Cupcakus Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Just kidding... Was that rude or what? Very Sorry, but it made you look didn't it!... The fact is scince the last time I talked about finishing the game I havn't even looked at the code. My focus has been on my growing family and my career which has taken a recent course for the better, but has only served to cement my lack of 2600 play time. So I guess the question begs, when *will* it be finished? At this rate, I wouldn't hold your breath, maybe never? Maybe we just release it in ROM form as an unfinished prototype or something, I dunno.... The worst part is, and always has been scince the show it missed two years ago is that it's really, really closed to being finished. I ran out of cart space and got frustrated and set it aside for a day, I ended up getting hired the next day to do real work, and I havn't given it much work scince. I over complicated the AI which will save a lot of cart space if and when that get's refactored and I never implemented the game play for the bomb card... Which shouldn't be too difficult. So I suppose my question at this point is. Is the community OK with waiting an undertermined amount of time before this ever gets released? Is there some really bored soul that wants to take it over and finish it? Or should I just release it as is and forget about it... (Mostly unplayable as the AI will lock up eventually and think forever) Well that was a whole lot of typing for a whole lot of nothing new to report, I'm very sorry. I bothered to post this because I actually put a couple hours into the source today, mostly relearning what I was doing, and fixing a few minor bugs, and I decided I might poke my head out of the closet again. (Where's the flash cart?) Gone, I lost all of my work on that project in a computer meltdown, thankfully I had backups of the Kablamo stuff. It's fantastic to see Kroko came up with a superior design anyway. If I ever revive the project, I will make it a direct PC->2600 link for programmers to use as a dev tool, and I beg Kroko to make more carts cause I want one!!! :-) Let the punishment begin... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrppv666 Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Finish the game! You know you wanna! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Who are you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cupcakus Posted April 18, 2005 Author Share Posted April 18, 2005 Who are you? 838978[/snapback] Ouch :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uosipa llamxew Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Who are you? 838978[/snapback] Ouch :-) 838982[/snapback] I remember seeing Dave's artwork for the game, but I don't think I ever saw a screenshot or read any sort of game plan on this one. Does anyone have a link with more information? @Cupcakus: I hate volunteering other people, but you might contact Nukey Shay, Robert M, or atwwong to see if one of them would be interested in finishing the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cupcakus Posted April 18, 2005 Author Share Posted April 18, 2005 (edited) @Cupcakus: I hate volunteering other people, but you might contact Nukey Shay, Robert M, or atwwong to see if one of them would be interested in finishing the game. 838994[/snapback] OK, but I'm gonna tell them you said they had to do it... My web site is down due to Al moving the AA servers, he's empowered me to fix it, but it sorely needs updating so don't expect that too soon either. Here are some screen shots of the game on the main AA page though... http://www.atariage.com/development_page.h...evelopmentID=56 Edited April 18, 2005 by Cupcakus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uosipa llamxew Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 @Cupcakus: I hate volunteering other people, but you might contact Nukey Shay, Robert M, or atwwong to see if one of them would be interested in finishing the game. 838994[/snapback] OK, but I'm gonna tell them you said they had to do it... 838995[/snapback] It's nice to have an [edit] option. I'll delete my post and tell them you made it up! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 Who are you? 838978[/snapback] Ouch :-) 838982[/snapback] I remember seeing Dave's artwork for the game, but I don't think I ever saw a screenshot or read any sort of game plan on this one. Does anyone have a link with more information? It's been in our In Development section for some time.. http://www.atariage.com/development_page.h...evelopmentID=56 There are some screenshots and a description if you click the above link. @Cupcakus: I hate volunteering other people, but you might contact Nukey Shay, Robert M, or atwwong to see if one of them would be interested in finishing the game. 838994[/snapback] I agree, if you're not able to devote the time to finish the game Chris, it's pretty far along (nearly finished!) that another homebrew author might be able to pick up where you left off. I'd really like to see a cart of this adorned with David's beautiful artwork. I also want to play the game, of course, as I enjoy games of this nature.. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uosipa llamxew Posted April 18, 2005 Share Posted April 18, 2005 (edited) It's been in our In Development section for some time.. http://www.atariage.com/development_page.h...evelopmentID=56 There are some screenshots and a description if you click the above link. Ah, yes, my bad! I have seen those. I guess I was being stupid/lazy to not check the development section. I would love to try Kablammo out, even in its current stage. Btw, cupcakus (in case you hadn't been lurking in the forums all this time), each of the three people I mentioned have put out some sensational hacks fairly recently. I could be wrong, but I think that a lot of the other homebrew authors would prefer to write their own kernals from the ground up. At any rate, you might mention this in the Homebrew forum... somebody is bound to be interested! :!: Robert M Nukey Shay 2 3 4 atwwong Edited April 18, 2005 by mojofltr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaManFan Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 I hope somebody will finish this. I've been waiting years for this to come out on cart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 (edited) Ran out of cart space? How big is this program? BTW what happened to the flash cart project? Has this been abandoned? Edited April 19, 2005 by Nukey Shay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Mitchell Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 Gotta finish what is started!! Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rasty Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 Chris, I've had a similar time as yours not being able to keep my Atari development going. Anyway the idea of having a nearly finished game helped me out resuming work on it, as it seems it's doing with you.. of course it must still be a fun process for you to do, because if you feel forced, then there's no reason to keep going! Regards! Rasty.- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cupcakus Posted April 19, 2005 Author Share Posted April 19, 2005 Ran out of cart space? How big is this program? BTW what happened to the flash cart project? Has this been abandoned? 839847[/snapback] The program is 4k, and should not have to be bigger... I could go 8k bank switched and even tried to figure it out at one point, but it's just not necessary. Spending the last couple days reading over it, the code is sloppy in a lot of places and I have a lot of unneccessary data that can be cleaned up. The problem ends up being that the code has to be tighter, and better written to make everything fit (which is very common in 2600 development). There's no reason to make the cost per unit of a cart go up because I'm a lazy programmer I answered the flash cart question in my original post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEBRO Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 There's no reason to make the cost per unit of a cart go up because I'm a lazy programmer 839942[/snapback] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nostalgic Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 The program is 4k, and should not have to be bigger... I could go 8k bank switched and even tried to figure it out at one point, but it's just not necessary. Spending the last couple days reading over it, the code is sloppy in a lot of places and I have a lot of unneccessary data that can be cleaned up. I think it could be done in 4K as well. Cleaning up some of the code should help a lot toward fitting everything in. The folks on Stella were very helpful in pointing out ways I could optimize Euchre (another 4K card game), with simple tricks like using branches rather than jumps (when the status flag state is guaranteed) and making a jump table for all of my various "stages" (game over, computer player's turn, human player's turn, etc). As for the game logic, that comes down to decisions about just how intelligent you plan to make the computer players. There'll probably be some subtle strategies that you'll have to sacrifice, but the computer players can still play a good game with some general rules in mind. In short - in can be done, and I'll be one of the first in line to pick it up when it is finished. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted April 20, 2005 Share Posted April 20, 2005 Another way to save space is by careful editing of the ram assignments. Bits in ram locations that are looked at frequently should be moved high (so you can take advantage of BPL/MI and BVC/S branching instead of using AND's and CMP's all over the place). Also if the ultimate value loaded following one of these tests would be either the value of a bit or zero...you should just use that bit position in a ram location to hold it (no need to perform a branch at all...just load the value and strip off all unused bits). And sharing data tables or routines whereever possible helps save loads of space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cupcakus Posted April 20, 2005 Author Share Posted April 20, 2005 Most of those suggestions are already in play... however I made very poor use of indirect addressing and pointers. A lot of areas are rediculously silly like, if player 1 do xyz to player1 if player 2 do xyz to player 2 if player 3 do xyx to player 3 etc... xyz is the same exact thing each time, and could be 20 or so lines long. Wheras it would be much more efficient to load a pointer first do xyz to (player) This is one of those programming 101 things I was ignoring because I thought I had plenty of room to spare on the cart and it was easier to read. But it burned me I also have an insane number of NOP's in the kernel to make everything display correctly. This may be unavoidable, but there's a lot of rom space wasted this way, I may replace some with useless but more intensive opcodes so I can use less space, or maybe I could stick some usefull code in there too... I just wish I had time to figure it out Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted April 26, 2005 Share Posted April 26, 2005 well i pre-purchased two of em LONG ago here on AA. so I patiently wait... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted August 9, 2005 Share Posted August 9, 2005 Has this one pretty much fallen into oblivion? It's been "almost complete" for over 2 years now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gateway Posted August 9, 2005 Share Posted August 9, 2005 **reads topic title, gets excited** **sees dates of topic** Damn you! Damn you all to hell! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted August 9, 2005 Share Posted August 9, 2005 **reads topic title, gets excited** **sees dates of topic** Damn you! Damn you all to hell! 907770[/snapback] Is there a bin of this floating around? What state of completion it is at, 90% or so? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted January 19, 2009 Share Posted January 19, 2009 yea, i'd love to see a .bin so i could at least play it at some point... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Impaler_26 Posted January 19, 2009 Share Posted January 19, 2009 At least you can take a look at the Kablamo!-Label... http://www.liveinabin.com/pages/1_3.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted January 19, 2009 Share Posted January 19, 2009 At least you can take a look at the Kablamo!-Label... http://www.liveinabin.com/pages/1_3.html Here's an actual cartridge from when the game was briefly in the store: And here's a picture I just took of the "finished" manual. I say "finished" as I believe modifications would have been needed due to changes in the game that were made (or needed to be made) after these were printed: I doubt the game will ever be completed at this point unless someone else picks up the reigns from where Chris Larkin left off. I have not spoken to him in a long time. I last tried to write him on October 31, 2007 but my email was bounced by his evil ISP. I didn't make any other attempts after that. Looks like my last actual contact with him was in July 2004. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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