Here’s my final LD#12 entry: The Siege of von Danken Tower !*

It’s a game for the Atari 2600 VCS, but you can play it here in a browser based emulator. There is also a zip for Windows, packaged up with a standalone copy of the excellent Stella emulator, including the ROM. Hint for Debian/Ubuntu users: sudo apt-get install stella. For a laugh, take a look at the ugly source code.

Back in the day, every great Atari 2600 game had a back-story (to help you enhance the incredible graphics using your incredible imagination). Be sure to read the all-important cheezy back-story.

Tools used:

• batari Basic and it’s excellent manual.
• PlayerPal 2600 Sprite Editor

You may notice that my journal entries don’t really reflect the development process of this game. After a combination of electricity failures slowing me down, and my realization that I don’t actually know the best way (or rather, any way) to code a decent falling block game, I decided to try something quick in batari Basic. I’ve never coded it before, so I’m really stoked that I even got this much done. It would have sold a million copies in 1981. If you’d asked me at the beginning of the competition “Which is ‘easier’, Python+Pygame+Rabbyt or batari Basic ?“, I would have said Python+Pygame+Rabbyt …. I would have been wrong. Despite only having space for ~ 26 single-byte variables (+ a few bonus, if you are tricky), you can do quite a lot in batari Basic (and I had ~10 variables to spare !! Imagine what I could have done with those !!).

* 100 % Owl free. May contain nuts.

Tags: final

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 3:57 pm and is filed under LD #12 - The Tower - 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.