2021 Atari Gamer game jam coming up!

[Ninjabba]

Perfect! I think I have an idea to work on

[Igor]

So since this is a jam, I'm going to kick it off with sharing my idea for the game.

The running title is "Zombie Attack", basically a more simplified Plants vs Zombies game.

What's everyone thinking of making?

 

This is a very early mock up done in GIMP...

 

[retro_fan]

Someone is asking here about a Lynx ASM template for ca65 (with regards to the jam): https://old.reddit.com/r/retrogamedev/comments/qwy6ha/lynxjam_2021_annual_atari_lynx_handheld_game/

[+karri]

6 hours ago, Igor said:

So since this is a jam, I'm going to kick it off with sharing my idea for the game.

The running title is "Zombie Attack", basically a more simplified Plants vs Zombies game.

What's everyone thinking of making?

Bats are scary. I go for Batman!

Here is the 1st screenshot of Batman in action.

[Fadest]

7 hours ago, Igor said:

So since this is a jam, I'm going to kick it off with sharing my idea for the game.

...

What's everyone thinking of making?

 

I'd love to make a game that play in the dark (so no graphisms...)

Still wondering if audio is needed

[Igor]

A game without audio is scary

 

[Fadest]

A game with MY audio is probably too scary for you

[+karri]

Hmm. Batman may be taken.

How about Bathman?

 

Is this a family friendly competition or can i cook a devil?

 

Why the 32k limit when you cannot use the cart or eeprom?

For the next year I suggest to skip memory limits. Just require the entry as a BLL *.o file.

[LordKraken]

Why the 32k limit when you cannot use the cart or eeprom?

 

Well because if you limit the games to 32k, you can easily pack a bunch of them on a single cart

[Fadest]

A 34 or 36k game (or even a 40ko if yo udon't use double buffer, you can use more ram) also fits, as long as all assets are fully integrated into single .o file, it should qualify as guess.

[+karri]

17 minutes ago, Fadest said:

A 34 or 36k game (or even a 40ko if yo udon't use double buffer, you can use more ram) also fits, as long as all assets are fully integrated into single .o file, it should qualify as guess.

I would like my bat turn into a vampire and use animations. So space is sparce.

 

[LordKraken]

7 hours ago, Fadest said:

A 34 or 36k game (or even a 40ko if yo udon't use double buffer, you can use more ram) also fits, as long as all assets are fully integrated into single .o file, it should qualify as guess.

the .o must be 32k, then what you do in ram is up to you I guess

[Igor]

Yep the limit is so we can fit all the games on the one cart, if we knew ahead of time how many entries there would be, it would be more flexible, but that's what we have to work with

 

Edit: Also yes, Batman can't be used as that would violate copyright/trademark and the rules of the jam

 

Edited November 20, 2021 by Igor

[LordKraken]

Nice to see already 8 people willing to participate! Hope we'll see a lot of entries this year again (Me and fadest convinced another french retrodev to join sorry guys, a lot of white flags this year again :D).

Edited November 21, 2021 by LordKraken

[Fadest]

What coul be more scary that a bunch of french coders?

[42bs]

Vive la France ?

[+karri]

3 hours ago, Fadest said:

What coul be more scary that a bunch of french coders?

Reducing the development time to less than 20 hours. French devs are known to wait for the last day and code like crazy.

[solo/ng]

On 11/20/2021 at 12:53 PM, LordKraken said:

 

 

 

Well because if you limit the games to 32k, you can easily pack a bunch of them on a single cart

but ~cant use samples : < would be perfect for this theme.

[42bs]

28 minutes ago, solo/ng said:

but ~cant use samples : < would be perfect for this theme.

You can compress them and play with only 6kHz. Or use byte beat. This produces often really scary noise

[solo/ng]

1 minute ago, 42bs said:

You can compress them and play with only 6kHz. Or use byte beat. This produces often really scary noise

Silent Hill'ish sounds! Hmm. :3

[+karri]

I may try some slow melody with echoes. As I did not get HandyMusic to work yet I go with Chipper.

I wonder how to make fire sounds and howling wind. It is easy to do vocally.

 

After some research in scary music I found French chansons. Too scary for me. So I am currently trying "Les copains d'abord". Sounds like pure torture imho.

 

PS. Pay no attention to the bat. I am still learning to fly.

[therektafire]

Retro_fan, I was the one asking for the ca65 lynx template ? I've been looking around for a couple days since I want to try making a game for the jam and wanted to use ASM but was unsure of which tools I should be using to compile the game and assets etc. I was also hoping there would be some existing templates for stuff like hardware register defines like how the gb/gbc has 

hardware.inc

and there is similar stuff for NES. And a lot of the preexisting tutorials and guides seem to be for C so that isn't terribly helpful in my case either lol. Any help with this stuff would be greatly appreciated

[42bs]

7 hours ago, therektafire said:

Retro_fan, I was the one asking for the ca65 lynx template ? I've been looking around for a couple days since I want to try making a game for the jam and wanted to use ASM but was unsure of which tools I should be using to compile the game and assets etc. I was also hoping there would be some existing templates for stuff like hardware register defines like how the gb/gbc has 

hardware.inc

and there is similar stuff for NES. And a lot of the preexisting tutorials and guides seem to be for C so that isn't terribly helpful in my case either lol. Any help with this stuff would be greatly appreciated

ca65 is the backend for the cc65 and thus not very sophisticated.

Edited November 25, 2021 by 42bs

[+karri]

2 hours ago, 42bs said:

ca65 is the backend for the cc65 and thus not very sophisticated.

True. Also all the libraries are written in asm but to use them you need to use the C-stack.

Your best bet is to use BLL and lyxasm if you want to code in asm.

 

Here is a starting point for entering this competition.

 

ca65template.zip

 

This Makefile will compile all the required  binaries for the competition. game.o, game.lnx and game.lyx

 

In order to write your game in asm I would create a new file like level.s and add level.o to the list of objects. The makefile will compile your asm stuff into the binary.

 

You can also start by coding something in C like:

 

level.c

 

and then you compile it to asm with

 

make level.s

 

If you then delete the level.c and continue developing level.s you have asm.

 

Example:

static void init()
{
    tgi_install(&tgi_static_stddrv);
    joy_install(&joy_static_stddrv);
    tgi_init();
    CLI();
}

compiles to

 

; ---------------------------------------------------------------
; void __near__ init (void)
; ---------------------------------------------------------------

.segment        "CODE"

.proc   _init: near

.segment        "CODE"

;
; tgi_install(&tgi_static_stddrv);
;
        lda     #<(_tgi_static_stddrv)
        ldx     #>(_tgi_static_stddrv)
        jsr     _tgi_install
;
; joy_install(&joy_static_stddrv);
;
        lda     #<(_joy_static_stddrv)
        ldx     #>(_joy_static_stddrv)
        jsr     _joy_install
;
; tgi_init();
;
        jsr     _tgi_init
;
; CLI();
;
        cli
;
; }
;
        rts

.endproc

 

[+karri]

If you want to use sounds also then you need a few more files in your compilation.

lynx-snd.s

soundbs.mac

extzp.inc

 

And of course you need an exported music file with your masterpiece.

Here is my work in progress sounds.

LesCopainsDAboard.s

 

In order to use them from my C-code.

 

extern void lynx_snd_init();
extern void lynx_snd_pause();
extern void lynx_snd_continue();
extern void __fastcall__ lynx_snd_play(unsigned char channel,
                                       unsigned char *music);
extern void lynx_snd_stop();

typedef struct {
        unsigned char *music0;
        unsigned char *music1;
        unsigned char *music2;
        unsigned char *music3;
} song_t;

extern song_t tune1;