Category: Atari 2600

Juno First (Beta 10) (A2600 Game)

Juno First is intended to be an Atari 2600 port of the arcade game of the same name. Naturally the Atari 2600 version requires some significant simplifications, but the main elements are there. The visual style of the game is similar to Beamrider, but it plays quite differently.

The awesome sprite graphics were created by Nathan Strum, and the the excellent title music was created by Erik Ehrling (moderntimes99).

Changes:

Blue sky is now shown while you are invincible (it also flashes just before the end of invincibility).
There is a slight pause before you reappear after dying (let me know if it is long enough).
There is now a time bonus at the end of each wave – it is shown in the score area while the wave number is displayed.
Each wave is now 60 seconds long (previously 40 seconds).
Included some new speech from mos6507 (more next time).

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=125269

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Bong (04-06-2008) (A2600 Game)

Bong is an open source port of Pong for the Atari 2600/7800. It features 1 and 2 player game play, a smart AI, handicaps, 2 different color modes and a pause feature all squeezed into a 2k rom.

This version is the final version of the game and unless there are any bugs needing fixing will be the last rom revision. Bong has been submitted for the 2k 2008 Minigame Competition.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=126576

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Juno First (Beta 9) (A2600 Game)

Juno First is intended to be an Atari 2600 port of the arcade game of the same name. Naturally the Atari 2600 version requires some significant simplifications, but the main elements are there. The visual style of the game is similar to Beamrider, but it plays quite differently.

The awesome sprite graphics were created by Nathan Strum, and the the excellent title music was created by Erik Ehrling (moderntimes99).

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=125269

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Squared Away (Build 4) (A2600 Game)

In Squared Away you are a yellow square, and you must go around collecting red rectangles without being caught by the green square. If you reach the end of the screen, you will warp back to the opposite side (the rectangle can’t). Use this to gain time collecting red rectangles before the green one catches up to you. There is a code in this game to play the title screen (to sort of get a feel for the game.) At the title screen, press left, then right, then fire to start. If you want to delve in the actual game, just press fire to start.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=126034

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Sudoku v0.1.2 (A2600 Game)

Thomas Jentzsch picked up the challenge to create a working Sudoku game for the Atari 2600. Due to heavy limitations this will turn out into beeing very interesting.

Recent status:

Version 0.12

Dramatically improved generation performance (especially by remembering allowed digits for each row, column and block). Now a medium difficulty Sudoku is calculated in 3 to 10 seconds. To reduce average time for really difficult Sudokus, I abandon the solver if it takes too long and restart the generation from scratch. Still those Sudokus often take minutes to generate and I am not sure if and how this impacts the difficulty.

Implementing an intelligent solver turned out to be pretty impossible due to memory restrictions. I am already using ~94 bytes during generation, so there is not much space left.

Also added some eye-candy (useful for debugging too) during generation.

Next steps:
1. Trying to optimize memory consumption (to allow 2.)
2. Further speed improvements
3. Final digit permutation to hide generation orders
4. A better, non-flickering kernel

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=144&showentry=4916

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Juno First (Beta 8) (A2600 Game)

Juno First is intended to be an Atari 2600 port of the arcade game of the same name. Naturally the Atari 2600 version requires some significant simplifications, but the main elements are there. The visual style of the game is similar to Beamrider, but it plays quite differently.

The awesome sprite graphics were created by Nathan Strum, and the the excellent title music was created by Erik Ehrling (moderntimes99).

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=125269

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Steam Tunnel Bob (30-05-2008) (A2600 Game)

The main goal is to get to the mine car. Find the steam valves to turn off the steam flowing out of pipes. Press the button on the steam valves to enable/disable steam from a particular pipe somewhere in the maze (but you’ll need to find out what pipes are being impacted). Avoid the construction worker. If he sees you, you’ll lose a life. Touch steam and you’ll lose a life. If you run out of time, you’ll lose a life, and the value of steam valves will reset.

Release notes:

I’ve modified the Construction worker screens so that it decrements your timer rapidly if you’re on their screen instead of killing you.
Honestly, I think I like that better.

In addition, on level 3, there’s a new power-up. 🙂 It was fun to write in. I bet y’all will like it.

-John

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=125621

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Steam Tunnel Bob (21-05-2008) (A2600 Game)

The main goal is to get to the mine car. Find the steam valves to turn off the steam flowing out of pipes. Press the button on the steam valves to enable/disable steam from a particular pipe somewhere in the maze (but you’ll need to find out what pipes are being impacted). Avoid the construction worker. If he sees you, you’ll lose a life. Touch steam and you’ll lose a life. If you run out of time, you’ll lose a life, and the value of steam valves will reset.

Release notes:

Here’s a prototype build where the valve changes. It’s just a placeholder now, and no animation.

I’ll try to add some animation, and of course, make the valve have better graphics in “on” mode than just a red circle. 🙂

-John

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=125621

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Steam Tunnel Bob (19-05-2008) (A2600 Game)

The main goal is to get to the mine car. Find the steam valves to turn off the steam flowing out of pipes. Press the button on the steam valves to enable/disable steam from a particular pipe somewhere in the maze (but you’ll need to find out what pipes are being impacted). Avoid the construction worker. If he sees you, you’ll lose a life. Touch steam and you’ll lose a life. If you run out of time, you’ll lose a life, and the value of steam valves will reset.

Release notes:

I’m going to take the feedback about steam valve animation, and then work on it.
I’ve been thinking about it, and there’s some difficulty to it.
In level 1, some people may not have noticed that the steam is off in 2 rooms and on in 2 rooms to start.
So, it may “look” like some valves are not working, when in reality, they’re making things worse. A sound indicates a successful toggle.
However, with some valves off by default, I thought that would be an interesting twist to add in. Of course, that’s too much for level 1.

This brings up a problem with steam valves being in a “moved” state.
Say I just changed the color. It would be a dead giveaway if on level 1, 2 valves were blue, and 2 red. No one would touch the 2 blue valves, as they are already off.
So, I need to make some changes so the valve color would indicate a “changed” state, meaning that the user toggled it. All would default to red, and change to blue if toggled.
On earlier levels, all steam would be on, so the mission would be to find every valve and toggle it.
On later levels, some steam would be on/some off, so the mission would be to find the correct valves to toggle, instead of all of them.

I’ve been thinking about the construction guy too. He’s way too unfair in level 2.
Level 2 was a proof-of-concept sort of level. In my later ponderings, I’m thinking of making the construction guy take time away rapidly from the user, instead of starting over. That may be too heavy of a penalty. I think losing time/points would be enough of a scare factor to get out of that room immediately, with a little cost.
I’ll keep thinking about it. I don’t think I’ll make things as tough as level 2 was, at least for initial levels.

For those interested, I made a new version that now has 4 levels.
Level 1 became level 2.
Level 2 became level 3.
And, I added levels 1 and 4.
1 is simple, to show how things work; it’s a tutorial sort of level.
Level 4 only has 1 construction guy (yay!), and is a pretty big map, showing what can be done with good boulder/ladder placement.

Feel free to try it out.
In the meantime, I’ll start figuring out how to show that a valve is in a “changed” state.

Thanks all for the feedback!

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=125621

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