23 replies to this topic

[Salmaan Khan]

Here in England, Street Fighter X Tekken will be released on March 2nd. I will be getting it on the 3rd. I'm so excited, that I'm going to (actually already started) make an Atari 2600 version of SFxTK. This will be te first Atari game I've ever created so could you give me some tips? My goal is to create a game where you pick from: Ryu, Ken, Kazuya or Nina and fight against a CPU (or maybe a player). My idea is that if you press "Right" and "Fire" your character will punch facing right and if you press "Left" and "Fire" your character will punch facing left.



That, that there is a little art of how I imagine it to look like on a cartdrige.




I will post screenshots/demos of my beta project later.

Thank You

[BladeJunker]

Quote

Here in England, Street Fighter X Tekken will be released on March 2nd. I will be getting it on the 3rd. I'm so excited, that I'm going to (actually already started) make an Atari 2600 version of SFxTK. This will be te first Atari game I've ever created so could you give me some tips? My goal is to create a game where you pick from: Ryu, Ken, Kazuya or Nina and fight against a CPU (or maybe a player). My idea is that if you press "Right" and "Fire" your character will punch facing right and if you press "Left" and "Fire" your character will punch facing left.

It sounds like a cool project and an ambitious one too for your first 2600 game. I've been working on a fighting game design for the 2600 too so I'll give the 411 with some suggestions.

-You'll want to forget about scrolling and just use a very wide panoramic background graphic. The majority of your graphics resources will be going into the 2 fighters. Also forget about background sprites unless you can draw them into the Playfield(EG.Onlookers/Ambient), better to spend your cycles on the player sprites and produce the best possible gameplay experience.

-Stick to 2-line kernels for the fighters at least and consider thicker line rendering for everything else as you'll want fast smooth animation and fast gameplay responses.

-Try to make the fighter sprites as small as possible sounds like an obvious statement but its very true. Try Street Fighter 2 on Gameboy and then try Street Fighter Alpha on Gameboy Color, much smaller sprites but way more fun to play and a better compromise for an 8-bit platform . The widescreen letterboxed background should help make the fighters appear proportionally taller than they are.

-Standard 8 bit wide player objects won't cut it so you're going to have to use Missile and Ball extensions for any wide stances of the arms and legs.

-You mention a directional based approach to fighter moves "Right or Left+Fire=Punch", I suggest using a Mortal Kombat setup to achieve the full fighter move set as it is an intuitive logical approach.
Examples:
*Down+Fire=Uppercut
*Down Back+FIre=Roundhouse Sweep
*Back+Fire=Roundhouse Kick

*Forward+Fire=Forward Punch
*Down Forward= Crouching Punch

You'll also want tap and hold detection on the Fire button so you can tap for basic moves or hold Fire then perform a joystick move and release Fire to execute special moves.



Well that's all I got, I wish you much success in your project.

[Salmaan Khan]

Thanks man

[BladeJunker]

Was thinking about fighting games and SFXT which I haven't tried yet but looked up since I checked out your posting. Anyway was screwing around with a character select screen based on the game trying to find a good distribution of rendering. It's not a complete mockup visually as its really about concentrating object use to do the most efficiently so don't take it too literal. I tried to get the spacing accurate but its so easy to misplace a bit when you aren't working directly with code. ^_^

-I tried exacting replication of the original menu but 2600 based rendering tends to favor vertical isolation of rendering zones thus the stacking. Also I think its safe to say you'll need an asymmetrical screen setup for the character select.

-The character icon setup is one of non highlighted(Generic) and highlighted(Specific). Generic icons are rendered with Playfield and Ball which might be able to have a unique color with some tricks but will likely be the default menu border color. The Specific icon is Player0 & Player1 paired along with a couple extra color clocks made from there Missiles, mostly tried to cram as much drawing resolution into it for good legibility.

-Used the Playfield to draw the menu border and the text within just for a cheaper render. Used vertical text just so it would fit more naturally.

-Likely should treat the roster area of the menu the same as a HUD in coding as in a split of the screen.

-Isolated the character portraits to there own vertical band so every object could be utilized. Used a width of only the first 12 bits in the Playfield register with the remaining 8 drawing half the menu column. Basically in the portrait any pixel 8 color clocks wide is Playfield, any pixel 4 color clocks wide is handled with either Missile or the Ball, and the Player objects(Drawn double wide but not stretched in hardware.) are used whenever the Playfield and Bits fail to render the intended bitmap pattern.
Not very sure if multicolor is possible in the portraits even though I imply it but a mid-line color change in the scan line rendering of the Playfield should allow a unique color for one portrait, a change to the menu color, and ending on the second portrait color. Also I think the character name would likely need to be part of the portrait image as in drawn into it.

Well even if it doesn't work as good as I think it will the basic concept of the setup should be sound and I hope you find it useful.

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Edited by BladeJunker, Sat Mar 3, 2012 12:05 PM.

[Syntaxerror999]

My recomandation would be to program it to use a Sega Genesis controler. Go to the link below for a thread on how to do this...


http://www.atariage....-with-the-2600/

I could have sworn there was a way to get all the buttons to work, but was unable to find the thread for that. Perhaps someone else here knows its URL

Edited by Syntaxerror999, Sat Mar 3, 2012 1:05 PM.

[BladeJunker]

Did a res scale test on a basic HUD and fighter sprite size. Used Ryu from Street Fighter Alpha on GBC as a placeholder, even that seems too big so I think you'll have to go very small in sprite scale to have enough room to manuver without a scrolling background. I hadn't tried 2-line sprite design before, its very tight.

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[BladeJunker]

Syntaxerror999, on Sat Mar 3, 2012 1:03 PM, said:

My recomandation would be to program it to use a Sega Genesis controler. Go to the link below for a thread on how to do this...


http://www.atariage....-with-the-2600/

I could have sworn there was a way to get all the buttons to work, but was unable to find the thread for that. Perhaps someone else here knows its URL

I think Pac-Man-Red had a thread about it too, something about using Paddle lines I think. Even 2 buttons would be good as one button is a real squeeze especially with combos lol.

[PAC-MAN-RED]

I had two ideas for using more than one button that you could try.

This one is just a rewiring of a Genesis controller but there is some theory there. Also in Post #4 RevEng adds some of his valuable information:
http://www.atariage....controller-mod/

This one is a complete circuit that requires building. Post #3 has the correct circuit as I messed up in Post #1:
http://www.atariage....with-2-buttons/

Illya

[BladeJunker]

Was kind of irked by the big scale of the placeholder test sprite so I tried a few different scales. The outline of the figure really starts to become less viable the smaller it gets so I'd suggest internal outlines as in the traditional 2600 sprite approach or multi-color shape separation to maintain character clarity. Hard to say which scale is ideal, however your plan to stick to average sized characters should help.

Tried a background and even tried to draw some onlookers into the Playfield but they are so big they look like giants lol. I saw a T-rex in one screen shot which would be in proper scale if drawn into the Playfield.

Still this should give you an idea how things could look under the setup I described earlier.

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[Salmaan Khan]

Thank you for all the replies, I will find it useful at some point

[BladeJunker]

Quote

Basically in the portrait any pixel 8 color clocks wide is Playfield, any pixel 4 color clocks wide is handled with either Missile or the Ball, and the Player objects(Drawn double wide but not stretched in hardware.) are used whenever the Playfield and Bits fail to render the intended bitmap pattern.

Sorry I meant to say any pixel 4 color clocks wide is Playfield and any pixel less than 4 color clocks in appearance would be either Missile or Ball set to 4,2, or 1 color clock in width and horizontally shifted to the intended position per scan line. Also don't forget about jutting pixels since the TIA rendering layers allow wider line segments to be mostly occluded where only a small portion is visible on screen which is great for creating odd color clock distances like 3 or 6 using 1 pixel bit instead of 2. Atari hardware, its a whole different language of terminology so I keep interchanging width values for pixels and color clocks at times and get confused lol.

Since there are 2 portraits instead of 1 that complicates matters in regards to the copying and clock distances between Missile and Ball line segments so you'll have to flicker multiplex both sets of line segments just to get each into there intended respective horizontal positions on the left and right of the screen.

Also to be more specific about the Player object use, each portrait would use Player blocks like a "tile" which you could position horizontally to places in the bitmap pattern where the limits have been met to what can be done with Missile and or Ball copying and there respective color clock distances.
The safe route would be to limit it to one Player object per portrait varying the pattern based on a set vertical height res or the "lane/band" approach but you could try for 2 Player objects per portrait if you race the beam and multiplex the 2 objects into 4.

Regardless if you try this setup for the character select screen you'll probably want to stick to a minimum of colors just to get the rendering kernel working before multi-color can even be considered.

[Salmaan Khan]

A good idea for the selection screen is if you set the code that when joy0right then show the character next to the one your highlighting. And the same for all the other directional buttons. Also if joy0fire on a certain characher then set the player's sprite as that character.

Did you get that?

Can someone give me a compiler that works?

Edited by Salmaan Khan, Thu Mar 8, 2012 3:07 PM.

[theloon]

Salmaan Khan, on Thu Mar 8, 2012 2:28 PM, said:

A good idea for the selection screen is if you set the code that when joy0right then show the character next to the one your highlighting. And the same for all the other directional buttons. Also if joy0fire on a certain characher then set the player's sprite as that character.

Did you get that?

Can someone give me a compiler that works?

I'll give you one better: A link to a series of tutorial topics
http://www.atariage....-chapter-links/

[Salmaan Khan]

Thank you, but could someone give me a compiler? My one doesn't work!


EDIT:
Join us on facebook! At:
http://www.facebook.com/SFXT12600

Edited by Salmaan Khan, Fri Mar 9, 2012 12:18 PM.

[theloon]

Sorry about that.  The first session in the tutorial mentions DASM but doesn't give a link.

HERE is the download site for DASM (atari2600.org is still down):
http://sourceforge.n...ts/dasm-dillon/

Edited by theloon, Sat Mar 10, 2012 12:11 PM.

[Salmaan Khan]

Hold dude, doesn't work either! New Idea:

Salmaan Khan, on Sun Feb 26, 2012 3:57 AM, said:

Here in England, Street Fighter X Tekken will be released on March 2nd. I will be getting it on the 3rd. I'm so excited, that I'm going to (actually already started) make an Atari 2600 version of SFxTK. This will be te first Atari game I've ever created so could you give me some tips? My goal is to create a game where you pick from: Ryu, Ken, Kazuya or Nina and fight against a CPU (or maybe a player). My idea is that if you press "Right" and "Fire" your character will punch facing right and if you press "Left" and "Fire" your character will punch facing left. That, that there is a little art of how I imagine it to look like on a cartdrige. I will post screenshots/demos of my beta project later. Thank You

Ryu, Ken, Kazuya and Nina Forget that idea, maybe someone diffrent... Like Oni and M.Bison (Vega) VS Devil Jin and Ogre


In fact, already done the stand sprites:

Oni:


Bison:


Devil Jin:


And my best, Ogre:

Edited by Salmaan Khan, Sat Mar 10, 2012 2:50 PM.

[BladeJunker]

Quote

Hold dude, doesn't work either! New Idea:Ryu, Ken, Kazuya and Nina Forget that idea, maybe someone diffrent... Like Oni and M.Bison (Vega) VS Devil Jin and Ogre
In fact, already done the stand sprites:

I dig the chibi style sprites, I had thought about suggesting that but I wasn't sure. I see you sprite is basically 12X12 in resolution, I'm guessing you're adding a couple color clocks to each side of the Player objects with there respective Missiles when needed?

Here's some suggestions for you sprite designs, Ogre is definitely the best very cool.

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[Salmaan Khan]

I liked the way you edited my sprites, thanks about what you said about my ogre. I might use your sprites instead


A Competition:
Everyone make a few sprites of your own character (stand, walk, attack) and I will pick which
two that will make a guest apperance in my game!
It will close on the 20th of march 2012. So start spriting fast!

Edited by Salmaan Khan, Sun Mar 11, 2012 6:00 AM.

[theloon]

Tell us what isn't working.  You asked for a compiler.  DASM is what most people use.

[Salmaan Khan]

How do you install it? I use Batari Basic. When I open it all I see is a flicker. And on Batari Basic when I click compile nothing happens.

+ A new label:

I removed Ryu and Kazuya since they're removed from the game.

[Salmaan Khan]

So it's been a long time..... game going well

[theloon]

Salmaan Khan, on Sat Oct 27, 2012 7:41 AM, said:

So it's been a long time..... game going well

Any screenshots?

[CrazyChris]

I wouldn't get sidetracked with non standard controllers. It would
be enough of a feat just to get the game up and running.

- Chris

[Godzilla]

Yea good luck! I'd love to see a good fighter on the 2600, IMHO it has none