My first game - Einväder

[Coopdevil]

It may not be a good game, but it is a game, and it is a completed game :)

 

This is my first effort with bAtari, written in two nights while learning the language. It's a clone of/inspired by Darren Foulds' C64 game 1vader which was his first attempt at a game in assembly and documented in this video - https://youtu.be/SJ81YD9Ebec

 

I thought this was a neat idea for a first attempt since it would easily fit into the two sprites/two missiles/one ball limitations.

 

Einväder in action.

 

https://youtu.be/PWcYlXABFzA

 

The Qatsopian Attack Gliders are in their final approach path to their LZs on your home planet and they breed at such a prodigious rate that should just one land on terra firma it will all be over for your civilization. Sadly Qatsopian fifth columnists have sabotaged the controls of your tracked lazer(*) base...

 

So it's a one button controlled game. The fire button fires an anti-Qatsopian warhead and inverts the direction of travel of your lazer base. The lazer base bounces at the edges of the playfield.

 

Once the invader gets to about 60% of the way down the screen it doubles its speed and the playfield turns orange to alert you to this. Once it reaches the final two rows it turns red and hits treble speed. After defeating 5 Qatsopians all newly spawned ones start at double speed.

 

Press start (or F2 for Stella users like myself) to start and to return to the title screen after the game over message.

 

There are five different game modes selectable by SELECT

 

1 - Standard Einväder

2 - Long bullets (probably easier)

3 - Tiny bullets (probably harder)

4 - All invaders start at double speed

5 - HELL MODE!! All invaders move at treble speed all the time.

 

Once I'd got my head around bAtari I found this really pleasingly simple to create (it may show...). I found it interesting how a initial working idea that seemed to be the worst game in the world started to become almost enjoyable after a process of tuning and tweaking the speed and the difficulty curve.

 

I have only tried this under Stella, and believe it is NTSC.

 

(*) Obsolete and incorrect US spelling adopted for maximum late 70s/early 80s feel..

 

 

Einvader.bin Einvader.bas

[Cebus Capucinis]

Speaking as someone who can't even code a "HELLO WORLD" I'm ecstatic that there's more people coding homebrew! Keep up the efforts!

[Erik Zimmermann]

The game is beautiful. The enemy could also shoot. You could copy the enemy with NUSIZ0 or NUSIZ1.

[Coopdevil]

The Blaze handheld might be a fairly dreadful piece of kit but at least it plays mobile Einväder!

[doug0909]

Great work, it's a fun challenge. If you make it so this game can be started with the fire button, I'll be able to play it on my smart watch along with other 2600 one button games...