NuType

ZackAttack and Vidak, thanks for all your help! Thanks to everyone who has also taken the time to respond! ​Excited to collect my ideas and make a 2600 game. In spirit at first, but eventually an actual game that will run on the 2600.

Hilarious. How do you skip something milestone like the 2600? Serious journalism issues. Anybody have Twitter? Tweet at GameInformer and GameStop for skipping any mention of the granddaddy of the modern video game era.

So for this iteration of the game, movement will be turn-based, and the player and AI can move vertically or horizontally. I'm working with GameMaker Studio at the moment, and I am playing with Atari 2600 visuals as a personal aesthetic choice while also trying to develop under a similar environment. Eventually I would love to port this to the 2600. ​Right now my constraints with this design are to 1) Keep it at 4K max memory or less, true 2600 resolution, and following the general rules for sprites, objects, and playfield.

Can't seem to edit my previous response to include an image, so had to double post. ​Here's my newest mockup. Let me know if it looks like it would run or not on the 2600.

​Thanks! It seems overwhelming, but if I ever get into Assembly I should have some ground work done. ​So when you say PLAYER graphics, do you mean the player's sprite object? Or the missle and ball objects? Does it also included the playfield?

Thanks for your help! ​Things are making sense little by little.

Need a little more than that.

So I have two specific questions that seem to be stumping me. One is related to the screen resolution and the other to the playfield. My searches have been unfruitful. 1) If the screen resolution is 160x192, why do all the screenshots for Atari 2600 games appear wider than they are taller? Why do the sprites appear correct and not stretched vertically? I'm doing a mockup in Photoshop and it seems that if I use a canvas in the Atari resolution, large vertical portions will remain unused. Here's an image to illustrate what I mean. 2) If the playfield is 20 playfield pixels across, and the playfield can be mirrored, how do you fit this playfield sample fully in a 160 width space? It seems the resolution would need to be kicked up to 320. Unless again, vertical portions of the screen are not used. Here's with just 20 playfield pixels. So any ideas? What am I not understanding if anything?

Thanks for the links BigO. Will pour through that Stella programming reference. I can always go to the programming forum for when I need any help or ideas explained.

So still wrapping my head around all this info, thanks for the link by the way. Read through it and came out understanding things a bit more, but still need to process it all. ​With that being said, here is a screenshot of a previous iteration of the game that I worked on. Aside from not having only two colors per horizontal line, and too big of a resolution, do you see any other issues?

Hmm, I read a thread by a user called BladeJunker on Pixelation.org (he has also posted here) where it was mentioned you could do 320x192 for resolution. Is this not accurate? That's the resolution I was using. Unless I misunderstood what he was talking about or he was wrong. The information I have on the Atari 2600 visual capabilities came from a large thread he did on the topic: https://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=13697.0 ​Regarding the line kernel, how exactly do I go about choosing what to use? Is it set in the system? I don't understand the specifics, but I figured it would give me room to choose one and design based on the kernel thickness. Smaller seems better, while bigger seems chunkier. ​Regarding the playfield. Each playfield pixel is 4 color clocks wide, which is about eight normal pixels. So 8 x 40 equals 320. I'm wondering now if this depends on kernel line thickness more than anything. Or I'm misunderstanding something. When do pixels stretch? Maybe that's what I need to account for. ​Here's an image that I have been using to build upon. ​I might need to go over the thread again. But it's possible a lot of the info has flown over my head, and the images that were used to describe the examples are all gone now. Though I saved a few to my computer. ​Would it be possible for someone to edit my image and show me examples of where I'm doing something wrong? @Rhindle The Dragon: You've been helpful too!

Hi all, first post here! I'm currently working on a stealth-action game inspired by Metal Gear called Winged Victory: Phase I. I've broken the game down into Phases as a way of simplifying my work load and increase complexity as I lock down core mechanics. I'm currently working in Gamemaker Studio, and for this first phase, I wanted to approximate an Atari 2600 visual style. (Eventually I would LOVE to port it to an actual 2600). Does this look correct, or am I breaking limitations here? ​Here's the image at twice the original size. ​The game is being redesigned from its current iteration which I have uploaded on itch.io (if anyone is interested in checking it out, let me know). This new redesign will probably incorporate turn-based movement on a grid (as opposed to just grid-based movement). Was the Atari 2600 capable of turn-based movement or even grid based movement?