This is a very rudimentary implementation of flappy bird for the Atari 2600. It represents the first work I did with the console and shows inexperience with the hardware. But it's fun and plays quite well.
The game was developed with DASM and expects the presence of the "standard" vcs.h and macro.h files during assembly. You should therefore copy macro.h and vcs.h to the flappy source first. The files can be found in the DASM github project.
dasm flappy.asm -I. -v1 -f3 -T1 -oflappy.bin
Alternatively, you can add an additional -I option to the command line (The
path_to_DASM_include_files changed to wherever you have copied the include
files on your computer.)
dasm flappy.asm -I<path_to_DASM_include_files> -I. -v1 -f3 -T1 -oflappy.bin
On Jan 16th 2021 I was fortunate enough to be nominated for an award in the 3rd Annual Atari Homebrew Awards (2020) organised by ZeroPage Homebrew
The category the game has been nomintated in (<=4k port) is very strong and I am extremely pleased to see the game in such esteemed company. Results are announced on the Feb 6th 2021.
-NominatedLaurels-Atari2600Best4KHomebrew(Port).png)
I was trying to get more work out of the TIA by using flickering effects but it's not successful in all places. The background "trees" in particular aren't very appealing, mainly I think, because they are implemented with playfield graphics. I like the tree "foliage" however and the swamp water at the bottom of the screen. The splash and sinking bird death-animation is particularly effective I think.
I was also overly ambitious with the construction of the code. The header files in the project are an attempt to abstract away non-game code but it's probably more confusing than anything else. I would probably construct the code differently if I was to write it again.