Minigun Miner (WIP) - Beta 1 released

[drludos]

Minigun Miner is a unique digging game for the Atari 2600 (VCS) home console.

 

 

Using a minigun, dig holes to collect buried treasures (coins, diamonds, rubies, etc.). But be careful to never touch the ground, or you'll explode! Thankfully, each time you fire your minigun, the recoil will send you flying in the air.

How to Play

- Hold Fire to shoot to fly up and dig holes. Move the joystick while holding the fire button to aim in any direction.

- Move joystick Left and Right while Fire button is released to move left and right.

- There are items to collect (earn points), and enemies to avoid (loose game)

 

About

A first version prototype of this game was created last year for the Retro Platform Jam #6. Since then I've been (slowly) working on improving and extending the game. Today, I'm happy to share with you a first beta of this "full version" of the game. Compared to the prototype, the game now features :

• 3 game modes:
  • Arcade Mode : aim for the highscore in a randomly generated level (this was also how the prototype worked)
  • Survival mode : aim for the highscore in a unique non-random level. This is great for contests, as everyone will experience the same (quite difficult) level
  • Levels mode : clear a series of challenges in a set of finite levels. This mode is still a "work-in-progress" and currently not available in the current beta. But instead of making a highscore, you'll have to collect X treasures to complete a level. I'm currently trying to offer 16 different and interesting levels for this mode.
• Faster and improved gameplay:
  • The game now plays much faster than previously, and should be less frustrating too.
  • You now have several lives instead of a unique chance (less frustrating as I said
• Polished / improved code:
  • The game should now never drop a frame for a steady 60fps (tested on Stella to check for constant 262 lines )
  • It also offers a menu, with the ability to change the color palette on the fly, so you can play on NTSC, PAL, SECAM / Black&White with the same ROM.

 

The game is now a 16kb SuperChip ROM, developed with the wonderful batariBasic and its very helpful documentation by RandomTerrain - thanks a lot for your hard work making tools allowing us to make new games for the 2600!

 

So, if you are interested in trying the game, here is the first beta of the full game version:

minigunminer_beta1.bin

 

I hope you'll enjoy the game, and of course any feedback is welcomed and appreciated!

 

Edited August 14 by drludos

[8bitPoet]

Very cool! It's challenging and fun. The physics are smooth! Nice acceleration and deceleration. The sounds are really great, too!

 

I was hoping it would return to the title screen after a little time on the game over screen, and maybe show me my highest score. That way I could explore some of the other options in the menu without having to restart.

 

Solid game, overall.

[drludos]

8 hours ago, 8bitPoet said:

Very cool! It's challenging and fun. The physics are smooth! Nice acceleration and deceleration. The sounds are really great, too!

 

I was hoping it would return to the title screen after a little time on the game over screen, and maybe show me my highest score. That way I could explore some of the other options in the menu without having to restart.

 

Solid game, overall.

Thanks a lot for your feedback, and I'm glad you're enjoying the game!

 

Saving and displaying the highscore is a planned feature, I'm currently working on it alongside adding the "levels".

For now, you can quit the game to go back to the main menu by pressing the reset switch at any time (during game play or game over), and it'll send you back to the main menu to try other modes, without fully reseting / clearing the game to keep the highscores in memory.

[Silvio Mogno]

I love games with gravity.

 

Very cool, but really hard.

 

Mi humble suggestions:

 

- 6 digit score is too big for a game you can score so few points

- vertical scrolling could be improved. When going down the object seems not scroll accordingly with the cave

 

Goot work!

[+Al_Nafuur]

12 hours ago, drludos said:

Saving and displaying the highscore is a planned feature, I'm currently working on it alongside adding the "levels".

This is a great game and I would be very happy if you would consider adding it to the PlusROM HSC. The bB code for the PlusROM functions is only 50 bytes. So PM me if you are interested.

 

 

[KevKelley]

I love this! It has so many elements I enjoy. Physics, playfield removal, shooting. 

[drludos]

Thanks everyone for your feedback and kind words, it's very motivating!

On 8/14/2024 at 2:53 PM, Silvio Mogno said:

- vertical scrolling could be improved. When going down the object seems not scroll accordingly with the cave

 

Thanks for your suggestions. Can you please elaborate on this one? What bother you during the vertical scrolling?

Technically, the objects do scroll at the same speed as the ground, with one exception : when you decide to not collect an object (or avoid an enemy), it will move up faster than the ground once it's 30 pixels above the player avatar. I did this to reduce the waiting time before getting a new object to interact with. I tried to make it not too obvious, but if you pay attention, yes it's noticeable that the game "cheats" to try to maximize the "fun time" :).

 

Another point is that the color gradient doesn't scroll at all, (well it can "jitter" a bit during fast scrolling) while the ground shape does scroll. So maybe that's what is bothering you?

 

I'm very interested in honest feedback here, as I'm so used to playtest the game that I no longer notice things like that.

 

20 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

This is a great game and I would be very happy if you would consider adding it to the PlusROM HSC. The bB code for the PlusROM functions is only 50 bytes. So PM me if you are interested.

 

 

 

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. Actually, after all the features are finalized, I plan to try to support AtariVox/Savekey to save the highscores. So adding support for PlusROM too is a very nice idea, thanks for the heads up and the help offer! I'll PM you when I'll start working on highscore saving/restoring.

 

Edited August 15 by drludos

[+Al_Nafuur]

1 hour ago, drludos said:

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. Actually, after all the features are finalized, I plan to try to support AtariVox/Savekey to save the highscores. So adding support for PlusROM too is a very nice idea, thanks for the heads up and the help offer! I'll PM you when I'll start working on highscore saving/restoring.

If you plan to use PlusROM functions later in your project you should already add these 3 files to your project directory:

2600basicfooter.asm

banksw.asm

PlusROM_functions.asm

 

and add at the top of your bB code the line:

inline PlusROM_functions.asm

 

This will keep the PlusROM hotspots clear (reduces the free space in each bank by 4 bytes) and prepares your project for using PlusROM functions later. It doesn't initiate any "network activity" in your ROMs, therefor you will have to define the backend URL and the code for sending/receiving data from this backend later.

 

 

[drludos]

Thanks a lot for your help and the files! I'll look into this, and will PM when I'm ready to try to add the PlusROM features (that may take a while though, I still have quite a lot of work to do on the game first).

[Silvio Mogno]

On 8/15/2024 at 10:30 PM, drludos said:

Thanks for your suggestions. Can you please elaborate on this one? What bother you during the vertical scrolling?

Technically, the objects do scroll at the same speed as the ground, with one exception : when you decide to not collect an object (or avoid an enemy), it will move up faster than the ground once it's 30 pixels above the player avatar. I did this to reduce the waiting time before getting a new object to interact with. I tried to make it not too obvious, but if you pay attention, yes it's noticeable that the game "cheats" to try to maximize the "fun time" :).

 

Another point is that the color gradient doesn't scroll at all, (well it can "jitter" a bit during fast scrolling) while the ground shape does scroll. So maybe that's what is bothering you?

I don't really know what is it. Maybe is that you did explain. I think is what you call an "exception" that gave me impression that the object is not buried in the ground but somehow floating in it.

 

But hey, I'm not criticizing your game! 🙂After all we are talking about a funny "switch on and play" 2600 game 😎, not a "start, wait a minutes loading time, set 50.000 options, wait for other players" super complicated multi-player network game 😵!

And personally I really prefer the first kind of game😎

 

Silvio

[drludos]

Thanks for the detail, I guess it the "objects flying faster to reduce waiting time" that may be bothering you then. I see if I can make it a bit less disturbing then. Thanks a lot for taking the time to make a detailed feedback!

 

And yes, I prefer games that you can play right away too - sometimes when you have very few time or simply want to clear your mind, you definitively don't want to waste 10 minutes just booting / updating / navigating menus!

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

ZeroPage Homebrew is playing Minigun Miner on tomorrow's ZPH stream LIVE on Twitch! Hope you can join us!

 

Tue Aug 27, 2024 | LIVE @ 6PM PT | 9PM ET | 1AM GMT+1Day

WATCH LIVE: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:

• Tumblers (2024 Exclusive World Premiere | 2600) by Andrew Pauley @Armscar Coder
• Minigun Miner (2024 WIP Update | 2600) by Dr. Ludos @drludos
• theWall (2024 WIP | 2600) by Alberto @jab
• Xump (2024 WIP | 2600) by Gisberto Rondinella @Nop90

 

[drludos]

Wonderful, thanks a lot for featuring the game in the show! Sadly I won't be able to watch it live (it'll be the middle of the night here :p), but I'm eager to watch the replay tomorrow!

 

It's always very helpful for me to see you playing my games on video, it always gives me good feedback on what to improve in the game :).

 

I hope you'll enjoy all the four games during tonight show!

Edited August 27 by drludos

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

49 minutes ago, drludos said:

Wonderful, thanks a lot for featuring the game in the show! Sadly I won't be able to watch it live (it'll be the middle of the night here :p), but I'm eager to watch the replay tomorrow!

 

It's always very helpful for me to see you playing my games on video, it always gives me good feedback on what to improve in the game :).

 

I hope you'll enjoy all the four games during tonight show!

 

Very looking forward to playing the updated Minigun Miner tonight, thank you again for making this great game @drludos! So happy to help in any way I can by playing your extremely creative games on ZPH. 🙂

 

- James

[drludos]

Hi James, I've finally been able to watch the latest @ZeroPage Homebrew episode, and I had a blast watching Tanya and you playing my game live! I discovered many new issues to fix, thanks again for your help!

 

I'm happy that the movement in the game now feels good, and that the game is less frustrating as a result. Congrats on reaching 100 points by the way, and for finding an "exploit" allowing you to do it safely :). I'll now work on fixing this issue and the "repetitiveness" of the game. First, I'll rework the random distribution of buried objects, there are way too many coins compared to the enemies and other treasures. I'll also seek to make the coins worthwhile again so players are no longer enticed to "skip them" :). I think rebalancing the points earned for each treasure should fix this issue.

 

And to answer one of the questions during the show, the "skull" that you encountered is NOT the "rare boss", but a (new) standard enemy. So it's normal that it appeared twice in a row :). The boss version is larger and tougher, and looks like this:

 

I'll keep working on this game, my next goal / deadline is to have a new version ready for the PRGE 2024, as the game will be demoed on Atari Age booth. I will also share the new beta here when it's ready! So all of you who are interested in th project can expect a new version in September!