YOUR POWERS ARE WEAK!
Just thought I'd share some amusing pictures of Darth Vader as a kid:
Adjusting the fit...
Using the Dark Side of the Force to terrorize the house! Oh no!
Unmasked!
This helmet plays various Darth Vader phrases and sound effects. Usually it's used by the older two, but recently Jo has had a fascination with it. Good times, good times.
TWO MORE TUNES today.
Also thought I'd show a little progression in the development of a tune.
Here's the 2600-ization of the title screen song from Wizards & Warriors:
2puck.zip
Tommy whipped that up for me a few weeks ago on a whim, I guess.
Here's the first draft of that: That's just the notes.
Here's the 2nd draft: 2puck.zip For this one, I made the lower notes (in the first measure, the 2nd, 4th, etc.) a little softer, I made the countermelody articulated, and I twe
AFTER MAKING BIG plans earlier this year I've done a whole lot of nothing so far.
Hmmm...strike that. Looking back through my blog, I've done more than I thought. Mostly I just haven't managed to produce a game.
I was going to use this blog entry as a data dump for everything I've half-assed over the last couple of months - and don't worry, I still will use it for that purpose! - but I think I will change gears and use it as a sort of retrospective of the year so far. Maybe help me
SO, FOR LACK of anything better to work on, I decided to see if I could actually get a kernel working for a VCS Metroid.
The answer is yes.
Right now it supports a partially asymmetric, striped playfield (PF1 & PF2), one non-flickered sprite, up to five (limited by RAM) intelliflickered sprites, M0 and M1.
I'm kind of amazed that I got it working, actually. Some of the missile writes come at non-optimal times (around repositioning scanlines) but not too bad.
Screenshot:
B
DID A LITTLE WORK DURING my lunch break today on The Battle of Gilgamesh. Some of the notes are wildly out of tune but either a) they aren't that out of tune or b) it's so fast - in any case, it doesn't sound so bad to me.
I'll attach the music also so you can see what I'm working from here.
EDIT: I suppose a few notes on the music are in order. First, notice that there are 16th-note triplets in there. The version of my music driver I'm using doesn't allow for triplets, so they ar
BACK TO STRIPED elevators, based on feedback. I thought this would give me lots of RAM back - but it wasn't to be.
I really wanted to add stairs on either side of the screen, and I just couldn't fit it into the old kernel. So I've gone back (again) to the RAM-hungry kernel that supercat suggested.
And so now RAM is an issue. Probably can make it work, though.
So new binary: still isn't playable - I was too tired last night to add the code back in that moves you up a floor and incr
WORKED ON THE Four-Play tune again last night: FourPlaySong20060821.bin
Made a little progress with parts of it and...ugh. Feel like I went mostly backwards.
My current music driver allows the use of 4 tones (AUDCx values) for notes (an additional four are assigned to the percussion track). I'm mostly using just three: square, lead, and saw. I am using the bass tone a little bit and I thought I could cut that part out and reclaim that 4th tone for an additional percussion sound.
AN OLDIE but a goodie? I was looking back through my super-sprite-multiplexor demos and I realized that I never shared the latest revision of the space shooter demo. So here it is:
spcinvdr.bin
It handles 12 sprites (two are used for the player) plus 2 missiles flickered for 4 bullets. It also detects collisions, both missile-to-sprite and sprite-to-sprite.
gac.v10.zipgac.v12.zipgac.v121.1.zip
EDIT: Attached source: gac.v10.zip
I'm not actively working on this right now (and I h
HERE'S what I've been working on, slowly, over the last few weeks. Well, besides the tile demos I've posted in the homebrew forum, which are mostly just a sideline - for now, anyway.
Demo120080209.bin
Demo220080214.bin
Both are very rough and likely will roll on a real TV.
NOW WITH ENEMIES that move!
TankMaze20120222.bin
Not too exciting, really - they just change direction randomly when they hit an intersection. But it's something!
Also, your tank will now turn whichever way you press the joystick, even if a wall prevents you from moving.
Press RESET to start things off and to switch through the different mazes.
SO IT'S BEEN A WHILE since I've been very active on AA; but in the last few weeks I have again started some fairly intensive 2600 development. I'm sorry to say, Nathan, that it isn't RPS - which is still on my slow-moving to-do list - but rather a project that I toyed with years ago: a semi-faithful port of Tank Battalion.
I'll try to find time to put up the in-progress ROM of what I've got so far along with some screenshots, plus other details. And I am having some difficulty with the gra
THIS IS KINDA TECHNICAL, I suppose.While I don't expect to ever actually complete a VCS Metroid port, for various reasons, I am going forward with it right now. I've targeted it for a 32K cart, and I've been thinking a bit about the best way to switch banks.This is what I've come up with:Call a subroutine in another bank with this code:
brk
.word Subroutine
Have the break vector point to this subroutine (copied in every bank):
plp
tsx
inx
dec $00,X
lda ($00, X
WANT TO GET 'em all!
I am trying to pick which homebrews to pick up from the AA store...
Here's my long list:
A8
Beef Drop
2600
Venture
Thrust+
Synthcart
Fall Down
Oystron
FlapPing
Jammed
Marble Craze
Power Off!
Hunchy II
Crazy Balloon
Star Fire
Strat-O-Gems
Dark Mage
Dreamcast:
Feet of Fury
Tunes:
Cabana EP+
Unfortunately, funds aren't unlimited. So I've got to narrow it down.
So, shorter list:
Beef Drop
Venture
Thrust+
Cabana EP+
Power Off!
ARKANOID 2600?
Next up, my flier for an Arkanoid port to the 2600.Let's see...July 18 2005 looks like the latest source I have.Here's the latest, buggy, binary: It also has a thread in the homebrew forum.Here's a screenshot:Judging from the date on the latest source I have, I last worked on it January 21st of this year.Here's a screenshot:Status of this project:Preliminary, working kernel written, with 15x16 brick playfield, two larger balls, two (flickering) enemies, and a paddle-controlled, u
I think I'll go through my already-started projects one by one and evaluate the pros and cons of each game as well as looking at the problems I encountered in each one.I'll attach the most-recent binary as well as a screenshot of each one.First, the practically ancient...Running Man.Read about its development in its thread in the homebrew forum.Judging from the date on the latest source I have, I last worked on it January 21st of this year.Here's a screenshot:Here's the binary:Status of this pro
WELL, THAT was a whirlwind! Finished up Squish 'Em with just days to spare.
I posted the list of differences vs. the A8 version in the Squish 'Em thread, but I thought I'd recap here and try to collect my thoughts about my next project(s).
First, Squish 'Em - this turned out waaaay better than I thought. It was easier than I hoped (and a lot of fun ) to disassemble the A8 source, which allowed me to get the timings to match exactly and the sounds to match very very closely. I still h
YET ANOTHER update.
Changes:
Biggest changes are
-adding the climbing animation. The animations are mostly done now, though I need to tweak things a little - the climbing animation is a little goofy when you start with your left hand up.
-major cleanup on the kernel. This is very close to being complete. Enemies no longer jump around when the screen is scrolling and there are many fewer graphic glitches at the top and bottom of the scroll area.
EDIT: Just glanced at the screensho
YOU GOTTA LOVE WORDS WITH CONSECUTIVE 'u's in them, even if they are made up.
Anyway, I gave it the ol' college try, but I couldn't quite get a playable version done last night.
Changes:
-Added legs-up animation when you press the button.
-Enemies can be squished! Er, just by touching them. The timing on this needs work also.
-Constrained player movement. This is now done, except for animating the little bastard and getting his left/right speed correct.
-Added some of the scori
THINGS ARE MOVING ALONG, though my self-imposed deadlines are looming and looking more and more unrealistic the closer they get!
Unsurprisingly. I'll keep plugging away, though, and we'll see what happens.
The Latest!
Big changes:
-Scrolling now works, though the kernel isn't completely tightened up yet.
-Randomly generating girders, monster colors and positions.
-Moving monsters.
-Player movement constrained. Now pressing up scrolls the screen, down does nothing.
-Matchi
SQUISHING IN FULL EFFECT! New update. Still not technically playable, since you can't die, but pretty close now.
Changes:
-Player now moves at correct speed in all directions and is animated when he moves sideways.
-Only can squish enemies by actually stomping on them.
-Enemies are generated correctly (i.e., 1 blank row, 15 rows of 1st enemy, 16 rows of 2nd enemy, 1 row with bonus item, 15 rows of 3rd enemy, 1 row with suitcase, repeat).
To do:
-clean up kernel transitions, tighten
RETURN OF SQUISH 'EM! I haven't forgotten or dropped this project! Here's the latest code and binary.
Where I'm at:
-Kernel is mostly there, just needs a few things here and there and some tightening up. I think I introduced a page-crossing error last night which is why the "enemy" graphics are messed up a little.
-Converted all graphics to data. Discovered something interesting in the process: all enemy/item animation is done by flipping the reflection register. Very nice! It's also
SUCCESS!
Christmas morning!
Ahh...I know that glazed look of concentration...
The day after Christmas - at it again:
He even let his brother play a little:
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!
(PS The 5200 port of Squish 'Em is almost done... )
SQUISHING CONTINUES! Oh, I slay me.
Anyway. Did some more work last couple of nights.
Changes:
-Rewrote part of kernel to use actual enemy graphics (without 13 trailing zeroes)
-Animating enemy graphics. This, as I mentioned before, is amazingly easy. Even easier than I thought it would be: I just take the frame counter variable and write it to REFP0. That's it.
-Added six-digit score
-Got girder color-changes into the kernel, looks much nicer now.
-Moving the brick. I'm
I HAD AN UTTERLY RANDOM thought this morning, an idea for a game:
What if you took Missile Command, flipped it upside down and put it under water?
I.e., rather than protecting a city from missiles, you would be protecting a ship from torpedos/etc. You would drop depth charges (and...?).
Has this ever been done?
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