44 replies to this topic

[disjaukifa]

Hey Guys,
This is my attempt to develop and release an Atari 2600 homebrew game before Halloween which I've named Candy Catcher. Here is a screen shots of the game and the Cartridge Label:





The object of the game is simple. Catch Candy however you have to beware the robot that comes and tries to hit you! Here is how scoring is going to work:

You catch a piece of candy : + 10 points
You jump and crush the robot : + 15 points
You miss a piece of candy and it hits the ground : - 1 point
You get hit by a piece of candy : - 5 points
The robot grabs a piece of candy : - 10 points (Basically random luck on the robots part but forces you to take more challenging moves!)
The robot hits you = Game Over.


The Left Difficulty Switch determines which game mode you are playing.
Difficulty B Easy

• The frequency at which the robot appears on the screen is fixed and does not change.
  
• The first 3 times you smash the robot, the robots speed will increase
  
• The score is purple in color

Difficulty A Pro

• Both the frequency and the speed of the robot will increase for the first 3 times you smash the robot
  
• The score is red in color

The reason behind the design of the player sprite and the robot sprite is my tribute to Berzerk, my personal favorite game for the 2600. I've set some limits for myself and it has turned out to be more challenging than I thought.

• I've used the multi-sprite kernel in Batari Basic which actually presented some challenges when it comes to collision detection which I'm still working on at the moment. I used this kernel to make it easier and in turn has been a very interesting learning curve.
  
  
• 4K Limit. I wanted to see if I could make a fun simple game into 4K. As it stands right now I have about 195 bytes left.
  
  
• Implement sound (Something I have never done).

Let me know what you think!

Candy Catcher is available for pre-order here!

Note: You have permission to use this program with emulators and on a real Atari using a Harmony cartridge or similar device. Please do not include any version of this program in collections and please don't put it on cartridge without first getting my permission.

Latest Binary
 Candy_Catcher_Final_NSTC.a26   4K   200 downloads
 Candy_Catcher_Final_PAL50.a26   4K   140 downloads

Old Binaries
 Candy_Catcher_10032011.bin   4K   112 downloads
Candy_Catcher_10042011.a26 4K 20 downloads
Candy_Catcher_10052011.a26 4K 15 downloads
Candy_Catcher_10062011a.a26 4K 12 downloads
Candy_Catcher_10062011b.a26 4K 14 downloads
Candy_Catcher_10072011.a26 4K 26 downloads
Candy_Catcher_10082011.bin 4K 13 downloads
Candy_Catcher_10092011a.a26 4K 13 downloads
Candy_Catcher_RC1.a26 4K 27 downloads



Hope ya'll enjoy this!
Thanks
Disjaukifa

[Chuck D. Head]

disjaukifa, on Mon Oct 3, 2011 10:17 PM, said:

Hey Guys,

This is my attempt to develop and release an Atari 2600 homebrew game before Halloween which I've named Candy Catcher. I've set some limits for myself and it has turned out to be more challenging than I thought.

1st - I've used the multi-sprite kernel in Batari Basic which actually presented some challenges when it comes to collision detection which I'm still working on at the moment. I used this kernel to make it easier and in turn has been a very interesting learning curve.

2nd - 4K Limit. I wanted to see if I could make a fun simple game into 4K. As it stands right now I have about 1200 bytes left and I have not tried compacting the code yet so so far so good!

3rd - Implement sound (Something I have never done). I've got one sound effect in there at the moment, looking to add others.

Here is a screen shot of the game:

Screen shot 2011-10-04 at 12.04.33 AM.png

The object of the game is simple. Catch Candy however you have to beware the robot that comes and tries to hit you! Here is how scoring is going to work:

You catch a piece of candy : + 10 points
You miss a piece of candy and it hits the ground : - 1 point
You get hit by a piece of candy : - 5 points
You jump and crush the robot : + 15 points
The robot grabs a piece of candy : - 10 points (Basically random luck on the robots part but forces you to take more challenging moves!)
The robot hits you = Game Over.

If you download this build, you will see I only have collision done if you catch a piece of candy and if the piece of candy hits the ground. I hope to get the rest of the collision detection implemented this week and get the game wrapped up by next week.

Let me know what you think!

BTW to start the game press the fire button and you can press reset at any point and the game will start over completely. Here is the latest build of the game:

Candy_Catcher_10032011.bin

Hope ya'll enjoy this!

Thanks
Disjaukifa

Hmm, well it works, not sure why theres a tiny robot on the floor, but......I like it! You need to subtract points if you happen to catch some healthy trick or trat snacks.

[Tony The 2600]

Congratulations and really good for your first homebrew mate

[disjaukifa]

Chuck D. Head, on Tue Oct 4, 2011 12:46 AM, said:

Hmm, well it works, not sure why theres a tiny robot on the floor, but......I like it! You need to subtract points if you happen to catch some healthy trick or trat snacks.

I don't think I have space left, but if I have enough room, I'll try to add it in, its not a bad idea either! The robot is there to give the game a way to end. It got bored just walking back and forth and wanted to added something else to the game to make it more difficult.

Tony The 2600, on Tue Oct 4, 2011 1:14 AM, said:

Congratulations and really good for your first homebrew mate

Thank you! In actuality its not my first homebrew, just the first one that will be done and finished. I've got a homebrew game called Atomic Meltdown that is currently on its 3rd re-write, and I think this one will be the final one as well!

[TrekMD]

Looks nice!

[disjaukifa]

TrekMD, on Tue Oct 4, 2011 8:04 AM, said:

Looks nice!

Thank you for the feedback! I hope to have another update tonight with some of the collision detection implemented, if not all just depends on how the code goes. I have it laid out how I want to implement it, its just seeing if that design will work.

[brojamfootball]

Maybe the robot could instead be a Halloween cat, witch, or ghost?
Just a thought...

[disjaukifa]

brojamfootball, on Tue Oct 4, 2011 8:20 AM, said:

Maybe the robot could instead be a Halloween cat, witch, or ghost?
Just a thought...

I could do that, but I had the robot in there and the person's graphics the way they are as a tribute to Berzerk . . . my personal favorite 2600 game

[rockfistus]

Nice work!

[disjaukifa]

rockfistus, on Tue Oct 4, 2011 4:52 PM, said:

Nice work!

Thank you for taking a look! I'm going to put more work into the game tonight and try to have some more of the collision detection finished tonight. I would like to have it all finished tonight and just have to worry about setting up the various rules and sounds.

[Chuck D. Head]

disjaukifa, on Tue Oct 4, 2011 8:29 AM, said:

I had the robot in there and the person's graphics the way they are as a tribute to Berzerk . . . my personal favorite 2600 game

Well, good, cause thats exactly what it looks like!!

[disjaukifa]

Chuck D. Head, on Tue Oct 4, 2011 5:52 PM, said:

disjaukifa, on Tue Oct 4, 2011 8:29 AM, said:

I had the robot in there and the person's graphics the way they are as a tribute to Berzerk . . . my personal favorite 2600 game

Well, good, cause thats exactly what it looks like!!

I'm glad you think so! Just got my kids to bed so its time to do some coding. I hope to have an update with some new collision routines done and uploaded by around 12am eastern time tonight!

[disjaukifa]

Hey Guys,

Here is the update as promised! I still have about 715 bytes to play with and then I will be out of room. I need to optimize the code and add other sound bytes into it for different things. The game now as an ending. Please note to restart the game you need to reset button, that will be changed tomorrow. Also currently you can only start a game by hitting the fire button. Minor tweaks to correct these over sites will be made tomorrow.

Here is a screen shot of the new game ending screen:




All collision detection has been implemented ( . . . I think) and let me tell you that was probably the most annoying thing I have ever had to do. I did decide to be nice, if you start jumping and the robot on the bottom of the screen collides with you as your are traveling upwards, nothing happens, you can only destroy the robot when you are falling down.

Pending space after sound is completely added and other code clean up has been accomplished, I'll put in an animation for the robot getting destroyed, right now I'm not sure I have enough space to do that.

Here is the latest binary! Let me know what you think!
 Candy_Catcher_10042011.a26   4K   47 downloads

Thanks

PS Thanks Al for letting me attach .a26 files!

Edited by disjaukifa, Tue Oct 4, 2011 10:20 PM.

[disjaukifa]

Hey Guys,

Midnight again and guess what I have another build. Here is the list up stuff updated:

• Fixed bug where score could go from 000003 to 999998
  
• Implemented Robot Death animation so now the Robot does just disappear
  
• Fixed it so when a game ends you can start a new game by hitting fire
  
• Do miscellaneous code clean up that you won't see playing the game but saved me about 110 bytes of room which allowed the death animation for the robot.
  
• Updated one of the candy sprites to be 1 pixel shorter and thinner.

Stuff to do still:

• Implement the remaining game sound and modify the current walking sound to take up less room
  
• Implement a system to check to see if you have rolled the score over 1,000,000,000 so you can decrement the score back to 999,999,999
  
• Minor tweaks and updates as they come along
  
• Make it random which side the robot will come from, noticed that tonight that it was too predictable.
  
• Maybe implement a difficulty setting which the speed of the robot and the speed of the candy failing changes (really this is pending space left after sound)

Really this game is very close to being done. Try out the latest build and let me know what you think!


 Candy_Catcher_10052011.a26   4K   39 downloads

Thanks

Edited by disjaukifa, Wed Oct 5, 2011 10:41 PM.

[disjaukifa]

Well update from the build last night.

Stuff to do still:

• Implement the remaining game sound and modify the current walking sound to take up less room
  
• Implement a system to check to see if you have rolled the score over 1,000,000,000 so you can decrement the score back to 999,999,999
  
• Minor tweaks and updates as they come along
  
• Make it random which side the robot will come from, noticed that tonight that it was too predictable.
  
• Maybe implement a difficulty setting which the speed of the robot and the speed of the candy failing changes (really this is pending space left after sound)

I was able to implement both the difficulty setting and randomize the starting position of the Robot in about 65 bytes which I was very happen with. I have right at 451 bytes left to do sound, which should be more than enough. I'm think I'm going to remove the walking sound but add the following sounds:

• Catch a piece of candy sound
  
• Smash the robot sound
  
• Candy hits you sound
  
• Candy hits the ground (maybe not sure yet)
  
• Robot hits you sound.

I'll be doing more updates with the code later tonight. Here's the latest binary:
 Candy_Catcher_10062011a.a26   4K   38 downloads

Thanks

[disjaukifa]

Hey Guys,

I'm a little late but here is the latest build:

I removed the walking sound because it was annoying to me and it turned out to be taking up a tremendous amount of space that I could use for other things. I have the following sounds implemented:

• You catching candy
  
• Candy hitting you
  
• You jumping
  
• The robot getting smashed

All the sounds are very basic, however I think it compliments the simplistic graphics and gameplay. Also I removed the Difficulty option for the Candy from the previous build, now you can just set the Left Difficulty to set how difficult the robot is to catch/avoid. Also I've made the robot's appearance on the random, though the first time will always be on the left, because the way I implemented the random for the robot's starting point is fixed the first time, however after that its anybodies guess.

Here is what I have left to implement

• Sound for when the robot hits you
  
• Intro music
  
• End game music

Here is the latest build
 Candy_Catcher_10062011b.a26   4K   44 downloads

Thanks

[disjaukifa]

Hey Guys,

I'm a little late on the update, but AA seems be having some technical issues

As of right now I think the game is done, I only have 195 bytes left to play with and seeing as nothing glaring is sticking out at me, I'm not really sure I'm going to do anything else. I'm going to be testing it throughly for the next few days, and I might be tweaking colors here and there.

 Candy_Catcher_10072011.a26   4K   57 downloads

I've update the first post with new screen shots and with the cartridge labels I made for the game as well.

Thanks

Edited by disjaukifa, Fri Oct 7, 2011 10:28 PM.

[Random Terrain]

One of the items falling is a shade of blue that is very hard to see on a black background. You might want to lighten it up.

[disjaukifa]

Yeah I'm going to tweaking the colors. Right now I'm using rand to generate the colors but I'm thinking about using an array of values for each piece of candy.

[Impaler_26]

Nice little game!

It's fun to play and i love that little robot.

But i think the difficulty should increase after getting a certain amount of points (maybe every 500 or 1000 points ?):

- You could increase the falling speed of the candy

- Or how about having 2 or 3 little robots running around later in the game (this could be easily implemented with NUSIZ)

This is all i can think of ATM. Maybe you should clear all sprites on the game over screen but everything else like the sounds, controls and scoring is good as it is IMO.

I'll have to play some more but here's my best score so far:

[disjaukifa]

Impaler_26, on Sat Oct 8, 2011 8:01 AM, said:

Nice little game!

It's fun to play and i love that little robot.

But i think the difficulty should increase after getting a certain amount of points (maybe every 500 or 1000 points ?):

- You could increase the falling speed of the candy

- Or how about having 2 or 3 little robots running around later in the game (this could be easily implemented with NUSIZ)

This is all i can think of ATM. Maybe you should clear all sprites on the game over screen but everything else like the sounds, controls and scoring is good as it is IMO.

I'll have to play some more but here's my best score so far:

Candy_Catcher_10072011.a26_2.png

I can easily remove the sprites when the game ends, so you just see the robot and your player holding the bucket, that will be an easy change.

I had messed with increasing the speed of the candy and it was just a bit insane with going so fast and you would really need to make this game run on paddles for that to work, and I really don't like paddles.

The idea of making more robots on the screen is a great idea, however I'm not sure I have enough space to do that, I can try, its an interesting idea, I just need to figure out some new logic for the collision detection. I'll work on that tonight to see how it goes.

Thanks for trying it out and leaving feedback!

[Gorfy]

nifty little game, Disjaukifa! My only suggestion is to reiterate the one about finding a way to ramp up the difficulty level after a while. Maybe increase the speed of the robot?

Here's my high score.......

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[disjaukifa]

Gorfy, on Sat Oct 8, 2011 10:14 AM, said:

nifty little game, Disjaukifa! My only suggestion is to reiterate the one about finding a way to ramp up the difficulty level after a while. Maybe increase the speed of the robot?

Here's my high score.......

Thanks for the feedback Gorfy! Quick question ... were you playing on difficulty A or B?

I think I know a way to increase the pace of the robot in both games.

Thanks

[Gorfy]

disjaukifa, on Sat Oct 8, 2011 10:46 AM, said:

Gorfy, on Sat Oct 8, 2011 10:14 AM, said:

nifty little game, Disjaukifa! My only suggestion is to reiterate the one about finding a way to ramp up the difficulty level after a while. Maybe increase the speed of the robot?

Here's my high score.......

Thanks for the feedback Gorfy! Quick question ... were you playing on difficulty A or B?

I think I know a way to increase the pace of the robot in both games.

Thanks

I played on difficulty B. I'll have to try it on A....

Edited by Gorfy, Sat Oct 8, 2011 3:36 PM.

[Impaler_26]

Just had an idea... As the player and the robot are already a tribute to Berzerk - why not use the same score-font ? I think it looks not bad...



 score_graphics_berzerk.asm   2.37K   32 downloads