+SmittyB Posted December 31, 2023 Share Posted December 31, 2023 Ducks Away is the 7800's first light-gun compatible homebrew and one of a very few light-gun games in general to support 4 players (in this case via the QuadTari). You and up to 3 friends must defend your vegetable garden from the local ducks who have grown sick of stale bread. Use your popgun to shoot corks at the ducks, or play as the family dog and jump at them to scare them away. Note that A7800's light-gun emulation doesn't work correctly for Ducks Away. ~Controls~ Intro: Pressing the button skips to the next section of the intro. Player Select Screen: Left / Right on a controller chooses whether to use the popgun via an onscreen cursor, play as a dog Fire button on a light-gun toggles playing as the popgun or not. When the timer runs out the game will start with the selected players Gameplay: Point and shoot with the light-gun as one would expect. Use the joystick to move the cursor around and shoot with the button. Left / Right move the dog, down barks (does nothing), and the button jumps. ~TO DO LIST~ Add PAL colours. Fix Rice in ground bug. Fix 1 frame graphical glitch on Intro > Player Select transition. Fix 1 frame graphical glitch on Player Select > Game transition. Fix 1 frame graphical glitch on Light-gun Detection > Game transition. Complete Intro Sequence. Add intro skip for light-guns. Add Music. Improve Sound. Animate Dog. Add effect when bread-ducks' armour is shot. Limit cursor to screen bounds. Improve feel of cursor handling. Improve feel of cursor hit detection. Play on JS7800 DucksAway_231231_1549.a78 21 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlidellMan Posted December 31, 2023 Share Posted December 31, 2023 Wow, this was unprecedented. Whereas other light gun games are two players tops, you decided to innovate by going for four players. Coding that must not have been easy. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted December 31, 2023 Author Share Posted December 31, 2023 1 minute ago, SlidellMan said: Coding that must not have been easy. Actually the hard part was adding QuadTari support when I don't have a QuadTari to test with. Fortunately I've had a lot of help in that regard. Once the code for one gun worked I could extrapolate that to the others just by keeping track of which gun pulled the trigger. The light-gun stuff itself was dead simple because I'm using 'target selection' where it'll flash hitboxes on screen and I only need to know if the gun saw something that frame, compared to the other method where the whole screen flashes and then strict timing is used to determine where the gun was pointing before running through a bunch of other logic to see if there was something at that position. In theory target selection is more accurate, but with all the action on screen there'll be a lot of flashing with 4 players. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted December 31, 2023 Share Posted December 31, 2023 We need someone to reproduce the light gun or create a new one which is better than the Atari one. Or create an adapter. Unless there already is something like this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted December 31, 2023 Author Share Posted December 31, 2023 The SMS 'light phaser' is more common in some places and it's fairly simple to knock up an adaptor for it, or the Mega7800 acts as an SMS convertor and should also work with the gun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted December 31, 2023 Share Posted December 31, 2023 7 hours ago, SmittyB said: Note that A7800's light-gun emulation doesn't work correctly for Ducks Away. What does not work correctly? After the lightgun controller is selected, the console must be Reset: Controllers are not hot swappable. I am able to play fine with lightgun selected under A7800: The Crosshair options can even me tweaked to user's preference: The sensitivity/response of the mouse can be tweaked as well: Anyhow, fantastic job! Looks and plays wonderful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoundGammon Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 Cool! Another game I thought that would make a great light gun game is Rear Door that was on the 8-bits from Antic Magazine. It used keys 1 2 3 to fire at the 3 doors. I believe it was written with the Action programming language. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 22 minutes ago, Trebor said: What does not work correctly? It works in that it'll register hits, but not necessarily where the cursor is pointing in my experience. It seems to register hits on what I assume would be the first target only. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7800Knight Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 Yeah, the collision detection on later waves needs some work. It does look like a solid concept so far; it's a nice mashup of Barnyard Blaster with Duck Hunt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 @7800Knight just to be clear, which collision are you referring to? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7800Knight Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 It's the later waves. I have trouble shooting the ducks despite being able to hit them in the earlier waves. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlidellMan Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 Blake, will there be options to use the ST/Amiga Mouse and 7800 Trak-ball? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted January 4 Author Share Posted January 4 12 minutes ago, SlidellMan said: Blake, will there be options to use the ST/Amiga Mouse and 7800 Trak-ball? I hadn't considered it but if I can make it work then I think that'll be a good idea. The difficulty will be in having a good way to select them as I don't know how I can auto-detect them like I can the light-gun, and I'll need to handle them separately so as to not break the QuadTari stuff when they're not in use. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ZeroPage Homebrew Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 ZeroPage Homebrew is playing a FOUR PLAYER SIMULTANEOUS game of Ducks Away with FOUR LIGHT GUNS on tomorrow's special ZPH stream LIVE on Twitch! All four co-hosts will be there and we hope you can join us in the chat! Fri Jan 12, 2024 | LIVE @ 2PM PT | 5PM ET | 10PM GMT <- NOTE SPECIAL START TIME WATCH LIVE: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/ WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/ Games: Ducks Away (2023 WIP | 7800) by Blake Smith @SmittyB Mashed Turtles (2011 | A8) by František Houra @Fandal (Code), Zdeněk Eisenhammer @pseudografx (Graphics, Music, SFX) Shot'em All (2002 | A8) by Radek Sterba @raster/c.p.u. Helicops (2013 | A8) by Nils Feske, František Houra @Fandal, Radek Sterba @raster/c.p.u., Adam Wachowski @+Adam+ Sails of Doom (2018 | A8) by Antonin Holik @R0ger Dynakillers Unchained (1997 | A8) by GMG (Globe, Marco, Goldmaster), Martin Šimeček @matosimi M.U.L.E. (1983 | A8) by Ozark Softscape / Danielle Bunten Berry 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrunchyTC Posted January 17 Share Posted January 17 VERY fun addictive game! Major props! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrunchyTC Posted January 19 Share Posted January 19 (edited) I played until I got up to the 86th wave (as the dog, using the proline), and I think it would be insane if when you start getting up there in the waves, the waves become more crazy, and maintain the craziness with all the different ducks, and have a longer duration, and the ducks should take off faster once they grab a veggie! I don't have a light gun sadly. Edited January 19 by KrunchyTC 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bent_pin Posted January 19 Share Posted January 19 I just got a backbit pro and a light gun. I'm going to attempt to make this the first game that I play with both. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted January 19 Author Share Posted January 19 You both flatter me, thank you very much. As I define more waves it'll definitely get crazier. At the moment I have 20 defined that it just loops through and 99 is the current limit, so I do intend to balance things so that getting anything close to 99 is a challenge. I have to balance it so that anyone can play so the first few waves at least will be easy enough. There's also a limit to just how much chaos I can have on screen at once because potentially with 4 dogs the whole thing will slow to a crawl. At least it turns out 4 lightguns isn't unplayably flashy even if it is hard on the eyes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrunchyTC Posted January 19 Share Posted January 19 Absolutely! I did experience a crash once when I reached the 22 wave. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+saxmeister Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 How did I miss this one! This looks GREAT. Now I'm definitely going to have to spring for another CRT and an SMS zapper. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted February 6 Author Share Posted February 6 If I had to guess I'd say somebody on the nomination committee is a trigger-happy duck-hater because Ducks Away has been nominated for an award in the 6th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards! Thanks again to the nomination committee, to James for all the unseen work it takes to make these awards happen, and to the AtariAge community for whom this game was made. Don't forget to don your stale bread-armour and dive to the polls before the deadline on the 18th of February. 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Muddyfunster Posted February 6 Share Posted February 6 Congratulations on the nomination mate 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlidellMan Posted February 6 Share Posted February 6 Congratulations on your nomination, Blake! 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrunchyTC Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 Wondering if you plan to add a texture to the grass? Really tie the look of the game together Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SmittyB Posted February 21 Author Share Posted February 21 On 2/16/2024 at 6:29 AM, KrunchyTC said: Wondering if you plan to add a texture to the grass? Really tie the look of the game together It's something I've considered but I don't want to do it unless I can make it look right with the scrolling, not be too distracting, and I have to be very careful about the palettes I'm using. There are many plans, it's just that graphics have been a low priority for a while. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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