ECS : is there homebrews planned for it?

[CatPix]

Well, I spotted an ECS on Ebay, and since I like the Intelli quite a bit, I decided to buy it, for the joy of collectionning.

 

Now, I just wonder if there is homebrews planned to use the ECS features? Either fully ECS-only games or game featuring enhanced sound or something else (I don't think it's possible to have better graphisms à la Vidéopac+, but who knows?) like 4 players games?

[voltron]

I wish there were more games for ecs as well as intellivoice. ecs was my first computer, and i learned basic on it. because ofmit Imwas accused of cheating in school. Since I had experience with basic, when i took basic in schools i had a head start. and school used basica which was a lot more powerful than ecs so i just needed to learn new commands instead learning stuff i already new. .so as a final project everyone had to write a game in basic. Everyone wrote a text based game like hangman or guess the number, but i went over board and made a submarine game with graphics and color. They accused me of cheating and had me in a room a recode the game from memory. .eventualy i redid the game and they had to pass me.

[voltron]

that was over 30 years ago. Last week .i picked up Aquarius basic and re learned it, and it is very similar to ecs basic. You can make a game in basic, but their are limitations ans the games are so simple that there wont be a market for it. I guess its up to our resident assembly language members here to make a game for it. .if I knew assembly I would try to make one, but for some reason, i just dont get assembly.

[+DZ-Jay]

I have at least one game planned for the ECS, to use the keyboard. Valter was working on Colossal Cave for the Intellivision, and it was rather close to complete. He said he was going to finish it some time.

 

Also, I believe that Space Patrol, among other games, uses the ECS to layer more sound effects than without.

 

Personally, I don't think there will ever be much focus on 4-player games. I think most of us have enough trouble getting ONE friend willing to play on an ancient console, let along three more!

 

-dZ.

Edited November 13, 2013 by DZ-Jay

[+DZ-Jay]

Voltron, if you decide to pick up Intellivision programming, I am willing to help you in any way I can. Assembly is not as hard as some people make it out to be, just terse. It does require some practice and discipline to be able to break down problems into such small and primitive parts, but it is really not that bad.

 

Heck, I made a game, and I wouldn't consider myself anywhere near the same league as GroovyBee, Carl Mueller Jr., Joe Z, or Arnauld Chevallier (though I did have prior programming experience). Also, if you check out the history of the Blue Sky Rangers, you'll see that some of the programmers were not computer engineers, but clerks or marketers or whatever, that just started programming one day.

 

Give it a shot! You may be surprised.

 

-dZ.

[jaybird3rd]

Personally, I don't think there will ever be much focus on 4-player games. I think most of us have enough trouble getting ONE friend willing to play on an ancient console, let along three more!

... which is a pity, because if you have a collection of classic game systems, one would think that the first thing you'd want to do is show it off to your friends. What better way than to get them all together with a game they can play as a group? It's like taking your friends out for a spin in a vintage car that you've just finished restoring. I think multi-player games are a greatly underrepresented category in homebrew.

 

I've got a few ideas for the ECS, but I need to get some other ideas "out of my system" on the Aquarius first. When most people speak of ECS homebrews, they seem to think that it should involve something written in ECS BASIC, but I don't have high hopes for that idea; ECS BASIC is really little more than a toy, very limited compared even to Aquarius BASIC. An Intellivision game that makes use of the ECS features (in the way Space Patrol does) is a much more promising idea.

 

Fortunately, I think the ECS is already worth owning for Mind Strike and for Melody Blaster (if you have the Music Synthesizer keyboard).

[+intvsteve]

Unfortunate that Paddle Party didn't have a 4-player mode. Though having never played it yet, perhaps it would not have been technically feasible. Sadly, I don't think you get any extra MOB registers with the ECS.

 

IntelligentVision released a few ECS titles, and as mentioned, Space Patrol adds more sound.

 

I think it would be cool to see something like the unreleased Party Line title support four players (don't think it did natively).

 

I agree w/ DZ that there won't be much work on 4-player games, but would go even further and state that the low adoption of the ECS outside the more active community acts almost as a disincentive to write for the platform. Sad, really. I bet a lot more could be done than what we've seen, given the quantum jump on quality the standard console games have achieved the last 10+ years.

[+DZ-Jay]

The problem with the ECS is that... well... there's not much to it. It brings only three main enhancements, an extra sound chip, more on-board RAM, and a bad chiclet keyboard. Modern ROM cartridges have a lot more RAM than the ECS, so that one doesn't count. The keyboard is uncomfortable to type in, is clunky and glitchy, and provides little touch feedback.

 

About the most interesting enhancement is the extra sound chip.

 

However, like you pointed out, the ECS was never widely adopted, so to make a game require it limits its distribution. Therefore, what you mostly will see is games that will try to take advantage of the extra sound chip for additional sound effects and music--and even that may just be as an after-thought bonus, not even as a "must-have" feature.

 

I'm curious to know what people mean when they pine for more ECS games. Do they want games that require the keyboard, or games with the music synthesizer? Because other than that, there's not much else that the ECS brings.

 

Oh yeah, a really crappy BASIC. But that can't be it, right?

 

-dZ.

[+Gemintronic]

The Aquarius can be had much easier and with much less up front cost. With the current state of BASIC on the INTV side that's where I'm headed.

[voltron]

The problem with the ECS is that... well... there's not much to it. It brings only three main enhancements, an extra sound chip, more on-board RAM, and a bad chiclet keyboard. Modern ROM cartridges have a lot more RAM than the ECS, so that one doesn't count. The keyboard is uncomfortable to type in, is clunky and glitchy, and provides little touch feedback.

 

About the most interesting enhancement is the extra sound chip.

 

However, like you pointed out, the ECS was never widely adopted, so to make a game require it limits its distribution. Therefore, what you mostly will see is games that will try to take advantage of the extra sound chip for additional sound effects and music--and even that may just be as an after-thought bonus, not even as a "must-have" feature.

 

I'm curious to know what people mean when they pine for more ECS games. Do they want games that require the keyboard, or games with the music synthesizer? Because other than that, there's not much else that the ECS brings.

 

Oh yeah, a really crappy BASIC. But that can't be it, right?

 

-dZ.

More synthesizer games, is what imnthinking bc that would bring life to both ecs and the music keyboard. Edited November 13, 2013 by voltron

[+JasonlikesINTV]

I'm still waiting for:

 

Intellivision Guitar Hero: Heavy Mattel

 

...for the synthesizer Oh wait, this would require an Intellivision guitar controller.....which should totally happen.

[voltron]

it can be dont with existing musc keyboard. remember guitar hero has keys too

[+DZ-Jay]

I don't know about synth games, but a cool synth/tracker program is on my Gort Excursion List, also known as "things to do if the Earth stood still."

 

I especially want to create something for live playing. Talking to Seth from 8-Bit Weapon at CGE last year, he mentioned that he doesn't really use the Intellivision for his music because there was no good way to play it, except for rolling your own synth software which he wasn't ready to do. That, and a nice conversation with Nurmix on what would be useful for musicians gave me some ideas. I'm sort of like an old analog-synth aficionado, so it's a project close to my heart.

 

However, it'll have to wait in line with all the rest of the crap I have planned. So... anybody know how to stop time?

[+intvsteve]

Was brainstorming (dreaming) on another forum about a Rock Band type game:

• Synsonics hacked as the drum kit
• Arduino hooked to a mic to provide 8-bit quality sampling (controller inputs are general purpose 8-bit digital I/O)
• Hacked Guitar Hero type guitar
• Synth

Problem is, of course, that synth takes two controller inputs, so you'd be limited to only two additional inputs. Guess you'd have to stick to a three-piece band unless you do some tricky multiplexing. You might be able to tickle the bits in R8 on the PSG for a custom controller to act as TTL control signals to toggle sampling different instruments, but not sure you could get the responsiveness you'd want.

[+intvsteve]

The Arduino (or other microcontroller-based controller or DSP chip) would need to do something like sample the mic and run a real-time FFT that encoded enough of the dominant frequencies in a voice that the game could then use to decide if your voice was in tune.

[voltron]

Voltron, if you decide to pick up Intellivision programming, I am willing to help you in any way

 

-dZ.

may take u up on that.

[JohnPCAE]

An ECS Extended Basic cart would be really nice (hint, hint), maybe with an SD slot for saved programs. I also wonder what kind of bandwidth could be gotten out of the ECS AUX and/or tape interfaces (USB-to-ECS?).

Edited November 14, 2013 by JohnPCAE

[pimpmaul69]

Well, I spotted an ECS on Ebay, and since I like the Intelli quite a bit, I decided to buy it, for the joy of collectionning. Now, I just wonder if there is homebrews planned to use the ECS features? Either fully ECS-only games or game featuring enhanced sound or something else (I don't think it's possible to have better graphisms à la Vidéopac+, but who knows?) like 4 players games?

super nasl soccer or super soccer or soccer 2 or whatever the released version is called(i forget offhand) allows 4 players. At least all the roms do.

[+Lathe26]

An ECS Extended Basic cart would be really nice (hint, hint), maybe with an SD slot for saved programs. I also wonder what kind of bandwidth could be gotten out of the ECS AUX and/or tape interfaces (USB-to-ECS?).

 

The tape and AUX interfaces run are at 300 bps (or 335 bps when hooked up to a PAL Intellivision). Theoretically it has a mode where it can run 16X faster, but realistically that mode is unreliable and unusable.

[CatPix]

The problem with the ECS is that... well... there's not much to it. It brings only three main enhancements, an extra sound chip, more on-board RAM, and a bad chiclet keyboard. Modern ROM cartridges have a lot more RAM than the ECS, so that one doesn't count.

True that. Also isn't the Bacon cart supposed to house the second sound chip? I guess you could as easily include it in a standalone cart.

Then. Looking at Princess Rescue, one of the impresive features is that it uses only a standard cart. No extra RAM, no extra DSP, not even extra ROM.

 

The Aquarius can be had much easier and with much less up front cost. With the current state of BASIC on the INTV side that's where I'm headed.

And yet, the Aquarius isn't an Intellivision.

It's like saying "why bothering with the VCS, just get a 800XL".

The aquarius isn't even a computerized Intelli, and isn't very impressive for the time.

Either way, the Aquarius isn't an Intellivision.

 

And, just for me, what I look for in an ECS game is.... Well, an ECS game.

As in something that regular Intellivision can't play.

It's much like the Videopac+ (tho the userbase is certainly bigger) where most games are Videopac games with added hi-res foreground. It's fine but it doesn't feel right. Like saying "look, we appeal to you... But you gotta just enjoy something a bit improved."

 

Now I surely don't expect to get a hundred of outstanding homebrews with a proper cart release.

But, if somebody made a cart release of a pacman homebrew for the Channel F (a console for wich I never see any thread on AtariAge, so even less discussed about than the ECS) there is surely room for an ECS homebrew ROM.

[+DZ-Jay]

And, just for me, what I look for in an ECS game is.... Well, an ECS game.

As in something that regular Intellivision can't play.

It's much like the Videopac+ (tho the userbase is certainly bigger) where most games are Videopac games with added hi-res foreground. It's fine but it doesn't feel right. Like saying "look, we appeal to you... But you gotta just enjoy something a bit improved."

But that's my point: there isn't much that the ECS can do that the Master Component can't do already, except force you to type on an uncomfortable keyboard, or play more simultaneous sounds.

 

-dZ.

[Intymike]

But that's my point: there isn't much that the ECS can do that the Master Component can't do already, except force you to type on an uncomfortable keyboard, or play more simultaneous sounds.

 

-dZ.

 

Bomberman...Bomberman...with..............................4 players.....

[JohnPCAE]

But that's my point: there isn't much that the ECS can do that the Master Component can't do already, except force you to type on an uncomfortable keyboard, or play more simultaneous sounds.

 

-dZ.

If only there was something that plugged into the ECS that let people use a USB or BT keyboard instead...

[CatPix]

But that's my point: there isn't much that the ECS can do that the Master Component can't do already, except force you to type on an uncomfortable keyboard, or play more simultaneous sounds.

 

-dZ.

I get your point. Still, this mean there is things the Master Component can't do. You could have to make use of the keyboard for some actions; like in an adventure game à la Maze of Galious on MSX, where you play with a joystick (or the arrow keys) but to access some places, you must find a word in a room then enter it on the right place.

That's just a suggestion, an idea that could be done.

[+Gemintronic]

 

True that. Also isn't the Bacon cart supposed to house the second sound chip? I guess you could as easily include it in a standalone cart.

Then. Looking at Princess Rescue, one of the impresive features is that it uses only a standard cart. No extra RAM, no extra DSP, not even extra ROM.

 

And yet, the Aquarius isn't an Intellivision.

It's like saying "why bothering with the VCS, just get a 800XL".

The aquarius isn't even a computerized Intelli, and isn't very impressive for the time.

Either way, the Aquarius isn't an Intellivision.

 

And, just for me, what I look for in an ECS game is.... Well, an ECS game.

As in something that regular Intellivision can't play.

It's much like the Videopac+ (tho the userbase is certainly bigger) where most games are Videopac games with added hi-res foreground. It's fine but it doesn't feel right. Like saying "look, we appeal to you... But you gotta just enjoy something a bit improved."

 

Now I surely don't expect to get a hundred of outstanding homebrews with a proper cart release.

But, if somebody made a cart release of a pacman homebrew for the Channel F (a console for wich I never see any thread on AtariAge, so even less discussed about than the ECS) there is surely room for an ECS homebrew ROM.

 

Well, both of our points are true. I don't think it has to be an either/or situation. If we support the Aquarius scene and its growing developments in tools and homebrewers then it's a natural progression into the more rarefied ECS.