Post by mj.Jernigan in Where is the Atari 7800 build?

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I'll weigh and consider votes for any platform, Atari and otherwise. The 5200/800/400 appear to have the hardware needed for this. If I port back to assembler, it is not out of the question... but, yeah, fairly unlikely at this point. It will partly depend on how motivated I feel to port back to assembler instead of taking the lazier route of porting to Batari Basic for the 7800. I already have the hardest stuff in assembler from the original game, and Batari Basic may not work well enough for this (no idea yet), so we'll see.

So many things ahead of this on the todo list right now. A bunch of board game mods at the moment. And, as always, GRITS Racing and the much-more-popular-but-lesser-developed Sendit Soccer.

ssalah8212 days ago

Ok, well that sounds great! I'll sit tight and watch this space! Since I'm new here, may I just ask what's the best way to keep track of all your work, including the projects you just mentioned as I'm really interested in your work on those other games too 😊. Thanks again even just for the windows port of squadron river raid, can't wait to play it with my nephews at the weekend!

mj.Jernigan11 days ago

Ask away. The more chatter here, the better. I use itch.io as the home base for most of my projects. Thus, if you follow me here, itch will notify you of all my devlog posts and new titles. And I usually write a post for most updates.

It's been pretty quiet here lately because much of my spare time last year was spent running a small slot-car/board-game/food club. I'm still running that club but I hope to work much more game dev back in as well. I'm currently trying to wrap up some expansions/mods to the board games Formula De (1997) and Speed Circuit (1971) (among others). Then, hopefully, back to GRITS Racing and get it to a dialed-back version 1. Then make some good progress on Sendit Soccer. Then who knows what. Considering using the GRITS engine to do a reboot of Atari's old Fire Truck (Smokey Joe) 2-player arcade game.

I hope to get to some sort of new type of story-driven games eventually--not unlike RPGs or action RPGs but more story and less rote leveling up. While my primary interest is generally multiplayer gaming, I also long to write more dialog (so, yeah, multiplayer RPGs, if I can). I also have a 4-player 2600 game in my head, not unlike River Raid but targeted at a younger audience, waiting to escape someday. In fact, it is that game that got me first looking at the River Raid code.

So, yeah, a lot on the todo list. Maybe I'll get to half of it eventually.

ssalah8212 days ago

PS Was the source code for the atari 800 version of river raid ever released to your knowledge? I believe this version has a few things that the 2600 version doesn't such as helicopters that fire back and tanks that fire from the side.

Thanks again!

mj.Jernigan11 days ago

Source code is rarely released for commercial games (but sometimes leaked). River Raid included. The source we have for 2600 River Raid was decompiled (reverse engineered) by Thomas Jentzsch, and later I added to his work on it. Someone could do the same with any game, including the 800 version, but no one has as far as I know. What Jentzsch did was rare.

Yes, the 800 version was different enough to be at least a version 2 if not a sequel edition. The 7800 could likely run a version that looks a lot like it. I just didn't go there because my purpose was entirely personal to relive the 2600 original version, just in 2-player (and with prettier sprites just because). I've never played the 800 version or any version but the 2600 one. The 800 version looks like it uses the same exact level generator, just with jagged borders and new enemies replacing old ones. Thus, it probably would not be hard to match up the same level code in the binaries and then decompile the changes surrounding it. But, that's not on my todo list since this was just a personal side project.