Time-Bandit

After thinking about this whole situation... Is there a way to contact the guy who stole my game? I would like to have a talk with him concerning ethics, the colecovision and the homebrew scene. It is one thing to take a game (from the MSX for example) and convert it to the ColecoVision. It takes technical skill to do so. But, to take a game that was already on the ColecoVision (and ALREADY released on a cart a few years ago), change a few bytes here and there and then try and call it your own. That takes a lot of nerve. You are basically assuming that the ColecoVision scene is stupid enough to fall for that, even if the game I wrote wasn't a super hit, it was still something I made and my intellectual property. So Jeroen, wherever you are, please get in contact with me. An arrangement was made with the people you were deceitful with and tricked into thinking it was YOUR game, so I have no beef with them, but I would like to clear things out with you.

I was always passionate about the Colecovision and wanted to program for that console. Daniel was the one who gave me the push to actually do it. I never used any of his tools (I prefere doing it in assembly, by hand, like the good old days), but his documentation was top notch. He was always there with something nice to say and some helpful advice. I admire his dedication and rarely have I ever seen someone with so much dedication towards a particular topic (the ColecoVision). Thanks Daniel! Merci!

Hi guys, I am the author of Space Hunter a few years back... I still have the source code tucked away somewhere. It was a game I wrote for a 4K minigame competition, which is why it was limited in such a way with graphics and levels. I always hoped to make a better upgraded version though. Coleco Master: I was the guy (no pun intended towards me ) you met this summer at your place in Chateauguay and we were discussing briefly the ColecoVision and homebrew programming. It's interesting to see that a game that I wrote many years ago seems to be generating some interest. It was the only game I wrote and had always hoped to write some more, but never had the chance time-wise to do so. Guy

I'd love to see a YouTube video with the arcade controller presentation!

Just got back from the convention. I was there for one day and it was fun seeing the regular gang, there was no new blood unfortunately this year. I expected to see many more new people due to the proximity of the Adamcon this year (Quebec). Quebec being a hotbed of Coleco activity... Perhaps I left too earlly and the new visitors will pop up during the week-end presentations. I think that your technical issues Daniel could have been avoided by simply being better prepared. You can't go to war with a dull sword. So what did I bring back from this Adamcon? I realized that my programming days are long gone for me, at least for a long while. Glad to see that the scene has many people that are even more capable than I to release awesome titles, I will support the scene by buying high quality titles when I see one. I'm still interested in seeing the untapped potential of the Colecovision being brought out. I will try to work on some hardware products for the Colecovision though. My first one will be to design a high arcade quality joystick solution for the Colecovision probably made out of arcade quality wood. (MDF) Well, nice to see everyone and if next years Adamcon is not too far away, count me in!

I checked out the FAQ and there is a pretty big error in there that should be corrected. It states that the Colecovision has 8K of RAM (I wish!). It only has 1K.

Famous last words, dude... Famous last words for whom? Me or you? As far as I know, you're the one who's clueless about ColecoVision programming... Before giving out snotty remarks, think twice. It's really unnecessary, and really puts a damper on any type of conversation. Now with that said, either behave and reply with maturity and intelligence or abstain yourself from replying with trash comments, such as your previous one. Thanks... DUDE.

Perhaps you can start with a checkers program, which is bound to be easier to do in terms of AI programming. Then you can upgrade to chess. Just an idea. Not a bad idea. Actually checkers was programmed by Daniel Bienvenue a long time ago. I think he had some problems with the AI and never released it. I had mentionned to Daniel last year that I was going to embark on a chess programming sprint and he told me the same thing --- start with checkers. But who needs to learn how to walk before running? Only people who don't want to run.

Well, it would be slightly more challenging if the enemies actually shot some kind of projectile at the player. Enemies with more "exotic" flight trajectories would be a welcomed improvement as well. With a little work, perhaps you could even turn this game into a port of Astro Blaster, or a similar arcade game. Yeah, that can be arranged, actually quite easily, but like I said, it's a year old project, it's done with. There's bigger and badder things that I want to accomplish. One of my projects, which you, Pixelboy might actually be interested in is to write a chess game for the Colecovision in Z80 assembly language. I want to do it in under 4Ks. Of course it will have AI. At what level? Not quite sure, probably enough to beat most casual players. Will keep you all updated here. Maybe I'll create a thread to talk about the shortcomings and pitfalls I've encountered along the way. This is all new to me. I've already written assembly language programs with recursion, but to develop the AI required for chess is truly something new and challenging for me!

Well, anyway, I tried the game with Meka, and it's a very nice game, albeit the easiest space shooter I've ever played. You could rename it "Space Cakewalk". Pixelboy: Which makes me respect the classic-era space shooter game authors even more! Not an easy genre to master.

You really should post this in the Homebrew Discussion forum. The way I see it, the ColecoVision Programming sub-forum is for getting answers to programming questions, and it doesn't get a lot of traffic. Finished homebrews are usually announced and released under Homebrew Discussion. It's not a homebrew I would want to announce publicly at large since it's simply an update to a homebrew that's close to a year old. I simply sent the updated version because someone had asked for it and since the thread was started here, this is where it goes. The homebrew forum is also in the "programming" sub-section, so I don't think it really makes much of a difference. At least by posting it here, I know that only the people interested in the Colecovision get to see it. Cheers.

This game was the culmination for myself of several months of learning the Colecovision architecture, learning Z80 assembly and learning basic arcade gameplay. It was my entry for the 2005 minigames competition. Out of the 3 Colecovision games that were submitted this one was the top rated one.

Latest build was somewhere on a diskette for a little while. Here it is... It's a bit more playable than the official version that was sent to the 2005 Mini Games competition. Still has a few things that bug me, but we'll leave it as is. It was my first official Colecovision game. I'd like to explore the same type of theme for a next game. Maybe a horizontal scroller this time. spacehunter2.zip

Happy to help. Well, if you can't attend, perhaps you can send the final version of the ROM file to Daniel via e-mail, and he can display it at the Arcadia show using his own CV USB cart. I'm hoping to see demos of Steve Begin's latest CV work, namely Mr Do's Wild Ride, Pacar and his Wizard Siege homebrew. Anything CV-related will be great to see at the show. I'd love to be able to say that I've finished the game and it's ready to be released! Started work on it about 10 months ago, and it still hasn't seen the light of day. Arcadia is still far away, so who knows what will happen until then...