Making an Atari game – Day 16

I added a rudimentary sound driver after reading the Random Terrain information on it. Not too bad, it works so far. Just need to check it on the real system to make sure everything still runs smoothly.

I went around the code a bit and polished things up some. Made the score gradually scroll up when you get points rather than just showing the new score instantly. Just more fun to display it that way.

Starting room
Starting room

In the entire game, I was using a total of 5 sprites and using the rest as extra variables. I wanted to free up some variables so I decided to eliminate the 5th sprite, and have it interchangeable with sprite 4 instead. Sprite 4 was always just the dungeon/floor entrance sprite (kind of a cross in a circle, shown above). Sprite 5 was always a ladder to go down a floor. Since they were both never being used at the same time anyway, now I just switch sprite 4 back and forth between the entrance and exit when needed. This gives me four more extra variables that I can use for whatever: player5x, player5y, NUSIZ5, player5height.

I think I already have a plan for 3 of them. I think I am going to use them as item drop labels. So when you clear a room, instead of just coins appearing for each monster killed, sometimes more items will be dropped, like something for increasing health, stronger sword, or an extra life.