11 replies to this topic

[atari2600land]

I've been working on this for a few hours. It's kind of like the candy catcher game only with less frills to make it fit into 1k. Or at least I think it's 1k. When I compiled it with the "set romsize 2k", it said I had 1024 bytes left, which I think means I only used 1024 (and half of two is one, so...) In order for this to fit in 1k, I got rid of pfdrawing.asm and pfscrolling.asm (by putting a semicolon before them in the default.inc file, which is making it the same as a rem in bB, so if I want to make a game that's <8k that has playfield blocks, I can just go back and delete the semicolon.) I've put the .asm file here too in case any of you people who are smart enough to do assembly can check it and make sure that it is indeed 1k. So anyway, the point of the game is to catch bananas with Mr. Zyx's mouth. Having a banana hit one of his eyes is OK, too. You get 10 points for every banana (read: yellow line) you catch (read: eat.) If you miss a line, no more bananas will fall from the screen so you press reset (F2 in Stella) to restart a game. So here's the game so far, which should be exactly 1k.

Attached Thumbnails

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Attached Files

•  zyx1k.bas.asm   35.19K   24 downloads
•  zyx1k.bas.bin   2K   45 downloads

[disjaukifa]

I'm impressed . . . and honored that you decided to kind of base it on the game I'm working on at the moment! Could you go more in-depth on how you disabled certain features in bB because I'm kind of under a space crunch at the moment and getting all the room I can get would be nice

Never-mind I found out how to do it here Default Includes

Going to be doing that now!!!

[esplonky]

disjaukifa, on Sat Oct 8, 2011 8:28 PM, said:

I'm impressed . . . and honored that you decided to kind of base it on the game I'm working on at the moment! Could you go more in-depth on how you disabled certain features in bB because I'm kind of under a space crunch at the moment and getting all the room I can get would be nice

Never-mind I found out how to do it here Default Includes

Going to be doing that now!!!

hey, how did you get your game to be sold on the AtariAge store and are you making money off of it?

[atari2600land]

Candy Catcher isn't listed in the AA store, he must be using the website to announce and order games. I read somewhere that CPUWIZ made the carts for him to sell.

[disjaukifa]

esplonky, on Mon Oct 24, 2011 11:58 AM, said:

disjaukifa, on Sat Oct 8, 2011 8:28 PM, said:

I'm impressed . . . and honored that you decided to kind of base it on the game I'm working on at the moment! Could you go more in-depth on how you disabled certain features in bB because I'm kind of under a space crunch at the moment and getting all the room I can get would be nice

Never-mind I found out how to do it here Default Includes

Going to be doing that now!!!

hey, how did you get your game to be sold on the AtariAge store and are you making money off of it?

Its not being sold in the AA store (To the best of my knowledge . . .), I'm selling it in the Marketplace myself. I'm making the cartridges myself and doing all the work myself. Honestly I'm pretty much breaking even, I'm making a little amount of money but not nearly as much as you would think, the cost for all the equipment, parts, labels, solder, boxes, shipping boxes, postage, and supplies eats almost all of the cost up!

[disjaukifa]

atari2600land, on Mon Oct 24, 2011 12:13 PM, said:

Candy Catcher isn't listed in the AA store, he must be using the website to announce and order games. I read somewhere that CPUWIZ made the carts for him to sell.

CPUWIZ supplied the parts for the cartridges, I'm programming the EPROMs myself and assembling all the PCBs myself as well.

[esplonky]

oh i see. I'm looking for a way to sell my game cheaply and make some money on it.

[disjaukifa]

esplonky, on Mon Oct 24, 2011 7:34 PM, said:

oh i see. I'm looking for a way to sell my game cheaply and make some money on it.

I'm doing this for the community and not for a profit. The shear fact that so many people have be messaging and letting me know how much fun they have had with my game has been my motivation to do this. Also it has been a wonderful learning experience as well! Yeah I'm making some money, but not much. Also this has been very time consuming at the same time however I've enjoyed ever moment of it!

[esplonky]

I enjoy Programming, and i am starting to get good and i wanna make money off it

[esplonky]

not sounding like a bad person, im in it for fun, i love to program, but im desperate for money right now.

[theloon]

esplonky, on Mon Oct 24, 2011 7:53 PM, said:

not sounding like a bad person, im in it for fun, i love to program, but im desperate for money right now.

Not to side-track this topic but homebrew 2600 games isn't a money maker esplonky. You might try making PC games for publishers that actively support budding game developers. Some of them even have their own game making tools too:

Game Maker
http://www.yoyogames...ases/publishing

MoMinis
http://dev.mominis.c...er/Intermediate

CrySet Games
http://cryset.co.uk/home/

[disjaukifa]

theloon, on Tue Oct 25, 2011 7:38 AM, said:

Not to side-track this topic but homebrew 2600 games isn't a money maker esplonky. You might try making PC games for publishers that actively support budding game developers. Some of them even have their own game making tools too . . .

That is a very honest and very true statement. Just on equipment alone, not factoring in the cost to make the cartridges, I've spent over $350, thats the EPROM Programmer, the EPROM Eraser, Soldering Iron (Which I'm about to upgrade to another model), solder, soldering iron tips (I'm burning through these like crazy but I think thats because its a cheap iron), donor cartridges, shipping boxes, packing material, tape, cleaning supplies, labels, etc. Even for me getting into this project there has been way more cost than I anticipated however like I said in previous post, I'm not doing this for a profit, I'm doing it for the community.

Originally I wasn't even going to do a CIB of Candy Catcher, it was going to be the Text Label and that was it, however I got a huge surge of interest for a boxed version, and Brian O. made an awesome box. I asked everyone that had pre-ordered my game which they would rather have, the text label or the new designed label and box from Brian O. I quickly discovered that most people wanted both, so that is what I've been doing. I wasn't planning on doing this much work and at times its been a little bit overwhelming but I've been learning and the community really seems to appreciate it as well. I went into this hoping to sell maybe 10 copies max and recover 50% of my cost, and still be down the other 50%. Whenever I get more parts in, I'm working on these carts at night after my kids go to bed, its time consuming but then again I love doing it!

Not trying to discourage you from doing this, its a wonderful feeling to have so many people play something you programmed, but its not a golden ticket either . . . . and trust me no thinks your a bad person, we could all use more money, but I will say this.

Design and program a game with love/compassion for the game and it will be better than a game that is designed and programmed with the intention of profit.

-Disjaukifa