Synthpopalooza Posted April 18, 2013 Share Posted April 18, 2013 (edited) About 1994, an Atari programmer named Itay Chamiel did a Tetris game called The Wall. It used the ColorView mode in Antic 4 to make a Tetris game that uses 64 colors. This was a triple-interlace swim mode inspired by the ColrView program by Jeff Potter. Fast forward about 20 years, and I came across this game. Itay was kind enough to let me have a look at the source code, and I modified the game to work in the ICE CIN mode. Unlike other uses of the ICE CIN mode, in this game the mode changes (between Antic 4 and Graphics 11) happen on the scanline. The actual game itself runs inside a DLI. This is the low-res version of CIN, so you get about 60 colors to choose from when designing characters in this mode. You have to use Graphics 11 on top of an Antic 4 screen so only 14 of the 16 chromas can be used. The blocks and font in this game were modified using the ICE CIN font editor. Here's the game. It will work in either PAL or NTSC, although NTSC atari's will produce a better result. Thanks again to Itay for letting me play around with this, wall2.xex Edited April 18, 2013 by Synthpopalooza 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam242 Posted April 18, 2013 Share Posted April 18, 2013 Looks great! Can't wait to check this out after work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8bit-guy Posted April 18, 2013 Share Posted April 18, 2013 Amazing, thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkhog Posted April 18, 2013 Share Posted April 18, 2013 Great clone, but I didn't find music interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fres Posted April 18, 2013 Share Posted April 18, 2013 I would call this an improvement. I remember seeing the original when I was looking for Tetris-like games. Nice tricks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synthpopalooza Posted April 18, 2013 Author Share Posted April 18, 2013 Curious question: How difficult would it be to take the source code of this, and modify it to work on the Atari 5200? I know the joystick input routines are different, as are the locations of the GTIA and ANTIC registers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam242 Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 Just had a go with this on my 800 and I've gotta say... well done. Plays well and looks very nice. The flicker is manageable, you can pretty much tune it out when you really get "into" the game, even on my PAL machine - the colors seem chosen to minimize the effect.. The 'random' piece generator seems absolutely evil! I swear it would give me exactly the block I didn't need (wrong handed L or Z) most of the time. It would be nice if there was a choice between sound effects or music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 Great clone, but I didn't find music interesting. The music isn't original. It's jacked from a game called Plastron. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacques Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8bit-guy Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 Curious question: How difficult would it be to take the source code of this, and modify it to work on the Atari 5200? I know the joystick input routines are different, as are the locations of the GTIA and ANTIC registers. a 5200 version would be amazing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari8guy Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 Just had a go with this on my 800 and I've gotta say... well done. Plays well and looks very nice. The flicker is manageable, you can pretty much tune it out when you really get "into" the game, even on my PAL machine - the colors seem chosen to minimize the effect.. The 'random' piece generator seems absolutely evil! I swear it would give me exactly the block I didn't need (wrong handed L or Z) most of the time. It would be nice if there was a choice between sound effects or music. I once saw a video game review where the "Left L Block" was rated the second most evil villain in all video game lore....one spot higher than Bowser. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+therealbountybob Posted April 19, 2013 Share Posted April 19, 2013 Getris looks good but the game fails as it is way too easy for way too long (we playing it in the HSC last season) Off to try The Wall 2.0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synthpopalooza Posted April 20, 2013 Author Share Posted April 20, 2013 (edited) Glad everyone is enjoying it. I am not really proficient at 6502 ASM, but I learned a bit from taking Itay's code and modifying it. There are still ways this could be improved ... adding PMG's for more colors or shading, for instance ... we have five lumas in this mode (per Antic 4), but adding PMGs could allow for all 8 lumas. It's also possible to make some of the tetris blocks into inverse characters so that we can display Graphics 11 chromas 12, 13, and 15 (the greens and green yellows), or the extra inverse chromas 3 and 7. If nothing else, it certainly proves that playable games can be made using interlace character modes like this, without the flicker being really bad at all. I'd love to see other games like Puzzle Bobble or Columns made using this mode. Edited April 20, 2013 by Synthpopalooza Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+therealbountybob Posted April 20, 2013 Share Posted April 20, 2013 unfortunately the flicker makes it unplayable more than the odd go for me on PAL/CRT but it's impressive seeing all the colours Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted April 20, 2013 Share Posted April 20, 2013 The music isn't original. It's jacked from a game called Plastron. It would be nice if you didn't use the Plastron track. I would prefer if it had original music. sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkhog Posted April 20, 2013 Share Posted April 20, 2013 Yeah. The only music I can stand being in Tetris is Korobeinki or other Russian folk music (in all tetris clones to date, Tengen Tetris for NES had best music selection). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 20, 2013 Share Posted April 20, 2013 As always it is a matter of taste. I LOVE this song. It's that old fashioned atari 8bit music, that I really appreciate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted April 20, 2013 Share Posted April 20, 2013 (edited) I think what Steve means is that he would rather not see music pulled from games that were created by the company he formerly worked for, unless they were considerate enough to receive permission first. I don't really like to see it either. I like the tune from Plastron, but I prefer to hear it when I play Plastron. Edited April 20, 2013 by MrFish 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synthpopalooza Posted April 20, 2013 Author Share Posted April 20, 2013 The music was in the original version of the game that Itay wrote back in 1994, had no idea it was in another game ... I may have a go at trying to write something myself with RMT, I did use to do Atari music back in the day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted April 20, 2013 Share Posted April 20, 2013 (edited) I may have a go at trying to write something myself with RMT, I did use to do Atari music back in the day. You can also load an existing MOD file into RMT and tweak the instrument parameters, if you want to get something together a little quicker/easier. Edited April 20, 2013 by MrFish 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+therealbountybob Posted April 21, 2013 Share Posted April 21, 2013 The music was in the original version of the game that Itay wrote back in 1994, had no idea it was in another game ... I may have a go at trying to write something myself with RMT, I did use to do Atari music back in the day. You can also load an existing MOD file into RMT and tweak the instrument parameters, if you want to get something together a little quicker/easier. Roughly how much RAM would I need to reserve to run a typical tune and for the (assembler) code to play it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted April 21, 2013 Share Posted April 21, 2013 Roughly how much RAM would I need to reserve to run a typical tune and for the (assembler) code to play it? Depends on the length, but about 4-5K give or take for one tune. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itaych Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 Wow synthpop, you did a beautiful job. For those of you wondering why there aren't sound effects, original music, or why the game is so bare: this was a quick hack written in a week in 1994. I was 15. Most of my serious programming time was devoted to Ice-T. Also, in my defense, I did not take anything from the game Plastron. I had not seen nor heard of the game at the time. The music was ripped from Plastron by persons unknown and used in the Atari Expo 1991 demo, which is where I heard it. The music data and player were present on that demo disk as a separate file, ready to be copied and reused. I had no idea I was infringing on commercial IP and would not have done it if I knew. Interestingly in 2004, in the process of rescuing the source code from the old floppy images, I did try to figure out the source and/or author of the music so I could at least credit them in the source code, and I did what I could not do in 1994: take various interesting words from the scrolling texts in the Atari Expo demo (which were in a European language I couldn't understand) and google them. One of those words was "Plastron", and that's how I learned where the music came from. May I add that the music (written by Richard Munns according to the Plastron title screen) is awesome! When I first heard it I left the demo running for a long time and let the music loop repeatedly as I grooved to it. I thought it would serve as the perfect background to my game and I'm sorry if not everyone agrees. -itay 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 For those of you wondering why there aren't sound effects, original music, or why the game is so bare: this was a quick hack written in a week in 1994. I was 15. Most of my serious programming time was devoted to Ice-T. Also, in my defense... 1. Please do not defend. Your contributions to the atari scene are fabulous. There is no need to defend anything. 2. 15 eh... WOW... I'm amazed. I know that Expo Demo too. Isn't that a Pokey Foundation contribution? Is that the demo with the 2-language Frankenstein part at the end of the demo (with digitized music at the end). I love the Plastron song very much, and I love this tetris too. Nice seeing you jumping in this thread. Greetz M. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itaych Posted April 24, 2013 Share Posted April 24, 2013 Thank you for your kind words. And yes, that's the demo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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