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Gate Racer


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I rarely share my bB projects on the homebrew forum but I had fun with this one and thought some people who don't frequent the bB forum might get a few minutes of enjoyment out of it. :) I created a self imposed 2k limit on this game. It was an experiment to see if I could make something fun in such a small amount of space. I still play Thomas' Cave 1k and love it so I know it's possible (even in bB). Fun is relative of course, but I was able to get my 10 year old son to play non-stop for an hour (using my Harmony cart) trying to beat the posted high score on AA. Considering he gave up game time on his Xbox 360 that's quite an endorsement. ;)

 

The object is to drive through the scrolling gates while avoiding hitting the barriers, sides of the road, or oil slicks. There's a clock timer (that shows minutes/seconds/tenths of seconds) at the bottom and the object is simply to survive on the road as long as you can. Your final time is displayed when you crash, hitting fire then restarts the game. I implemented left/right velocity to make it more interesting (and require a bit more skill), and the gate location is randomly generated. There is a powerup, also randomly generated, that you can collect (a white block on the screen) that will make you invincible for two gate passes. My best score on the final version is 2:08. Anyone care to challenge that? :)

 

EDIT (3/18/13):

 

Attached is what should be the final revision of GateRacer II 4k (GRIIi.bin) that includes AtariVox/SaveKey high score saving support. It has the following features that the 2k version does not:

 

:arrow: Adds permanent savekey location for real hardware at my assigned location (I used $0640, $0650 and $0660)

:arrow: An important note about saving: The high score does not save until you press the fire button after a crash.

:arrow: Holding the joystick up and pressing the game select switch on the title screen will clear out the current high score

:arrow: Hitting the oil slick now produces a skidding sound

:arrow: Includes an options menu screen to allow you to change the car velocity to on/off, powerups to on/off, car size to normal/large, and the oil slick to on/off.

:arrow: Probably a few other things I'm not thinking of right now...

 

Current High Scores (using the 2k version or the 4k version with default settings):

 

1. Atarius Maximus 7:03.7

2. Horeus 5:43.2

3. (Tied) Horeus & ACrystal2011 3:14.8

4. Atarius Maximus 2:28.0

5. Atarius Maximus 2:26.6

6. Atarius Maximus 2:14.8

7. Impaler_26 2:03.1

8. Brian O 1:01.6

 

EDIT (3/24/13): I updated the final release of Gate Racer II because I found a bug. Hitting the side of the road would sometimes get you stuck in an endless loop of crashing. It was a simple one line fix, the updated (b) version is attached.

GateRacer_Final.bin

post-2143-0-44866100-1362779535_thumb.jpg

GateRacerII_Final(b).bin

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Gotta step up my game.

Both of you are still better than me! :) My best so far is 2:24.4. I just updated the game to 4k and included an options screen to allow you to change the velocity to on/off, powerups to on/off, car size to normal/large, and the oil slick to on/off. The new version will also save your high score to the savekey or atarivox if you have one. The default options in the new 4k version are the same as the 2k version, so I'm sticking with the defaults for trring to beat high scores as changing options could make it easier. I'm going to play some more tonight to see if I can beat 3:14.8.

 

I've attached the 4k version with the options screen and SaveKey/Atarivox High Score support. It's been tested on a real Atari (with a real SaveKey) and it works great. Note that the high score saves still write to the "scratchpad" area of the SaveKey so they may be overwritten by another game. Once I finish up I'll ask Robert H. for a permanent memory allocation area on the SaveKey.

 

Steve

 

EDIT: Old version attachment removed from thsi post. Please see the first post for the latest version of the 4K build.

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