Glenn Jupp

If you've not seen it, then you might want to have a look at Erik Mooney's River Rampage on [stella]. Looks like the beginning of not just a shoot-em-up, but a full-on-bullet-hell-shmup.

I prefer the cart on the other left. The one that's not trying to look like it's officially licenced and manufactured by Atari Inc. Guess I'm the odd one out. Grafixbmp, you are obviously putting a load of effort and meticulous attention into this project. It's going to amazing, whenever it's ready.

I didn't know what the hell you were talking about. And after following that link I still don't know what the hell is going on, but in a different way. Wow.

Swordfight (M Network / Intellivision Productions)

I've noticed another Supercharger game that doesn't quite work right. Stellar Doomsday Interceptor. http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/73350-stellar-doomsday-interceptor-1k-minigame/ I can't see the missiles or any explosions. But the game is still tracking the missiles. You can tell because the planetary shield gets damaged when the invisible missiles hit it. Thanks for the Meteroids patch, by the way. I was going to mention that one too, but tkarner beat me

Good to know, thanks That was after I disabled the perspective projection for performance reasons. Switch the right difficulty to B and the problem will disappear. I just tried it again. For whatever reason, the perspective projection is not disabled. Surprise!

After too long a delay I had a go at trying these demos on a real 2600 (a Junior, and NTSC) by way of the Harmony Cart. What I saw wasn't always what Stella said it would be The Cobra mk.3 and the Fer de Lance (or maybe the Gecko, I forget) had vertical grey bars appearing and vanishing in the "drawing area" of the screen. Only one, two or three at a time, and the exact pattern seemed dependent on the precise orientation of the ship. Oh, and the Cobra locked up if the orientation and zoom are set just so. For the Coriolis station about half the vertices could not be drawn. Orient the station one way and it looked fine. Turn it around and it looked like the Thargoids hit it. The Gecko (or Fer de Lance, I still can't recall) had no problems at all. So, that's my bug report. Make of it what you will Oh, that's perfect. I've read that each company to port Elite to another micro put some sort of system-specific variation into it. Finally adding the generation ships to Elite 2600 is so inviting that it would almost be rude to refuse the invitation.

Why, thank you. Hmm. I think flat projection might make lining up the docking approach EASIER. If you're even a little out from being precisely perpendicular to the face of the station then it quickly shows up around the edges. With perspective on it's harder to see around the corner, if you take my meaning. I guess it all makes for one more decision for whoever has the gumption to make a full game of this

I was wondering when you would get to the C3. It's pretty I forgot about the Coriolis stations. Those would be in the field of view for a long time. Might look peculiar in a flat projection. Maybe even throw off one's time-honed skill for docking approaches. Perhaps one more demo screen of a C-station, with and without perspective, to check it out?

To my eyes, the loss of perspective is acceptable. I don't notice the perspective until the ship is rather close to the point of view. In play, a ship that close to the POV doesn't stay in the field of view for long. If going to flat scaling gives enough cycles for a playable game, then I say play on. After a brief play of Elite (PC version), it looks like it used perspective. I didn't yet say how impressive your work is, did I? Well, it's very much so.

Oh, wow. Thanks to Mitch and all for getting this done. Terribly interesting. And don't forget the information Kevin Horton had on the hardware of the thing. http://web.archive.org/web/20000118025908/tripoint.org/kevtris/gameline.htm http://atari2600.org/pipermail/stella/2001-August/007818.html EDIT: Forgot to mention that the first link has off-white text on a white background. Just select everything to see what it all says.

May I have one, please? I thought I had voted yes for the Harmony cart a while ago. Turns out I misremembered Chimaera for Harmony.

Yes, that's the thread I had in mind. Thanks. I've also remembered a work-in-progress for the C-64 called Nether. Here's the main page for it, and some screenshots. Too many colours for the 2600 I expect, unless one could find enough time for chronocolour tricks. Still, the resolution looks about right for 2600 playfield pixels.

Hmm. Well, there is Merlin's Walls from Ebivision. That uses a raycasting engine and a first-person view. No sprites for monsters, though. The Ebivision guys thought a better engine was possible (see here) but nothing has come of it yet. I think there was also some chatter about it in the programming forums a while back. Again, nothing's come of it, but I think it was at least a starting point. Gotta dig around for it.

These "poems" are good stuff. Very unexpected, and makes the player get into a very different mindset from the usual. I think there is a scanline count problem with Thunderstorm. On my 2600 Jr. (with Krokocart) the picture kinda rolls. Not a full roll, but the picture creeps up the screen about 1/6th of the way, jumps back down to where it belongs, then repeats.