Homsar

[Tork110]

Here is a game I had in my mind several months ago when I tried to make a game in assembly. It's based on a Strong Bad email. You have to avoid the falling blocks (giant cartoon weights) and the missile (Superball of DOOM?).

 

 

I put in a ton of stuff, including quick animations at 3 different point intervals, a title screen, a quick intro, a theme tune (but no sounds within the game because I figured that would be annoying.)

 

 

 

 

Press fire to start the game. The fire button has no other purpose.

Press the game reset button to restart a game. Press the Black and white button to pause.

Move the Joystick around to move.

You get 10 points for successfully avoiding a block. You have 3 lives.

 

 

 

In case you have never seen it, you'll need to see this flash cartoon to understand the game:

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail2.html

Homsar2withsource.zip

[Jess Ragan]

It's a pretty unique game! I can't wait until Batari BASIC includes color layering for the players... that'll make this much closer to the source material. Still, it's pretty true to the Homestar Runner web site, going so far as to include a Strongbad E-mail message.

 

Some suggestions I would make would include giving the player a way to fight back against Strongbad, and experimenting with the TIA registers to make the players and missile larger. You'll find more information about that here:

 

http://alienbill.com/2600/basic/downloads/0.2/help.html#TIA

 

You could also use two players to draw both Strongbad and Homsar, if you're really ambitious. What you'd need to do is draw Homsar in one frame, then Strongbad in the other, then continue to alternate between the two. The characters would be more flickery, but on the plus side, they'd be more colorful.

 

JR

[Atari-Jess]

the bouncing ball is clearly a "powerball"

 

don't we all remember homsar exclaiming "I think I won the powerball, pshooo"?

 

so, lol that bouncing ball is the powerball.

 

not vast american fortunes.

[Luigi301]

Complete text:

 

"Hi Wonder Mike, I'm Homsar!

The captain of the gravy train!

Climb aboard, I'll put my best foot flowered.

Pshoo.

Sure beats breakin' up with me!

Don't look now, I'm just a friendly reminder!

Waa!

WaaaaaAAAaaaAAA think I won the Powerball!

[Atari-Jess]

pshooo

[kisrael]

It's a pretty unique game!  I can't wait until Batari BASIC includes color layering for the players... that'll make this much closer to the source material.  Still, it's pretty true to the Homestar Runner web site, going so far as to include a Strongbad E-mail message.

maybe you could have a more "normal" presentation of the email with some upcoming kernals. I don't know if "color layering" is on the agenda...it's all a matter of time with the kernals, in terms of how many instructions you can cram in as the electron scan line sweeps by, and it might be if there is a "color sprite" kernal you have to give up something else, like the PF graphics or the Missile (er I mean Powerball) or something like that...on the other hand, never say never...

[Tork110]

My original idea for a game was to take the email "Mile" and make it into a 2600 game, but I soon found out that Strong Bad head was too big, so I took all the characters and drew them using MSPaint, and Homsar seemed like a great character who could fit in 8 pixels. If you squint real hard, you can see a fully colored Homsar in my avatar.

 

The reason why I have a missile is because I wasn't sure how well I was going to get the dropping playfield pixels effect to work, so I threw in a bouncing missile to add extra danger. I originally planned to have Strong Bad drop up to three pixels, but the game seemed okay as it was. If I update it, I might make the game faster at certain levels, or have an extra missile, but I planned it as a game of survival. I originally wanted the score to be based on how high your sprite was, but I kept getting 64 points no matter where Homsar was, so I just made it 10.

 

All the other stuff I added was overcompensation for the main game. The intro, the intro music, the events that happen when you reach certain scores were just me trying to cover up the main game. (Originally, the intro had letters that zig zagged, which I changed after I saw the title for Solar Plexus. I realized that people will want more than a opening that was really hard to read.) I should have animated Homsar's legs, but I was still using the first version of the BASIC tool so I had to deal with the line numbers I already had. If you look at my code, it's a mess.

 

You know what's weird? I'm proud of the fact that I added a pause feature with one line of code. I have no idea why that stands out, but I thought it was cool that I got it to work on the first try.

 

I don't know what I'll work on next. I do want to make a Zelda-ish game, or maybe an adventure game like the obscure "Journey to the Planets" which was made for the Atari 8-bit computers. That game starred a bald guy with a gun who traveled to 7 different planets and he had to solve puzzles to get a treasure for each.

[Jess Ragan]

All the other stuff I added was overcompensation for the main game.  The intro, the intro music, the events that happen when you reach certain scores were just me trying to cover up the main game.  (Originally, the intro had letters that zig zagged, which I changed after I saw the title for Solar Plexus.  I realized that people will want more than a opening that was really hard to read.)

897376[/snapback]

 

You wound me, sir.

 

JR

[kisrael]

I don't know what I'll work on next.  I do want to make a Zelda-ish game, or maybe an adventure game like the obscure "Journey to the Planets" which was made for the Atari 8-bit computers.  That game starred a bald guy with a gun who traveled to 7 different planets and he had to solve puzzles to get a treasure for each.

Ha! I remember that game! Played the music "anchors aweigh" as you flew around, right? I remember getting totally stuck in that game...

 

I'm still playing wait and see re: new versions of bB before getting into the really deep stuff. But still it's great to make some small little programs to get a feel for it.

[Tork110]

wait, I meant that my opening was hard to read. Instead of alternating words, I had alternating letters, and it was really hard to read. Sorry, I was criticizing myself and not you.

 

 

 

 

And yeah, that's the game. I bet the planet you got stuck on was the ruby chain planet, because I think anyone who played that game got stuck there. It was an accident when I found out the solution, which was to use the stick thingie as a flying broom or rocket or something.

[Jess Ragan]

Journey to the Planets was, like, weird. It had some pretty inventive concepts and was surprisingly long for an early console game, but I never came to fully appreciate it. Part of the problem of early adventure games was that the lack of available memory resulted in a lack of in-game text, making them very cryptic and confusing. I had the original cartridge, beat a few of the planets, and just quit in frustration after stumbling across one particularly vexing puzzle (I can't remember which one; I think a stack of blocks were involved).

 

Hey, I wonder if there's a walkthrough for this game on GameFAQs?

 

EDIT: Holy crap, there's one by YOU, Tork! That came as a bit of a surprise.

 

JR

Edited July 25, 2005 by Jess Ragan

[kisrael]

Journey to the Planets was, like, weird.  It had some pretty inventive concepts and was surprisingly long for an early console game, but I never came to fully appreciate it.  Part of the problem of early adventure games was that the lack of available memory resulted in a lack of in-game text, making them very cryptic and confusing.  I had the original cartridge, beat a few of the planets, and just quit in frustration after stumbling across one particularly vexing puzzle (I can't remember which one; I think a stack of blocks were involved).

 

Hey, I wonder if there's a walkthrough for this game on GameFAQs?

 

EDIT: Holy crap, there's one by YOU, Tork!  That came as a bit of a surprise.

 

JR

897846[/snapback]

Heh, hearing there's a FAQ for it now makes me wanna go fire up an emulator...

[Jess Ragan]

Two of them, believe it or not. This game's got some big fans.

 

JR

[kisrael]

Though whats all that about a broken ROM for it floating around?

[Jess Ragan]

Dunno. Still trying to get my hands on a complete set of XE/XL ROMs. I started a Torrent last night but had to wait 24 hours (!!!) to download all 300 megs of it. My apartment experienced a power failure during that time, and I don't know if it's worth waiting that long to finish what I started.

 

JR

[Tork110]

I haven't used Batari BASIC in a long time, and I abandoned some crappy games I failed to make. So I'm sharing some clips of what I have. They should be good for a laugh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's the game I sorta got right.