Atari: Amazing tenliner game The Children
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VÃctor "Vitoco" Parada (Chile) gives us the scoop on "The Children", an original game for Atari 8-bit computers with which he participates in the EXTREM-256 category of theBASIC 10 Liner annual contest 2021
You play as Pedro, who must move various objects to reach his friend The Child - although at some point he will discover that there are many of him. Aside from the names, the character graphics bear some resemblance to the famous series "The Mandalorian".
As he explained to Atariteca, "The Children" is inspired by "Pitkat" (Atari 2600) and "Millie and Molly" (Atari 7800), which he discovered when he was testing games for ZPH's Annual Homebrew Awards 2020 contest. Both titles, in turn, have as references "Pitman" and "Catrap", written in BASIC for the Sharp MZ-700 computer in 1985.
"Vitoco" began writing it in FastBasic, with tricks to achieve a larger color palette in the Atari's graphics mode 2. The game was upgraded to a 16x10 screen resolution with a playing field, "so that the puzzles wouldn't be so big and also to save bytes of data to include so many puzzles."puzzlesas I can in the 10 lines of code."
When it came time to define the colors to be used, he used the DLI function to createspritesmulticoloured or shaded. It was at that moment that he decided to give it the theme linked to the well-known Disney production, starring Pedro Pascal.
On the technical side, the author points out that he combined different compression methods until he obtained an algorithm that allowed him to gain more space for the puzzles. "The Children has many areas, more than the 7 (seen in) the video, but I don't want tospoil them
It should be noted that Parada also revealed thePatrol videos, practically a clone of the classic Moon Patrol (Atari, 1983) also in the "EXTREME-256" category (maximum 256 characters per line); andby Hubert, inspired by Qbert (Parker Brothers, 1983), which competes in the “PUR-80” category (each line of code with a maximum of 80 characters).
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