Guess I haven't posted anything here yet. Well, it was my entry for the Axe Parser contest on Omnimaga: Simul, a game where you try to survive for as long as you can while the game switches constantly between Pong, Falldown, Keepitin, and Avoid. After a bit, you get to Level 2, where you have to start playing two games at once. And of course, there's Level 4, or as I like to call it, Fourplay

More info, a download, and (really crappy) screenshots at http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/432/43245.html. (It's also in the archives here.)

That looks extremely challenging, and fairly well done. That's based on a Flash game concept, no? It seems somewhat familiar. Also, I don't love the dithering on the ball in that top screenshot, but other than that, very nice, sir.

Kerm: There was a flash game that came out a few years ago that consisted of you playing a series of something like 1000 games for like 5 seconds each or something insane like that.

Oh wow, that sounds intense! That's not what I'm thinking of, though, it was something where you had to play multiple ball-themed games at the same time.

Multitask?

Actually, I only heard about that game after I finished this one and posted it online The idea for the game actually came from a combination of Grid 16 (probably what Pseudoprogrammer was talking about) and a dual Fast Tunnel game someone made.

That's exactly the game that I was thinking of, thanks for finding that for me so I know I'm not that crazy. Still, you did a very good job on this, and I look forward to playing it when I get a chance.

This is really challenging. I still haven't made it to Fourplay yet. Nice job.

Indeed, and congrats on the ticalc.org feature, since I don't think I got a chance to mention that.

That's how I find out about the good stuff, because I hate scrolling through thousands of items in the archives trying to find something good.

That's not a good way to find fun BASIC arcade games, though, because ticalc.org almost never features BASIC games. Indeed, I think my Civilization Simulator I was one of the last non-Kevin BASIC games that got featured, and one of very few pure BASIC games ever featured.

I think BASIC should get attention, because graphics, stories,etc. that are unremarkable compared to ASM can take many hours of work. It's just as hard to make something really well. BASIC isn't just for noobs.

True, but I find to an overwhelming extent that the people who get far enough in their BASIC coding skills to be truly proficient get frustrated with the language and move on to ASM anyway (or now Axe, it seems), because of the simple limitations of BASIC even with hybrid libraries.

I did that because the DCS Lib commands were long and Axe can do sprites with a simple

Pt-On(X,Y,Pic000
routine.
(I don't actually use the X and Y, Kerm.)

Mmm, I don't feel like that's a good enough reason to use Axe, personally. Unless you're going to take full advantage of all its other features, I'd rather just stick with pure BASIC (or in my case, pure Doors CS-enhanced ASM).

I did do more, like grayscale,etc.
And the fact that my friends think nothing good comes from BASIC.
(They're wrong)

And Contra 83 got featured. Finally.



Yeah, it's just too easy to make better stuff with Axe... I still like BASIC, though. It's really fun to code, especially since it's so slow

Especially since it's so slow in the sense of challenging you, or something more nefarious? And good point, I totally forgot about the amazing Contra.

Great game you did there Deep! Shame on those who will not bother checking the readme and most of the description and say: Oh, that's just Pong and Falldown. It's a great idea you had there to make a game where we play all of them at once. Very challenging!

Well, it in a sense is just pong and falldown, but the technical skill that went into making four games playable smoothly and correctly at the same time is far from trivial. I think that that fact will unfortunately fly way over a lot of users' heads.

Heh, thanks.



^ That, and it's even more fun to optimize.