Fruit Fly Fun (Atari 2600)

[+atari2600land]

The new goal of mine is to make three tiny 1k games and then make a menu that is also 1k for a total of 4k. Three games - no bankswitching. The constant theme between them all is they all must have bananas in them and they all must do good things (i.e. bananas cannot kill you.) I just finished up my first 1k game, a remake of the very first game I ever made. The original bB code has been lost to time, but I was able to remake it using assembly and add new things. It was originally called Zyx, but I think I'll rename it as not to confuse with the new homebrew Qyx.

 

I've posted a binary file of this game in the hopes I could get feedback on it. Which I will do with all three of the games I want to make. But I need some help. And that comes in the form of ideas for these other two games I want to make. As you can see it is 1k in size. Will this work on a Harmony cart or do I have to recompile it to 2k?

 

I'm wondering whether I should make the fast speed of the fruit faster. The only things I can change is stuff like that, because I have 1 byte left. What do you think, all?

zyx8.bin

[+atari2600land]

Ch.ch..changes:

• the faster speed is now faster.
• the well is now narrower.
• fixed a bug pertaining to collisions causing a new game to cause instant death. Looks like I forgot to clear the collision latches when the game ends.

zyx10.bin

[Silvio Mogno]

Cool sprites and colors!

 

Personally I prefer the wider well.

 

And having multiple fruits falling at same time would be better, because now the game is too easy.

 

[+atari2600land]

I'm afraid I can't have multiple fruits falling because I only have 5 bytes left. My goal is to fit these games in just 1k. But I changed the game again to try and make it more difficult. The creature moves faster to accommodate the wider well. The bananas are now taller than the oranges (just like in real life.) My highest score is 141 so far.

zyx11.bin

[+atari2600land]

Here is the second of the three mini-games. When I got done with it, I figured it was kind of easy. So I thought of what I could do to make it harder. So I sped it up. i have hardly any bytes left, so any change has to be really small.

imrunning6.bin

[+atari2600land]

I couldn't sleep, so I began work on the menu even though I have to make one more game. I have about 1,600 bytes left for it so I may make some good changes to the other games if I have room after putting the third game in and enabling it in the menu.

Press the reset switch to come back to the menu.

goingbananas1.bin

[+atari2600land]

A much better version of the game where everything's fixed (I think.)

I tried to make it so if you miss a banana in Road Block you die but I couldn't.

I need to design a better gorilla for it. It must be a total of 8x8 pixels. Any help?

 

goingbananas3.bin

[+atari2600land]

I changed some stuff and fixed other stuff. Everything should be a steady 262 scanlines no matter what you do (except power up the game.)

In "Road Block," I changed it so if you miss a banana the game ends. I also made the speed go faster at 50 and again at 75 and changed the banana graphic. It was beginning to look more like a boomerang than a banana.

I have 1401 bytes left, more than enough room for another 1k game.

goingbananas4.bin

[timdu]

Suggestion: Since the oranges and bananas are falling down the well, I think you should change the sound from an ascending sound effect to a descending sound effect.

[+atari2600land]

I tried and couldn't, so I just deleted the falling sound from the well.

goingbananas5.bin

[+atari2600land]

Hi all! I came back to this project after awhile. I made it a lot better IMHO. Take a look at it.

I spent all night working on this.

This is the updated menu. I made the cursor a banana. It's the ball.

goingbananas6.bin

[+atari2600land]

I put in a falling fruit sound in the "Oh Well" game. It was giving me quite the trouble but I think it has been all worked out now. I have 1,100 or so bytes left. I think I can put in one more simple game. But what?

goingbananas7a.bin

[+atari2600land]

Decided to make a fly-swatting game as the third game.

The fly animation:

The bee animation:

Right now, not much is functional in this game, you can move the fly swatter around, but that's it so far.

I don't know if I can fit the game in 586 bytes or not, but I'll try.

goingbananas9.bin

[+atari2600land]

So I was thinking and I've decided that the fly swatting game has enough interest to stand as its own game. So I may come back to the Going Bananas concept later, and for right now I'm going to work on the new game, tentatively called "flies!" For those of you with a Harmony cart, please test this and see if the score goes off the screen. I tried it and it's good on my TV, but I need to see if it would cut off on other TVs.

This will be a 2k game if I can help it. I have 939 bytes left, double the size if I had kept working on it as part of Going Bananas.

fly1.bin

[+atari2600land]

Now you can swat the flies. Sometimes the scan line goes to 263 for a frame or two for some reason, but other than that, it's good.

 

fly2.bin

[+atari2600land]

I give up. This is literally impossible.

Here is the code in case someone wants to try and finish it (good luck!)

fly3.asm

[+atari2600land]

After seven long, excruciating hours, I have version 3.

 

fly3.bin

[+atari2600land]

Version 5 is here. I fixed a whole bunch of things, so check it out.

fly5.bin

[+atari2600land]

Polishing time. I fixed quite a few glitches. Let me know if it's jittery or acting weird. I worked a long time trying to make the scanline a steady 262.

fly7.bin

[+atari2600land]

Which looks better: This

or this?

I could make clouds in the game, but the tradeoff is the sprites have to be twice as big.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

I think the clouds add a lot to the atmosphere (ha!) of the game. The bugs were pretty tiny so I don't think the size will affect the gameplay too much and will be well worth the tradeoff.

 

- James

[+atari2600land]

OK, I'll keep the clouds in. I merged the two clouds above the bananas into one.

[+littaum]

I think the larger sprites actually look clearer, and the clouds definitely add more "zazz" to the screen.

[Arenafoot]

keep clouds!

[+atari2600land]

New version,

• Fixed fly bonus timer. It wasn't resetting when a fly was swatted.
• Moved the upper clouds up a little bit more.
• The hornet no longer is jittery if it's chasing you in a straight line.

 

fly9.bin