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About this blog

Mostly Atari-related projects, and other ramblings. Home of the Artie the Atari comic strip.

Entries in this blog

 

To-Do Part Two

Well, just when I get a bunch of stuff checked off my To-Do list, more stuff gets added to it.   So, new to the list are: New ghost sprites for Dennis' PacMan (not Pac-Man) (Some) new sprites for Rainbow Invaders Tiles for Bob (maybe he's redecorating his bathroom or something) Plus I still have to clean up the Four-Play title screen a bit, finish the label art for it, finish the manuals for RPS and MGD, and I may take a crack at the power-ups for SuperBug.   Plus, I need to w
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

24
 

Homebreviews - part 2

The reviews continue... Crazy Balloon 4/5 Crazy Balloon was an obscure arcade game from the 70's, from a time when videogame genres were still being invented. Game companies hadn't settled into reusing the same formulas over and over again, and unique, quirky games like Crazy Balloon were the result. While essentially a maze game, Crazy Balloon is more than simply finding your way from point A to point B. It's a devious mix of needing to be patient, while beating the clock. The first few lev
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

9
 

Homebreviews - part 1

I always look for reviews before I buy something (especially games), so I can get some idea of what I'm going to plunk down my hard-earned money for. So, after my recent haul of homebrew games from AtariAge, I promised Albert I'd write up some reviews. Be careful what you ask for... The ratings (out of 5) have to do with how much I enjoy playing a game, and how likely it is the cartridge will see a lot of time in my 2600. Technical merit has a little to do with it, but not much. Gameplay an
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

10
 

If everybody to-did it, would you to-do it too?

So, with other people posting their to-do lists, I thought I'd post mine:   1) Make to-do list   This is going to be harder than I thought...   I'll start over.   1) Finish Colony 7 sprites. - Done! At least I think so. Manuel hasn't told me otherwise. Yet.   2) Finish sprites for LadyBug. The bugs are done, except for some tweaking. They turned out pretty well, I think, plus John really likes them. They capture the feel of the originals, which is what I was after. Up next I have to
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11
 

Cheeeese!

I finally picked up Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and I have to say, it's a wonderful film!   I missed it in the theaters, but I wanted to get the DVD because I've been a fan of Nick Park's work since his Creature Comforts short. Wallace and Gromit are terrific characters, and it was great to see them in a feature-length film. And even though I don't think the Oscars usually provide any sort of real-world validity, I was glad to see this film win for best animated feature.
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Weekend Warrior

Three-day weekend!   Monday is President's Day, where we combine the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, and use it as an excuse to go shopping.   I mean... reflect on our nation's history.   Okay. Shopping. Or, lazily sit on our butts and enjoy the day off.   Which is what I plan to do. More or less.   Actually, this weekend is a good chance to knock some stuff off my "to-do" list: I'm working on the Juno First sprites, and should have the first pass wrapped up today (I posted a sn
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A quick digression

Jumping back to the animation industry for a second... the rumor of the day is that Apple will buy Disney. Umm... no. Not gonna happen. Why? Apple has no reason to, or more to the point, Steve Jobs has no reason to. With the Disney buyout of Pixar (or more accurately - the Pixar takeover of Disney), Steve is already in the position he needs to be in, to get whatever he needs from Disney for Apple, and what he's after is content for the iTunes video store, or more to the point - content for t
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The Olympics and stuff

I'm still tired from typing out that XBox/PS3 thing, so I'll make this short. ;)Late-night Olympics are much more interesting than the daytime stuff. I've seen enough downhill skiing and figure skating to last a lifetime.The sports they show late at night are usually the ones they figure nobody will watch. Like the biathlon and curling. Both are pretty interesting sports. But I guess neither is "flashy" enough for prime time.Right now I'm watching women's curling.I don't really understand curlin
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11
 

Back up!

So, I've been playing a lot of Juno First lately, since I'll be making sprites for it.If you haven't checked it out in MAME, you should. It's a really challenging and fun game. Although it looks like a standard vertical shooter, there's more to it than that. By controlling forward/reverse movement of your ship, it adds a completely different dimension to the game. For about the first three waves, it doesn't make much of a difference.But then... they break out the homing missiles.These little bug
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17
 

WarGames

After years of searching, I finally found the WarGames soundtrack on CD.   While the soundtrack never did have an official, commercial release, a limited production run of promotional CDs was made, and I managed to locate one.   A complete review of it is now up on my website - MacMAME.net - in the Reviews section.   Enjoy!  
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6
 

Back to Atari!

Well after getting sidetracked with animation for a few entries, it's back to some more on-topic stuff.Animation!...of Atari 2600 game sprites, that is. ;)I just sent off the first batch of exploding sprites to Manuel for Colony 7. I couldn't make huge, elaborate explosions due to the constraints, but I think what I came up with gets across the idea of stuff blowing apart pretty well.I'll also be working on some sprites for Chris' version of Juno First. This was a cool game I discovered while wr
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8
 

Wait a minute... I was right?

Well, I wasn't exactly "right" about Disney buying Pixar, since I thought that it was an outside long shot at best: But essentially, that's what happened today. I think someone's gonna owe me a steak. (Hi Frank!) As I mentioned in my previous blog entry about this, I figured the only way Pixar would make this deal is if they took over creative control of Disney Feature Animation, and much to my surprise, Disney agreed to pretty much that.According to the press release: Now exactly w
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3
 

Trailer trash

I seldom go to movies anymore, mainly because they're too expensive. For the price of admission and snacks, I could buy it on DVD instead.   While on vacation though, I managed to get out and see The Chronicles of Narnia, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I hadn't read the book, but I've been told the movie follows it pretty faithfully. And although it may not be among my all-time-favorite movies, I'd certainly put it in the "very enjoyable diversion" category, which is a pretty good recommendatio
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12
 

Sure... and Sony will buy Apple, too.

So the big brouhaha in the animation industry over the last couple of days is the age-old rumor of Disney planning to buy Pixar.   As far as I've been able to tell, all of the articles have been based around one article which originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal. What's interesting to me about all of this, is how all of these other "news" services seem to be treating this as fact. The buyout is practically a done-deal by their accounts. Although at the end of most articles, most are
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2
 

Why Pixar doesn't have anything to worry about...

…maybe. So, a friend of mine who worked on Chicken Little recently invited me to a screening of it at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood, in 3D, for members of the visual effects industry. I should point out that he left Disney a year-and-a-half ago. He’s feeling much better now. While the theater was mostly full, there were maybe six or eight kids in the theater. The rest were all adults. I think this tended to result in a more “honest” reaction to the film. If the place was packed with ki
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Christmastime!

Reindeer Rescue Wrap-upWell, it looks like Bob is done programming Reindeer Rescue. I think the game turned out great, and people are gonna love it! It's already climbed up to the fourth best-selling homebrew of all-time in the AtariAge store. That's pretty amazing! (The fact that it can be had for free may have had a little to do with that... nah. )It was a lot of fun creating the sprites and other in-game graphics for it. I want to thank Bob for inviting me to be part of the project, and givi
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19
 

They do chicken... right?

So I grabbed dinner at Kentucky Fried Chicken tonight.   Yeah, I know. But I still eat there. (And I actually worked there once!)   Anyway... here's the thing that puzzles me.   All they make... is chicken. That's their whole thing, right?   And yet... it seems about half the time I go there... they are out of chicken!   "Sorry, we don't have any Original™. Would you like Extra Crispy™ instead?" "Sorry, we don't have any white meat. Would you like dark meat instead?" "Sorry, we're ou
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15
 

Colony 7 Sprites

Okay, I think I have all of the sprites done for Colony 7. It took a little time to rip the ones from the original arcade game in MAME, but thanks to Snapz Pro X 2, I can capture movies of anything on my Mac. Then it's just a matter of taking the individual frames I need, and importing them into ImageReady, so I can see them as animation.Like this:(enlarged to 300%)The Advisor doesn't do much, does it? Although really, how much action can you expect from an Advisor?Those were pretty easy to capt
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27
 

Only 8 pixels wide

So... where was I?Well, I managed to wrap up the coloring on the Solar Plexus label. Jess posted a picture of it here.Still on my "to do" list is the last part (or two) of the label tutorial. I just need to make some time for it.The big project turned out to be the manual for the 2005 MiniGame MultiCart. Besides a tight deadline, it was like doing seven manuals in one, so it turned out to be quite a challenge to cram everything in there, without it turning into something the size of a phone book
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7
 

Stella at 20-something

Well, if you've been following along with this thread in the 2600 forums, then you already know that a DVD release of the 2-part documentary "Stella at 20" is in the works.   Shot in 1997 and released on VHS, this documentary featured interviews with many of the Atari 2600's designers and programmers, as well as Atari's founders: Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn. (See complete descriptions of "Stella at 20" at the CyberPunks home page.)   Volume 2 has long been sold-out, although Volume 1 is sti
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6
 

Making Labels - Part 4

Part 4 - Shading   I'm going to split shading into a couple of categories: Shading and Highlighting. They're actually both part of the rendering process, but the way I approach them in Photoshop is as separate steps.   The reason for this is flexibility. This goes back to the whole thing about splitting the Photoshop document up into layers. I can experiment a lot more by keeping them on different layers, and adjust them as needed.   First though, I'm going to sidetrack a little bit.    
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You can't erase dirt

I spent more time fixing the RPS label today. There's been an area of the drawing that's been bugging me all along, but it wasn't until I printed it out and actually drew on top of it with a pen that I figured out how to fix it. It ended up being a line that needed to be moved, and an area re-shaded a little bit. Then all of the sudden that area seemed to "snap" into place. I was also able to make a couple of other areas work better, so it was worth the effort.Sometimes you just have to see it i
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Making Labels - Part 3

Part 3 - More Coloring     Color Space   This is probably a good point to mention color space. A color space defines what primary colors are combined together, and how they're combined, in order to make a full range of colors.   RGB (red, green, blue) is what you see on your computer display.   CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) is what printers use. Technically, this image is only CMY. But it's a good comparison against RGB.   Printers can not print all of the colors that you c
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3
 

Making Labels - Part 1

When Jess Ragan asked for help in coloring his line art for his 2600 game Solar Plexus, I thought it would be a good opportunity to make a "how-to" for other people who want to create label artwork. Whenever there's a label contest at AtariAge, people invariably ask for tips on creating labels, so hopefully this will be of some help. So here we go...     Part 1 - Line Art   If you're going to draw your own label, that means you're going to end up with line art somewhere in the process. How
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7
 

What's this? A short blog entry?

A few quick things (well... quick to type them up anyway): The RPS label is done! Billy really liked the final artwork, and plans to get back to working on the game soon. As a side note, Billy also had me create some new sprites for the game. So I'm anxious to see how they work out. Speaking of sprites, the next 2600 project I need to work on are some sprites for Manuel's port of Colony 7. (Thought I forgot, didn't you Manuel?) After that, I'll be coloring Jess Ragan's artwork for
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