Lost game from the '80s: Scumbotron!

[EyeballKid]

I just managed to get to level 41 (out of 42).
There are a lot of rude words on my high score table.

[EyeballKid]

New 4th version!
Only minor changes:

- Rifasharks now worth 100 points (rather than 10)
- Rescuing Heavily Armoured Space Marines now refreshes your powerup time, so it's worth saving the poor fools.

scumbotron.prg

(26.82 KiB) Downloaded 550 times

And I _still_ can't get past level 40, dammit.

[StewBC]

Hi,
Sorry I am so late to the party on this, but I just wanted to say - what a truly excellent game! Just played it for the first time now and had a blast. Very nicely done. Love it!
Stefan

[paulscottrobson]

Very nice implementation of a Robotron-a-like. Maybe add the control system on Jeff Minters' own version, which I always liked, and means you don't have the twin controllers issue.

[EyeballKid]

Very nice implementation of a Robotron-a-like. Maybe add the control system on Jeff Minters' own version, which I always liked, and means you don't have the twin controllers issue.

Llamatron was fantastic!
You're talking about the hold-down-fire-button-to-lock-the-firing-direction single stick scheme, right?

I do actually have some code for that.
The problem at the moment is that I can't compile it - I was already right up against the 40KB-ish limit for a single PRG file, but some toolchain changes just pushed it over. I'll need to go back and do some fiddling.

In the meantime, with a SNES controller you should be able to use the d-pad to move and the buttons for firing direction.
Or use the mouse to aim and fire?

[paulscottrobson]

My (Neo6502) version, not quite complete. No Brains .... and obviously no collision detection which makes surviving easy but scoring a bit difficult.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzpN1NQkSEk

[ahenry3068]

Very nice implementation of a Robotron-a-like. Maybe add the control system on Jeff Minters' own version, which I always liked, and means you don't have the twin controllers issue.

Llamatron was fantastic!
You're talking about the hold-down-fire-button-to-lock-the-firing-direction single stick scheme, right?

I do actually have some code for that.
The problem at the moment is that I can't compile it - I was already right up against the 40KB-ish limit for a single PRG file, but some toolchain changes just pushed it over. I'll need to go back and do some fiddling.

In the meantime, with a SNES controller you should be able to use the d-pad to move and the buttons for firing direction.
Or use the mouse to aim and fire?

I would say see if you can move some data out to banked ram and make it a loadable asset. There is nothing wrong with needing more than 1 file for a program. That could leave you some room for more code in that 40kb sweet spot. Also. YOU CAN Make your program load at $0400 and gain an extra KB that way.

[EyeballKid]

Yeah, I'm already up against the 40KB code limit
The .prg contains compressed code and graphics data. Upon startup, there's a little bootstrap routine which decompresses the graphics out to vera ram, then decompresses the code out to its full 40KB(ish) glory, overwriting the original .prg.
So it's either split the code up to offload some into banked ram, or rewrite a lot of it in 6502 assembly. Neither of which I'll likely get around to doing any time soon
But I'll figure something out. I might not have space to add more features, but I'd like to be able to tweak things at least.

[EyeballKid]

My (Neo6502) version, not quite complete. No Brains .... and obviously no collision detection which makes surviving easy but scoring a bit difficult.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzpN1NQkSEk

Oh! I missed that - it looks fantastic!

[ahenry3068]

Yeah, I'm already up against the 40KB code limit
The .prg contains compressed code and graphics data. Upon startup, there's a little bootstrap routine which decompresses the graphics out to vera ram, then decompresses the code out to its full 40KB(ish) glory, overwriting the original .prg.
So it's either split the code up to offload some into banked ram, or rewrite a lot of it in 6502 assembly. Neither of which I'll likely get around to doing any time soon
But I'll figure something out. I might not have space to add more features, but I'd like to be able to tweak things at least.

Offload the graphics and maybe some of the code to a separate file. Put less used routines in banked ram