Releasing An Album as an Atari 2600 Cartridge

kid0017 · December 23, 2011

I had this idea while driving home. So you have an albums worth of songs created on the Atari. I would love to be able to make little music videos for each song. By video I just mean an animation moving around on a screen. Maybe for one song it's a guy dancing, then for the next it's this psychedelic color bars going around on the screen or something. Just weird things. So I want it to be you plug in the cartridge (or start it up in stella) and then Track 1 starts and the animation starts. At the bottom where the score normally is it says "Track 1" or the name of it or something. Then you can push left or right on the joystick to skip forward or ahead, respectively, around to the next tracks, Each song is obviously different and it comes with its own animation. Is a project like this do-able? If so can you point me in some of the right directions, especially the part about creating animations. I am imagining this as something similar to the old Mario Paint projects for the SNES, except with an albums' worth of video/song creations. Thanks all.

+Random Terrain · December 23, 2011

You probably won't be able to make something like this with bB:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=63_nw-z2inQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63_nw-z2inQ

kid0017 · December 23, 2011

You probably won't be able to make something like this with bB:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=63_nw-z2inQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63_nw-z2inQ

That was GREAT.....I wasn't thinking anything this ambitious in my mind. Musically perhaps - there are no limits I think I understand the sound part well enough - two channels and all the tones are there to choose, with time lengths, etc, so it's whatever you want. I was wondering:

How do you go from one screen to the next? I see the limitations are in these kernels written in assembly that they have in bB. I'd like something like the standard kernel but maybe just tweaked a tiny bit (perhaps I can do this if I learn just enough to be able to hack the kernels in assembly). I want to go from one playfield with some sprite movement going on for maybe 50 seconds, then the screen goes black and goes to another playfield with more animation. Are these options available in bB? I couldn't quite find this on the bB tutorials. The demos I saw were contained games inside of one playfield. I was thinking these were just beginner games.

Also with the animation and the music...the way I see it this ends up getting very complicated (but still do-able). You have to keep printing the new outputs within the music loop, i.e. you change sprites along with the music notes? In other words the music and video don't work independently of one another. If I am understanding how the Atari works (at least to some degree). It wouldn't be bad to make a "Mario Paint" type program like I described in the original post....I guess I will have to do this myself since people have their own projects. It's just a chore to have to do this. But then once it's done you can load it, and it tells you (copy past your song here). Move your sprites around here using the appropriate x y coordinates, save Track 1. Then go Track 2, 3, 4, etc and the program puts them all together for you. Maybe also a title screen with the album title. I'm rambling now, hopefully someone can find questions in this mess to answer.

kid0017 · December 23, 2011

Sorry for rambling. I learn best when I see code and then I manipulate it. If anyone would spend (it would probably only take a few minutes out of your time). This would be the perfect example for me to see. Play like 5 different tones, and move some simple sprite, maybe like a happy face, to 5 different positions on the screen. Repeat this a few times. Then go onto a scene with 5 different tones, and a new sprite (maybe now a square), moves around differently. If someone could show me what that looks like in bB code I would be forever grateful. That's really all I am asking I can take it from there after that. Sorry if this is asking too much....