The setting is a futuristic gladiator tournament, where combatants duel each other to the death for the pleasure of the galactic empire. The game will comprise the player’s fighting career, with the difficulty and rewards ramping up with each match.

Release notes from jrok:

Here’s my latest build:

Finally got scanline under control with a small kernel edit and some optimization of the player control scheme. The game runs at a smooth 262 except for overflows during the death animations, which I’ll have to investigate further.
Replaced left and right walls with a PF0=128 vertical frame in the vblank
Set a limits on laser beams to stop their progress at the left and right walls (still working on stopping vertical and diagonal beams)
Created a color phase animation for the combatants while waiting for a new match to begin.
Increased hittable area of both combatants
Revised AI routine
Expanded number and style of playfields
Expanded number of unique enemies

For me, the most exciting part was being able to finally get my core game routines to run at a reliable 262, since I was at the verge of giving up. I have lots of ideas where I want to take the game next, so its a big relief to know that, at the very least, I might still have a program that’s functional.

Next:
Now that I can have scores of unique “looking” enemies, I really want to work on getting unique “acting” ones. I’ve left placeholders in my enemy data set that I will try to use as pointers for different weapons, and maybe even alternate AI routines. I have plenty of ROM left in my AI bank, so I just have to figure out what I want them to do differently that varies the challenge as you proceed through the game.

I also would like to add in a few new player control options, which will be pretty easy since I’m already tracking the time that the player is holding down the fire button. But I could use some advice:

Quick button “taps”:
Which do you think would be more interesting and/or useful: a quick dodge manuever or a melee attack?

Overcharging the gun:
Should this produce a negative effect for the player, like the weapon becoming unavailable for a short period of time? Or should it be some sort of super-attack or manuever that can be stocked up like smartbombs?

Also, I’ve realized if I keep this a 32K game, I still have 2 completely empty banks to create completely alternate gameloops, to keep the player guessing about what’s coming in the next level. For instance, instead of facing a lone gladiator with a laser beam, I want to create the following alternate round-styles:

Fend off groups of alien wildlife that emerge from a pit.
Battle a snakelike creature that moves like a Tron light cycle.
Battle a killer robot that can teleport around the screen.

It’s probably biting off more than I or bB can chew, but if I can squeeze even one alternate play-style in there I think I’ll be happy with this project.

Cheers,
Jarod

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=134731&st=0

atari2600land is continously improving his Jellyfishing game featuring SpongeBob SquarePants.

Release notes:

Multi=point idea added due to popular demand. What else should I add?

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=134817&st=25

atari2600land is continously improving his Jellyfishing game featuring SpongeBob SquarePants.

Release notes for yesterdays second version:

Here’s a little sound effect. The more jellyfish that are near you, the louder the buzzing is. Does anyone have a good idea about how to do collision detection for stinging (death?) Since I’m using flickering, i don’t really have a good idea on how to do it.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=134817

The setting is a futuristic gladiator tournament, where combatants duel each other to the death for the pleasure of the galactic empire. The game will comprise the player’s fighting career, with the difficulty and rewards ramping up with each match.

Release notes from jrok:

FYI, I have attached yet *another* build, which adds color progression to the enemy sprite and playfield as you advance. It also lengthen’s the range of the enemies beam in addition to making him more aggressive as you get farther in the game. I think that’s gonna be my last update today, because I have to get my butt back to work. Thanks for the encouragement.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=134731

The setting is a futuristic gladiator tournament, where combatants duel each other to the death for the pleasure of the galactic empire. The game will comprise the player’s fighting career, with the difficulty and rewards ramping up with each match.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=134731

The setting is a futuristic gladiator tournament, where combatants duel each other to the death for the pleasure of the galactic empire. The game will comprise the player’s fighting career, with the difficulty and rewards ramping up with each match.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=134731

The evil Emperor Wang is leader of the planet Porno and sends his mighty “Sex Ray” towards Earth, turning everyone into sex-crazed fiends. Only one man can save the Earth, football player Flesh Gordon.

This game was based on the 1974 movie Flesh Gordon which is a spoof on the 1936 movie Flash Gordon. Flesh was shot very closely like the movie it was spoofing, but in a very campy, sexual way. It’s probably only funny to people who’s seen Flash.

In this game you must travel up the fallopian tube avoiding just about everything, especially those pesky eggs. You wouldn’t want to get anyone pregnant!

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=134775

atari2600land is working on another game called SpongeBob SquarePants – Jellyfishing. It’s in an early stage of development.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=134817

jrok released a techdemo.

Quote:

So, I’ve been working on designing some routines that use the playfield to draw laser beams that can destroy playfield-drawn terrain. Enclosed is my first effort, which I think could do with a lot of improvement. It its current state, my death ray does the following:

– Calculates the playfield position of the sprite from which it originated.
– Draws a progressive line in one of eight directions depending on the player’s direction when the fire button is released.
– When the laser reaches it’s full range or hits a playfield pixel, the line progressively erases (also erasing the pfpixel at its endpoint.)

Ultimately, I’ll want to add a second player, and vary the length of the death ray depending on how long the button was held down. But there are many things that i’d like to improve about this code before I can take this to the next stage. Hoping a few of you could take a crack at optimizing down this code… I’ve been staring at it all weekend and it seems to be begging for a clever function or two to tidy it up. Also, there is a small bump in the scanline count that happens during beam collisions that I can’t seem to nail down.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=134333

New game for atari2600land…

Quote:

but i’m not working on this anymore in favor of Toobin.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=133394