Lode Runner™ for Atari 2600

[ZylonBane]

Why only 20 tiles across instead of 28? Surely not just to horizontally fill the screen.

[Dionoid]

6 hours ago, ZylonBane said:

Why only 20 tiles across instead of 28? Surely not just to horizontally fill the screen.

I've considered using 28 tiles across, but that would mean that all tiles had to be 1 playfield-pixel (or 4 player-pixels) wide - assuming all elements (gold, bricks, stairs, runners, etc.) take up a single tile. And that would have really hurt the look & feel of the game, e.g.

• consecutive tiles of gold would look like a big bar
• falling/climbing/trapped player graphics would be limited to 4 pixels wide to not overlap with playfield
• hard to distinguish bricks from solid bedrock floor
• digging animation would have been very limited
• etc.

It would probably have ended up looking a bit like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnk-jgSHwV4

Because I wanted to have better looking graphics, I decided to use the full horizontal width of the screen and make each tile 2 playfield pixels wide.

Interestingly enough, for most of the 150 levels, the adaption from a 28x16 to a 20x15 grid didn't change the gameplay or required a different strategy to solve the level. When the demo rom is released, you can play it and decide for yourself, of course

 

 

Btw, the IBM PC version of the original Lode Runner (released together with the Apple II, C64 and Atari 8-bit versions) used a slightly smaller 26x16 play area, which I don't think many people even noticed.

 

 

[Dionoid]

19 hours ago, m.o.terra kaesi said:

gorgeous! It is a single-player only game, right?

Thanks! Yes it is single-player only. The classic Lode Runner is more of a single-player puzzle solving action game. The modern conversions have some cool levels for two player co-op mode, however.

[Dionoid]

A video showing the gameplay was just posted on AtariAge's YouTube channel:

 

[ZylonBane]

8 hours ago, Dionoid said:

I've considered using 28 tiles across, but that would mean that all tiles had to be 1 playfield-pixel (or 4 player-pixels) wide - assuming all elements (gold, bricks, stairs, runners, etc.) take up a single tile. And that would have really hurt the look & feel of the game

Fair enough. It does make the ladders look a bit massive, but I guess there's no helping that.

[Lauren Tyler]

Some games just never get old.  I had once heard that there was a port of Lode Runner in development for the Atari 2600 but it was canceled (most likely due to the Great Video Game Crash.)

 

I'm tempted to hook up my Atari 800XL just to play this again for a while.

[+Stephen]

Fantastic - even kept the iconic circular sweeps for the level transition!

[TeddyBear89]

This is such great news!  I did appreciate the Colecovision version of Lode Runner from a few years back but was put off by having to use BOTH buttons on the Coleco controller in order to drill left or right as needed.....

 

I can only hope that the drilling feature (left or right) will feel pretty similar to the C-64 version as this will utilize a joystick with one button.

 

Hurry up and get here November!

[+sramirez2008]

Only 50 days left to PRGE! 🙂

[Albert]

8 minutes ago, sramirez2008 said:

Only 50 days left to PRGE! 🙂

No, please stop this.

 

 ..Al

[+groundtrooper]

3 hours ago, Albert said:

No, please stop this.

 

 ..Al

Better start loading that trailer Al!  

[TheDevil'sCompass]

6 hours ago, TeddyBear89 said:

I can only hope that the drilling feature (left or right) will feel pretty similar to the C-64 version as this will utilize a joystick with one button.

No! Please have a two button option. Lode Runner was originally written for the Apple with two buttons in mind. All ports that only had one button were handicapped by the limitation. The arcade ports all have two buttons. Gameplay is so much better with two buttons instead of having to push left or right on the joystick to determine the dig side.

[ZylonBane]

I was thinking that having some visual indication of which monks are carrying gold bars would be a nice enhancement, but after looking at several dozen Lode Runner ports and sequels, it seems only the arcade and Android versions did this. Strange design decision, since knowing who's carrying gold would allow the player to act more strategically.

 

Would also be nice to have some simple background music, since the game itself really only needs one sound channel at a time.

 

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Wow, the 8-Bit version is really ugly.

[carlsson]

14 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Wow, the 8-Bit version is really ugly.

I believe that is an NTSC version that relies on composite video effects, similar to Night Mission pinball and other games. When played on an emulator with the composite video effect turned off, or on real PAL hardware, it will look like this.

 

Besides, the VIC-20 version obviously has 22 columns (though the hardware can be reconfigured to other screen widths) so in that respect at least two of the classic versions didn't have 28 columns.

Edited August 25, 2022 by carlsson

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

59 minutes ago, carlsson said:

I believe that is an NTSC version that relies on composite video effects, similar to Night Mission pinball and other games. When played on an emulator with the composite video effect turned off, or on real PAL hardware, it will look like this.

 

I can confirm this, I bought a Lode Runner 8-bit cart a few months ago and thought it was defective when I played it on my modern TV. It looked just TERRIBLE and seemed to be missing graphic information. It also had something rattling inside of it so I pried it apart to see if it was defective. Turns out nothing was wrong with it and it was just a piece of loose glue rattling inside. I sadly destroyed the cart in the process and then I learned after about the artifacting effect that a number of 8-bit games used.

 

I've since bought another Lode Runner 8-bit cart and will know to play it on a CRT instead. 😉

 

How the game should look when displayed/emulated properly (still not super great looking):

 

 

- James

[carlsson]

For that matter, Atari's re-release for the XEGS in 1987 seems to have enabled (somewhat) colourful graphics on all 8-bit machines, including PAL and high resolution screens. So not all the XEGS releases were straight rehashes, some were reworked from the earlier versions. I believe last time we played it in the A8 HSC, we played that version.

 

Anyway, I'm more of a Boogie Woogi Jungle guy. Very strong inspiration from Lode Runner, but not a 1:1 clone.

 

[Keatah]

Some of those ports aren't even Lode Runner. They may carry the namesake, but the zoomed in levels or (god forbid) 3D levels are just lousy. The whole game changes. Part of the puzzle atmosphere is seeing the whole level at one time.

 

SuperFamicom comes to mind first. There are others.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Keatah

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Wow, the 8-Bit version is really ugly.

Yes it is. The emulation isn't set up correctly. Or, rather, the emulated machine + emulated display is incorrect.

 

1 hour ago, carlsson said:

I believe that is an NTSC version that relies on composite video effects, similar to Night Mission pinball and other games. When played on an emulator with the composite video effect turned off, or on real PAL hardware, it will look like this.

Absolutely.

 

[Keatah]

Atari 400/800 Lode Runner.

   

Edited August 25, 2022 by Keatah

[Dionoid]

On 8/24/2022 at 9:30 PM, TeddyBear89 said:

I can only hope that the drilling feature (left or right) will feel pretty similar to the C-64 version as this will utilize a joystick with one button.

21 hours ago, TheDevil'sCompass said:

No! Please have a two button option. Lode Runner was originally written for the Apple with two buttons in mind. All ports that only had one button were handicapped by the limitation. The arcade ports all have two buttons. Gameplay is so much better with two buttons instead of having to push left or right on the joystick to determine the dig side.

When using a classic one-button joystick, the digging is indeed like the C-64 version, i.e. in the direction you are facing. When a Sega Genesis / Mega Drive gamepad is connected, you dig a hole to the left with the B button and to the right with the C button.

[ZylonBane]

23 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

How the game should look when displayed/emulated properly (still not super great looking):

That's not how it's supposed to look either. Lode Runner was coded for CTIA artifacting, not GTIA artifacting, so the bricks are supposed to be blue.

[imstarryeyed]

Wow that game looks amazing on the 2600, so smooth.

 

Looking forward to being able to buy this beauty.

[durkada]

Very stoked.  Once again, AtariAge has a direct line into my wallet.

If its not too late, I might make this one suggestion...

Have running music/sounds you can toggle on or off.  Something to break the silence.  Kinda like DigDug.

Regardless, one day, it will be on my beloved shelf of Atari homebrew releases.

 

[Dionoid]

9 hours ago, durkada said:

Very stoked.  Once again, AtariAge has a direct line into my wallet.

If its not too late, I might make this one suggestion...

Have running music/sounds you can toggle on or off.  Something to break the silence.  Kinda like DigDug.

Regardless, one day, it will be on my beloved shelf of Atari homebrew releases.

 

Great to hear you're excited about the game! I'm also very much looking forward to its release at PRGE this October, which I'm planning to attend.

 

This port of Lode Runner is a tribute to the original 1983 home-computer release, including similar graphics, sounds, AI and level design, but with modern features like unlockable levels and a timer bonus. It was a conscious choice to stay close to the original/classic version of the game (or at least as close as the 2600's TIA chip allowed me to) and not to add optional background music or extra sound effects for running or climbing the stairs, like for instance the later NES versions had. I actually experimented with adding running/climbing sound effects a few months ago, but found that these continuous sounds quickly became annoying to me, and detracted from the core puzzle-platform gameplay which I love about the original version of Lode Runner.

 

Anyway, I can't wait to share the downloadable demo version in a few weeks, so you can play it yourself and experience this "undecorated" version of Lode Runner on the good old Atari VCS 🙂

 

Edited September 3, 2022 by Dionoid