Zombie Crisis (WIP)

[slacker]

I started learning batari Basic in June and have been playing around with it on my free time when available. Here is my first Atari 2600 work in progress. It's an action/adventure game based around trying to escape a zombie outbreak. The game is currently a 32k ROM but at least half is unused as I went for a larger ROM file so I could include more screens later. The current game only includes the first section of the game.

 

The goal of each area is to get the gas can to fuel the car enough to keep going to the next location.

 

The very rough "story" I have for this game:

You finally took the long road trip up to Cranberry Lake, NY to pay your respects to 
your parents who passed years prior in an accident. You haven't visited their graves 
in many years and the guilt of never having the time to go finally caught up to you. 
While walking to the graveyard, you meet up with an old man who was your parent's 
friend and neighbor. He is happy to see you and lets you know he's going fishing at 
the lake just north of the cemetery and that you should  come seem him after your 
done with your folks to catch up.


While at the grave site you notice that the ground at another grave appears to 
break apart as a hand reaches through the soil....

 

 

Controls:

• Joystick moves
• Button fires (once you find a gun)
• Color/BW switch pauses game
• Left Difficulty in A Position: Lose all items and progress on game over.
• Left Difficulty in B Position: Items and progress is saved on game over. (Until a reset)
• Right Difficulty in A Position: Full Speed Monsters and Full Damage (v02)
• Right Difficulty in B Position: Half Speed Monsters and Half Damage (v02)

 

 

On title screen, button starts the game. On "car" screen, button drives off.

 

 

Tips:

• Colored barriers require keys to unlock them.
• Treat the gun as a machine gun. Hold the button down when firing otherwise some enemies will take forever.
• Boss of area one is vulnerable on the right side.
• The forest is a maze and not all screens will make sense. Don't be surprised if you're turned around there.
• "Thin" ghosts are only easily hit from the the left or right side.

 

Screen shots:

 

 

 

ROM attached to post. Please let me know any issues you may have. I've played it on my 4 switch and 6 switch using the harmony cart and haven't noticed any flickering or issues but if you see anything, please let me know.

 

Thanks!

 

Update 2021-02-10: Added NTSC & PAL60 version of v0.3a

 

zombie_crisis_v01.bin

zombie_crisis_v02.bin

zombie_crisis_v02_PAL60.bin

zombie_crisis_v03a.bin

zombie_crisis_v03a_PAL60.bin

Edited February 10, 2021 by slacker
Adding Updated v03a

[+Karl G]

Great start! It plays well, but is definitely challenging. I wasn't able to find the gun on my attempts, so I wasn't able to progress very far, though.

[KevKelley]

Really cool.

[slacker]

2 hours ago, Karl G said:

Great start! It plays well, but is definitely challenging. I wasn't able to find the gun on my attempts, so I wasn't able to progress very far, though.

Thanks! Good to know about the difficulty. It's hard for me to tell because at this point I've run through the game 1000 times.

 

To get the gun:

Spoiler

It's in the house on the north west corner that's locked by the green key. To get to the beach where the green key is, head north two screens from the graveyard and then east two screens. This beach path will twist it's way to the key. Once you have the key you need to backtrack to the house with the green lock to get the gun.

 

1 hour ago, KevKelley said:

Really cool.

Thanks!

[slacker]

Updated first post in this thread with version 0.2 download. This version uses the right difficulty switches to set monster difficulty. In the A position they will be full speed and full damage. If it's in the B difficulty they will do half damage and move at half speed.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

We'll be checking out Zombie Crisis on tomorrow's (Fri Sep 04) ZeroPage Homebrew stream LIVE on Twitch at 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 7PM GMT! Hope everyone can watch!

 

Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:

• Stratovox 2600 (2020 Exclusive WIP Premiere) by Carlos Centeno (@RaymanC)
• Demo Platformer (2020 WIP) by @Lillapojkenpåön
• Zombie Crisis (2020 WIP) by @slacker
• Headkicker 2.0 (2015) by @Retro Lord
• H.E.R.O. (1984 Activision Patch Challenge) by John Van Ryzin

 

(SET VIDEO TO 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY)

 

Edited September 6, 2020 by ZeroPage Homebrew

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

I couldn't help myself, really fun game! Looking forward to playing it again on the stream tomorrow!

 

- James

[slacker]

Awesome! I feel honored getting a spot on the show! Glad you liked the game so far. I'm unfortunately not going to be able to catch the stream live tomorrow but I'll definitely check it out when it's posted on YouTube. Really interested on hearing your input.

[chewy]

i cant find the gun

[fluxit]

15 hours ago, chewy said:

i cant find the gun

Watch Darcy's play in the ZPH video above.  He finds the gun after a couple of minutes.

[slacker]

Finally caught the ZPH stream on YouTube. Thanks again for playing!

 

This was also answered in the stream but I figured I would post here as well:

• Gun can be used to kill any enemy. Each enemy has it's own health and speed stat. (Speed stat is the probability of moving per frame). Some enemies have much higher health than others. The enemies with a lot more health are reserved for ones that walk a predetermined path.
• Enemies that have detail are zombies (player1). Zombies besides the ones that walk predetermined paths can't walk through walls unless they really wiggle their way through (Had to use a simpler version of the collision detection than the player to save on cycles).
• Enemies that are just the solid blocks that float through walls are ghosts (missile1)
• Anything that's picked up or killed adds to your score (besides health)
  • Kill a zombie: 50
  • Kill a ghost: 100
  • Kill boss: 2500
  • Boss Projectiles: 5 (15 for last one)
  • Pick up weapon: 1000
  • House (green) key: 500
  • Graveyard (orange) key: 1500
  • Gas can: 500

 

Bugs/To-Do:

• Update entrance to green key area to make it more obvious that you can walk off the screen that way.
• Extra lives or full health if lives full at x amount of score interval.
• Fix bug where NUSIZ1 gets reset when player is marked dead. Currently sprite scaling/duplication reverts to 1/normal when player dies. This can be seen at the end of ZPH's stream of the game when they died by walking into the big zombie blocking the forest entrance.
• Some screen layout updates where player can get a little stuck when moving to next screen. (Exiting the green key screen to the right on the lower half of the exit is an example of this)
• Make the difference between doors (at least green door) and ghosts more evident. On ZPH stream they point out that the ghost and the door are exactly the same. Didn't even think of that! Definitely needs to be fixed.
• Start working on puzzle/map for area 2.

 

I'm open to suggestions as well!

Edited September 8, 2020 by slacker

[+Al_Nafuur]

24 minutes ago, slacker said:

 

I'm open to suggestions as well!

A PAL60 colors version?

[slacker]

I'm not too familiar with how PAL60 works. From what I see on Random Terrain's website, I can use a list of consts for the colors to swap them out between NTSC and PAL60 (https://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#colors ). Is it just a palette swap but keeping the same NTSC refresh rate?

 

I gave it a go on the title screen and in Stella the background color looks wrong (but I guess red still works. Text looks correct). Do the colors end up looking correct when viewed on a PAL TV?

 

Attached are a screenshot of the two versions. Green background is regular NTSC and red background is using PAL60 colors.

 

If this seems right to you, I'll go ahead and add a PAL60 version of the v0.2 demo.

Edited September 9, 2020 by slacker

[+Al_Nafuur]

On 9/9/2020 at 6:14 PM, slacker said:

I'm not too familiar with how PAL60 works. From what I see on Random Terrain's website, I can use a list of consts for the colors to swap them out between NTSC and PAL60 (https://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#colors ). Is it just a palette swap but keeping the same NTSC refresh rate?

 

I gave it a go on the title screen and in Stella the background color looks wrong (but I guess red still works. Text looks correct). Do the colors end up looking correct when viewed on a PAL TV?

 

Attached are a screenshot of the two versions. Green background is regular NTSC and red background is using PAL60 colors.

 

If this seems right to you, I'll go ahead and add a PAL60 version of the v0.2 demo.

You can use control + f key on stella to change the TV format to PAL

 

[slacker]

11 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

You can use control + f key on stella to change the TV format to PAL

 

Oh cool! It looks like it works. Thanks! I'll spin up a version of the demo either later today or tomorrow and post it to the thread. 

[slacker]

@Al_Nafuur I added a PAL60 version of v0.2 to the original post.

[slacker]

Added newest version of game to the top post (v0.3a) in both NTSC & PAL60 formats.

 

New changes since last release (not a huge update):

• Fixed dead body color so that dead zombie bodies are now red mush instead of whatever color they were when they were "alive".
• Zombie have "hit" animation when they get hit by a bullet so you know they are getting damaged.
• Zombie and Ghosts both have a small knock back when they get hit by a bullet.
• Reworked door/gate/etc images so that they're more obvious what they are.
• Reworked a small bit of the map so it's easier to find the first item.
• I think that's it?

[MissCommand]

Just finished playing this game, "End Of Area 1"... absolutely loved it... great job. 

 

I was going to ask what the plus signs were.  I found they are used to restore your health.

 

Took me a while to navigate that forest!

 

[slacker]

Awesome! Glad to hear that you enjoyed it!!

 

I started working on Area 2 back in 2021 shortly after the latest release. It's a small outside area with a mansion. Same play style as Area 1 with some key puzzles and a special item from a boss to exit. Unfortunately, I never got around to finishing it. Maybe some day though!

[Snowbound1996]

Hey there! Gave this a bit of a play and it's definitely interesting; I always enjoy zombie games and it must be a challenge to program this on the 2600. I'm really not sure what suggestions would actually be feasible for you to add to the game, but I've thought of a few ideas for the game if you ever want to resume work on it

Add a menu select screen: Would be nice having some extra options like choosing starting lives or other things.

Day & night system: Maybe you could have a day night system wherein different enemies appear at night, or the zombies/ghosts become more powerful at night, but weaker in the day. Aardvark uses a day/night system and it looks gorgeous; something like that would be fitting for a zombie game I feel

Loot drops: Perhaps make it possible for enemies to drop items to get more points? Some extra way of getting points would be neat. 

Anyways, was a fun time trying this game out

[MissCommand]

On 5/28/2023 at 12:54 PM, slacker said:

Awesome! Glad to hear that you enjoyed it!!

 

I started working on Area 2 back in 2021 shortly after the latest release. It's a small outside area with a mansion. Same play style as Area 1 with some key puzzles and a special item from a boss to exit. Unfortunately, I never got around to finishing it. Maybe some day though!

Sounds like Area 2 could be a lot of fun!  Hope you get around to finishing it up sometime. 😃

 

I also like Slackers idea of having dropped items for extra points when you shoot some of the zombies.