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Amoeba Jump


Dionoid

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On 6/14/2022 at 10:56 PM, LatchKeyKid said:

I'm curious how much space such a catchy intro (tune and programming) takes up as it's well worth it compared with other additions.

The music data itself is 64 bytes, where each byte contains the notes for both voices combined (voice 0 the lower 4 bits and voice 1 the upper 4 bits).

And the code to play the music is 98 bytes. So that's 162 bytes all together, which means that the intro music uses almost 4% of the total 4K game code.

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  • 10 months later...

Yesterday I got my hands on a real nice Aristona CRT Color Television from the late '70s, which turns out to support PAL 50Hz only. So that means I can't play any of my PAL 60Hz homebrew games on this TV 😐

Because I still want to play Amoeba Jump on this retro TV, I decided to adapt the latest version 1.3 of Amoeba Jump to PAL 50Hz. In case anyone is interested, this version can be downloaded here. Enjoy!

image.thumb.jpeg.865f617dff9c942b34f4863140a50f75.jpeg

 

Edited by Dionoid
updated link
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  • 4 weeks later...

Been playing Amoeba Jump recently and it is a very fun game. It plays great on the 2600 or 7800 and it looks cool on a CRT tv. I was able to manage 12k points last time I played and just thinking about now make me want to play it again. 

 

Thank you Dionoid.

 

I will very likely pick it up again when the rom is sold through the VCS store depending on the price.

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21 hours ago, E. King said:

Been playing Amoeba Jump recently and it is a very fun game. It plays great on the 2600 or 7800 and it looks cool on a CRT tv. I was able to manage 12k points last time I played and just thinking about now make me want to play it again. 

 

Thank you Dionoid.

 

I will very likely pick it up again when the rom is sold through the VCS store depending on the price.

IMO playing on a CRT is still the best, but not everyone has (or wants?) a classic setup at home. Anyway, great to you enjoy one of my games!

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  • 1 month later...
On 5/3/2023 at 1:33 AM, Dionoid said:

Because I still want to play Amoeba Jump on this retro TV, I decided to adapt the latest version 1.3 of Amoeba Jump to PAL 50Hz. In case anyone is interested, this version can be downloaded here. Enjoy!

I just tried turning on again this old B&W 12" CRT (from the mid '80s) that has been sitting in a closet for a few years and only does 50Hz too, and I thought the PAL 50 Amoeba Jump was perfect for this test!

IMG_20230705_180341.thumb.jpg.1501c6509ffba5670699ea43ef86e72a.jpgIMG_20230705_180356.thumb.jpg.96dc25117e8da629ffae23a1f6c11699.jpg

It brings back memories, as when I got my 2600 as a kid, I was rarely allowed to play on the living room color TV, and I mostly played in the kitchen, on a valve B&W set from the '60s, which was already over 20 years old at the time. (I remember that when switched on it only displayed a single bright dot in the middle of the screen, then the image slowly enlarged horizontally and vertically as it warmed up!)

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11 minutes ago, alex_79 said:

It's a TV, from the (now closed) italian "MIVAR" manufacturer. It has 16 presets to store TV channels.😄

https://vintagelectronicsmuseum.blogspot.com/p/il-mivar-12bn4v-e-un-televisore.html

That's very cool, thank you for the additional information!  Pretty wild how that one panel pops out to reveal more controls!

 

 ..Al

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22 minutes ago, Albert said:

Pretty wild how that one panel pops out to reveal more controls!

That's to setup the preset channels that you access with the front big numbered dial: you choose a position on the dial, then the green button sets the band (VHFI-VHFIII-UHF), the two black ones marked "sintonia" are used to scan the frequency, and the red button is to save it.

IMG_20230705_190025.thumb.jpg.65840bac12057e256506423531fb1f53.jpg

Older European TV sets usually had a removable panel with a bank of trimmers and switches, one for each of the presets (like the one in this thread)

Edited by alex_79
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Blasphemy.. Only 16 channels?  :lol:

 

To think how small that is compared to the number of channels we have access to these days.  I remember in Maryland having to use a manual dial to access a station in Baltimore on UHF ( I think) just so I could watch Star Trek.  :lol:

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  • 1 month later...
On 5/26/2023 at 7:19 AM, Dionoid said:

IMO playing on a CRT is still the best, but not everyone has (or wants?) a classic setup at home. Anyway, great to you enjoy one of my games!

Originally purchased Amoeba Jump (and Tower of Rubble) through the VCS store; loved them so much that I also purchased the carts through AtariAge. Thank you so much for making the ROM available, too! Anything I ever had that could be considered a "classic setup" for display is long, long gone though 😅.

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  • 2 months later...

Just wanted to say that I've discovered the world of homebrews two weeks ago or so and this game is soooo great! At the moment this is my favourite Atari 2600 game. I love everything in it - the character, the colors, the title music, and the gameplay of course. Being a software developer myself, I can't believe it's Dionoid's first program for Atari 2600.

 

Thank you Dionoid!

 

I've been playing it for hours on emulator, but I wanted to run it on the real hardware. Today I soldered a custom cart with "community" version (as well as a few other carts) - here is the process and the result:

 

20231021_173212.thumb.jpg.d0bdcb240695ec4bcea110aa690f3071.jpg

20231021_175620.thumb.jpg.e82c97d1fdb164a5109518c17decc12e.jpg20231021_215327.thumb.jpg.be7d37be29c28d20648a780b7f1ff5f9.jpg

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