Role Playing Adventure Game Cartridge in the works

I am continuing my work on an Role Playing Adventure Game engine using multicolored sprites and now Super IRG style graphics. Recently been ported to be on a cartridge image. This is a pre-concept demonstration to show others what the program is capable of doing. I decided to release it as an open beta to get some feedback if it works, get suggestions, and compliments. It also lets me see if eveything can be completed within a VBI cycle, how much flicker occurs with the sprites and alternating fonts. Shows what things may look like in the final game. We know the Atari 8-bit only has an x-number of clock cycles within a frame to complete everything.  I am testing it at the max of 8 sprites on the screen at once to show it can be done. However I am thinking that most of the rooms may normally have 4 to 6 sprites. I can create little zones for some monster types so that not too many crowd on one line. Right now there is not much logic in them, just random directional movements.

The Rooms are drawn with a series of instructions rather than being stored in memory as full screens. Doing that way allows almost 4 times as many rooms available. With a 128KB Cartridge Imaged, can store up to 256 rooms, maybe 2 independent maps. Also leave lots space for sprites, sound effects, music, fonts, and other data. The Room Index is a byte, 8 bit, range of 0 to 256. Should handle most adventure type game designs. Would have to optimize the bank switching. I prefer to copy the program logic to ram when a cartridge is initialize so it just bank switches to access different portions of data. The multiplexer routine needs to execute fast, so its best the sprite data come from one bank or copy some of it to ram.

I have not finalized on a design yet. Right now I am tweaking the routines. Looking at doing a simplified action RPG with hitpoints, experience, some skill levels, a few different weapons. Not going to get crazy with character attributes like Charisma, Dexterity, Wisdom, etc. I discovered doing games with those things on the PC slows down the pace by making the player worry about that stuff. I am also not a big fan of "turn-based" stuff.

I am using it to experiment with different tweaks to the  sprite multiplexer code and see how far I can get CPU usage down. I admit going with 8 multicolor sprites with the Atari 8-bit player missile graphics will flicker like crazy. This demo shows some of the monsters with different movements and I created some rooms to move around in. The limitations of how many rooms and sprite images is defined by amount of memory available. 64K machine can probably hold 200 sprite images with 64 rooms. 130XE or 128K Max Cart can go as far as 255 rooms.

This is the direction I would go if I wanted to progress the 2600 Adventure or Zelda like game on the Atari 8-bit. I wanted to make an adventure game with many rooms 20 years ago. I was limited to using Basic/Turbo Basic back then with a few ML routines I copied from a magazine, and was just learning assembly. Now Multiplexing and all assembly programming is bringing such a game to reality. I like mixing Semi Role Playing Game elements with lots of action. Have a stand in character that resembles Indiana Jones right now.

I am not going to be concerned with someone disassembling this cartridge image right now because it is far from being completed. Some programming has purposely omitted or altered to further deter anyone from stealing my final game.