atari7800 It's Conner time! The final version is here.

[Ecernosoft]

I know this is very off topic (and not even atari related) But we just rescued a brown dog named Astro. He's brown and small, but he's bigger than a malteese dog (Like, imagine the middle between a small white dog and a hound-beagle mix.), so he'll be featured in the game too!

If you collect astro and bring him to the old lady, you'll be awarded 30-50 coins!

[Ecernosoft]

... In version 1.2 at least.

[Ecernosoft]

Tell me what you think about the game. It's my first 7800 game and I want it's sequel, Conner's dream land to look better and sound better. I might even make this free to play (And that would be superior to mobile gaming with those PETSCII ads, get it?)

 

 

[SlidellMan]

I just played it and will say that the music is quite catchy for just TIA. However, each time I get hit or fall into a pit, it does this weird shift to the beginning. You do show a lot of promise when it comes to 6502C assembly and platformers.

[Ecernosoft]

Thanks. Also, yes, I have a POKEY in this game.

[Ecernosoft]

20 hours ago, SlidellMan said:

I just played it and will say that the music is quite catchy for just TIA. However, each time I get hit or fall into a pit, it does this weird shift to the beginning. You do show a lot of promise when it comes to 6502C assembly and platformers.

Yes, I have a POKEY. I'm also writing this for 48KB and POKEY @ 450, so concerto gamers like me can't hear the music. Is there a hardware fix? let me know! 

Is there a software fix? Even better! If so, let me know and please give me a link to the downloads. Thanks!

 

Edit: The shifting issue is because of the way the game scrolls. The issue is the Enemies and the Level generation aren't linked and if the level is generating a column ahead of the enemies, then all the enemies would spawn in one column to the right. But the same is true for the other things like scroll-locks, and in the future, powerups.

The same is also true of the pipes. It works like SMB where instead of each pipe having it's own destination, a "room change" is triggered every N columns, efectivley meaning you could do a scroll trick to scroll the screen some, then enter a pipe and it will go to where the next pipe lead to. This is also based on the screen's position, not the player. So there could be game-breaking problems where a wall is there and a pipe, and because the screen is loading in tiles one column farther to the right than it's intended to, it might not load the transition and therefore softlock the game. The shift helps with those problems, but there can be per-pixel inconsistencies. 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Ecernosoft

[Ecernosoft]

Speaking of In-tune/good TIA music, check out my failed game Beach run. It has only TIA music that while the 2 channels are out of sync, is in tune. It's also made entireley in 320C minus the sidewalks. Here's a download:

320C_test - 2022-08-02T143749.532.a78

[Ecernosoft]

Hilariously, I opened the game in NOTEPAD (The .a78 file) to see what I'd get, and near the bottom, I laughed to see some swear words in the No-pokey RANDOM numbers area. One of 3 lists has some swear words in it. Not sure why or how, but I think that's funny. ?

[+x=usr(1536)]

Out of curiosity, are you testing on actual hardware, in emulation, or both?

[gambler172]

Well...looks ok, but has still lots of bugs. 

Moving back to the left is not possible, when you are stuck. So, if you are in a dead end at the right side of the screen, you must restart.. 

[Ecernosoft]

6 hours ago, gambler172 said:

Well...looks ok, but has still lots of bugs. 

Moving back to the left is not possible, when you are stuck. So, if you are in a dead end at the right side of the screen, you must restart.. 

Could you send me a screenshot? Thanks. 

Also, level 3 isn't beatable because I haven't implemented that yet. Please download 1.31!

Connertime_v1.3 (1).a78

[Ecernosoft]

Actually now 1.32 is out so download that instead. You can download 1.32 on the main post.

[Traxx]

Good job so far

[+x=usr(1536)]

@Ecernosoft:

 

On 8/5/2022 at 7:41 PM, x=usr(1536) said:

Out of curiosity, are you testing on actual hardware, in emulation, or both?

 

Please let us know the environment you're developing in / testing on.  It helps to know what your baseline is, and, given that it's possible to have a number of hardware variations with the 7800 (including multi-cartridges, etc.), to work out which environments may or may not be affected by bugs, crashes, and the like.

[Ecernosoft]

38 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

@Ecernosoft:

 

 

Please let us know the environment you're developing in / testing on.  It helps to know what your baseline is, and, given that it's possible to have a number of hardware variations with the 7800 (including multi-cartridges, etc.), to work out which environments may or may not be affected by bugs, crashes, and the like.

Ok ok! I test using:

JS7800

A7800 (Sometimes)

Mty actual 7800

8bitworkshop (What I develop it on)

[Traxx]

Playing better each build

Edited August 10, 2022 by Traxx

[Traxx]

I know a pixel artist that is looking for a programmer that is creating a scrolling platformer.Interested in working together?

Edited August 10, 2022 by Traxx

[Traxx]

[Ecernosoft]

On 8/10/2022 at 4:00 PM, Traxx said:

I know a pixel artist that is looking for a programmer that is creating a scrolling platformer.Interested in working together?

Sure! I don't mind.

[Ecernosoft]

Is that on C64? I can't help on C64. I'd need to learn that before-hand.

[Ecernosoft]

If it's on 5200, 7800, NES, or 2600 I can help out. Anything else I'll need to learn before hand and if it's not a 6502 based platform then I'll have serious problems.

[Ecernosoft]

ICT will still be ICT. In fact, we can use ICT's story for the game, and also, the characters. (My conner sprite for the player?)

[Ecernosoft]

If he needs it, I have a level decompression routine but am looking to making a much better one, similar to the NES way of doing things.

Using 16K at $4000-$7FFF, have 8K be dedicated to a 256*16 tilemap of 8*16 160B tiles (8*16 achevied by 2 4*16 tiles next to eachother) and decompressing it before the level starts.

[Ecernosoft]

Just realised just how broken 1.4 is, as you can literally hit z and then release z over and over and then achieve massive speeds. I can beat the entire game in like 50 seconds using this glitch. Sorry, no fotage. 

[+x=usr(1536)]

1 hour ago, Ecernosoft said:

you can literally hit z and then release z

What is this equivalent to on actual hardware?

 

This is one reason why I was asking what your test and build environments are.  Not everyone (myself included) is going to know what hit-and-release-z means when they aren't using the same emulators as you are.

 

I'm not being obtuse by asking these questions; I'm genuinely trying to determine whether or not an issue only exists in my test environment or yours.  And, because there's no 'z' key on a physical 7800, there's no way for me (or likely others) to know how to reproduce the issue that you're seeing.