Action 52...On the 2600!

[Netsurfer_x1]

I'm all for quick games but my god have you played Action 52, it's a pile of shit and I think everybody on this forum can do better. Now 2 hours isn't long enough but keeping it simple is still a worth while pursuit. If this catches on I'm sure some games will take on a life of there own but even a moderately small group of games sounds great. 52 games sounds good but look how Action 52 turned out, how about Action 32 or Action 16.

 

It should be Action 26, since 26 is half of 52 and also references "2600"

 

-B

Funny you should say that. If I had to cut this game up into "volumes", I was hoping to make it two volumes (25 games each, +1 hidden game). Naturally it'd be called "ACTION 25".

[Netsurfer_x1]

Okay I added a score gauge but had to change SHOTS to a bullet icon.

 

Lookin' good. I'd have settled for something like:

 

[score here] AMMO: xx

 

But this is perfect!

[+Gemintronic]

One other idea is to create a byte-code interpreter like Chip-8 and fill the rest of the banks with DATA statements that represent instructions for each of the games.

 

Stupid question: How many 8-bit numbers can you store in 4k? Just wondering how big (how many 8-bit numbers/instructions) each game could be using this method..

Edited December 22, 2011 by theloon

[Tjoppen]

How many 8-bit numbers can you store in 4k?

4096?

[+Gemintronic]

How many 8-bit numbers can you store in 4k?

4096?

 

So, less than 78 byte-code instructions per game if packed into a 4k bank. As bB can do 32k ROMs I'd say there's enough room for 52 byte-code based games.

[BladeJunker]

Well I got a bunch of things brewing but I thought I'd post something based in "frenzy" based gameplay simply called Frenzy lol. It's mostly based around the needs of the genre IE throw a bunch of crap at the player to fight versus what the 2600 can do.

 

Player0: Player

 

Player1: Civilians

 

Missile0: Enemy A

 

Missile1: Enemy B

 

Ball: Player Weapon

 

Playfield: Enemy C, Buildings

 

 

I guess I describe the game as Robotron with a sword rather than a gun since the Player projectiles are used to generate the enemy sprites.

 

As mentioned the enemy are Missile segments which are made with skipped scan lines so they can be staggered and multiplex further than they could if they were solid shapes, I'm sure they'll flicker anyway but mostly just trying to keep as many on screen without clipping or disappearing completely. Whether a single shape or animated they will need kernels to define them. Also varying the 2 enemy types per stage could help keep things interesting.

 

The Ball acts as the player's weapon probably a plasma sword with its bright color. The enemies just run into you as attacks while the player runs to avoid or stands and attacks by holding the button and press 1 of 4 directions for different attacks. I'm sure some sort of joystick tap based combo system could be made.

 

Civilians just stand and wait since they aren't so much fodder but rather guarded by enemies since the player slaps a transporter badge on them as a means of rescue. It was this or have them flicker as independently moving units or move about the screen in unison. I'm thinking of varying them per vertical zone for variety sake mainly male to female.

 

There wasn't much I could do with the Playfield other than do Fireball lanes and a giant snake that move across the screen vertically. While simple this should add to the overall frenzy of things thrown at the player. I also thought maybe of adding enemy generators and the occasional wall like just for variety sake. The Playfield will have to be asymmetrical for the sake of using each Playfield segment independently but tiling or flopping the segments can be taken advantage of.

 

The HUD is Playfield based mostly to generate the characters needed for the Score and number of Civilians rescued.

 

The rules of the game are wide open to anyone willing to program this engine as I can't take it any further till someone tries it out or at least assesses its plausibility.

 

Logan

[BladeJunker]

Although mundane I thought I'd address the menu design. I have fancier designs but I don't know where or how much space would be dedicated to the front end menu so this submission is simple and compact. Mostly just tried to make it easy to read.

[Netsurfer_x1]

Although mundane I thought I'd address the menu design. I have fancier designs but I don't know where or how much space would be dedicated to the front end menu so this submission is simple and compact. Mostly just tried to make it easy to read.

 

Very nice! Although the name of the "company" is AtariAge Enterprises, but whatever.

[Crazy Climber]

Didn't read the entire post so excuse me if this has been mentioned already....

 

- I'm no programmer, but 52 games on one cart, NO, impossible

*edit...hmmmm....forgot about some of those dipswitched brazilian pirate carts...okay maybe possible but not likely

 

- Solution

It would be expensive but you could put the 52 games on a SD card and sell it in Harmony cart format. Basically you would be buying a Harmony cart that came with 52 shitty games on a pre-programmed SD card and a custom "Action 52" game label. You could load other emulated games on it also to make it worth the high pricetag but essentially it would be more of a collectable for the niche crowd that likes stuff like this.

[BladeJunker]

Although mundane I thought I'd address the menu design. I have fancier designs but I don't know where or how much space would be dedicated to the front end menu so this submission is simple and compact. Mostly just tried to make it easy to read.

 

Very nice! Although the name of the "company" is AtariAge Enterprises, but whatever.

Whoops sorry, I'll remember that for all future company listings. AtariAge Enterprises is a great name.

[Netsurfer_x1]

Didn't read the entire post so excuse me if this has been mentioned already....

 

- I'm no programmer, but 52 games on one cart, NO, impossible

*edit...hmmmm....forgot about some of those dipswitched brazilian pirate carts...okay maybe possible but not likely

 

- Solution

It would be expensive but you could put the 52 games on a SD card and sell it in Harmony cart format. Basically you would be buying a Harmony cart that came with 52 shitty games on a pre-programmed SD card and a custom "Action 52" game label. You could load other emulated games on it also to make it worth the high pricetag but essentially it would be more of a collectable for the niche crowd that likes stuff like this.

 

This is definitely one of those times where it would be most beneficial to read the entire thread. Thankfully, it hasn't gotten too long (yet!).

[Netsurfer_x1]

Although mundane I thought I'd address the menu design. I have fancier designs but I don't know where or how much space would be dedicated to the front end menu so this submission is simple and compact. Mostly just tried to make it easy to read.

 

Very nice! Although the name of the "company" is AtariAge Enterprises, but whatever.

Whoops sorry, I'll remember that for all future company listings. AtariAge Enterprises is a great name.

 

Indeed. And for reasons that are blindingly obvious, I think you can see why I chose it.

[BladeJunker]

Didn't read the entire post so excuse me if this has been mentioned already....

 

- I'm no programmer, but 52 games on one cart, NO, impossible

*edit...hmmmm....forgot about some of those dipswitched brazilian pirate carts...okay maybe possible but not likely

 

- Solution

It would be expensive but you could put the 52 games on a SD card and sell it in Harmony cart format. Basically you would be buying a Harmony cart that came with 52 shitty games on a pre-programmed SD card and a custom "Action 52" game label. You could load other emulated games on it also to make it worth the high pricetag but essentially it would be more of a collectable for the niche crowd that likes stuff like this.

"I'm no programmer and 52 shitty games", you're stealing my lines. ^_^ Sure the Harmony cart is a possibility and yes it isn't cheap but there is always the option to sell to Harmony cart owners if A52 were an SD card with SD cards being relatively cheap.

 

As far as cartridges as in actual 2600 cartridges the physical cost is always there whether you make 4K or 32K roms so I consider that a moot point to the big picture. I see what you mean about the external hardware aspect needed for 52 games as the 2600 really only handles one game at a time so a bridge is necessary.

 

As far as the "not likely" aspect you mention, the entire forum is full of pipe dreams, hobbies, and half finished projects so I don't think that matters. I'm not saying homebrews don't happen but the singular intimate nature of 2600 programming tends to stymie very much in the way of collaboration as a whole with everybody doing their own thing.

[TripleWelly]

Hey everyone.

I am planning on (attempting) to write a game for this project this weekend.

More info to come!

 

TripleWelly

[Netsurfer_x1]

Hey everyone.

I am planning on (attempting) to write a game for this project this weekend.

More info to come!

 

TripleWelly

 

Ok, good to hear. Just a few pointers: I want this to be a collection of games we would actually want to play. Also, variety: It is, in fact, the spice of life.

 

Lastly, care to give a small taste of what you'll be working on?

[BladeJunker]

Funny I called the genre Frenzy and forgot that the Berzerk sequel was called Frenzy so I switched this games title to Frantic. Anyway just experimenting with 3 bit wide enemies changing bit width per scan line to get some less blocky shapes. Avoided changing bit width mid scan line but my gorilla guy broke that rule. Things are more Halloween than Sci-Fi lately, probably all the Real Ghostbusters cartoons I've been watching lol. Decided to add vertical color zones into the Playfield instead of one default color even though the player sword will switch color but I think the larger graphics take precedence over the smaller bit graphic. Also added acid pools as a hazard but other stationary traps are possible too using the Playfield like spikes or trapdoors.

[BladeJunker]

Decided to take another stab at the A52 Startup Menus, kept the same look but expanded on possible features. Also corrected the company name lol.

 

Added a window border & scroll length indicator around the worded listings using Playfield pixels just to give the user some hint at how tall any given scrolling screen is and to segment areas of information.

 

The Description screen is just for a basic storyline and or history of each game title. The bottom bar switches the company name for the author of game title the user has selected from the Main menu.

As you can see game selection from the Main menu creates a sub menu of Main, Description, and Controls which are toggled with Left & Right on the Joystick with scrolling using Up & Down on the joystick.

Main is an option of the sub menu simply so you can get back to the Main menu without resetting the console. Also it isn't visible in these images but the sub menu will have Go as an option to start the game actually loading and playing jsyk.

 

As a collector of retro games I often don't have the manuals for many of my games so I thought a Control listing was in order. Although games like Space Invaders hardly need a Controls listing other games with more elaborate setups like Raiders of the Lost Ark sure do.

 

Anyway still trying to work out ways of rendering games like Cheetahmen, Timewarp Tickers, etc. in the best possible manner. I came up with a few setups but I have doubts about there efficiency so I've been consulting SeaGtGruff on how taxing certain functions are within actual gameplay rendering so more interesting stuff soon.

Edited February 13, 2012 by BladeJunker

[Netsurfer_x1]

Wow, that's impressive! If anything, I thought that the joystick L/R should be used to switch pages in the "game" sub-menu, same goes for switching between pages of the main menu.

 

To me, pressing U/D is confusing in the "game" sub-menu, especially when the page arrows point L & R.

[BladeJunker]

Wow, that's impressive! If anything, I thought that the joystick L/R should be used to switch pages in the "game" sub-menu, same goes for switching between pages of the main menu.

 

To me, pressing U/D is confusing in the "game" sub-menu, especially when the page arrows point L & R.

 

The menu diving could be increased to achieve what you propose, I admit switching listings and scrolling on a 2600 joystick can be awkward but I think this will work faster which is important when you have so many games to look through. The lack of a second fire button really tied my hands in a lot of ways.

 

As far as the arrows I thought the category abbreviation next to them was clear enough that pressing the direction would take you there and if the shortening was unclear it wouldn't last since the full listing name would be shown just through trying L/R. Could add some color codes to the different areas of grouped text if I went with a purely separate odd even scanline approach.

 

I know the scroll Window/Bar isn't as obvious as the sub menu arrows but I thought something should be included to not just visually separate the listing from the sub menu but also to indicate how large or long the information listing is through standard Windows style scroll appearance states. EG. no scroll indicator present for a single screen of text.

 

Admitting the use of a scroll bar for a page flipping system is confusing but I didn't want to decrease the font scale to accommodate a different menu design and the Window/Scroll Bar would be easy enough to render using the Playfield.

Personally I would have preferred a true page flipping visual with a numeric page indicator(Page) 4/6 (Pages) but I want to make sure the game titles get as many letters as possible horizontally under the 2600's limited rendering ability and I also hated the title shortening in the original Action 52 like Critical BP. I could drop the maximum title listings height to 7 visible and add a page indicator easily or maybe I'll have to try a new shorter font and see what fits.

 

Nothing is written in stone as of yet so I'll see what I can do.

[Netsurfer_x1]

Well, if you go through with a page indicator, maybe placing it in the top right corner (where the "ACTION 26" title bar is) would work. That'll help with the problem of avoiding a cluttered menu. Rendering it in black will help make it more visible.

 

Naturally, it'll self-adjust w/ the situation (i.e.: in a "game" submenu, it might read 1/3. Whereas in the main menu it might read 1/6 or what have you.) As far as a scroll bar goes, I'm perfectly ambivalent about it. If you think you need it, add it, if not, then don't.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Netsurfer_x1

[BladeJunker]

I was thinking about the size concerns lately of multiple games not in limiting game size to a particular ROM size but rather generalizing certain elements like perhaps a universal font shared by all games on account of the particular optimization needs of text rendering on the 2600 being strict and maybe dedicating an entire section of ROM space to it much like a system character set.

 

In practice I think 4X7 pixels is a good universal font character size as its wide enough to read with the stock RF output while 7 pixels allows for good legibility even with skipped scan lines. The Harmony Cart font looks like 3X5 with skipped scan lines which is the minimum size possible while still being readable but it works better for glancing at directory listings rather than actual reading of paragraphs.

 

Because of the limited Bits available its impossible to not skip scan lines with Bit based kernal rendering of fonts unless you have short word widths or that most of the character graphic is being rendered with Playfield pixels which is the only context for solid character graphics other than odd to even scan line alternation which is hard to get right.

 

Text can be generated multiple ways such as giant Playfield notepad drawings, Dual Player block word segments, and 48 bit wide multiplexed Player block Title screens seem to be the quicker more straight forward option but they tend to be space heavy in asset size compared to more cycle heavy segmented font systems. I don't see anyway around the segmentation issue when it comes to space used per game across multiple games.

 

I bring up text but I think much of getting A52 into a practical form on the 2600 will depend on breaking data down into compact tiles whether that be Player blocks, Kernal sprites, or Playfield Blocks since rendering anything whether font or sprite is handled the same way on the 2600.

Under standard 2600 game coding structures either the games will get bloated trying to resemble there original counterparts or if they conform to the original 2600 ROM sizes they will become heavily abstracted and unrecognizable.

 

While I don't think an Action 52 game should necessarily be overly complex or deep like a dedicated game title would be such as including dialogue screens you still have to consider the costs of approximating these simple Nes games on the 2600.

 

On that subject SeaGtGruff informs me that tile based systems are difficult to do on the 2600 since it isn't a default function like you would find on other platforms which means a method has be decided upon usually a single standard like those found in Boulder Dash 2600 or grafixbmp's Castlevania project.

 

Just some food for thought about the project as a whole.

[Netsurfer_x1]

Since we're all revisiting our previous work recently, here's some different versions of the A52 cartridge art I came up with.

 

Since it seems like this is gonna have to be split into more than 1 volume, this is what said label art would look like with either of the two proposed names for this two-parter. The last two are an idea I came up with for making the label art red.

 

As always, comments are welcome.

 

Edited February 18, 2012 by Netsurfer_x1

[BladeJunker]

Since we're all revisiting our previous work recently, here's some different versions of the A52 cartridge art I came up with.

 

Since it seems like this is gonna have to be split into more than 1 volume, this is what said label art would look like with either of the two proposed names for this two-parter. The last two are an idea I came up with for making the label art red.

 

As always, comments are welcome.

Well I like the design, its clean and cool unlike the Nes label which was just gaudy. The only thing I'd change is the coloring of the main central Action 26 title from a solid color to maybe a tropical gradient along the lines of the AM2 or Naughty Dog logo. I think that would give the label some character and draw the eyes to the title in a positive way.

 

I'm still a bit confused by the 26th game being hidden but as far as the logo Action 25 +1 doesn't seem to fit well so I'd stick with Action 26 regardless as its just simpler to read and say.

[Netsurfer_x1]

Well I like the design, its clean and cool unlike the Nes label which was just gaudy. The only thing I'd change is the coloring of the main central Action 26 title from a solid color to maybe a tropical gradient along the lines of the AM2 or Naughty Dog logo. I think that would give the label some character and draw the eyes to the title in a positive way.

 

I'm still a bit confused by the 26th game being hidden but as far as the logo Action 25 +1 doesn't seem to fit well so I'd stick with Action 26 regardless as its just simpler to read and say.

 

Well, I was trying to make the label design look like something that got released in 1981. So it's simple, but effective.

 

My goal is to make the 26th game locked, but once conditions are met, game 26 is unlocked. And, I didn't want to call it Action 26, when the average Joe boots up the game and finds one game missing, assuming of course that the unlockable game idea can be made to work.

[BladeJunker]

Since I broached the subject of tiles might as well discuss it a little bit.

 

Although the 2600 Playfield only allows for 6 tile columns of four columns at 8 bits wide and two columns of 4 bits of width that should be sufficient enough to save some space using repeated columns. One unfortunate factor is the 20 bit register which reduces any space saved through tiles by 50% since every tile needs a mirrored copy because of the linear direction and order it reads bits. Of coarse center symmetrical tiles are possible as well with the tiling of the 20 bit Playfield with a supplemental overlay of Bit based walls like Adventure did that would get around that 50% loss but that will only work with certain game designs.

 

We do however have much control over the vertical grid division with the "Infinite Vertical Resolution" the 2600 offers lol. I decided to take a pragmatic approach and assume that the greater the vertical splitting gets the higher in cycle costs such as system would use. So here we'll just look at each division option and try to predict there usefulness to games.

 

First we have 6 by 1 which doesn't have any vertical splits. Like I mentioned 6 columns isn't half bad for interchanging bits compared to nothing and may have uses in regards to games where heavy vertical splitting uses too many cycles for the intended game play design.

 

Next we have 6 by 2 adding a single vertical split, not terribly versatile but some saving are possible as well as built in 2 player split screen support.

 

Followed by 6 by 4, I'd say that division would be good for a Playfield with large set pieces and a minimal repetition of tiles.

 

Next is 6 by 8, I regard this as the best middle ground in terms of vertical division which I think will serve the greatest number of games. Still some space waste with smaller scale graphics but minimal.

 

Last is 6 by 16, other than extreme small scale as in 1 bit wide walls I don't think further division would reap many rewards so I'll call this maximum vertical division. I think this would work well with Isometric graphics as they have a high degree of layer related rendering issues.

 

 

Now these are just gross hypotheticals as I haven't included vertical HUD space splits or scrolling factors as I'm a coding Noob but I know they matter. I still think it isn't likely a single engine will serve every game in the Action26 set but I consider this an option towards reducing the number of engines to as few as possible.

 

If anyone with experience with tile based system could chime in on this subject please do so as I have good intentions but we need real coding suggestions and limitations to iron out to get this bird to fly.