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catsfolly

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    Male
  • Location
    Japan
  • Interests
    Intellivision programing
    retro games
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    Paddle Party
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    More Paddle Party

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  1. Is there a version of C for the Intellivision now? This should work, assuming that "whichtile" is a 16 bit number. whichtile=((franky/8)*20)+(frankx/8); tilevalue = *(BACKTAB + whichtile) ; Catsfolly
  2. Actually in 2016 GroovyBee wrote a Coloured Squares library for Intybasic, which allowed people to plot points on the Intellivision colored square screen like it was a blocky bitmap. I used his routines to write a colored squares "Snake" game and "Mirror Snake" game. The routines were easy to understand and use. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/248436-colored-squares-snake-game-wip/?tab=comments#comment-3436089 Back in 2014, I wrote some assembly language routines to do colored square sprites on the Intellivision. These routines would draw colored square sprites, including transparent areas, on the colored square screen. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/228743-big-blocky-things-on-my-intellivision/?tab=comments#comment-3055184 I have never released the assembly language routines, but I am tempted to rewrite them in IntyBasic just to see how fast they would run... Catsfolly
  3. If you make a system with 2 Z80's, isn't that a dual boot system too? I think a system with a 68000 and a Z80 sounds like a Sega Genesis copy, while a dual Z80 machine would be a unique system. Clive Sinclair made 3 successful computers based on the Z80 ( the ZX80, the ZX81, and the Spectrum) , but he got into trouble when he tried to make a 68000 based machine (the QL). I think this was partly because he kept the 8bit data bus, which slowed down the 68000 quite a bit. How wide is the data bus on the SGM2? How do you address more than 64k of Ram with the new Z80?
  4. So, in this picture, is the graphics chip just sitting on top of the pc board, or is it mounted at an angle? (I'm assuming the black square thing is the new graphics chip...)
  5. Thanks for the answers. I'm thinking that one use for "plane B" would be as a non-scrolling text overlay on top of the game screen - for displaying player scores, lives, and other information - like many arcade machines had back in the day. I guess I should read up on Super Nintendo scrolling and zoom to find out how this sort of thing was done on other systems...
  6. Random hardware questions: 1. If sprites have 16 colors, is color index 0 transparent? How about for tiles? 2. If I want my sprite to walk behind a lamp post, does the lamp post have to be a sprite too? 3. Can the framebuffer be wider than the number of tiles displayed on the screen? Just trying to get my head around this new hardware...
  7. RoadBlasters? Do you mean "Road Runner"? Road Blasters was not a Laserdisc game. In the mid 80's, Sega and Namco had sprite scaling arcade hardware - the game would store one image of (for example) a tree by the side of the road, and the hardware would scale the sprite image up or down when the object was supposed to be close by or far away. Atari Games didn't have sprite scaling hardware in 1987- so they faked it in Road Blasters. Every side of the road object was rendered at many different sizes - and they just switched the graphics for the sprite as the object got closer. Since the Omni has scalable sprites, I imagine it could do Road Blasters much more easily than the original arcade hardware. Edit - oops. Sorry about that. I was confusing Atari Games' Road Blasters with Data East's RoadBlaster, which was a Laser Disc game. Sorry.
  8. Hey, I programmed this game back in 1982 (with help from Jeff Ratcliff)! Thanks for the positive review!
  9. This is fun.. It reminds me a lot of the original game. The green robots give me trouble because I am in the habit of always chasing robots. Some suggestions: 1. It would be nice if the game screen would initially pause for a second or two to give the player a chance to find their position. 2. The tip about "different robot colors meaning different movement patterns" seems misleading since some robot colors are deadly. 3. The "How to play" section needs better key debouncing so the player can easily see each page. Wait for like one second of no key pressed before accepting a new keypress that advances the page. 4. If the power up icons were in the same order as their descriptions, it might be easier to follow. So far so good. I have seen the boss a few times,but haven't beat him yet....
  10. Happy New Year! 2019 could be a very interesting year...
  11. Hockey Robots of Death had 16 robots on screen at once (I could have done more, but the screen felt cramped https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIj5lgdvulc Here's an example in Intybasic: The robots can't overlap, so it's not really like Robotron. But it might give you some ideas... Catsfolly
  12. I think this is referring to the Collectorvision Phoenix. At one point Collectorvision was contemplating adding more memory and another sound chip to their FPGA core, in the same locations as in the SGM, so that SGM compatible games would just coincidentally run on the Phoenix. After a very long discussion (I think it's on the Collectorvision area, somewhere), Collectorvision agreed to license the SGM so they could say they were an "official SGM compatible system", and Opcode will get a license fee for each Phoenix system shipped.IIRC...
  13. I was a big fan of Ed Averett's games on the Odyssey 2 - games like UFO, Monkeyshines, PickAxe Pete, and Attack of The Timelords. He was for a while almost singlehandedly competing with Atari and Intellivision, writing like 24 games back in the day. I'm excited to see what he can do with this new console. I think in many ways a console is like a musical instrument - each one has strengths and weaknesses and unique characteristics the help define the nature of the games that are done for that system. Just as the electric guitar didn't make the acoustic guitar obsolete, the existence of modern consoles doesn't make the old consoles obsolete. That's one reason why there is still interest in games for these older systems. I'm looking forward to seeing this "new, 80's style, what could have been" console!
  14. The rights to Klax are owned by Time Warner, so I can't just make a version of it. On the other hand, Mark Pierce (the designer and producer of Klax), started his own game company years ago and made a "Klax Inspired" game for iphones called "Starburst" which was similar to Klax except the game pieces moved up instead of down. So maybe something could be done,,,
  15. The Air Hockey game on Paddle Party was primarily designed as a two player game, with the single player mode thrown in so people could practice the controls by themselves. Shuffle Puck Cafe is a single player game, so it can use first person view, and it has a variety of interesting opponents with different graphics, strengths, and weaknesses. This kind of game is best suited to a mouse, or trackball, or some kind of analog controller. The Intellivision has only a digital "on/off" controller. Some tricks can be done such as having the movement speed up the longer the disk is held, or moving at different speeds based on the position pressed on the disk, but it will never be as natural as an analog control.
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