82 replies to this topic

[arcadeshopper]

I would like to see this on the TI99/4A, I spent 2 years of my life playing it in the bar across the street from my place.

 

Could have bought a car with the money I pumped into that machine.

 

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=ymrYkbEbnEQ

 

NOTE: It required 2 joysticks as that is how you steer a tank in those days before they adopted the yoke like a Plane design.

 

 

Rich

 

I own one  have owned a few over the years..  currently have the cabaret: https://scontent-a-s...0143_2802_n.jpg

 

Greg

[Asmusr]

Boulder Dash=Rock Runner.  The version titled Boulder Dash was for the Mini Memory (making it one of the great reasons to have that cart) and sold by Legio Computing Centre in Holland.  Asgard asked the Eric LaFortune if he could port it over to the E/A environment so that they could sell that version in the US.  As Chris Bobbitt was worried that the name would cause copyright issues, he also asked Eric to change the name.  Eric pops in here now and again, though he hasn't posted in a long while.  He's a nice guy that I talked to several times while I was in Europe long ago.

 

Interesting. Is the version on Boulder Dash for Mini Memory still to be found? I have a Mini Memory but I have never really used it.

[OLD CS1]

 

Interesting. Is the version on Boulder Dash for Mini Memory still to be found? I have a Mini Memory but I have never really used it.

 

If it is not at the Game Shelf, I know it was posted in another thread, here.  I still have the DSK image.

[Vorticon]

If it is not at the Game Shelf, I know it was posted in another thread, here.  I still have the DSK image.

Would you mind reposting the image here? I'd love to have it up at the TI Gameshelf.

[Asmusr]

Would you mind reposting the image here? I'd love to have it up at the TI Gameshelf.

 

It's somewhere in this thread:

http://atariage.com/...n/#entry2342807

[Vorticon]

Got it. Thanks. Only problem is that I can't seem to run the programs on the disk. There is a LOAD program, but when I try to run it in TI BASIC with the MM module in place, I get an error. This is in Classic 99 and have not yet had a chance to test it out on real hardware...

[TI-Sissy]

did they ever make pengo for the ti?  it was on an old 5200.  it was real cute.

[TI-Sissy]

I would just note that ColecoVision games can't be trivially ported to the TI.. you have to rewrite all the Z80 code. It /might/ be possible to do some kind of re-compiler (it has been done on other platforms!), but I don't know the Z80 well enough to do it, myself.

 

Mario Bros I'd like to try someday.. it was why I did the Mr Chin test (Mr Chin has no bank switching to worry about).

 

mario!  i love mario!  yes please!

[save2600]

No Pengo, but we've got Hopper for a Pengo like experience.

[sometimes99er]

There's a Pengo in the Gamebase.

 

 

[OX.]

There's a Pengo in the Gamebase.

 

 

Always surprises me how few people on here bothered to download Gamebase since it's probably the most comprehensive collection available, anyway there's a new version coming out soon with a couple hundred new entries plus MESS 150 + rpk support and a few fixes.

Edited by OX., Fri Oct 25, 2013 1:59 PM.

[Kurt_Woloch]

I'd like to see a version of Marble Madness. I know there has never been a version of it for TMS9918A based systems, so there isn't much to base it on. Or does anyone know about a similar game for the TI-99 (except for my own, rather poor attempt which I posted in the "what have you actually played" thread)? I've actually tried to put together some graphics in Magellan, but gave up because it's rather time-consuming to do the levels. Here's an example of Level 2 (trying to keep under 128 "transitions"... RasmusM will know what I mean :-)

 Marble_Madness_Magellan_Lev2.PNG   19.34KB   4 downloads

[sometimes99er]

Looks good. 

[Ksarul]

I haven't seen anything directly Marble-Madness-Like, but Diablo would probably be the closest, and it is a really distant match.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Yes, it's a really distant match... Diablo is actually closer to games like Locomotion (Arcade, Intellivision, Tomy Tutor) and Happy Trails (Intellivision, others?).

[Asmusr]

I'd like to see a version of Marble Madness. I know there has never been a version of it for TMS9918A based systems, so there isn't much to base it on. Or does anyone know about a similar game for the TI-99 (except for my own, rather poor attempt which I posted in the "what have you actually played" thread)? I've actually tried to put together some graphics in Magellan, but gave up because it's rather time-consuming to do the levels. Here's an example of Level 2 (trying to keep under 128 "transitions"... RasmusM will know what I mean :-)

Marble_Madness_Magellan_Lev2.PNG

 

Very nice, I would like to see it in Magellan. Is it ordinary graphics mode?

 

There are many nice versions out there that don't necessarily have continuous smooth scrolling.

 

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=dvzrn2sxEOY

[virios]

YIE AR KUNG FU ,beautiful game.

 

 

Rasmus can do this miracle?

[sometimes99er]

Just an experiment. An obvious trick for getting less color clashes with the 9918A is to make pictures wider as in more of the same color horizontally.

 

I took a 128 x 192 pixel snapshot - half the width of the TI screen.

 

 

Repeated all pixels horizontally.

 

 

Remapped colors manually and secured a max of 2 colors per 8 pixels horizontally - with a few manual corrections.

 

 

Now besides vertical scrolling, you'd also had to worry about some kind of horizontal scrolling. One could have a system with which the screen would scroll on 8 pixel boundaries (both ways) and center the marble in a Zelda type fast scroll when it came within a distance of 40 pixels from the border.

[Kurt_Woloch]

Very nice, I would like to see it in Magellan. Is it ordinary graphics mode?
 
There are many nice versions out there that don't necessarily have continuous smooth scrolling.

No, it's bitmap mode. In ordinary graphics mode, there would be more color clashes. In bitmap mode, you can get it with almost no color clashes, at least if you do away with the shadows and the shading.

The versions in this video which don't have continuous smooth scrolling are made by Melbourne House (for the Spectrum and the Amstrad) and are based off "Gyroscope" they did earlier as an unofficial Marble Madness clone. Those versions also have very few similarities to the arcade version regarding the maze structure and the enemies. But the Spectrum version of "Gyroscope" gave me an idea how Marble Madness could be done with relatively clean graphics. Of course you could do it that way on the TI-99, but I always thought this is somewhat poor. There's another version not shown in the video, which is an LCD game by Tiger which actually has converted to 2D and is rather like the rolling ball mazes out of wood which you can buy as toys.

I've attached what I have so far as a Magellan project here:

 Marble Madness V5_mag.zip   3.34KB   10 downloads

It's the first three levels of the game. The third level could still use some refinement as it doesn't come near to the maximum number of transitions yet. I thought of adding the "cyan area" at the bottom where there are waves in the original. If there's no room for waves, you could just drag the ball to the lower right when on this area.
 

Just an experiment. An obvious trick for getting less color clashes with the 9918A is to make pictures wider as in more of the same color horizontally.
 
I took a 128 x 192 pixel snapshot - half the width of the TI screen.
 
Repeated all pixels horizontally.
 
Remapped colors manually and secured a max of 2 colors per 8 pixels horizontally - with a few manual corrections.
 
Now besides vertical scrolling, you'd also had to worry about some kind of horizontal scrolling. One could have a system with which the screen would scroll on 8 pixel boundaries (both ways) and center the marble in a Zelda type fast scroll when it came within a distance of 40 pixels from the border.

Well, also if not doubling the width, you could do a much better approximation of the arcade graphics than I did... the TI-99 would be capable of it, graphically. The reason why I simplified my version so much is actually the "transitions"... I imagined it to be scrolled the same way as in "Titanium", and there every transition from a character to another counts as a character to be scrolled, and there are only a maximum of about 128 transitions allowed for each level... maybe even fewer if you need static text for scores etc. This limits the complexity of the screens severely. If you do character-wise scrolling instead, the graphics might be better as well, since then you basically have full bitmap mode... as long as you can cram it into memory somehow. Even with 256 distinct characters per level, you can do much better than I did... I think in my version, each level only uses 40-50 distinct characters. I had a preliminary version (which I also attached as 1st try) where I tried to do it as faithful as possible, and there I ran out of transitions after about half a screenful of data. This one is here:

 Marble Madness 1st try_mag.zip   1.3KB   11 downloads

Finally, an XBASIC version which I wrote back in 1987... this one scrolls in steps of 4 characters and only has the first two levels (also not as true to the arcade as the Magellan maps since I did most of it from memory). Use with Classic99:

 MARBLE_XBASIC.zip   3.13KB   18 downloads
 

YIE AR KUNG FU ,beautiful game.
 
Rasmus can do this miracle?

 
Well, there's an MSX version of that game, also by Konami. It's fairly good graphically, although it moves the enemies in 8-pixel steps. I don't see to many problems putting up a TI-99 version like that. Of course, it's a time-consuming process. I once did a version in XBasic on the TI-99 myself, but in my version, two players play against each other with magnified, monochrome characters and no background graphics at all.

[OLD CS1]

The music for "Marble Madness" would not be too difficult, either, since it exists today in many formats: MOD, MIDI, etc.

[sometimes99er]

Finally, an XBASIC version which I wrote back in 1987... this one scrolls in steps of 4 characters and only has the first two levels

Wow ! Hold on, that's an XB masterpiece there !

[ti99iuc]

[...]
Finally, an XBASIC version which I wrote back in 1987... this one scrolls in steps of 4 characters and only has the first two levels (also not as true to the arcade as the Magellan maps since I did most of it from memory). Use with Classic99:

MARBLE_XBASIC.zip

[...]

 

Nice Try !

 

 Marble.wmv   2.74MB   34 downloads

[Asmusr]

Well, also if not doubling the width, you could do a much better approximation of the arcade graphics than I did... the TI-99 would be capable of it, graphically. The reason why I simplified my version so much is actually the "transitions"... I imagined it to be scrolled the same way as in "Titanium", and there every transition from a character to another counts as a character to be scrolled, and there are only a maximum of about 128 transitions allowed for each level... maybe even fewer if you need static text for scores etc. This limits the complexity of the screens severely. If you do character-wise scrolling instead, the graphics might be better as well, since then you basically have full bitmap mode... as long as you can cram it into memory somehow. Even with 256 distinct characters per level, you can do much better than I did... I think in my version, each level only uses 40-50 distinct characters. I had a preliminary version (which I also attached as 1st try) where I tried to do it as faithful as possible, and there I ran out of transitions after about half a screenful of data. This one is here:

 

I have wanted for a long time to write some 'plug and play' code that can produce a scrolling demo directly from an Assembler Transition Data export file from Magellan. This looks like is a good opportunity to try that idea.

[poconojo]

I would love to see jungle hunt or king ported over to the Intellivision. One of my favorite games of all time!! I wonder how it would look on the Intellivision? After seeing Donkey Kong I bet it would be awesome!

[Asmusr]

 

I have wanted for a long time to write some 'plug and play' code that can produce a scrolling demo directly from an Assembler Transition Data export file from Magellan. This looks like is a good opportunity to try that idea.

 

And here it is: with this modification of one of my demos you can turn your own Magellan export file into a smooth vertically scrolling demo for further development into a game. Kurt, I hope it's alright that I have used your Marble Madness graphics for the demonstration video?

 

 

The map must be 32 characters wide and use bitmap mode colors. The number of vertical transitions must be less than 128. For more information, please see the notes in the 'Vertical bitmap.a99' file.

 

Note that smooth scrolling has its price, the demo based or Kurts graphics is eating up around 16K RAM, most of which is used for storing scrolled patterns and colors. A game like Marble Madness would either have to load levels from disk or cartridge, but once the new 512K carts become readily available that shouldn't be a problem... 

 

... and just to clarify, I'm not going to work on a Marble Madness clone myself. I haven't settled on my next game project yet, but I'm thinking in the lines of Commando/Ikari Warriors.

Attached Files

•  MagellanScroll.zip   35.41KB   12 downloads