Making an atari 800 game: how to start exactly?

[Beeblebrox]

Sage words from a master. ?Thanks @shanti77 for your amazing games and for continuing to push the A8 in all aspects. 

[rdefabri]

On 7/21/2022 at 12:50 PM, TGB1718 said:

Best thing to do in small doses (as you say you don't have a great deal of time at the moment)

is to get to know the machine, what the hardware does, how to manipulate it, these little amazing

machines can be made to do great things, the more you know about the chips and how to get the most

out of them, the easier things become.

 

When I first started back in the 80's I decided I wanted to write a fruit machine program in BASIC.

I soon learnt BASIC is far too slow for the "action" bit's i.e. spinning reels etc. so I learnt assembler

and incorporated it into the BASIC program.

 

I ended up having a custom character set, Player/Missiles, custom display lists, Vertical blank interrupt

routines. I never envisaged most of that at the outset.

 

Best of all it was great fun ?

I did make some "games" and/or "demos" back in the day.  One was a primitive soundboard called the "Fart Chart", where you could select different types of passed gas, and it would have an animation (with sound effects) of a guy passing gas.  It was stupid, but fun.  I did some preliminary work on a Smurf type game, I had a P/M character (like a smiley face) that would bounce on screen with some background, but nothing more.

 

We're talking over 30 years ago, I've long forgotten how to do much of it.  I think my ideas outstrip my abilities, so I need to think more simplistic.  I have an idea in mind, I think it's something I could (possibly) do.  I need to plan and learn, then I'll give it a go.

Edited July 28, 2022 by rdefabri

[zzip]

18 hours ago, rdefabri said:

I did make some "games" and/or "demos" back in the day.  One was a primitive soundboard called the "Fart Chart", where you could select different types of passed gas, and it would have an animation (with sound effects) of a guy passing gas.  It was stupid, but fun.  I did some preliminary work on a Smurf type game, I had a P/M character (like a smiley face) that would bounce on screen with some background, but nothing more.

 

We're talking over 30 years ago, I've long forgotten how to do much of it.  I think my ideas outstrip my abilities, so I need to think more simplistic.  I have an idea in mind, I think it's something I could (possibly) do.  I need to plan and learn, then I'll give it a go.

I wrote or started so many games back then.    I had maze games, a text adventure parser, a tile-based RPG,  a lawn-mowing game, some adventures, A Xevious-like top down bomber, black-jack, slot machine sim, a tetris game.    

 

I'd like to get back into it, but nowadays I find it hard to get the motivation to come up with an idea worth doing and sticking with it until the end.   

[atarilux]

Lst year I started playing around with writng simple game-like tests on the A8. I never quite got into it when I was a kid... Anyway for I found starting with FastBasic really good as it helped me understand the core components e.g. play missile graphics and DLIs. It is a really good starting tool, but as things progress you will hit speed limitations. I recently moved to trying CC65, I cannot give an honest answer of that yet, but so far it seems fast enough... We will see as it gets more complex.

[TGB1718]

On 8/25/2022 at 9:06 PM, atarilux said:

I recently moved to trying CC65, I cannot give an honest answer of that yet, but so far it seems fast enough... We will see as it gets more complex.

One of the nice things about cc65 is that it's very easy to incorporate assembler routines into your code and passing

variable values between both is also very easy.

[danwinslow]

On 7/28/2022 at 4:15 PM, rdefabri said:

I did make some "games" and/or "demos" back in the day.  One was a primitive soundboard called the "Fart Chart", where you could select different types of passed gas, and it would have an animation (with sound effects) of a guy passing gas.  It was stupid, but fun.  I did some preliminary work on a Smurf type game, I had a P/M character (like a smiley face) that would bounce on screen with some background, but nothing more.

 

We're talking over 30 years ago, I've long forgotten how to do much of it.  I think my ideas outstrip my abilities, so I need to think more simplistic.  I have an idea in mind, I think it's something I could (possibly) do.  I need to plan and learn, then I'll give it a go.

I made a similar game called 'Sprack-man'. The hero could emit a small but powerful cloud of greenish pixels.

[atarilux]

On 8/27/2022 at 5:14 PM, TGB1718 said:

One of the nice things about cc65 is that it's very easy to incorporate assembler routines into your code and passing

variable values between both is also very easy.

yes, that is something I will look at later, so far the speed seems ok. But I have yet to do anything really complex, so I can only assume that will change. With FastBasic it really started to slow down once there were many NPCs moving around (those not using PMG routines), by many I mean a handful. But that may also be down to being new (again) to Atari programming.

Edited August 30, 2022 by atarilux