Killer Bees!

[+atari2600land]

I worked a little with it. I am wondering why not just use the same code you did with the bees with missile 0 the same as missile 1.

I also got rid of the little "dance" the beebot does when he's trapped in a corner.

Thank you so much splendidnut for the work thus far.

 

killerbees8.zip

[+atari2600land]

I can't make Missile 0 a different color than Player 0, can I?

 

[+splendidnut]

Sadly not.... Missile 0 uses/shares the color of Player 0... and Missile 1 uses/shares the color of Player 1.

[+splendidnut]

By the way, here's a different take on the side boxes... using a slightly different display kernel that has a few more cycles available.  And I think that gives enough cycles to add in the other missile (or ball) if you have a use for it.

 

Slight bug though, the Arena is slightly bigger and I didn't change bounds checking for the beebot/bees, so they don't quite hit the full arena.

killerbees9.asm

[+atari2600land]

I have been working on this independently this morning. I got it so the Beebot slows down when the swarm touches him. I also changed the swarm that was a missile into the ball. This means that the swarm can change colors, but so will the walls.

 

planned stuff to add:

The yellow number will be how many swarms you have left. When it reaches 0, the game ends. You'll start with 9. You'll lose swarms when the colored bees attack your bees.

I want to have the different colored bees with different movements like the Odyssey 2 version.

killerbees9a.zip

[+atari2600land]

I have to give up on this project. I can't get the scan line constant. If anyone else wants to do this project I'm putting the code here. Until then, I can't take it any more. I'm so angry.

 

killerbees10.asm

[+splendidnut]

Alright... I spent quite a bit of time and merged the two codebases together (my killerbees9.asm with killerbees10.asm).  I had to fudge around with things for quite a while, but I managed to get a rock-solid 262 scanline count.  I fiddled around with the RIOT timers and made sure EVERYTHING was wrapped: vsync+vblank, overscan period AND the display kernel. 

 

I removed all the old overscan tweaking code (OverscanValue) and the old display kernel counter (ScreenDrawing).  I moved the "wait for overscan" into the beginning of the VerticalSync routine so that code can be executed in the overscan region.  I also wrapped the display kernel in a timer just to be safe.

 

I kept the bigger side boxes with the technique to "hide" the HMOVE bars and I also changed the top one to match better.   Also did some code cleanup (rearranged somethings).

 

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

Enjoy!

killerbees10_pb.asm killerbees10_pb.bin

[+atari2600land]

Wow. How in the world were you able to do that? I played around with that code for a few HOURS and couldn't get a stable count. Two things that would really help when testing the game in Stella are:

• Actual jittering of the screen like when you play a game on a real 2600, and
• Alert the user when the scanline doesn't reach 262 (or any desired number).

I altered the code (just took out 2 lines of it), I was wondering why there was no different beep for when the player gets a point, so I added that back in. So the way things stand now are:

Beebot is player 0, your bees are player 1, and the enemy bees are the ball. What I am planning to do is have the RoSha beam be missile 1 and vertical instead of horizontal, because that would make things easier for me to do.

Thank you so much.

killerbees12.zip

[+stephena]

2 hours ago, atari2600land said:

Two things that would really help when testing the game in Stella are:

• Actual jittering of the screen like when you play a game on a real 2600, and
• Alert the user when the scanline doesn't reach 262 (or any desired number).

For the first one, have you tried enabling 'TV Jitter' effects?

 

For the second, this could be a good enhancement suggestion.  I will create a Github issue for it.

[+atari2600land]

Let's get the enemy bees moving.

 

Other stuff fixed/changed:

• Got rid of the topmost beginning spot. I wasn't going to use it, so I just got rid of it.
• Made it so the Beebot automatically moves when a new one gets on the screen like he's supposed to and doesn't just stand there in the middle of the field like an idiot.
• When you press reset the current score is still there. Only when you press fire to start a new game does it go back to 0000.

I tried TV jitter effects. It works good. Now I will test it on a real Atari 2600.

killerbees13.zip

[+stephena]

Just created an issue on Github for detecting the final scanline count in the last frame (https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/issues/624).  With this, you could have the debugger do a break if the last scanline count doesn't reach some desired number.

[+atari2600land]

So do I need to do something? I don't have GitHub.

[+stephena]

1 hour ago, atari2600land said:

So do I need to do something? I don't have GitHub.

No, I already created the issue, and now the other Stella developers can see it.  All you have to do it wait until the next version of Stella, where we will have implemented that feature

[MLdB]

3 hours ago, stephena said:

Just created an issue on Github for detecting the final scanline count in the last frame (https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/issues/624).  With this, you could have the debugger do a break if the last scanline count doesn't reach some desired number.

Thanks! Was literally just going to ask about the possibility of this exact feature when I saw your name under this thread and got curious. Would be an amazing feature!

Edited May 2, 2020 by MLdB

[+atari2600land]

Time for different types of bees.

I'm going by what the manual says for game development.

The longer a swarm of Killer Bees remains on the screen, the more dangerous it becomes. They come out of the tunnel as Green Meanies and start exploring the screen. After a short time they advance to the Blue Bodyguard stage and protectively hover over the Beebots. The final and most dangerous phase of their evolution is the Red Devil stage. Red Devils will aggressively attack your swarm and become faster as the game progresses.

So that's what I did here. They start out as green, then move to blue and hover over the Beebots. And then they turn into the red Devils. But since there's no RoSha Ray yet, they'll stay red until you reset the game. But there's still no way to die yet.

 

killerbees14.zip

[Skwrl63]

Awesome, I hope this will "bee" available on cartridge sometime.

[+atari2600land]

You can die now. I also experimented a little with the RoSha Ray. I'm trying to make the game not easy, so I'm wondering if I even need it since there's only one enemy swarm of bees. You can press fire to activate it, but it doesn't do anything at this point.

killerbees15.zip

[KevKelley]

Will you use multiple sprites with flicker or just a single, simplified version? One thing that always stood out to me about the O2 was the simplistic but solid colors.

[+atari2600land]

No flickering, I don't know how to do that (that, and I don't like it. It makes games look tacky). I think I'll just go with what I have.

[+atari2600land]

OK, here is everything in the game: RoSHa Rays work, you can die, the works. I'd like feedback on what I should do next because I have 1,377 bytes left to play with. I know I said I'd do it tomorrow, but I got bored.

killerbees16.zip

[+splendidnut]

I fiddled around with the enemy swarm... You can make the enemy bee swarm a bit bigger if you replace beesAsMissile with the following:

 

beesAsMissile:
    .byte $00,
    .byte $00,$22,$D2,$32
    .byte $00,$E2,$32,$D2
    .byte $00,$22,$D2,$32
    .byte $00,$E2,$32,$D2
    .byte $00,$00		

 

[+atari2600land]

Changes:

• You now start with 5 swarms. I find it easier to lose a life than in previous versions. When you reach 0 swarms, the game ends.
• Beebot starts out blue, then turns red if he's being stung by your bees.
• Made the enemy bee swarm a little bigger with splendidnut's suggestion.

Let me know what you think.

 

killerbees17.zip