153 replies to this topic

[johnnywc]

I got a chance to download this and I am really impressed! I managed to almost finish Level 2... my only suggestion is in regards to the River Of Death. I hit it on Level 2 and was just stuck there feeling quite helpless. Any chance you can give the player a chance to swim to shore with enough time? For example, have the player's movement only happen once every second or so (or faster)...

Great job!

[Thomas Jentzsch]

johnnywc, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 11:54 AM, said:

Any chance you can give the player a chance to swim to shore with enough time? For example, have the player's movement only happen once every second or so (or faster)...

Or maybe even being able to use the river to your advantage. But very risky!

[StanJr]

This is all kinds of fun. But I am having all kinds of trouble firing the zapper at the Ducks. It just sits there atop my head doing nothing that I can determine. Also, if I hold the joystick button and press the joystick in a direction, I am sometimes transported to a different room??

I love how big the world gets after level one! There seems to be a lot to see and do in this game. Very fun! Please keep up the good work, I look forward to the eventual release!

Edited by StanJr, Sun Aug 30, 2009 2:51 PM.

[e1will]

StanJr, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 2:44 PM, said:

This is all kinds of fun. But I am having all kinds of trouble firing the zapper at the Ducks. It just sits there atop my head doing nothing that I can determine. Also, if I hold the joystick button and press the joystick in a direction, I am sometimes transported to a different room??

I love how big the world gets after level one! There seems to be a lot to see and do in this game. Very fun! Please keep up the good work, I look forward to the eventual release!

Ah, you have stumbled on the 'debug key'! The right joystick fire button does what you describe (switches to the next room), but the left joystick button should throw the zapper. Perhaps you have your fire buttons mapped to the opposite joysticks?

--Will

[haroldoop]

This is a really fantastic Atari 2600 game. Good graphics and quite complex gameplay.

[StanJr]

e1will, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 3:44 PM, said:

StanJr, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 2:44 PM, said:

This is all kinds of fun. But I am having all kinds of trouble firing the zapper at the Ducks. It just sits there atop my head doing nothing that I can determine. Also, if I hold the joystick button and press the joystick in a direction, I am sometimes transported to a different room??

I love how big the world gets after level one! There seems to be a lot to see and do in this game. Very fun! Please keep up the good work, I look forward to the eventual release!

Ah, you have stumbled on the 'debug key'! The right joystick fire button does what you describe (switches to the next room), but the left joystick button should throw the zapper. Perhaps you have your fire buttons mapped to the opposite joysticks?

--Will

that might very well be the issue. I'm running the latest Stella, I'll check the mapping! Thanks!

Stan

[StanJr]

Played through all five levels tonight (once I remapped the button ). Very fun game, lots of stuff to do and places to explore! I can't decide if playing through the previous level as part of the subsequent level is part of the charm, or if it gets redundant. So far it is still pretty fresh, though. I LOVE recharging the zapper in the electrical outlet! Genius!

Couple of SPOILER level questions though:

Spoiler

Do you have to have the balloon to make it through the closing walls in the orange door? If so, that greatly limits what you can do in that area and if you lose the balloon you are screwed. I have lost the balloon a couple of times (once going into the light purple door near the river. I have no idea where it ended up), and the zapper once, but with the balloon I was able to retrieve the zapper!

There is some dithering that goes on when you really push against some walls (other rooms bleed in), or when you leave a room at an angle with the balloon. Can that be cleaned up or is that part of the trade-off for making an awesome game?

The last "golden" egg in level 5 is mostly stuck in the wall in the room above the starting point (or near thereby). Is that intentional?

Never had to use the flashlight, is that for later levels? Also, how does one use the shield?

If it is better to answer these questions via PM to avoid spoiling for the others, that is cool.

Loving the game! Thank you and keep up the great work!

Edited by StanJr, Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:02 PM.

[e1will]

StanJr, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:01 PM, said:

Played through all five levels tonight (once I remapped the button ). Very fun game, lots of stuff to do and places to explore! I can't decide if playing through the previous level as part of the subsequent level is part of the charm, or if it gets redundant. So far it is still pretty fresh, though. I LOVE recharging the zapper in the electrical outlet! Genius!

Couple of SPOILER level questions though:

I agree, having to playing through the previous level is redundant; I've changed that in v0.03 (which will be posted once I work out some bugs in the attract mode.)

You need either the balloon or super-speed (from picking up the pink balloon) to complete the level you mention. Since you'll no longer have to get through the previous levels, you should be more likely to have super-speed by the time you get to that level in the next build. At any rate, I will be putting more pink balloons around to pick up, probably in v0.04.

I know there are a couple of rooms with borders that are too thin, that let you peek through to the next room without actually being able to get in. That'll get fixed too.

The golden egg has a better location in v0.03. Where it is now is just an artifact of it not having a "location" at all (e.g. it's in room 0, horizontal location 0, vertical location 0).

The flashlight will be required in later levels, but you can use it on earlier levels too (e.g. the room with the black door, and the rooms behind the black door.)

As for the shield, pick it up and run into a tank for a good demonstration of what it does.

Hope this helps!

--Will

[e1will]

Thomas Jentzsch, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 11:58 AM, said:

johnnywc, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 11:54 AM, said:

Any chance you can give the player a chance to swim to shore with enough time? For example, have the player's movement only happen once every second or so (or faster)...

Or maybe even being able to use the river to your advantage. But very risky!

I like this idea. I think I'll include a level where you have to hop in a river to get to a certain egg. It could sweep you into the egg, then into an exit door if you time it right.

--Will

[StanJr]

e1will, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:58 PM, said:

I agree, having to playing through the previous level is redundant; I've changed that in v0.03 (which will be posted once I work out some bugs in the attract mode.)

You need either the balloon or super-speed (from picking up the pink balloon) to complete the level you mention. Since you'll no longer have to get through the previous levels, you should be more likely to have super-speed by the time you get to that level in the next build. At any rate, I will be putting more pink balloons around to pick up, probably in v0.04.

I know there are a couple of rooms with borders that are too thin, that let you peek through to the next room without actually being able to get in. That'll get fixed too.

The golden egg has a better location in v0.03. Where it is now is just an artifact of it not having a "location" at all (e.g. it's in room 0, horizontal location 0, vertical location 0).

The flashlight will be required in later levels, but you can use it on earlier levels too (e.g. the room with the black door, and the rooms behind the black door.)

As for the shield, pick it up and run into a tank for a good demonstration of what it does.

Hope this helps!

--Will

Thanks! Eagerly awaiting v0.03!

[StanJr]

A few more interesting notes:

SPOILER

Spoiler

While floating around I found a room with a magnet (I assume), but I could not get it to attract anything. Maybe too many items on screen?

Also found an odd room with an open green door in the lower left corner that took me back to the start.

I found all of this whilst floating along with the balloon, so I'm not sure if these areas can be honestly reached via level 5 access or not.

Are these intended for later use in higher levels or am I doing something wrong?

Loving it!
Thanks!

[e1will]

StanJr, on Thu Sep 3, 2009 5:02 PM, said:

A few more interesting notes:

SPOILER

Loving it!
Thanks!

The thing the magnet is most attracted to is the egg, followed by the balloon, so if you're holding those things it won't attract anything else in the room. I may change that though, now that you mention it... it should be easy enough to code it so the magnet only attracts things you're not already carrying, and more intuitive too.

There are a few doors that will take you back to the beginning, or to various other places that you might not expect. There are a couple of really nasty doors in a later level, but I'll leave those for you to discover (they're not visible in v0.02).

I'm putting the finishing touches on v0.03 now; I hope to post that by Monday. It's got more levels, along with an arcade-style attract mode (demo mode that shows you how to play) and a pause feature.

--Will

[StanJr]

Awesome! Bring on the Ducks!

[e1will]

Hello again!

I'd like to thank everyone for your kind words and helpful suggestions. I've been able to incorporate several of the suggestions into version 0.03. I really appreciate the feedback!

v0.03 has several significant improvements, including:

- An arcade-style "attract mode" where the computer controls the robot to demonstrate how the game is played.

- A pause feature: use the TV Type switch to pause the game (B&W position) or unpause it (Color position) I also incorporated 7800 detection code (thanks to Nukey Shay for posting how to do this) to handle the 7800 Pause button.

- Most importantly, you can now win the game! All the levels are in place, as are all 25 eggs. If you somehow manage to complete Level 12, the egg count resets and the ducks speed up.

- The scanline counts should be (mostly) stable now. Thanks to Nukey for pointing out one case where they weren't... a little digging let me to discover that there were a lot of other places too. I've had to do a major overhaul of the code to get rid of the timing problems, but it should now be a constant 262 scanlines for NTSC and 312 for PAL. (There are three exceptions I know of where it does roll: pressing Reset from the Select screen, pressing Select from within the game, and a serious jitter if you pick up a bonus item while carrying both the zapper and an egg. I know why it's doing this, but fixing it is going to be a major task, and may take a while. In any case the first two cases (Reset & Select) may not be visible on an emulator, and the third does not occur in the PAL build. If you see any other jitters or rolls in the game, please let me know.)

- The "arcade" zone, behind the pink door, has some new (yet familiar) characters to attack you.

- The "warp of death" is now present. You can sacrifice your current life to advance to the next level if you can't figure out a way to finish it.

- I've added some levels where the river actually helps you rather than just sweeps you to your death. You'll have to jump in at least one river to get an egg, and doing so will take you someplace useful. Don't just hop into rivers indiscriminately, though, they are still (mostly) deadly!

- You no longer have to re-collect eggs you collected in the previous level. Each level from 1-11 now only requires you to collect 2 eggs to advance to the next level. You need to collect 3 eggs on Level 12, and 5 on Level 13 and higher.

- The magnet behavior is now different: if you're carrying objects, the magnet ignores them and attracts "uncarried" objects. This should make the magnet much more useful.

I'm really excited about the new version... I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think.

--Will

Edited by e1will, Fri Jan 15, 2010 4:59 PM.

[StanJr]

Can't wait to try it, but it may be a day or so, busy, busy!

[StanJr]

Ok, couldn't help myself! Played one game, got to level 5. The game is much improved by not having to regather the eggs from previous levels, plus there is like 100% more exploring to do in the older rooms!

Love the additions to the classic section!

Can't wait to see what is beyond level 5!

So far having a LOT of fun. Oh and there is a wicked mean red duck that shows up in level 5, YIPE!

[e1will]

Another screenshot: this shows the maximum number of extra lives you can earn (15). Get to 15 and instead of green 1UP balloons, you get yellow balloons worth 5000 points each (very handy for racking up points.)

--Will

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[tremoloman2006]

This game looks AWESOME! I love the parody in it!
Please finish this and put it in a cart so I can give you some moola!

Anyone who hasn't downloaded this owes it to themself to do so - graphics are great!

I love the huge duck BTW!

[Nati]

I like the way you make the ducks, They look like the ones from duck hunt

[MausGames]

How long have you been working on this? Everything about it is excellent, I hope it's one of many.

[e1will]

MausGames, on Wed Sep 9, 2009 4:13 PM, said:

How long have you been working on this? Everything about it is excellent, I hope it's one of many.

Thanks! I've been writing down ideas for it since 2003 or so, but this April I finally decided to start coding it. There are a couple of other game ideas I'd like to try if all goes well with this one.

--Will

[nonner242]

Will
Great Work!
I hope you plan a cart release for this...IT ROCKS!
Time well spent on this game!
Thank you!

[e1will]

Hello everyone!

I've been spending the last couple of months trying to cram 48k worth of code and graphics into 32k of ROM space, and I think I've succeeded. Attached is the latest version of Duck Attack! (v0.04). The changes since the last version have been too numerous to mention, but the big ones are:

- Random mode: move the joystick right or left at the Game Select screen to turn random mode on (all objects will be scattered randomly throughout the game) or standard mode (objects are put in the same place every time you play).

- Title cards: every time you complete a level, a title card appears showing the bonus item for the next level. (Sample screenshots attached.) There are 100 unique bonus objects.

- The super outlet: this is a red recharging station (electrical outlet) that lets you stun a duck permanently (at least to the end of the level). The other (yellow) outlets only stun them temporarily (about a minute in the early levels, decreasing to a few seconds at the higher levels.)

- More bad guys: there are two types of bees: a yellow one, which mostly minds its own business, and an orange one which is more aggressive. There are more snakes, and they're faster.

- Meaner ducks: If you manage to collect 25 eggs, the ducks get much faster and more aggressive.

- An easter egg: I won't say too much about it, but you'll know it when you see it. The one hint I will offer is that you'll need the blue balloon to find it.

I need to update the manual to reflect the changes I've made; I'll be working on that over Thanksgiving break.

What's here is pretty much all the functionality I'd originally envisioned. Let me know if you notice any bugs, or have any ideas for ways to improve the gameplay. So far everyone's suggestions and comments have been great.

Enjoy!

--Will

EDIT: I found a bug relating to the random placement logic in v0.04. It's now fixed: v0.05 is now attached.

EDIT 2: Noticed a couple of screen rolls in v0.05 and fixed those. v0.06 attached.

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Edited by e1will, Fri Jan 15, 2010 5:03 PM.

[Propane13]

I just played this. It's a LOT of fun.
And, looks to be tightly programmed, so you get my official thumbs-up!

-John

[e1will]

Here's the latest version, v0.07, which has some bug fixes and various enhancements. The biggest changes are:

- If you go through a door and a duck watches you do it, it may follow you through the door.

- The snakes now inch up or down towards you, and don't leave the room you're in (they will keep on winding back towards you until you leave the room.)

- I was finally able to add JohnnyWC's excellent suggestion to let you struggle against the river currents and eventually free yourself. I've made this a difficulty setting: Choose "A" on the Player 2 difficulty switch for the old behavior (river is too strong to struggle against) or "B" for the ability to free yourself from the rivers.

- I've added some more bad guys in various places.

The feedback I've received so far has been very helpful, and I'm very open for more. What do you like about the game? What do you dislike? What might make it better?

--Will

EDIT: Here's another screenshot... PAL for a change.

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Edited by e1will, Fri Jan 15, 2010 5:08 PM.