult, hopefully you'll manage to get it working.

 

To Average Software, it's great for you to support the 5200 with a new unique sports game. Thanks!

 

Much appreciated, this is just a really fun hobby for me, and I already have another game in the planning stages.

 

Thanks so much for expanding the Atari 5200 Realsports line. Will get the word out :)

 

I had to make sure the 5200 had a sports game that the Intellivision didn't.

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You guys are actually going to make me finish this thing, aren't you?

 

I'm planning a second alpha release on Sunday. I've done some work this week fixing a few bugs, in particular I found a nasty mistake in one of the math functions used by the collision code. I'm also starting to get some ideas on how to do the CPU opponent.

 

I'll talk to Albert this weekend about a cartridge release. I'd love to have it in the store, even if I have to write a manual (that part isn't very fun). Of course, I'll need some label artwork. Even if it doesn't make it into the store, the ROM will always be available so folks can have custom carts made if they want.

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That looks like one of those old tourism posters. I feel like I need to book a flight to Montreal now.

 

Ya. Someone needs to do the Atari box art treatment on that hot Russian curler, Anastasia -

 

http://www.inkedmag.com/g/this-olympic-curler-is-a-dead-ringer-for-megan-fox-and-angelina-jolie/2/

 

Sexiest RealSports game in the whole catalog!

 

I am all in on a boxed game (overlays?) if/when the AtariAge store starts selling them.

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Just wanted to post an update:

 

I'm still hard at work on this. Unfortunately, I've discovered a nasty collision bug that I have a lot of trouble reproducing, so it's very difficult to diagnose and fix. It's really bad, sometimes it just locks the game up in some kind of endless collision loop, so this is something that absolutely needs to get fixed.

 

Tonight, my most recent attempt at a fix failed miserably. I have some new ideas though, I'll get this thing eventually. Then I can dedicate myself to coding up the CPU player.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've just posted alpha release number 3, see the first post for the download.

 

I really think I've cleaned up the last of the collision bugs this time. These bugs were very difficult to track down because I couldn't create a reproduction case on my emulator. I just had to play the game on real hardware and make observations and notes on when the issues occurred.

 

I had at least three fixes that I thought would do the trick, but it turns out that each of them held a small piece of the puzzle. What was happening was very interesting.

 

I'm using a real-world physics formula to calculate the deflections from rock collisions. The problem is that the rocks on the screen are approximations of circles, and due to the chunkiness of the 5200's graphics output there were certain situations that looked like collisions, but when you plugged all the values into the formula you got nonsense results back because in reality, a collision couldn't possibly occur under those circumstances.

 

Fortunately, I've only seen this issue come up in one specific collision case, so I engineered a hack to "round off" the collision space to weed out these garbage results.

 

My testing has looked pretty good so far, although there still might be some edge cases I haven't caught.

 

Either way, I'm now moving on to implementing the CPU player, which is the only major feature missing from the game. I'm still not entirely sure how I'm going to do this, but I intend to come up with something, even if it's awful.

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  • 4 weeks later...

OK, time for a new release.

 

I'm calling this beta 1. There are no known bugs remaining, and the game is now feature complete. I've finished implementing the CPU player, so now you can have exciting curling matches against your Atari 5200 SuperSystem!

 

I plan to put this build through some heavy testing over the next couple of weeks, and if it holds up, the is the final code.

 

I can't seem to edit the original post anymore, so here's the beta 1 file right here:

 

 

rs_curling.zip

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OK, time for a new release.

 

I'm calling this beta 1. There are no known bugs remaining, and the game is now feature complete. I've finished implementing the CPU player, so now you can have exciting curling matches against your Atari 5200 SuperSystem!

 

I plan to put this build through some heavy testing over the next couple of weeks, and if it holds up, the is the final code.

 

I can't seem to edit the original post anymore, so here's the beta 1 file right here:

 

 

 

What is screen on the top half for? It seems the stone ends up in the same place up there even though it starts later but moves faster.

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