If only...
Entry posted by The Usotsuki
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I've never been much of a game programmer by myself, and oftentimes I need a hand writing stuff.
Lately, I've found out about a couple so-called "sprite cards" that add a TMS9918 video display processor to the stock Apple ][, and this got me thinking, would people be interested in this stuff, if there were software for it? So I figured I'd try to fill that void, but although I didn't find it particularly hard to understand most of the TMS9918, and I don't get stuck writing stuff like demos and terminal code for it, I tried writing two very basic games (Pac-Man and Flappy Bird) and got stuck because I just couldn't figure out what I was doing... I really think it would work better to have someone else be like, well, this is what should happen, and I try to implement that. :/
Not like I haven't, at all, figured it out.
For example, for Flappy Bird I have a working sprite, and I've got moving ground. I've got the graphics for the pipes. But I can't figure out how to decide, oh, this is how the level should be laid out, this is what you want to display. And so my head explodes.
For Pac-Man, I'd really rather try translating Z80 code, if I understood Z80 and how it worked. There's a lot of great arcade ports out there that run on Z80-based systems with the TMS9918 and AY8910 (or the similar SN76489), so the only major barrier is that I'm running on a system with a 6502, not a Z80. I'd love to be able to make use of what's already there rather than reinvent the wheel.
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