peteym5

First time I visited Jungle Quest since December and did some work on the programming. I added Music and Sound. Corrected several bugs. "Jungle Quest" could be renamed before the final release. Video61 and I have a title in mind, and will be making the announcement when the game is more complete. Jungle Quest, is a game that I started when I returned to Atari in 2007. I resumed work on the game around August 2022. The game was intended to be similar to Pitfall, but would have new worlds to explore. Use big scrolling screens and take advantage of extended RAM. It will have a jumping system similar to what is seen in other side scrolling action type games. It will have moving platforms. Video61 wanted more elements to make it different from Pitfall because David Crane is someone he knows. I looked at another MS-DOS called "Jill of the Jungle" for inspiration. This will be a colorful and action packed challenging game. Jungle Quest was a game that I started before I met KJMANN (SAL) and many probably do not know who he is. I posted this game on another Atari forum, and several months later, I got contacted by Sal about doing other games, such as Battle Squadron, Tempest, and eventually Venture. Kjmann was separated from our group, and I, Video61, and team achieved better after he left. I learned how to use Raster Music Tracker myself, so I do not need to depend on others to create music files.

Will there be any documentation to help programmers develop software for this BackBit Pro device?

Megaoids Under Construction for the Atari 7800. This will be a game released on cartridge from Video 61. It is one of several games I am currently developing for the Atari 7800. This is another port over from the Atari 8-bit and 5200 version. It will be similar, using a shield that you need to recharge by collecting power. Get power ups. After all the asteroids are destroyed, you must go through the galactic gate to go to the next level. 7800 Special features are the rotating animated asteroids and an animated galactic gate.

Maybe a giant Space Centipede pops up in one of the upper levels.

I will be honest. Season 3 of Star Trek Picard feels more like the Star Trek everyone is used to and enjoy. The first 4 episodes are more like an ongoing movie or the DS9 Multi-part story arc than what we saw in the first two seasons of the show or Star Trek Discovery.

I am working on that. I want to get some smaller games done for the 7800 before tackling bigger games like Tempest and Secretum Labyrinth.

No Plutonium 238 Oxide power yet? I keep running into YouTube videos about these new advance power batteries that can hold more power and recharge in less time.

This may be the final work in Progress video for Delta Space Arena for Atari 7800. Released February 16, 2023. As a guideline, Video61 and team usually reviews the videos clips before I mark them for public review. Showing various levels and different features. https://youtu.be/7xtG8p3kAyY

Here is the latest update for Surround'Em for the Atari 5200. We are preparing several more games for the 5200 at this time, more announcements will be made soon.

I have been looking alternatives of how things look on screen during game play. One ideal is to replace the HP: indicator just to the right of EP: with a bar across the top of the screen, showing hit points or health. I could still have HP: in the character detail display (Press C on keyboard during game) I have looked into making the walls look 3D, but my early efforts did not provide promising results. I am holding back on doing this because It would be a major overhaul of the game and will take a lot of time.

https://youtu.be/1nbfN6_RuO0 This is one game I have been working on with Video61 and others for awhile. We have been busy beta testing this game and hope to get it out soon. I provided some extra tools to my internal team to help accelerate the testing process. We do want to keep things as a surprise to our customers and the solution to solve puzzles inside the game needs to remain secret. I did recently looked a minor sound gap issue that some people made a big deal about a few years ago. Most people don't pay much attention it to. It was when the main character moved from screen to screen, some interrupts needed to be disabled and sound was silenced for about 3 to 4 TV frames. Less than 1/20th second. There were claims that it troubled anyone who plays it. It could crash the game. Other ridiculous claims were made. I would like nothing more to jam it back into their face. The latest version eliminates this issue. I should remind everyone that YouTube work-in-progress videos are not final game versions. The fix was not using "JSR RMT_SILENCE" during the screen redraw. I discovered this caused RMT_PLAY to delay one TV frame before sound can be heard again. Instead I just writes 0 to the sound registers, so next RMT PLAY immediately generates sounds. I also observered that with video encoding software and uploading to YouTube, additional gaps may appear in the audio stream. I assume it is happening to keep the A-V in sync. There is Secretum Labyrinth King's Gold, a game in the series that is free to play. It can be downloaded here https://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=7079

I am glad we were finally able to put this game out. We had some issues compiling with the latest version of 7800 Basic. It affected some minor stuff like the temp of the music. This version is different from the 8-bit/5200 in that it has more texture patterns, color schemes, types of animals. Uses a different Fruit for each level. There is an intermission screen between each level with a short musical tune. I finally got around to making Animal Keeper in 2019 for the 8-bit and 5200, after about a two-year delay. It was suggested that I make this game by members that other Atari forum, who wanted ZooKeeper to be ported to the Atari 8-bit. I was backing away from making exact clones. Made changes to the graphic layout to take advantage GTIA/Antic graphics. That is why it has a brick background, changing color schemes for each level. I change the animals, added a few more, and even more for the Atari 7800 version. So we did make this game more unique and of our own design.

Thankyou for discussing the idea of doing some VBXE programs. However, as expected, my associates have elected not to be involved with marketing VBXE. This is due to the small number of people out there with modified Atari 8-Bit systems. I am still open to making some Fast Basic sample programs with assembly routines that manipulate VBXE graphics. I need to look to see if someone already programmed something.

CrossBow, you are in the United States, Oklahoma, correct? I am going to ask you to email us at Atarisales, or send me a private message before going forward with anything. For starters, I am considering VBXE versions of a few games like Delta Space Arena and Bug Invade. More games could be ported depending on how everything works out. It will be awhile before I be able to do anything as I am busy with finishing up another Atari 8-bit game. I already sent out a few emails to see if another person can help me beta test VBXE programs and to see how games will be distributed.

I have considered porting some of my prior games over to VBXE, but there are a few obstacles that had been prohibiting the idea from going forward. First thing, is the limited and much smaller market than the whole Atari 8-bit community that does not make it worthwhile to make VBXE cartridge games. The second obstacle is that very few people have these, that it is difficult to find people trusted by myself and Video61 to beta test any games modified to use it. This was discussed a few years ago on another that Atari place and did volunteer to help test it. When I did have a few test Tempest Elite, It did not take long for me to see that one of them was passing along copies. So I had to cut off beta testing from anyone that refuses to submit information about themselves beyond just a screen name. Some of them when I told them that they need to get in contact with Video 61, they freaked out, did not hear from them until later they made public posts over there just to bully about me not trusting people. I have to allow free copies because I am there seeking help from others. Like Hello, this was not unexpected from a place full of untrustworthy people that allow bullying, harassment, and uncivilized behavior. If people want to see more VBXE ported games, and have a nice cartridge, they will need to post about it, tell myself and Video61 if they want it. I know what VBXE is capable of. I am really surprised there have not been many games ported to take advantage of better graphics.

Hello, these take SD cards. Any limit on the size these can use. I am wondering if there is any online documentation about programming and take advantage of the SD extra space. Maybe make games much larger and load segments as needed. Does it load the images into RAM?

https://youtu.be/mUcD4PIin14 This is the latest Work in Progress I have done for Jungle Quest. I have added collision detection, character dying, collecting enough Gems to open up an exit to go to another level.

People want exact clones of the games mentioned here, or would they want to see something similar with features added? Designed to take advantage of 7800 graphics. Change some things and add stuff, so it can be original. I am working on porting my own Atari 8-bit / 5200 titles over to the 7800. I may be doing Novawolf and Megaoids next.

Yes, it is designed to help authors and can be used as a tool for story telling.

https://github.com/PJM-NCC-70511/Text-Adventure-Game-System-Atari-FastBasic This is my next Fast Basic Sample that is my text adventure game system with two programs, an editor and a player. The program has been ported back to the Atari 8-bit and compiled with Fast Basic. It was originally written in BasicXE, ported to IBM-PC MS DOS. I lost the BasicXE Sources many years ago, but had the QBasic Source that is not far from Fast Basic. There were some differences I needed to work around and save memory. Like the string storage of using 256 characters for each string variables. That works against the requirements of this program and consumes the needed memory. Therefore, I wrote a custom memory storage ML routine that transfers text data to fixed memory locations. If I need just to store names, just designate 16 bytes per each character or name. There are opening and closing paragraphs that introduce the game and closes the game. The editor has a string field editor that lets you insert and edit text.. The game data is similar to common databases, where you have text and numeric fields to store all the information. In this case, the data is stored in arrays. You need to go into the editor to set the memory configuration for both the editor and player. You can set the memory Parameters for a 48K, 52K, 64K, or 128K computers. Smaller memory amounts will only let you have less stuff inside the game. Right now, there are no plans to get this work on a cartridge. Fast Basic has an 8K limit currently, and the programs compile to 24K each. Bank switching is almost impossible to figure out with compiled program code. I apoligize for lack of commenting and not using more descriptive variable names. After all, it was originally derived from an Atari 8-bit source code with limited memory available.

https://youtu.be/AiiHpYXJvWQ Jungle Quest for Atari 8-bit Work in Progress, October 5, 2022. Been working on this game periodically over the last month. I made some progress with collecting objects and displaying on the scoreboard at the top. It can also collect keys and open doors. You need a specific key to open a matching door.

Hello. I am in discussions with a person interested in having a game create on the Atari 8-bit and related systems. This is going to be a horror, mystery, and adventure type game. I would like to do this game with this person. However, I have many games on my plate and trying to finish those up before starting up any new game projects. I do know there are many talented programmers out there and would like a challenge of making one of these games. Even if you are a beginner or novice programmer, I am still here to teach and provide programming language and technical support. This game may have a live action movie tie in that the person is involved with. I will leave it up to this other person to disclose details of the story if the decision is made to work together. .

This is the latest development of Jungle Quest (current working title.) Work In Progress for August 30, 2022. Major improvements and Additions since last posted video upload. Have Moving Platforms, Animated Gems, Lava, Spikes functional inside the game. Shows Keys and other items that will be interacting with. Can climb sideways on the ropes and move on the platforms when you stand on them. Fire Idols that will activate periodically. What you see here is a work in progress, and changes are being made frequently. I really want to make a fun and challenging game for the 8-bit.

How far have you got with Venture?

"Jungle Quest" Work In Progress Video for August 8, 2022. Have Animated Sprites working and aligning with the scrolling properly. Also, able to jump onto platforms, and you move with the platform. I am posting this here on Facebook and on Atari.IO for feedback as I develop the game. I am working on making this game more different from the Pitfall games. I am already using moving platforms and using different animals. I have more additions that I am developing, but also refining the current game. I started this game around 2007, posted on a popular forum, starting with a thread "looking to make an Atari Game" That was before I was personally contacted to work with Video61 to produce the games on cartridge. I got side tracked and convinced to make some different cartridge games. Jungle Quest was designed to show what can the Atari 8-bit can do. It was my answer to the Commodore 64 vs Atari 8-bit battle that raged on with another Atari forum. A little word on the history, I accidentally lost a version I was working on about 10 years ago because I accidentally had a parameter incorrect with a program I used to change my hard drive partitions around. I only retrieved a less developed version from a backup. I was using CDRWs at the time. Those were junk. Glad we have USB Flash and SD drives now. Much more reliable.