Jess Ragan

Okay, so I've gotta know... why do Asteroids clones on the ColecoVision look so... stiff? Ships don't rotate smoothly and have an annoying habit of stopping on a dime, ignoring the principles of physics. Why is that? Is it because the machine is so dependent on tiles? Ships in Atari 5200 games drift effortlessly through the void of space. Ships in ColecoVision seem to jutter into place. It's really jarring and takes you out of the experience.

Hee! This is fun. Now I need to import all my weird noises to CV Basic somehow... (Also, to whom it may concern. Can you have your program remember which folder to use to save SFX files? Because it always wants to default to Documents, and that annoys me. Thank you for your consideration.)

On reflection, I would never, ever ask anyone to play this game with a stubby-ass ColecoVision controller. Use the player two keypad instead. Use a Sega Genesis controller instead. Hammer your head against the television set where the Byrons are instead... it'll be more responsive that way. Nano, will games built with your compiler work fine with a Sega Genesis controller attached to the ColecoVision? I use a Genesis controller whenever possible to play ColecoVision games, but because of that dumb stock controller it's not always feasible to do that. Sometimes a Genesis controller will send unwanted input to the numeric keypad. It's why I have keypad input assigned to the second player controller.

Sparking conversation? But I'm feeling playfully argumentative, so let's extend that analogy a bit. Coleco claimed that its system was the arcade experience brought home, while Sega went for the same marketing angle in its early advertising. Coleco used the antiquity of previous game consoles as a springboard for its own system, claiming it was a major advance over previous technology and that its system could do what past consoles couldn't. Sega positioned itself as the "leader of the 16-bit revolution" and claimed that "Genesis does what Nintendon't." Coleco took every opportunity to integrate their console with hot pop culture icons of the time, like Smurfs, Dukes of Hazzard, and their own Cabbage Patch Kids. Once Tom Kalinske came on board, Sega went in the same direction, with games based on Barney the Dinosaur, X-Men, Garfield, and other contemporary properties. Of course Sega isn't literally the second coming of Coleco, but their marketing approaches were remarkably similar. And they both took a sledgehammer to the near-monopoly of a former industry leader as well. Atari never had the same towering presence in the market after ColecoVision, and Nintendo no longer controlled video games with an iron fist after the Sega Genesis found its footing. I think the two companies' histories pair up remarkably well.

I'm gonna put a pin in this for later. I've been working on a CV game and need to find ways to make sound effects for it (and probably the SG-1000 version too).

Holy hell, that shrunk the game a lot, didn't it? Er, anyway. The pixel issue was fixed (I must have dropped a bit of black on it in Aseprite and didn't notice), and now there's a new minor play mechanic. Hitting Byron on the buzzer no longer means you lose the points for that strike... now it's worth double. (This is great for the mystery bonus. It doesn't count against you if you hit a butt on the buzzer... that still doesn't count.) whackem_comp.rom

Completed compression in the ColecoVision version of WESEB (and may do the same for the SG-1000 version). Nano's right; it does chop the file size down a considerable amount. The access time it introduces isn't something I like, but I guess I can live with it when the resulting ROM is 5K smaller. I can add content with that additional space, and there should be plenty of space for sound effects and music. (When I can figure out how to do those. Which I hopefully won't have to do. I need to talk to Ray and see if he's made any progress.) There's a single black pixel at the bottom of the hedge row on the right hand side of the screen. It's driving me nuts. I h-a-a-a-t-e weird anomalies like that! whackem_comp.rom

Starting the switch to compressed graphics. The title screen takes two seconds to come up now, buuuuut it's still better than the thirteen damn seconds the ColecoVision takes to start its first party games. For no reason! Apparently that design was for the sake of brand recognition, but I find it incredibly annoying. I know I'm playing a ColecoVision! I don't need a reminder!

By the way, I'm experimenting with a logo for CV Basic; something that's clear in its design but could be reproduced on an actual ColecoVision without compromise.

By Grabthar's hammer, what a savings. Of cartridge space. A seventy percent reduction in size is a pretty big deal, especially on the ColecoVision where storage is tight. Now I'm thinking of actually doing this. (When? Pfft. Who knows?)

Okay, I'll keep this in mind. It's probably good practice to keep things compact, but I don't feel much pressure to squeeze the SG-1000 version of the game into 32K. Maybe I'll experiment with Pletter in the future, though. You said it doesn't compromise the visuals at all? That's encouraging. How much ROM space can I save using compression? How much time does it take to decompress the visuals? By the way, I ordered a MIDI cable on Amazon, and plan to dink around with that and my Rock Band keytar when it arrives. I was hoping to have someone else work on the music and sound effects, but it won't hurt for me to experiment a little, and see what I can do myself. People are telling me, "Well, you should try making music yourself!," and I'm just thinking, "Yeah, while I'm at it, I'll solve a quadratic equation and crack the human genome. Sheesh." It's not a talent I possess, is my point. You might as well ask a trout to run a marathon.

Heh, I think I've been talking to you on another forum! For the record, I don't know if I can compress the graphics in the game without losing visual quality. (Which would be a shame, as graphics are a highlight in WESEB.) I know Nanochess mentioned something called "pletter" in the instructions, but I don't know how that works. I'm pretty sure I don't want the code to get so complicated that I can't keep track of it, though. I've noticed that SG-1000 games can be slightly larger than ColecoVision games, up to 48K. How does CV Basic handle games for that system and the MSX? Same hard limit on cart size?

Examine the evidence. The SG-1000 was closely based on the specs of the ColecoVision (evidently Sega promised Coleco that they'd distribute the system in Japan, only to reverse engineer the hardware and make their own nearly identical system), and the Master System is an evolution of that hardware, with backward compatibility but a host of features to improve the gaming experience. Basically, the Master System is the ColecoVision II. If you wondered how a next generation ColecoVision would have turned out, the Master System is it.

Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Byrons is now available for the Sega SG-1000! And instead of merely a straight port, there's an intro with Byron doing his best imitation of the Sega CD BIOS. Run it today on your favorite... SG-1000... emulator. Whatever that would be. (Steve Snake's KEGA Fusion works well enough.) whackem_sg1000.sg