Millie and Molly (Atari 7800)

[+mksmith]

1 minute ago, CPUWIZ said:

Thanks, I just want to make sure to see where the problem is, currently it goes black after the Atari boot logo.  Probably a bug in my PLD code.  If I could test it without the extra RAM, like Sirius & Plutos, it would eliminate RAM from being a problem booting.

It's probably the splashscreen tune being copied into that ram.  I'll PM you ?

[+mksmith]

Hey everyone,

 

A 20 level demo is now available for a short time which can be played using the wonderful JS7800 by @raz0red.  You will find a link at the top of the first post or in my signature - enjoy ?

[Jinks]

Played the demo. Very cool. Only one funny sound in the song when playing and happy to hear zero squealing , level complete etc all sound good. Rewind works flawless and is amazing... I wish all games had that.. 

[+mksmith]

Thanks @Jinks for trying out the demo - the rewind is such a great feature and really happy we could get it working just right (and a surprising small amount of code too). Yeah still a little kink in there - will be fixed for the release for sure. The JS7800 emulator plays that tune closer to real hardware.

 

Anyone notice the new rewind sound effect ? A nice suggestion from the @ZeroPage Homebrew show on Sunday.

[Jinks]

If anyway you could make sound effects... please please!!! 

 

Also this sound scrutiny should not discount Synths amazing work. 

[Gray Defender]

Great game. I love puzzler games and this one is well done!

 

[+mksmith]

3 hours ago, Jinks said:

If anyway you could make sound effects... please please!!! 

 

Also this sound scrutiny should not discount Synths amazing work. 

No problem about the sounds - great people such as yourself are interested enough to want to see it as good as possible!  Adding additional sound effects now that the rewind is in might be a consideration so we'll see ?

2 hours ago, Gray Defender said:

Great game. I love puzzler games and this one is well done!

 

Thank you! We are very proud of how well it's come together and it really shows off what the 7800 can be capable of.  Of course true credit goes to Carleton and his team for devising such an enjoyable game. 

[+mksmith]

Hey everyone,

 

Updated the demo build with a couple of changes:

• Fixed an issue where very occasionally a monster would appear randomly during rewind
• Added a check to exit the rewind process once you reach the start of the buffer (easier to tell when back to the start of the level)
• Updated the TIA sounds to stereo which improves the rewind sound effect a little
• Expanded the size of the rewind buffer and added an EOB check
• Removed the controller selector as it was not required
• Some internal changes

[gambler172]

Hi Mk

looks great ? ...also bought the C64 version.

The password and rewind option is simply great.

Edited May 29, 2020 by gambler172

[+mksmith]

10 hours ago, gambler172 said:

Hi Mk

looks great ? ...also bought the C64 version.

The password and rewind option is simply great.

Thanks Walter - I'm sure the guys will appreciate your support ?

[phattyboombatty]

This game is quite an amazing feat, and I hope it works wonderfully for anyone using real Atari 7800 hardware! Millie & Molly has great POKEY music, terrific pixel art, and fun puzzler action. Thank you @mksmith for providing the demo!

Edited May 30, 2020 by phattyboombatty

[+mksmith]

Thanks for your very kinds words @phattyboombatty  Very glad you are enjoying the demo!

 

[Tigerduck]

On 5/17/2020 at 12:31 PM, gambler172 said:

one cart for me ?

I think he should take 2, because the other one is for me...?

Nice game, with good graphics and very playable. Not as frustrating as Rikki and Vikki (nevertheless also a pretty good game).

With good sound effects and background music it will become really a "10"...

Edited May 31, 2020 by Tigerduck

[gambler172]

6 hours ago, Tigerduck said:

I think he should take 2, because the other one is for me...?

Nice game, with good graphics and very playable. Not as frustrating as Rikki and Vikki (nevertheless also a pretty good game).

With good sound effects and background music it will become really a "10"...

Hi Stefan

will order one for you too,when it is ready

[Tigerduck]

3 hours ago, gambler172 said:

Hi Stefan

will order one for you too,when it is ready

?

[+mksmith]

10 hours ago, Tigerduck said:

I think he should take 2, because the other one is for me...?

Nice game, with good graphics and very playable. Not as frustrating as Rikki and Vikki (nevertheless also a pretty good game).

With good sound effects and background music it will become really a "10"...

Thank you for trying out the game. There is potential to add sound effects which would be a change from the 64 version. Something to consider but would depend on available bank space.

[Shawn]

23 minutes ago, mksmith said:

Thank you for trying out the game. There is potential to add sound effects which would be a change from the 64 version. Something to consider but would depend on available bank space.

 

I played the first few levels and it's fun. A found a couple of the sounds are ear piercingly distracting and take away from the enjoyment of the game. Only a few specific really high notes that seem out of place are like this,  the rest of the sound is pretty good.

[+mksmith]

30 minutes ago, Shawn said:

 

I played the first few levels and it's fun. A found a couple of the sounds are ear piercingly distracting and take away from the enjoyment of the game. Only a few specific really high notes that seem out of place are like this,  the rest of the sound is pretty good.

Thank you for your feedback - we are still reviewing the music for a final release ?

[Tigerduck]

Oops, missed that there are already music and sound effects in the demo version for the JS7800...

 

Before I downloaded the ZIP-file and tested it on the real hardware. There was no sound at all (except "rewind").

 

Think it needs only a little polish, and then it complete the game really nice.

[+mksmith]

12 hours ago, Tigerduck said:

Oops, missed that there are already music and sound effects in the demo version for the JS7800...

 

Before I downloaded the ZIP-file and tested it on the real hardware. There was no sound at all (except "rewind").

 

Think it needs only a little polish, and then it complete the game really nice.

The rewind sound effect uses the TIA whilst the rest of the music uses the Pokey and we will be polishing that over up the next few months ?

[zapiy]

Great job guys, as a co-owner of Bitmap Soft where we published the C64 version of this with Carleton. Really excited to see this development, well done guys.

[+mksmith]

16 hours ago, zapiy said:

Great job guys, as a co-owner of Bitmap Soft where we published the C64 version of this with Carleton. Really excited to see this development, well done guys.

Thank you very much! We feel very privileged that Carleton and the team have blessed our conversion of this wonderful game for the 7800.

 

Well done to you also for supporting the c64 release in the very traditional formats that retro lovers really enjoy.

[+mksmith]

Just a small update to the status of Millie and Molly. 

 

We have made a small change to enable the playback of pokey music on PAL machines to match the speed of an NTSC machine. Thanks to @RevEng for helping to identify how we could do this so we can now move forward with a release usable for both NTSC and PAL users (palettes were already sorted).  As the music is very important to the game having slower playback would have been extremely disappointing as a PAL user myself.

 

I've also added a couple of little easter eggs and animations! I'll leave that to someone to find once we release ?

 

Also Mike has updated 7800basic with some changes around calculating rom bank usage. This shows just how close we came to not fitting in the rewind feature (banks 2 and 3) without some serious rework ?

[+mksmith]

Hi everyone,

 

Been a while since we've had an update on Millie and Molly. Sythpopalooza (and RevEng) have been working their programming magic on the pokey playback and everything is now sounding incredible. Bobby has also been reviewing/finalising each of the tunes for release so we've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to get this coded up and real hardware recorded (thanks Trebor!). Here are some sample recordings:

Theme 3 20200829.mp3Theme 2 20200829.mp3Title 20200829.mp3

 

As for the game itself, I made some updates to the monster rendering process (split it over 2 frames) and along with some recent changes Mike made around sprite rendering in 7800basic have really contributed to making the game run beautifully on all levels (some of the later levels have a lot of monsters to process!).

 

Once the music is finalised we'll begin the final round of testing ready for hand-over to Albert. 

 

[+mksmith]

Hey everyone,

 

Synthpopalooza has completed his review of the pokey music (thanks Trebor for your real hardware recordings!) and the game is now code complete! We can now push into final testing for hand-over to Albert.

 

Just want to again publicly thank the team for all their commitment, hard work, suggestions and support in bringing Millie and Molly to this point ???