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Space Junk - Atari 2600


Words Fail

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Introducing Space Junk:
spacejunk_atariage_013123_bas.thumb.png.099005066431bbf523f858d854d07416.png

Story:

Aliens are littering outer space with trash. It's your job to clean it up!

I'm sure a lot of you will recognize this as an updated version of Solar Fox. It is indeed.

spacejunk_atariage_013123.bas_1.thumb.png.cdff4cb843500dbc1454c929d78dd944.png

How to play:

On the left side the screen are your 3 lives, in the center is your score, on the right is your gas meter. Clear the level without getting shot or letting your gas run out.

 

Reset starts the game.

 

Joystick flies your ship. You score 50 points for each piece of trash collected.

 

Joystick + fire flies your ship faster, but consumes more gas. You score 100 points for each piece of trash collected.

 

When your gas is low the meter will flash, when it's very low it will flash faster.

 

The idea is you can't always fly fast, so it makes somewhat of a challenge to get a higher score. Some levels have less trash, so if you fly well you can speed through it. Other levels you won't have enough gas to speed through it all.

 

How will gameplay go in the future:
After every 8th level there is a boss who may come back stronger each time. After killing a boss the levels get a little more harder. The other enemies will come out, stuff will get faster, etc.

 

Features:
50 levels

 

Features coming:

Player firing to stun enemies

After every 8 levels a boss

Two side enemies - these introduce flicker so not sure I will add them, but I do have other ideas for a single side enemy with no flicker

Sounds - I have NO clue how to get sounds working. I tried one and it crashed my game. Sounds great if I just make a standalone sound and run it in emulator. I am going to have a sound of the enemy plopping down trash, of the ships moving, firing, etc.

Difficulty - Right now it's easy. The side enemie/s will make it harder. But in later stages they will also move/fire faster. I am looking into how to make the enemies move faster, but not too fast. So you have a natural progression instead of just really slow to really fast.

Game Over - I haven't added it back in yet, but in the old version of my game it said "GAME OVER" and the ships still moved back and fourth firing.

 

Maybe features:
Multi speed ship - Someone showed me a routine to make the ship fly at different speeds using data statements. I kind of like it and it would give more variety in getting points and consuming gas. So instead of just 2 speeds, we'd have 3 or 4. Scoring 50, 75, 100, 125 points and using gas at different rates. So, when you let off the gas it gradually slows down, same with speeding up.

Bonus squares - Randomly come out for a select amount of time and award 500 points.

5th enemy - This enemy is not bound to the sides of the screen. He randomly appears and flies towards the player. Again, going to flicker.

Font change - I may try and use a futuristic font for the score. I believe I tried once unsuccessfully.

Gas meter refill - In between levels I was thinking to do an animation of the gas meter refilling and make a sound.

Background animation? - I had an idea to make the colors on the background move. I attempted it once, but it didn't work properly. I may revisit it.

Title screen music and end game music

 

Current known bugs:

The top enemy his bullet is a smaller size than I want. The bottom enemy bullet starts off the size I want and later gets smaller. I can't figure out why so far. I assume NUSIZ but I've tried placing it in a few spots and it's not working. In my old code it worked fine.

 

About my code:

I originally coded this using playfield: commands. That's the version I had running where the enemy bullets worked fine. My friend even tested it on a Harmony Cartridge. I was able to store 30 levels in the game taking up every bit of the graphics bank. However, I then had the idea to use data statements to draw my levels. This gives the player some rest in between levels, and makes it seem like the aliens are littering trash. This is where a cool sound will come in to represent the trash being littered. I do not own a Harmony Cartridge yet. I'm broke. I did find an Atari 2600 for $20 and got a power supply and coax adapter on Amazon. After finding a $5 game at least I know the unit works, so once I get a Harmony cart I'll be able to test things myself.

 

I programmed a routine to lock your ship to a grid, but did not program something to lock enemy fire to same grid. I may add that in the future as it'll make it harder. I think it's needed and will make it harder.

 

Some more screenshots of later levels:
spacejunk_atariage_013123.bas_2.thumb.png.41cec9e5ab6a05718e5b962fe2eac782.png

spacejunk_atariage_013123.bas_5.thumb.png.20148447b457288c37abe16ecb372cbd.png

 

Attached is a copy of my latest version that allows you to play up until level 10 and then it reboots. Nothing super fun yet, as the difficulty doesn't increase yet. I do have all 50 levels coded/working, but I'm keeping them a mystery for when the final game is released. I've included 10 levels this way when I include the boss level you'll be able to get there for testing.

 

 

spacejunk_atariage_013123.bin

Edited by Words Fail
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2 hours ago, Prizrak said:

When I try to run this on my harmony cart I get the title screen, it draws the playfield and then crashes and the screen goes black. Anyone else having this issue? Runs fine via emulator

Unfortunately until I get some money for a Harmony I won't be able to test on real hardware. My friend has a Harmony, but hasn't tested my new version, only the old version. The real difference between the two versions is old version drew playfield with playfield: statements. The new version draws it block by block using a pfpixel command to simulate aliens dumping garbage.

I do thank you for the reply.

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I just got through playing Space Junk and Solar Fox to see the differences between the 2 ports, Space Junk wins hands down and the joystick response is damn good on Space Junk compared to Solar Fox. Now if we can only get some sound out of this game she would be great. Well done!

 

BTW, checking in here, it does work on a Flashback 9 so that is a plus for all who own one

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8 hours ago, BIGHMW said:

I just got through playing Space Junk and Solar Fox to see the differences between the 2 ports, Space Junk wins hands down and the joystick response is damn good on Space Junk compared to Solar Fox. Now if we can only get some sound out of this game she would be great. Well done!

 

BTW, checking in here, it does work on a Flashback 9 so that is a plus for all who own one

Thanks! That's certainly fuel to get her finished.

Here's a sample of the sound I made for the enemy ships moving. If only I could figure it out. RT pointed me towards a possible solution I'll try tomorrow maybe. It's after midnight here.

Edited by Words Fail
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  • 2 months later...
On 2/1/2023 at 11:13 PM, BIGHMW said:

I just got through playing Space Junk and Solar Fox to see the differences between the 2 ports, Space Junk wins hands down and the joystick response is damn good on Space Junk compared to Solar Fox. Now if we can only get some sound out of this game she would be great. Well done!

 

BTW, checking in here, it does work on a Flashback 9 so that is a plus for all who own one

 

I bought Solar Fox for the 2600, but am too lazy to turn on the 2600 so I am using Stella. It's not as good of a game as I remember.

 

Things I see between my game and Solar Fox:

- Controls: Mine is definitely more responsive

- Playfield: Mine wins because it "appears" larger over all, but theirs wins because they have more blocks on screen and later levels they can have blocks where you have to run over them twice.

- Ship: Theirs has a different image for the horizontal ship. I don't like that.

- Enemy Fire: Theirs wins hands down. Enemies fire multiple bullets and make "walls of death" or whatever you want to call them. I don't think I'll be able to do any of that. Does theirs have side enemies? I only played a few levels. Mine might.

- Bonus Level: Theirs has bonus levels, which I'm not having, but I am having a boss level instead.

 

I haven't spent any time on mine since last time unfortunately.

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