Atari 2600 Homebrew - ElectroBall (Complete!)

[+littaum]

Bump - I have posted Beta 6 versions to the original topic.  PAL50/PAL60/NTSC should be fairly well centered and stable on people's systems.  I've also made AI Hard mode on Spring/Summer more challenging with regards to the goalie - if a ball is coming its way from far away it's not going to let it idlely score (but AI Hard is beatable - it just takes patch worthy skill & effort!)

 

Special thanks to Philsan and Bomberman94 for a few iterations of testing of beta 5 on their PAL systems.  The only known issue is on some PAL systems there is white ghosting seen on the title/options screen before the screen is even drawn.

[+somebooks]

I love this game.

[+littaum]

On 8/24/2021 at 4:18 PM, somebooks said:

I love this game.

 

Thanks for the kind words! 

 

In other updates, I was perusing old development threads in this forum when I came across SpiceWare's post on analyzing the 2600 Battlezone cartridge in Stella, where I discovered the use of the "trapwrite" command.  I was able to use that to analyze my own game, and discovered that I had an extra VSYNC for the Title/Options screen, which caused some strange ghosting on some machines.  I was also able to use trapwrite VSYNC/trapwrite VBLANK to make a consistent VSYNC/VBLANK/Draw/Overscan down to the scanline across my various screens.  I updated the first post with the latest beta build, which I figure to be the last WIP beta build unless someone finds a bug in the next few weeks (and if you do, please let me know!).  Once it is done I'll post a "Completed V1.0" build.

[+Philsan]

Tested new versions and they work on real PAL hardware.

I won Spring with medium and Adapt AI.

[+littaum]

19 hours ago, Philsan said:

Tested new versions and they work on real PAL hardware.

I won Spring with medium and Adapt AI.

 

Nice!  Hopefully I have the gist of what constitutes a stable Atari 2600 display now.

 

For the maximum challenge, play on the "AI Hard" setting with your difficulty switch set to "A" and the AI's set to "B".

[+littaum]

Bump.  No more bugs have been discovered in 2 weeks, so I am marking this as complete.  Updated final public V1.0 ROMs are posted on the main page.  Thanks to all for your testing and feedback!  It's been a fun experience, and I'm glad the only struggles I had to deal with in developing an Atari 2600 game was with the console itself, rather than what commercial developers had to deal with back in the day with Christmas deadlines or pressures from management on cartridge memory sizes or other constraints.

 

[+bhall408]

ElectroBall is now available in Argon for play on Android/Chromebook and rocks in >> stereo <<. Thanks @littaum!

 

 

 

[Voxel]

Thanks for coding this great game.  I hope it reaches a wide audience.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

ZeroPage Homebrew is playing ElectroBall on tomorrow's (Fri Sep 17, 2021) stream LIVE on Twitch at 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 7PM GMT!

 

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

 

Games:

• Space Pac-Man (2021 Exclusive WIP Update) by Ricardo Pim @Ricardo Pim
• ElectroBall (2021 Final Updated Binary) by Mike Littau @littaum

(WATCH IN 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY)

 

[+littaum]

I'm honored that ElectroBall was nominated for 2 categories in the 4th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards:  Atari 2600 Best Homebrew (Original) and Atari 2600 Best Music & Sound (Original)!

 

I would encourage everyone to check out all of the great Atari home brews nominated this year, and then celebrate this wonderful community by voting in this years awards by going here:  4th Annual Homebrew Awards    

 

There were a tremendous number of amazing Atari 2600 home brews completed and worked on in 2021, and you can see (and play!) many of them as found in the 2021 2600 Completed/WIP List

 

Be sure to catch the 4th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards on ZPH on February 12, 2022 at 12 PM PT | 3 PM ET | 8PM GMT on Twitch!

 

Special thanks to the many talented developers in this thread for the "Have you played Atari today?" jingle and splash screen inspiration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 22, 2022 by littaum
Added link to "Have you played Atari today?" thread

[Albert]

ElecroBall will be making its debut in physical form at this year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo!  Here's a first look at the box, created by Vladimir Zúñiga!

ElectroBall will be available in the AtariAge Store in November after the show.

 

 ..Al

[+littaum]

To follow up on my last post from 18 months ago - thanks to all who voted for ElectroBall in the 4th annual ZeroPage Homebrew awards.  It was an honor just to be nominated.  And, it was an honor to have that year's winner for original game (Vladimir Zuñiga for Game of the Bear), design the box art for the physical release of ElectroBall!

 

As a catch up to the game's further development, in early 2022 I was reading Howard Scott Warshaw's "Once Upon Atari" book and was inspired by the section where he described what improvements he would make to E.T. had he more time.  My game was not in a physical form, so why not continue to work on it?  I was also working on other 2600 projects (one of which became Berry Fun!) and had successfully taught myself how to reposition objects (sprites/missiles/ball) during screen display.  The version 1.0 release had a single positioning for the 2 sprites, 2 missiles and the ball for a given frame.  But with being able to reposition sprites, I was able to create an easier to read game clock using 2 sprites and a missile at the top, then reposition the sprites & missile for the rest of the display.  The AtariAge release will have the following improvements (all mostly improvements to usability and polish):

 

1. Game clock instead of "time bar".  

2. Title and options screen has been consolidated into a single screen.

3. Small bug fixes (Player 1 was always getting the ball first on the first game played, difficulty switch settings in options menu would not properly cycle through all options in both joystick directions, optimized code in vertical blank to prevent a screen roll in some instances)

4. New game lengths of 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes.

5. For games where at least 1 human is playing, after each goal a "press fire" prompt will be displayed before each ball deployment (handy for those 60 minute games where you need a break!)

6. If a player reaches 99 goals, a "mercy rule" is applied and the game instantly ends.

7. When a player scores a goal or wins the game, their color will be "strobed" as an extra embellishment.

8. If a player holds onto the ball for 10 straight seconds while the clock is running, the ball will auto-fire (this is an "anti-cheesing" rule)

9. New AtariAge-centric splash screen (taken from this thread) - modified to work in color and black and white!

10.Player 1 A.I. has been rebalanced against Player 2 A.I. to make games more competitive for the same skill level.

11.Difficulty switches can be overridden by software options on the options screen for an even more "Couch Compliant" experience.

12.If you defeat A.I. hard as a human on a match 10 minutes or longer in length, you'll get a special on-screen acknowledgement at the end of the game (IE-the "achievement").

 

A few screenshots showing some of the changes:

 

AtariAge Splash screen:

 

Title+Options screen:

 

Game play showing clock:

 

"Press fire" graphic after goal (only when 1+ humans are playing, AI vs AI will play straight through as before).  The graphic changes between "Press Fire" and the player sprites at this time.

 

Here is some video of game play from last year's PRGE where ElectroBall was one of the demo games at the AtariAge booth.  This shows the "celebratory color strobing" after scoring the goal while the Portland convention center blasted Ratt's "Round and Round" in the background.

 

 

 

[djmips]

First off, tremendous game. Very fun and it's such a treat to even have an AI! 

My small thoughts.
Even though the Press Fire is a nice UX improvement, I don't like how it breaks the immersion, I know they are just sprites but I believe you should treat your on screen players with more care and not interchange them with letters but respect their 'life' as the player's avatar. In a similar vein when the game is complete I think it would be good to take control of the players and move them to the celebration position instead of the jump cut. I know, some tiny game feel suggestions... But maybe you can ponder on them. 

 

Thanks for taking the time to learn all you have and climbed that hill to ascent a very tough little system to master! Great work! 
 

[+littaum]

On 8/14/2023 at 12:05 AM, djmips said:

First off, tremendous game. Very fun and it's such a treat to even have an AI! 

My small thoughts.
Even though the Press Fire is a nice UX improvement, I don't like how it breaks the immersion, I know they are just sprites but I believe you should treat your on screen players with more care and not interchange them with letters but respect their 'life' as the player's avatar. In a similar vein when the game is complete I think it would be good to take control of the players and move them to the celebration position instead of the jump cut. I know, some tiny game feel suggestions... But maybe you can ponder on them. 

 

Thanks for taking the time to learn all you have and climbed that hill to ascent a very tough little system to master! Great work! 
 

 

Thanks for the feedback!  I could see how removing the player graphics entirely while waiting to start could break the immersion.  But I do want to have something to indicate what the player should do next, so that they don't think the game froze up (I'm assuming that people won't bother to read the manual.  )  It's pretty straightforward for me to have the "Press Fire" appear above the players so that they are always shown.  The released version of the game will have something similar to the following blink at a reasonable pace.  To me this is similar to how sports games on TV have statistics/words/graphics overlaid on top of the action.  Or the "Press "F" to pay respects" type of graphics in regular games.

        

 

Showing the players actually move back to the center is a neat idea.  Due to the momentum based movement I'm not sure I could get them to move to their locations without them wigging out and making it look weird.  And removing the momentum part might also break the immersion.  And I also don't want people to not have control of their player for too long.  To me, the "jump cuts" to me are similar to game action resuming after crown shots or commercials or things of that nature.  

[BIGHMW]

Kind of an overhead perspective-based version of the 5200/A8 classic from Lucasfilm, Ballblazer. I'm gonna enjoy playing this once I get my 2600 Jr. fixed.

 

Everything looks great on her

[+littaum]

ElectroBall was one of two Atari 2600 games that I made (the other being Berry Fun!) that had its physical release premiere at PRGE 2023.  Presentation of the game (and all games at the AtariAge booth!) was top notch, and the cover art and manual by @vhzc was even more impressive in person.  The hanging posters of each game were very nice as well.   I did a quick check of the manual to make sure all of the final edits were there (they were), and did a final check of the gameplay to make sure the latest binary I provided to Al was used to fix a last minute bug (latest was used) so that I could fully enjoy the show.   It was interesting watching people play the game.  For a lot of the games, people could come up, play for a bit, then set the controller down.  I think I got a few extra people to play thanks to the "Press Fire" animation, calling to them to pick up the joystick and play.

 

      

 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

ZeroPage Homebrew presents...

 

Sun Dec 17, 2023 @ 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 8PM GMT
WATCH LIVE: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/

 

On Sunday December 17, 2023 ZeroPage Homebrew will be interviewing the developers of every single new physical release coming to the AtariAge store! Join us LIVE on Twitch while we unbox all the new Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar and Lynx games and talk with the incredibly talented Atari community members about their games! Get your questions ready for the devs and following along in the Twitch chat as we pop in each of the 22 new releases into our Atari consoles!

 

NEW GAME RELEASES

 

Atari 2600: Berry Fun!, Bot&Tom, Caramujo, ElectroBall, Game of the Bear 2 Much To Bear, Immunity!, Penult, Quantum Tunnel, Robot Zed

Atari 5200: Scorch

Atari 7800: A.R.T.I., Death Merchant, E.X.O., Harpy's Curse, Millie and Molly, Oozy the Goo - Gaiden, Plumb Luck DX

Atari Jaguar: Defender of the Crown, Novagen Volume 1, Rocket Ranger
Atari Lynx: Growing Ties Deluxe, Odynexus

[AW127]

I just discovered this game today and really like it. 👍 Especially, because you have different setting-options in the menue, to customize the game to your liking a bit. My favorite is the "fall" playmode, with the moving goals. This choosable game-season "fall", also reminded me a bit of the C-64 game "Hypa-Ball", which I have also enjoyed playing from time to time, since I was a child.