[Bitmap Soft - BS001 & BS002] RVG Blast and RVG Blast 2[Atari 2600].

[bogstandard]

RVG Blast is my donation to Retro Video Gamer.  This is a 2k game with 0 bytes left for changes or improvements.

Press FIRE at the title screen to start.  Launch a torpedo at enemies by pressing FIRE in-game.  Reset switch will reboot game system.

Occasionally the space tornado and aliens will release deadly energy blocks.  As you progress this tendency will increase.

Destroying the space tornado will award 10 points.  Upon destruction of the tornado a chaos bolt will launch downward.  The length of the bolt will grow over time.

Destroying the space alien will award 10 points.  When a new alien spawns they will change appearance, color, size and formation.  Up to three aliens may fly in formation.  Especially sneaky aliens will choose colors that camouflage their attack!

Touching a block, chaos bolt or space alien will deduct a life and send you back to the middle of the screen.  It will also clear the screen of deadly energy blocks and reset the difficulty.  When all 3 lives are spent the game reverts to the title screen displaying your current score.

Technical Features:
* 2k with all available space used!
* Animated title screen
* Vertical scrolling
* Many space alien types
* Difficulty increases with success

Developer Notes:
2k Atari 2600 games are a challenge within a challenge.  You could compare it to writing a haiku with only three letter words.  The original Pac-Man was twice the size and desperately needed more to compare favorably with its arcade counterpart.  In short, on a system with extremely limited resources, this is the most limited any commercial game attempted.

RVG Blast uses a stripped down batari BASIC kernel modified by Atarius Maximus for 2k Gate Racer.  By experimenting with what features were still available I determined a straightforward shooter was possible.  Since the 2600 only has 2 missiles a "bullet hell" type game is problematic.  I therefore used playfield "blocks" as the main obstacle.  Up to 11x32 blocks can fill the screen.  If dropped vertically these blocks become more projectile and less background art.

The tornado sprite is actually a trick to save space.  It's actually the lower part of the S and T from the title screen graphic.  Using the same graphic is an age old technique that can be seen even in more modern games like Goldeneye for the N64.  In that game the trigger sight texture is also used in the wooden barrel graphic.

The various alien sprites are actually one long sprite graphic being viewed in sliding vertical 8 pixel chunks.  A "new" alien is made simply by altering where the top part of the alien starts within a larger chunk of sprite.  The Atari 2600 hardware provides different sizes, colors and horizontal copies of sprites virtually for free.  All this combines for many, many different alien types.

Sound is produced by two similar routines that alter their character by how long they are run.  By combining one or two of these and varying the length we get explosions, laser blasts and other sound effects.

As you can tell developing in 2k  is more about what clever strategies you can make a game out of.  This differs from coming up with a game first and using clever strategies in service of a concept.  This is how most developers approached the 2600 in its hayday - figure out a neat trick and wrap a game around it!

[TrekMD]

No NTSC for those of us in the other side of the pond? 

[bogstandard]

No NTSC for those of us in the other side of the pond? 

Of course.  I'm starting with PAL first.  Otherwise I might forget :p

[TrekMD]

No NTSC for those of us in the other side of the pond?  :21:  Thanks again!

[zapiy]

Lol, this is so awesome i am speechless for a the first time in a while..

[Greyfox]

pretty impressive stuff and now with the fresh new theme added also, this is a winner of a day

[TrekMD]

pretty impressive stuff and now with the fresh new theme added also, this is a winner of a day

Whoa, that's quite the change!  Looks nifty.

[bogstandard]

2k game complete!  See first post for PAL and NTSC goodness!
http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=65045#p65045

[zapiy]

Flip me, you are a genius.. Will have a bash on this later and work out the details of a release.

What do you want in terms of copyright fella? Terms and so on..

[TrekMD]

That was quick!  Cool!

[bogstandard]

Flip me, you are a genius.. Will have a bash on this later and work out the details of a release.

What do you want in terms of copyright fella? Terms and so on..

Whatever you please.  As long as "Jason Santuci" is given credit for making the game.  Especially on the manual and art.

[zapiy]

Thats a cert fella.

[bogstandard]

Just to clarify I am open to feedback and bugs.  It's just that the game literally has no room for changes   The lightning storms when the tornado and space alien futz with blocks is intentional :p

[zapiy]

Give us a day and we will feedback if thats ok..

[TrekMD]

I had a quick game.  Simple but fun gameplay.  We need to work on instructions.