Jump to content
  • entries
    106
  • comments
    796
  • views
    140,707

Tanks!


vdub_bobby

2,575 views

SO IT'S BEEN A WHILE since I've been very active on AA; but in the last few weeks I have again started some fairly intensive 2600 development. I'm sorry to say, Nathan, that it isn't RPS - which is still on my slow-moving to-do list - but rather a project that I toyed with years ago: a semi-faithful port of Tank Battalion.

 

I'll try to find time to put up the in-progress ROM of what I've got so far along with some screenshots, plus other details. And I am having some difficulty with the graphics and could use some help from those who are more talented. But I'll save the begging for later. ;)

 

EDIT: Now I'm at home; here's a screenshot and a binary.

blogentry-6060-0-34109500-1327387212_thumb.png

TankMaze20120123.bin

 

It's pretty ugly at the moment. The explanation:

I'm trying to use the same technique that batari used in his Rally-X demo - using the missiles as alternate frames for the sprites to have 4 semi-flickered sprites. The ball (flickered) will be used for the tank bullets.

 

The current ROM has two different graphics in it - the original graphics I came up with are used for the L/R-facing tanks and the downward-facing tanks. The upwards-facing tank uses another version. I'm not really satisfied with either.

 

The constraints are:

the sprite is 8x12, which isn't set in stone.

The missile can only start or stop drawing on even-numbered scanlines. I.e., they can only be 2, 4, 6, etc. lines tall and the can only be positioned (vertically) every two lines. They can be 1, 2, 4, or 8 pixels wide. The missiles can only be rectangular in shape - they can't have blank lines in the middle or change widths in the middle.

 

Anyone got anything better, or have any good suggestions?

  • Like 1

10 Comments


Recommended Comments

That's okay about RPS - it's so far down my to-do list that it's fallen off the bottom a few times. ;)

 

I'm sure we'll get around to it someday. Maybe re-theme it as a holiday cart. :D

 

Tank Battalion sounds like a completely doable port for the 2600. Dave Dries did a write-up on the arcade game some years back.

Link to comment

Looks good - I like the combination of player and missile sprites to give 2 colours to each tank.

 

The tanks seem to get stuck on the edges of corners very easily - I'm not sure if that was the case in the arcade version?

 

Chris

Link to comment

Interesting game. Couldn't play it in MAME due to "missing roms", but it did work in iMAME which is based version 0.34/0.35 of MAME.

 

Movement is jerky, note the ghosting on the top tank - the tanks move 1/2 their length at a time.

 

IMG_0720.sized.jpg

Link to comment

Just so you all know, unless there is a huge clamor for a pixel-perfect port, I'm going to play very fast and loose with this. Mostly, I like the high-level concept: a maze with shootable walls, multiple enemies, and a base to defend. Everything else is up for grabs!

 

And Chris: the tanks getting stuck on corners is IMO a bug that is high on my list of things to fix. ;)

Link to comment

sounds good to me as while the game was interesting, I found the jerky movement a bit disconcerting. The smooth movement in TankMaze (other than stuck corners) is better.

Link to comment
Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...