[Bruce Tomlin]

Some of you may have noticed me mention working on a 7800 game. I've been trying to keep it quiet until I had something worthy of showing off. I've been stuck for two months needing to get a tricky algorithm working, and even had to write a 6502 monitor program so I could debug it. You try writing a pipe-tracing algorithm in 6502 assembler, it ain't easy.

Well, I finally got the tricky part working after hacking on it all weekend.

I came up with the idea on July 4. I had an idea for something sort of like a cross between Tetris and Pipe Dream. And this is the result.

Just so you know, I only just now got this thing working to the point where I can see if the gameplay will even work. I plan to do scoring by computing the triangle number (1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, etc.) of the number of tiles in a chain, or one point per bombed tile. I'll probably shrink the boards to 7 tiles wide so there's room on the display for scores and stuff. I also need to do something about the flicker when tiles fall. And it may not display correctly on older versions of 7800 emulators. (CC2 owners, use 7800_16K)

So here it is, the first public demo release of... Tubes.

Attached File(s)

•  tubes_2004_10_31.zip (5.92K)
  Number of downloads: 283

This post has been edited by Bruce Tomlin: Sun Aug 7, 2005 7:52 PM

[Ferris]

man what is up with 7800 homebrew lately??? thanks for the great demo!

[mojofltr]

Bruce said:

So here it is, the first public demo release of...   Tubes.  

Wow, this is a cool twist on the tetris/puzzle idea!
In its current state, it does seem a bit easy to match/blow pipes, but I realize you probably have stuff you still want to implement. :-)

Thanks for sharing!

[Gregory DG]

Ferris said:

man what is up with 7800 homebrew lately??? thanks for the great demo!

I dunno, but the more there are, the more I like it.

[Kepone]

I downloaded MESS so I could try this out and I like it! It's a lot like Tetris but I think it's actually more unique than Tetris.

I'm including a screenshot of it for those who like a preview. Very cool!

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[Gregory DG]

Anyone know what the CC2 banking is for this one?

[CPUWIZ]

Bruce Tomlin said:

CC2 owners, use 7800_16K

[Gregory DG]

CPUWIZ said:

Bruce Tomlin said:

CC2 owners, use 7800_16K

Thanks. Dunno how I missed that one.

[Cousin Vinnie]

Bruce Tomlin said:

Some of you may have noticed me mention working on a 7800 game.  I've been trying to keep it quiet until I had something worthy of showing off.

More please!~


CV

[bjk7382]

Nice

[Allan]

What's the emoticon for drooling?

Allan

[ApolloBoy]

Nice! Is that in the 7800's high-res mode?

[Bruce Tomlin]

Not only is it 320 mode, it's using double-byte indexed character mode for most of the display. Each double-byte character gives half of a tile.

Making the graphics was a bit tedious. I was doing it all by hand. But once it was done, it was done.

Has anyone left it running idle for a couple of minutes?


Anyhow, I definitely have to put back the tweak to the random tile generator that allowed for more bombs. It might even be better yet to just make a lookup table so I can tweak the percentages on a tile-by-tile basis. The problem is that most tile types have four versions, but there's only one bomb and only one 4-way cross.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Wow, it'll be great to have an original puzzle game for the 7800. Much better idea than just porting over Tetris IMHO. Can't wait to see how it turns out Bruce!

[thund3r]

finally a 7800 homebrew! gotta play this, if only i knew how to set up mess on mac...

[DracIsBack]

Hot damn! Just got this working on my Cuttle Cart! Nice job ... very addictive game. Are you going to make it have different backdrops like TETRIS?

[Bruce Tomlin]

thund3r said:

finally a 7800 homebrew! gotta play this, if only i knew how to set up mess on mac...

Don't bother. The only version out there is too old and doesn't support the 320B graphic mode properly.

Of course it would be nice if someone would take the time make an up-to-date version of MacMESS, hint hint.

[Mitch]

Bruce Tomlin said:

thund3r said:

finally a 7800 homebrew! gotta play this, if only i knew how to set up mess on mac...

Don't bother. The only version out there is too old and doesn't support the 320B graphic mode properly.

Of course it would be nice if someone would take the time make an up-to-date version of MacMESS, hint hint.

There has been some discussion on the MESS forums recently regarding MacMESS so maybe it will get an update soon. Apparently the *nix version should work on the Mac as well.

Mitch

[Mayhem]

How many bits at the start of an a78 file do I remove to make this a BIN for CC2? Would like to try it out properly

(the same applies to the other demo too)

[Bruce Tomlin]

I think I've figured out why it seems to be too easy. I'm going to remove the exits from the bottom row. I'm also putting back the patch that allows more bombs and 4-way crosses to show up.

I'll try it out when I get home tonight and see if it helps.

[Mitch]

MayhemUK said:

How many bits at the start of an a78 file do I remove to make this a BIN for CC2? Would like to try it out properly

(the same applies to the other demo too)

128 bytes from the start of the file.

Mitch

[Shaggy the Atarian]

I was playing this for quite a while and had a lot of fun with it. Although a harder version (or perhaps different difficultly settings) would be welcome.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Okay, here it is with the "bombs/4-ways more often" patch restored, and with the bottom edge exits removed.

It would be a bit of work to make the edges be configurable (right now it's just less-than/greater-than comparisons to detect it), but that might be one way to control the difficulty level. You know, like every other one is a cap, or no caps at all.

Attached File(s)

•  tubes_2004_11_03.zip (5.66K)
  Number of downloads: 192

[DracIsBack]

Is this a 160 or 320 mode?

[Mitch]

Bruce Tomlin said:

Has anyone left it running idle for a couple of minutes?

Yes, nice VCS style screensaver.

Mitch