Armor Ambush Reloaded (new game, finished)

[+bsteux]

Hi folks,

Here is a new game for Christmas, called Armor Ambush Reloaded !

It's a tribute to Armor Ambush, an excellent Atari 2600 game by M Network, sadly a bit forgotten in spite of its outstanding qualities (the scenery, the possibility to control 2 tanks per player). It's true that it was a bit slow, and the 25 lives on each side made the games too long...

My challenge was to rewrite the game in pure C (with cc2600, so without a single line of assembler), stay in the 4Kb limits of the original, and make a game at least as good. So here is the result : a faster game, 3 lives each - quick game -, and some colored sceneries to fight in (and hide). You will find in attachment the PAL and NTSC games, as well as the complete source code (to be found at https://github.com/steux/cc2600/tree/main/examples)

How does it work ?

- Select to choose the scenery

- Press both button (Player 1 & 2, yes it's a 2 players game) to start

- Reset to start again !

- Difficulty A/B => changes the range of fire. Either short range (and you shoot at higher rate) or long range.

You control the tank by going up, left and right, and switch from one tank to the other by going down. Fire ? fire.

This is not a freeware : it's a donationware. Every time the grey tank wins (the ukrainians), you don't have to pay anything, it's all good. If the red tank wins (the ugly bad ruzzzians), you morally have to give 1$ to support ukraine (https://www.unicef.org/ukraine/en). By the way, this game is not allowed to be played in russia (western sanction!).

 

And finally, the storyline of the game :

"The war in Ukraine comes to its end. On the field, the 2 last M70 russian tanks still in operation. As every ruzzian got dispersed, the first tank is controlled by Mad Vlad himself, and the second tank is controlled by his wife, Dmitry Medvedev. On the other side, the first two working western tanks have arrived at last ! They are controlled by Volodmir Zelensky and his wife Olena. The outcome of the war is in your hands."

 

Have fun and Merry Christmas !

armor_ambush_reloaded_NTSC.bin armor_ambush_reloaded_PAL.bin armor_ambush_reloaded.c

[+splendidnut]

That's a very interesting approach to doing playfield updates during the kernel.  I like how you worked you graphics around the limitation of only one 'PF' update per 2 scanlines.

 

Nifty little game... nice step-up from the original Combat.

[+MarcoJ]

Awesome. There's a lot going on for just a 4K game. The tank movement is smooth.

[+bsteux]

Armor Ambush Reloaded has been nominated for the Atari Homebrew Awards ! I don't expect much votes given the competition, but I hope at least that it will bring new players to this reboot. Don't forget this is a DonationWare : 1$ to support ukraine (https://www.unicef.org/ukraine/en) every time the ruzzian (red) player wins. Play play play and don't let russians win ! Glory to Ukraine ! And you can even donate if you play the other nominated games, which by the way are very good ! 1$ every game over ? Bot & Tom should make a lot of money...

P.S.: a lot of (well, some...) players complain that they can't start the game. Push both joysticks buttons at the same time (2 joysticks needed. This is a 2 players game. You have to invest). That should do it... Theoretically... Well, maybe I should change that, but I have only 9 bytes left...

[+MarcoJ]

Well deserved