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darryl1970

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darryl1970 last won the day on July 3 2017

darryl1970 had the most liked content!

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About darryl1970

  • Birthday 11/13/1970

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Ohio
  • Interests
    PC's, Graphic design, Web Design, Classic Video Games, Classic Gaming Homebrew Scene.
  • Currently Playing
    Classic arcade games, classic home systems, and a few modern thrown in.
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    Probably the same ole...

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  1. If I didn't have two other game commitments, I probably would have already picked that up to give it a shot.
  2. That was an interesting watch. That might be the episode that came to my mind, unless Bluto had a habit of tying Olive to railroad tracks. I can see how, as a young child, I missed Bluto's affection toward Olive. It seemed more like arrogance and testosterone than affection. I can also see where the theory comes from that Brutus is more of a romantic. Maybe it wasn't written into the character as much as the history of the show. Bluto seems to just want to one-up Popeye. I seem to remember Brutus as more of a flower guy, and Olive seemed to sometimes be drawn in a little, making Popeye jealous. Olive doesn't seem to be very interested in Bluto, but she always fluttered between Popeye and Brutus. I guess the change in "enemy" behavior could just be that the cartoon had to stop tying women to railroad tracks if they wanted a spot in the cartoon lineup. I don't watch enough to know if the violent behavior toward women coincidentally changed at the time of the character name change. As for the cartoon being racist, I do recall the use of black caricatures, with exaggerated features (maybe even tribal nose-bones?), in other episodes. I didn't notice anything like that in this episode, although I may have missed it. My assumption is that this one is banned, due to the kidnapping a woman and tying her to a railroad track. LOL. Overall, very interesting. As a child, I remember liking Popeye, but I preferred the color episodes. I probably didn't like Popeye being kind of a showoff and Bluto being more than just a bully. It all seemed wrong; but I did appreciate that Olive always seemed to be into Popeye. Watching this has also brought back the memory of what I didn't like about the color cartoons with Brutus. Olive was kind of a skank and not completely loyal to Popeye. I didn't like her, and couldn't figure out why Popeye would waste his time on such an ugly human being. Where the men were egotistic in the b&w, she seemed to now think she was a queen that the two needed to fight over. The fact that she seems undesirable made my head spin. I kind of wanted to see her get tied to the railroad tracks in these episodes. However, going back and watching that makes me want to watch some of the other suggested B&W videos. There are some cool aspects. It's interesting how strong Popeye was before eating the spinach. I also appreciate the level of creativeness, like using the peacock as the carnival gate. I remember appreciating Popeye punching things into smaller organized things. I don't recall of the later episodes had that kind of creativeness to them.
  3. I didn't realize that. I read that somewhere, and it matched my personal experience with the Bluto character. It's possible that I only caught half of an episode or saw a clip and it reinforced what I had read elsewhere. Bluto was a little more "manly" though, wasn't he? I recall Bluto as being the buff muscle guy, and Brutus always had a more dainty sense about himself. Brutus always seemed more "proper" and sophisticated, where Bluto seemed like he had a steroid problem. Well, that's the main point I was trying to preserve: the arcade game uses the Brutus character. I just like to attempt to preserve game history. Interesting information about the cartoon history though! It seems you have the same passion about Popeye, so I get that. Cool..
  4. My recollection of A8 stuff is foggy, but this one stuck out to me. I used to draw balloons back in the day, and I thought I recalled overlapping two blues for white.. I dug out the "Player Maker" that I made for myself back in junior high. I drew a striped ball in Altirra to test it out. This is the result of overlapping two different luminences of Medium Blue. Yeah. I understand that. I just try to preserve the arcade history. It's not that I want to correct, as much as I don't want to lose the purity of it. I have gotten a lot of slack for the Pac-Man monster debacle, even though the enemies don't go through walls, Blinky gets torn to shreds in the 2nd and third intermissions, and every arcade machine ever has that on the instruction cards. It's just an effort to preserve the origins. I figured that was your purpose. I think somebody mentioned it, and I just threw out the number. Definitely more stuff going on with points, bottles, and such. As I mentioned before, I am not proficient in A8. It sounds interesting. The only thing I am familiar with is that I think character modes are absolute 8x8, but you gain an alternate color for inverse characters. The other mode, like used in Donkey Kong, can plot anywhere on the screen, but you loose the extra screen color. When I hacked MarioXE, I saw how they got around the absolute position by creating shifted character sprites. I was just thinking that technique would leave bigger holes in the background when plotted. I don't want to waste your time trying to explain it though. Just clarifying what I meant in the original. I was thinking that the per-pixel characters would be a lot of extra work, especially if it ended up with a different issue. I was just sharing that as a possible issue to consider, adding that absolute position would not be the end of the world if it looks THIS good! This looks very cool, and I'd love to fire it up and see it on my 800XL (or Altirra) I agree. I had a lot of fun with the original. They did an excellent job, and the music is really good too. It always bothered me that Brutus's head looked like a number 5, and ColecoVision had such a great looking Brutus. I was a little jealous. Of course, Coleco's Popeye is mono and all white in color. My biggest obstacle to play those versions now is how slow the hearts fall, and the CV version is kind of choppy to control at times. Anyway, thanks for sharing. I hope the punching bag blue overlap can help a tiny bit. -D
  5. They served the same purpose. It was a rename for what they perceived as a copyright issue , but their behaviors were quite different. Brutus would always try to get Olive with flowers or something, and then he'd get made. Bluto, on the other hand, was more of a menace. He was the character that would tie Olive to railroad tracks. It was more than just a name change. Brutus is the character that Nintendo chose for the game, and rightfully so. He had more of a love interest than just being a bully.
  6. Thanks. Cool concept. Is it necessary to use the white background for the punching bag? I think dark and light blue will overlap to give you white. That would still be present in the bag animation, and you wouldn't have to clear it out during animation. Just to note, Brutus was the character in Popeye the arcade game. Bluto was just a bully, and he just wanted to kill Popeye and Olive. Brutus wanted to have Olive for himself. He was jealous of Popeye. Olive usually stops throwing object after 7 are on the screen. Even though the hearts might make a temporary "hole" in the playfield objects, I think that it's a good trade off. Every retro computer had limitations, and I think that's cleaner than a bunch of flicker. It seems like character movement would be the best option. I thought I read somewhere else that single pixel movement could be done for the hearts. I remember there were so many duplicate characters in the 128K version of XE Mario Bros, just to make all of the character enemies walk per-pixel. While the hearts would use less, it seems you would still need a lot for smooth horizontal and vertical movement, unless there a trick to the vertical placement? Even so, if a heart was in a position, while using extra frames for smoothness, I would expect it to leave a bigger gap in the floor, staircase, or ladder. It seems that it could take up two to four character blocks if smooth movement was attempted, right? That might not be worth all of the extra frames and calculation, unless you see a way around that. I haven't worked around that, so I don't know all of the tricks. It just seems like something that could be potential issue if going that route. Are you building this as a proof-of-concept that runs in Altirra first, or are you thinking it would be easier to hack the original as you go? I loved the A8/5200 version, but it had a lot of gameplay limitations that would be nice to see updated. I can see this becoming a total rewrite.
  7. I was just informed about this, and I had to check this out. I love the screenshots. I can't wait to see this in action. Looks great!
  8. @Thomas Jentzsch I have been so busy with non-Atari things that I haven't had time to share this; however, I managed to implement this suggestion into the control scheme. I haven't had time for another Demo. I also didn't want to talk about improvements that were not included in the nominated version, as that would be confusing and possibly misleading. Back when I updated the game to use the Mega7800, in addition to the SNES2Atari adapter, I figured out a way to make the "tie breaker" direction be the opposite of the last traveled direction. So the mouse no longer stops. Thanks for the suggestion. It was a challenge, based on all the control factors in place, but I got it. It really adds a polish to it. Thanks again.
  9. I also removed the Atari Today jingle. Popeye has had issues before when altering graphics. Also, it was time consuming to come up with a replacement. I chip away at it over time. I haven't had a lot of time lately to devote to anything in particular. I did this while I was helping to figure out why the 2600+ couldn't play specific versions. The JS7800 emulator has been updated with this version (the latest), and it adds a couple extra playable demo levels. It might have to change again though.
  10. I wanted the game to default to the exclamation point. That just indicates that the game is in a mode where Brutus will always throw 4 bottles. In earlier versions, he would stop at 2 if Popeye left his line of sight. It's not as accurate, but I thought it might help eliminate some slowdown. It's not necessary with the new version's display optimizations. That value can be reverted back to the original logic with a code, and that saves to the high score device. The exclamation disappears when reverted. Since it's a value that's saved to the high score devices, I wondered if there would be any cases where the exclamation was not initialized on one's individual device. Maybe it had random data? Fortunately it can be entered in with a code and proper from that point on. -Darryl
  11. @Albert shared a peek at the process of building 7800 Popeye cartridges. It is a LOT of work, and I do not know how he does it as quickly as he does. It's a lot of tedious steps. EPROMs need burnt, and then they need hand soldered to each board. I believe the 2600 carts are a little quicker process. However, they all require shells and labels. To build them as meticulously as he does takes time and patience on his part. A friend texted me that he got his copy yesterday. I am glad to see that the latest batch is making it out there.
  12. Yet, but it's easier than the actual arcade game .. It will get easier once you understand Brutus's behavior patterns. Here's a long-play video. You might get some insight into that behavior. I really like the RF look myself. I also really enjoy the crispness of the 7800GD component out, but I had RF in mind when I was making the game. The ship staircases are a slightly different color on RF, due to the artifacting between the BG and color of the steps. It's so subtle that my phone camera doesn't pick it up, but they become more orange than yellow. EDIT: I think I recorded the video above using the 7800GD output, which also does not have the stair artifact color. My phone BARELY pics up the color difference between the staircases and the floors. It's a little more pronounced with the naked eye, but I think it adds a little.
  13. Just to add here, Playsoft helped me with a graphic hack on top of the aforementioned hack that @tep392 and @MrFish created. Playsoft also helped port some of the optimizations to the 5200 version, because their hack plays like the original should have. Much better sound too! I decided to post the hack with a bunch of my other graphic hacks. (Donkey Kong, DK Jr., Mario Bros 5200, and Mario Bros XE). Ms Pac-Man versions were added as an afterthought. However I emphasized in bold that these were just my graphic hacks and that Ms Pac-Man versions (A8/5200) were based off of the Hack by @MrFish and @tep392. I had to dig to find out who hacked this. I am sorry that got missed. If it's the graphic hack, we may have contributed to that area. EDIT: I just finished the video, and our graphic hacks are not in the version used. --Darryl
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