This may come as a bit of a surprise to anyone who has been patiently following the progress of the project over the years, but the game is actually nearly ready! Virtually all the level data and graphics are complete and a fairly small list of changes remain to be done. Most awkward may be having to use a modified palette when running on NTSC machines, or rather, what those colours should be. Supposedly the PAL and NTSC machines produce similar colours, but it seems that some blues show as green or something like that. I may post some colour samples and ask people with NTSC machines to let me know what is the closest available colour from their machines. Or maybe someone more knowledgeable on these things can let me know how to map the colours to their equivalents?

Some more screenshots before what will hopefully be a release in the not too distant future.

And some early work on the final boss, who has the unusual and sometime snigger inducing name of “Wiwi Jumbo” (No, I don’t know why either). He’s also none too pleased about it, judging by the way he throws his toys out of his pram. (Please excuse my little British colloquialism – it does makes sense if you know what happens in the game here).

AtariAge Discussion Thread

AtariAge Discussion Thread

Some work in progress comparison screen shots

AtariAge Discussion Thread

I’m sorry to say that there has not been much progress to show for many months. The project is not dead, but I do get tired with work pressures and real life, and am not able to give the attention to the game that it needs to get it done. Lately I have been working on improving the tools for converting the redrawn sprites in the game to 6502 code. The demo doesn’t do it, but embedding the graphic data into code is probably the fastest way of drawing complex objects without hardware support (yes, even self modifying code is usually slower). The downside is that this takes more memory than other methods (hence the use of a large cartridge format for the game). I’d been optimising the sprites for data size, but sometimes that would mean they’d be a couple of hundred cycles slower at being drawn, and slowdown is still an issue. The tools help find a sensible compromise, as even with the largest 8Mbit cartridges, the space will soon be eaten up. I want to make some better music for the game. I plan on trying to use RMT for sound effects and music, as it is much better at making interesting instruments and playing music than my own very simplistic routines. I’d be very interested if anyone can make fairly close versions of the main themes or the boss jingles with two or three channels (at least one channel is needed for sound effects). I am a (not very good!) musician, and I would eventually get round to it myself, but if your work is a good approximation of the original that you want to share, I might be able to use it (and give credit, of course).

AtariAge Soft Sprite Discussion

Nearly all the graphics have been redrawn for Stage 3, to take advantage of having enough memory with the cartridge for more colours per object, and this has taken some while. Stage 3 is one of the prettiest in the game, and I’ve been trying to do it some justice on the little Atari.

AtariAge Discussion Thread