Aquarius: Word Chaser, new game on the works!

[jltursan]

Yep, a new game for the Mattel Aquarius (that I'm still polishing) is coming.

 

The game shares the C64's Randoom game concept with a twist:

 

 

In the attached file you'll find the 16KB rom file and the skeleton of the MAME Aquarius emulator. As the MAME exe is extremely big it's not included so you need to add mame.exe by yourself; then you'll only need to run the game executing the script "runme.bat"

 

The demo has only five levels and thus, it's a bit short if you're good enough playing the game. The full game will have 20-30 levels, depending the final RAM constraints (16KB RAM is the target).

 

Download: demo_word_chaser.zip

[+eebuckeye]

Terrific! Thanks for sharing!

[jltursan]

Thanks!

 

Being more specific, it's a 16KB ROM so it only needs 4K RAM. The PSG is used to play music if present; if it's not the case, you'll only hear some bleeps and bloops.

 

The final version is planned in all formats: ROM, CAQ (this time it'll really need 16KB RAM, at least!) and BIN (microExpander format).

[Aquaman]

Thanks for making this great game for the Aquarius and especially with making use of the mini-expander capabilities.

[jltursan]

To be honest, it's more microExpander friendly than the miniExpander, in fact it's only tested with Atari joysticks!. I still need to test the Mattel pads to be sure it works as intended.

Of course you can always use the keyboard, O-P-SPACE keys so there's no problem to play.

[Aquaman]

7 hours ago, jltursan said:

To be honest, it's more microExpander friendly than the miniExpander, in fact it's only tested with Atari joysticks!. I still need to test the Mattel pads to be sure it works as intended.

Of course you can always use the keyboard, O-P-SPACE keys so there's no problem to play.

I also have the mini-expander from Bruce with joystick adaptor, so also in that case I will have no problems. PS I have noticed on the emulators Aqualite and Virtual Aquarius that there is a sound problem (background noise). 

 

[jltursan]

Yes, the only emulator capable of run the game as in the real iron is MAME. Virtual Aquarius has a noisy 1-bit sound and Aqualite has a nasty bug with the 1-bit sound being stuck right when the first SFX is played.

Note that you can play the PAL (aquariusp) or NTSC (aquarius) version just changing the emulated machine in the runme script. Both have the same PSG speed so the music plays right; but the NTSC version is obviously faster than the PAL one (it also can have some slightly stuttering when playing the music, just a little...).

[Loudscotsbloke]

Absolutely brilliant!! Well done mate! Cant wait to see the full version! Loving the music.

[merman]

This is really cool! Just did a feature on Aquarius games for Retro Gamer, but will add news of this to the next issue.

[jltursan]

Howdy!, the game compatibility has been fully tested. Handcontrollers work as expected so it can be played with a MiniExpander for a "not so full" experience.

 

I say "not so full" because sadly, with a MiniExpander and the 16KB common RAM expansion, a "lite" game version is needed. Only 20 screens (still checking them), some musics are gone, PSG SFX has been replaced and some other little details are also gone.

 

The "deluxe" version will be available only for owners of a 32K RAM expansion or MicroExpander users. Expect 30 levels, more PSG, SFX and all the details I have been forced to dump in the lite version.

[Pernod]

On 9/2/2022 at 4:02 PM, jltursan said:

In the attached file you'll find the 16KB rom file and the skeleton of the MAME Aquarius emulator. As the MAME exe is extremely big it's not included so you need to add mame.exe by yourself; then you'll only need to run the game executing the script "runme.bat"

Just a quick comment to say you shouldn't put '-video gdi' in your runme.bat. The gdi option is software rendering and should only be used if your hardware doesn't support any of the better options such as bgfx, opengl, d3d.

[jltursan]

Yep, it's a way to "standarize" the script to avoid unwanted incompatibilities. Anyway, I'm usually using myself the gdi render, I don't like the fancy effects the hardware usually offers and best prefer the simplest one 😀