Jumper - Final Version Complete

[+Atarius Maximus]

It's be nice if you could start it with the fire button.

 

Done.

jumper17.bin

jumper17.txt

[+Atarius Maximus]

Also, when you reach the top of a ladder, hold up to jitter in place; that's minor but should be fixed and probably is an easy fix.

 

Fixed.

jumper18.txt

jumper18.bin

[vdub_bobby]

Hmmmm...I sense a pattern.

 

Let's try again:

 

It would be cool if the game would give me a cold beer whenever I collect a treasure. This is probably an easy fix.

 

 

(waiting...)

[djmips]

Hmmmm...I sense a pattern.

 

Let's try again:

 

It would be cool if the game would give me a cold beer whenever I collect a treasure. This is probably an easy fix.

 

 

(waiting...)

 

 

Nice one! but he might be running a little low on ROM for that one. heh heh.

[+Atarius Maximus]

Hmmmm...I sense a pattern.

 

Let's try again:

 

It would be cool if the game would give me a cold beer whenever I collect a treasure. This is probably an easy fix.

 

 

(waiting...)

 

[+Atarius Maximus]

Here's my first attempt at adding sound to the game. I'd love to hear some comments and suggestions on this!

 

EDIT: I've added a new sound for when you drop to the ground with the treasure, and I've fixed the problem of the lingering sound after you die - but I'm holding off on posting an update. I'm still trying to find the 'perfect' sounds.

 

Steve

jumper19.txt

jumper19.bin

Edited May 5, 2006 by Atarius Maximus

[+Atarius Maximus]

Ok, with a whole lot of trial and error testing (and Random Terrain's Tone Toy), I think I've got the sounds how I want them. There are a few known, minor bugs with the sound in this version: if you grab a treasure or get hit by a missile at the same time the missile or ball is making it's shooting sound, the shooting sound will remain in the background during the "death" sound and the "falling" sound. I know how to fix it (I've noted in the code where the volume should be set to 0), the problem is there's no ROM space left to add the code to turn off the missile sound when those events occur. I need to figure out how to save some more space! It's not really that big of a deal, but I'd like to try to fix it before I call this the final release.

 

If anyone finds any other bugs, please let me know...I think this game is almost done, at least until batari adds 8k support to the multisprite kernel. Then I can make Jumper 'Plus/Deluxe/Platinum', etc.

 

Steve

 

EDIT: I fixed a bug I found in the level progression, the missiles would have stopped working at a higher stage. The final updated bin and source for the 4k version is attached below.

jumper4kfinal.bin

jumper4kfinal.txt

Edited May 5, 2006 by Atarius Maximus

[MausBoy]

Has it been confirmed that bankswitching will be supported with the msk in a future release? If so I can't wait to see this game with multiple playfields. Everything looks great so far.

[+Atarius Maximus]

Has it been confirmed that bankswitching will be supported with the msk in a future release? If so I can't wait to see this game with multiple playfields. Everything looks great so far.

I'm not really sure, but I hope so. There's so much more I could do with this game if I had that much extra space. I wish I knew how to write actual assembly code...

 

Steve

[atwwong]

I'm not really sure, but I hope so. There's so much more I could do with this game if I had that much extra space. I wish I knew how to write actual assembly code...

 

Steve

Hi Steve,

 

You could have fooled me! This is pretty good for someone "new" to writing assembly code. I'm still trying to learn.

 

Cheers,

Tony

[+batari]

Has it been confirmed that bankswitching will be supported with the msk in a future release? If so I can't wait to see this game with multiple playfields. Everything looks great so far.

Yes, there will be support for bankswitching in all kernels. For now, try this patch. Just unzip into your bB folder and bankswitching should work in the MSK. I think - it's not been tested a whole lot.

 

To enable multisprite bankswitching for 8k, for instance, you put in the following lines at the beginning of your program, in this order:

 includesfile multisprite_bankswitch.inc : rem
 set kernel multisprite
 set romsize 8k

 

The rem after the includesfile command is a workaround for a bug in the compiler. Let me know if it works.

multisprite_bankswitch.zip

[+Atarius Maximus]

Has it been confirmed that bankswitching will be supported with the msk in a future release? If so I can't wait to see this game with multiple playfields. Everything looks great so far.

Yes, there will be support for bankswitching in all kernels. For now, try this patch. Just unzip into your bB folder and bankswitching should work in the MSK. I think - it's not been tested a whole lot.

 

To enable multisprite bankswitching for 8k, for instance, you put in the following lines at the beginning of your program, in this order:

 includesfile multisprite_bankswitch.inc : rem
 set kernel multisprite
 set romsize 8k

 

The rem after the includesfile command is a workaround for a bug in the compiler. Let me know if it works.

 

THANK YOU!!!

 

So far, it seems to be working great! I just compiled a new 8k version. I added 6 different playfield levels, although I just quickly made a few changes to them, they're not very well thought out yet. I also fixed the audio problem I spoke about last night, and changed the title screen again, using the highest possible resolution (pfheight=0). Now that I have so much more space, I've got a whole lot of work to do again!

 

The last version, jumper20.bin, I guess can be considered the "final" 4k release, I don't think I'm going to work on that one anymore.

 

Steve

jumper8k_1.bin

jumper8k_1.txt

Edited May 5, 2006 by Atarius Maximus

[Godzilla]

man, i cant wait to see a completed jumpman on the 2600, one of my fave ol games. hope it can have something close to the jumpman theme music tho :-)

[+Atarius Maximus]

Ok, here's my latest update. I've used about 7.5k already, but it's not optimized - I'm sure if I run low I can do some cleanup. The changes I've made are listed below.

 

1. There are now 12 unique levels (just like Jumpman Jr. ), with different platform layouts, colors, ladder positions, & missile size & speed. After completing all 12 levels (collecting 48 treasures), the game ends and you're taken to a "you win" screen.

2. There are now twice as many missile & ball starting positions.

3. Audio has been fixed from the final 4k version.

4. Ranking system was removed - the screen now shows a level number sprite that shows the last level you successfully completed.

5. New, high resolution title screen.

 

I spent as much time as I could today playtesting, but it's possible that some of the levels may be either too hard or too easy. I only spent about 5 or 10 minutes designing each level, I'm sure they'll all take some tweaking. Any feedback would be appreciated!

 

Here's a tip for trying out all the levels without having to play through the whole game -- You can change the code to start on any level you want fairly easily. In the define variables table (see below) change the 'a' variable to whichever level you'd like to go to. If you'd like to play the level with the correct missile speeds, you'll also have to change the 'V' variable to correspond to a valid number of treasures you'd have at that point in the game. For example, you'd set v to any number between 1-4 on level 1, 5-8 on level 2, 9-12 on level 3, etc (I would go with the first valid number, actually). You could also change the 'w' variable, which is the number of lives you get.

 

init
rem ------------------------------
rem Define Variables
rem ------------------------------
a=1	  : rem Level Counter
rem b=0  : rem Unused
c=130	: rem Player0XPos=c
d=23	 : rem Player0YPos=d
e=25	 : rem missile0XPos
f=25	 : rem missile0Ypos
g=0	  : rem Y pos to move to
h=0	  : rem currently jumping
i=130	: rem Player2 X Position (Treasure)
rem j=0  : rem Missile 0 Speed throttle 8.8 var
rem k=2  : rem Missile 0 Speed throttle 8.8 var
rem l=0  : rem Unused
m=53	 : rem Player3 (Top Ladder X Position)
n=69	 : rem Player4 (middle ladder X Position)
o=0	  : rem Death flag
p=53	 : rem Player5 (Bottom ladder X Position)
q=72	 : rem Ball Y Position
r=250	: rem Unused
s=0	  : rem speed Counter
rem t=0  : rem Unused
rem u=0  : rem Unused
v=0	  : rem Treasure counter 
w=2	  : rem Life Counter
x=0	  : rem Random Number Generator for Y Position of Death Missile
rem y=0  : rem Unused
z=50	 : rem Timer

 

man, i cant wait to see a completed jumpman on the 2600, one of my fave ol games. hope it can have something close to the jumpman theme music tho :-)

I don't think I'll be able to do the theme music. I can do sound effects, I don't think I can do music.

 

Steve

jumper8k_2.bin

jumper8k_2.txt

Edited May 6, 2006 by Atarius Maximus

[+Atarius Maximus]

Here's a few pictures of Jumper 8k playing on real hardware.

 

The Cuttle Cart 2 rocks.

 

Steve

[+Atarius Maximus]

I'm not really sure, but I hope so. There's so much more I could do with this game if I had that much extra space. I wish I knew how to write actual assembly code...

 

Steve

Hi Steve,

 

You could have fooled me! This is pretty good for someone "new" to writing assembly code. I'm still trying to learn.

 

Cheers,

Tony

 

Well, I'm not really coding in assembly directly, batari Basic makes it a whole lot easier.

 

Steve

[+Atarius Maximus]

Here's the latest version.

 

1. All 12 levels have been updated and playtested.

2. Updated the "you win" screen after all 12 levels have been beaten (48 treasures collected)

3. Level indicator (1-12) after you die, screen shows highest level that you completed.

4. Added code to silence V0 sound when you're going up and you've reached the top of a ladder. Other sound bugs fixed.

5. Added sound to the "skull and crossbones" death sprite screen.

6. Re-added lower res title screen - it looks nicer, and saves space.

7. Changed missile delay to a much shorter amount of time. I also changed the missile sounds to accomodate this change.

 

Working on:

 

1. Intro song - this isn't going very well.

2. batari: Is there any way you could add support for the score as it exists in the standard kernel?

 

Steve

jumper8k_3.bin

jumper8k_3.txt

[+Atarius Maximus]

I changed a few more things in this version.

 

I noticed that the game sometimes paused between levels. After collecting the last treasure on a screen, you could start climbing the current level, and halfway up the screen it would finally switch over to the new screen. This was a bug that I found and fixed.

 

I've also added an intro song to the title screen, using the example that Kirk Israel has on his bB help page. I used the exact song from the demo (it's the theme song to JoustPong/FlapPing), so I still need to change it.

 

I've done lots more playtesting, and everything is looking really good. I've just about used up all the available space again, so adding a score at the bottom of the screen may not be possible now without removing something else from the game. Opinions/thoughts on the necessity of a score in this game? The current 'score' is simply the level number you've reached, the object of this game is really to beat all 12 levels.

 

Steve

jumper8k_4.txt

jumper8k_4.bin

Edited May 9, 2006 by Atarius Maximus

[+Atarius Maximus]

I found a midi file of the original title theme to Jumpman Junior on the C64, which I've attached below. Now I just need to figure out how to make my title song sound something like this. This could take a while! Any atari audio experts out there that want to lend a hand?

jumpmanjunior.zip

[Albert]

Here are original SID renditions of the Jumpman and Jumpman Junior music. You'll want to grab a SID player (such as SIDPLAY for OS X) to listen to these.

 

..Al

Jumpman_Junior.sid.zip

Jumpman.sid.zip

[+Atarius Maximus]

Here is the original SID renditions of the Jumpman and Jumpman Junior music. You'll want to grab a SID player (such as SIDPLAY for OS X) to listen to these.

 

..Al

 

Cool! I've got an SD Card Reader for my C64, so I could just fire it up on the real thing. Of course, I guess I could also just play a quick game of Jumpman....

 

If any windows users would like to hear it, SidPlay 2 is a good choice.

 

EDIT: Someone asked me about the C64 Card Reader in a PM, so I thought I'd post the info here too. It is a pretty cool item, it's kind of like a Cuttle Cart 2 for the C64. It's manufactured by Individual Comuters in Germany. A product description is here, and it can be purchased here for about 54€.

 

You can archive your old disks to the MMC Card, and copy downloaded C64 disk images from the MMC to an 1541/1571 drive. Simple programs can be run directly from the MMC card, but most of the time you have to write the image to a floppy to play the game. It's a pretty cool item!

 

Steve

Edited May 9, 2006 by Atarius Maximus

[Godzilla]

There is a program that converts sid music to 2600 music. I know I've heard some pretty impressive results from it... So you may be able to have the problem solve itself...

 

GAH! finally. Man this was a beyotch to track down!

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...usic+conversion

 

I was really floored with the results...

Edited May 9, 2006 by Godzilla

[+Atarius Maximus]

There is a program that converts sid music to 2600 music. I know I've heard some pretty impressive results from it... So you may be able to have the problem solve itself...

 

GAH! finally. Man this was a beyotch to track down!

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...usic+conversion

 

I was really floored with the results...

 

Wow, thanks Godzilla! I'll have to take a closer look at that, it looks promising. I found the original thread about this program, SID2TIA, in the stella archives. I seem to have found a newer version here as well.

 

I have another update for today. No changes to the title song, but I added 'dynamic' playfields to Levels 2,4,6,8 & 10. Warning: some platforms may change during play. Kind of adds a new twist to those levels. It's a pretty cool addition, but now I'm down to 3 bytes free out of 8k.

 

There were also a few more bugfixes in this version, and I tweaked some things on a few other levels.

 

Steve

jumper8k_5.bin

jumper8k_5.txt

Edited May 9, 2006 by Atarius Maximus

[vdub_bobby]

Wow, thanks Godzilla! I'll have to take a closer look at that, it looks promising. I found the original thread about this program, SID2TIA, in the stella archives. I seem to have found a newer version here as well.

See Manuel's blog for the latest version of SID2TIA as well as some limited docs.

[uosipa llamxew]

I have another update for today. No changes to the title song, but I added 'dynamic' playfields to Levels 2,4,6,8 & 10. Warning: some platforms may change during play. Kind of adds a new twist to those levels. It's a pretty cool addition, but now I'm down to 3 bytes free out of 8k.

 

I like the new changes to the playfield.

 

The jumpguy still acts a little weird if you hold the jump button though. Hopefully that can be ironed out? It makes it a bit too easy to get to the top of the screen and the effect is a bit like watching a mosquito on speed.

 

(That would be the mosquito on speed, not taking speed and watching a mosquito.)