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2600 Game Dev and whatnot.

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Switching Banks Made Easy?

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  

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iVCS

SOME 2600 TUNES for your listening pleasure:   Metroid tunes: mm.bin Cycle through them with the fire button: 1. Title (64 bpm) 2. Item Discovery 3. Spawn 4. Secret Corridor 5. Brinstar 6. Mother Brain 7. Title (56 bpm) 8. Title (75 bpm)   The title is the most polished.   EDIT: Here's the latest version; took out the percussion and added a bunch more songs: 1. Title (64 bpm) 2. Item Discovery 3. Spawn 4. Secret Corridor (polished a bit) 5. Brinstar 6. Mother Brain 7. Norf

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Squupdate

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

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vdub_bobby

Metroid Flashback

GOING THROUGH the forum/blog archives and I realized that I don't think I ever posted the most recent version of my Metroid VIP (Vaporware In Progress).   So anyway, here it is. Metroid20060303.bin I'm not sure how it is different from the last version I posted either here or in the forums, but this one has selectable songs (with SELECT) and decent scrolling - horizontal only, though.   The main next tasks for this are the vertical scrolling and adding enemies to the map (so they scroll

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Here we go again...

AFTER MANUEL'S AWARD-WINNING performance in 2005, I thought I'd get off to a quick start in 2006: Mercy Elizabeth Montgomery January 11, 2006;) Ain't she purty?   EDIT: Oh, and: I won't be working quite as fast as I might like on various extra-curricular activities for the next few weeks. But, David, I do hope to get the Copland done ASAP. I'm on the job!

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Song B

I'VE BEEN PLAYING with 2600 music lately - I wrote a new music driver, which I'm pretty happy with (maybe more on that later); I've been trying to write something cool with it.Here's an unfinished 2nd effort; the imaginatively titled: Song B songb.bin It just loops through the final 8 measures forever, about a minute in. Thoughts?

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Two Steps Forward...

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

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New, but not quite as exciting

SPEAKING OF HOMEBREWS...   For some reason the 7800 has caught my fancy lately. Here's the result: S1K20080408.zip   Could someone with a CC2 or similar please run this on an actual 7800 and verify that it looks like the picture? The documentation on the 320 modes is unclear.   And, if Schmutzpuppe is reading this - can you explain the graphics in Frogger? I was looking closely at them in an emulator and, as far as I understand the 320 modes, you shouldn't be able to do what it looks

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Mayhem!

THIS IS COMPLETELY unrelated to Atari. Just so you know.   Last night I played in the 8th game (of 10) of the winter season of my soccer league. We play weekly, year round, and I've been playing with this team, Mayhem, for about five years.   Last season we pretty much dominated, going 7-1-2 before the debacle of the championship game (which involved a sh***y ref, a red card, and losing ).   This season, despite having mostly the same players, hasn't been so rosy. Before last night's g

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So many ideas...

WHEN I SHOULD HAVE been working on my Elevators/Maids game during the past week, I was instead working on this: RType20070329.bin   EDIT: Fixed a bug or two: RType20070329.bin   I was inspired partially by Manuel's post about the NES' lack of R-Type clones and partially by the idea of writing one for the 2K minigame competition.   I started with my Metroid code, since it conveniently had an asymmetrical playfield plus intelliflickered sprites.   I've pared it down from 32K to about 3K

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The Way-Back Machine

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

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Do-It-Yourself Speech

YOU, TOO, CAN MAKE your Atari talk!   Nathan wanted a ROM that he could modify/play around with that would make the AtariVox speak, so I jumped at the chance to get coding again. Here it is: SpeechTester20070802.bin SpeechTesterSource.zip   The ROM currently supports up to 4 different speech strings, though only one has anything in it right now: the "go fish" from the game of the same name.   Switch between speech strings with SELECT, start/restart a speech string with the trigger, a

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Speaking of ideas

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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Squish 'Em Postscript

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... )

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About Nothing Much...

SO...I have a Wii.   First time I've had a "modern" console since the N64 in 2001. Kind of weird, really - my brother-in-law gave it to me (!) plus ~5 games. Wasn't really sure what to do at first; I'd already decided that I wasn't buying any more hardware for the foreseeable future - I had/have too many systems and not enough games and not enough time for the ones I have.   But anyway, eventually hooked the thing up and I've been having fun with Wii Sports, Super Mario Galaxy. Also real

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A Day Late And A Dollar...

A NEW YEAR! TIME TO MAKE plans! What...February already? Oh well, better late than never.   Anyway, my plans for the year have come into focus only recently, so I thought I'd share.   Major Projects: 1. Finish the Maids+Elevators game. 2. Port Squish 'Em to the 2600.   Minor Projects: 1. Modify Go Fish! to allow higher scores (or allow the score to "roll") for a few folks that can actually max it out. 2. Mystery project that I'm working on with Nathan Strum.   Details: Squis

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Looks the same - but oh so different!

OK, NOT THAT DIFFERENT. But I did free up seven bytes of RAM, which is pretty huge. I finally wrapped my mind around supercat's fractional-position replacement - it was a little tricky because, unlike his example (16 speeds between 0 and 2 lines per frame) I wanted 64 speeds between 1/2 and 2 lines per frame (LPF). I ended up going with 64 speeds between 1/2 and 2 1/2 LPF, using a counter which goes from 0 to 32 and a 128-byte table (i.e., thirty-two 32-bit entries). I realized about halfway

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And Now For Something Completely

ON A COMPLETELY different note, I felt like compiling a list of which computers and consoles use what processors. Classic machines, specifically.   Please correct where I am in error and fill in the blanks in my knowledge.   6502 2600 5200 7800 Atari 400, 800, 800XL, etc. XEGS NES C64, C128, etc. Apple II, IIe, IIc   Z80 SMS Colecovision ZX Spectrum MSX Aquarius   CP1610 Intellivision   8048 Odyssey2   68A09 Vectrex   68000 Genesis Atari ST Amiga Neo-Geo Maci

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GTD: Number Three

I KEEP TINKERING and tinkering with this two-sprite flicker engine.   I'm not real enamored with it, but I'm having fun playing with it. I haven't drastically changed the kernel; despite my bold words, I haven't been able to make it work.   But I was able to figure out a quick sorting method that does work with the flicker engine. It isn't perfect, but objects don't disappear and it is slightly better than a 1-sprite flicker engine. The sort returns results like this:   For 3 objects:

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More Music More Music

WORKED ON THE Four-Play tune some more last night. The result: FourPlaySong20060712.bin Composed a few more measures here which I like pretty well, though I'll probably tweak them a bunch before I'm done.   Also did some volume tweaking: I was planning to leave this for final polishing, but very high (and very low) notes are much quieter, with the same AUDVx value, than middle-range notes and it sounded bad enough that I couldn't put it off any longer. Notably, in the harmony section the h

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2600 Tune (Or, The Joy of Boulderdash)

A FEW WEEKS AGO I finally got off my rear and worked up a rough draft of some music I promised I'd write. I got the go-ahead for the concept and I thought I'd post it here - I don't think anyone has ever blogged or posted (in the forum) the development of music for the 2600, and I thought it'd be fun.   Here's the rough draft: tune20060624.bin   The concept I had was something "plinky," with two different voices: one high, one low.   The drums are almost pure filler, and will probably be

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Reindeer Rescue Final Recap

YOU GOTTA MOVE ON at some point; this is the final recap. And not much of a recap, truthfully, but maybe the one with the most content. Anyhoo, here's the source and the ROMs. Enjoy!ReindeerRescueSourceAndRoms.zip

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Pretty Close, Now.

SO, SO CLOSE. So close to being done with the Four-Play tune. Here's what I've got now: FourPlaySong20060827.bin   Timed it for the first time just now and it clocks in at 2:20 - which is just about where I wanted it.   Working off of the to-do list I posted last time: Did: -finished the drum breaks -wrote new beat to go with 2nd bassline -figured out ending, wrote it, coded it   Still to do: -tweak some of the slide-y runs -add some crescendos/decrescendos to the melody -drum twe

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Two Steps Forward, Three...

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.  

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So, you think you have a good idea?

SO YOU WANNA DESIGN VIDEO GAMES, HUH?There is lots of programmer-oriented documentation for the budding 2600-coder, but not a lot for someone who doesn't want to code for the beast but still wants to know, in a somewhat non-technical way, how it works. Plus, lots of people think they have the bomb idea for an Atari game but they have no clue what will and won't work with the 2600 hardware.So, for them, I presentSo you want to be a game designer? How to design an Atari 2600 game.Updated!Note th

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