Hi there!
Ok, I got sidetracked a bit, playing way more G'n'G than I should have played...
Anyway, here's now another Colony 7 milestone, featuring no less than 20 brandnew marvellous explosion sprites from Nathan!
Besides all animation code for the explosions, I also tweaked lotsa issues introduced by that, like having destroyed cannons quit firing and other logical adjustments all over the place, like collision detection and the smartbomb animations for example.
Only thing th
Hi there!Phew... so the constant requests for a continuation of the Jumpman project made me think about the projects I still want to do on ye good ol' VCS in the next years...While I really have started lots of projects in the past 6 years, the ones I consider worth finishing are actually *just* half a dozen - Colony 7- Water Ski- Beach Head- Gateway to Apshai- Jumpman- HunchbackSo, what do we have already?Colony 7: ->About 60% done. Definitely the game I want to release this year.Water Ski:
Hi there!Thanks to everyone participating in or just following my previous blog entry which was entitled "The project after the project...", where I was narrowing down a large list of Arcade game choices to find a project to try next, once Colony 7 is out of the door :)So, without any further ado, here it comes:While at first glance it didn't look like a winner at all (in fact I hate sport games!) it just won me over with its charm. Marvellous and unique gameplay, beautiful graphics with lovely
Hi there!
Well, well... researching the next project is always fun and I can never get enough of "discovering" weird old arcade obscurities...
So here's my project research list for the project after Colony 7. Beach Head is in there as a stopper, if I find nothing better within my list, I'll do that next
(Putting G'n'G a little downwards the ToDo list... I don't think I'm ready for it... yet )
Beach Head
Time Tunnel
Water Ski
Greetings,
Manuel
Hi there!While researching this, I found two old mockups from moycon:The bologna sandwiches aside, I think this would be a pretty close approximation of what a 2600 version could look like.I'm just uncertain about the required amount of flicker in the first screen, especially on the top/bottom horizontals. Anyone have a clue what the maximum number of enemies in Zoo Keeper is? I assume with buffering the playfield and storing creature information, most RAM is already used up, so this would proba
Hi there!... if you don't hear much from me the next week.Today I spent some of that christmas money for "Fire Emblem - Sacred Stones" and, just as expected, I'm totally sucked into it... ;)Greetings,Manuel
Hi there!Oh, how original, a Top 7! :)Why 7? Pretty easy. I just checked all movies I saw in 2005, considering which would qualify to get bought on DVD. Then I simply ranked all 7 :lol:Well, here ya go:1. Sin City2. Constantine3. Batman Begins4. Episode III5. Serenity6. Mr. & Mrs. Smith7. The IslandAs you can see, I'm a sucker for Comic based movies ;)Greetings,Manuel
Hi there!Here I have something very special. Talking in superlatives, it's IMO "The best computer music ever made".What is it? It's 4 age old Amiga soundtracker tunes. I've searched for them a long time through the whole internet, as these where my favourite tunes on the Amiga. Actually they where one of the reasons I bought an Amiga back then.You can now listen to them, simply by installing this winamp plugin:http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=2266The four tunes are:dns.modThis one bl
Hi there!
I've spent a lot of time today playing Colony 7 on MAME, regarding a few aspects of the game:
- Crosshair and enemy speeds
I actually recorded an AVI of me playing the game, moving the crosshair around from top-left to right-bottom, I let the bummer do a full travel from left to right, and then I spent some more time single stepping through the AVI frame by frame and to my suprise, finally coming to the conclusion that the last binary I sent already is a very close match to
Hi there!Yup, here she comes. It's been a while since Bob requested some proof pics that it's the most beautiful baby in the world, but finally we got some:Greetings,Manuel
Hi there!
While I decided to have my Colony 7 holidays development burst mostly happening on [stella], here's now a version that's IMO justifying some progress report here as well.
For one, since Chris asked *here* about a finale for the shooting sequence and because I first saw the masked draw technique I use for it *here* in Roberts Blog. (Thanks! )
Other than that, I did a few more things, like reinstalling the spawning code, and the usual code optimisations.
Next things on my
Hi there!Just watched the drawing of the Groups live on German TV and noted down everything:Group A:1. Germany2. Costa Rica3. Poland4. EcuadorGroup B:1. England2. Paraguay3. Trinidad & Tobago4. SwedenGroup C: 1. Argentina2. Cote D'Ivoire3. Serbia & Montenegro4. NetherlandsGroup D:1. Mexico2. Iran3. Angola4. PortugalGroup E:1. Italy2. Ghana3. USA4. Czech RepublicGroup F:1. Brazil2. Croatia3. Australia4. JapanGroup G:1. France2. Switzerland3. Korea Republic4. TogoGroup H:1. Spain2. Ukraine
Hi there!Wow, that was quick! Nintendo just won the race for the first "killer app rpg" with:Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time!Total no-brainer for me. Its GBA prequel easily makes it into the top 5 games I played the last 5 years! While rather short (except the end battle!) it certainly was the game with the highest laughs/minute ratio ever!Ok, just for the overall summary, scorers so far are:DS: Castlevania, Mario Kart, Advance Wars, Mario & Luigi PSP: Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stor
Hi there!
Uihjah... what a weekend...
Against all odds I managed reclaiming my 4th rank in the Mini Compo with Crazy Balloon. Half a year ago I'd never thought it'd do that good, especially since it is pretty "unapproachable" due to its rather unique (un)control scheme
Well, I guess maybe it got some extra oddball(oon) bonus because of not being yet another a Lightcycle or Tetris game
Besides "watching" the compo and family visits I also found some minutes to finally add Nathans s
Hi thereOh my god, can it get any cooler?The Pong Clock And here I thought the part about the "Church of Pong" in Interplays classic "Neuromancer" game was a joke... :lolblue:Greetings,Manuel
Hi there!Uihjah... long time no see of this feature... well, Nintendo and Sony are still very slow on releasing games striking my interest.Well, ok, as you might remember, I'm tracking here my little private handheld war, with the result helping me decide which of the two new portables I should buy (maybe I should say, "buy first", as I might get the other one as well - a year or two down the road...)Originally my deadline was Christmas, but since both handhelds don't have any RPGs available so
Hi there!
Yay! I somehow managed to find some time to work on this again!
This update implements a large chunk of the particle code. There's still several small tweaks to be done sometime later, but all particles are now able to *perform* their main tasks:
The game can handle 6 particles. 2 are reserved for the "Own Fire Trails" effect and the other 4 for enemy fire.
Right now the Trails effect is pretty much completed, just press fire to see it. (Move the crosshair while firing
Hi there!Today is the day! Today after 13 or 14 years the first new real Fields of the Nephilim album "Mourning Sun" will be released in Germany! This is the major headline news in each & every gothic mag available here:Needless to say I'm thrilled to the hilt!Where's my goth gear? Where's my hat? Time to roam the streets in black again! :lol:Best part of it: They'll not only return on CD, but also soon to the stage!(Nonrelated sidenote: I think I just read somewhere that Nitzer Ebb are also
Hi there!Phew... now with the minigame contest being finished for 2005, the fun thing begins: Playing the games!While most were available for a long time already, I prefer to go through them in two big blocks (1K & 4K) at once, so I can all compare them against each other. Today was a day "off" in Germany, so I had enough time to go through all 1K mini game submissions.I rarely really like a 1K game. It seems too much of a compromise usually. No music, no fx, no scoring, no state display, no
Hi there!So the baby arrived here 14 days ago. Since then I found it somewhat impossible to focus on anything for longer than 10 minutes, so I didn't even seriously try 2600 programming during the last days. I sure hope things will calm down some time soon... :ponder:In case some was wondering at what unusual times I post messages lately... - yes, I don't sleep much anymore. In fact I'm slowly turning into a zombie... (What an interview question for Alien Sex Fiend: "Did you have a newborn baby
Hi there!Ouch, that hurt! Real tragedy :sad:This was easily one of the three worst live gigs I've ever seen. So bad I actually left the building after 8 songs. (Right now I can remember only one single other gig where I left during the regular set out of pure disappointment : The Wipers )To me, the Mission were always the 2nd best live gothic rock show on the planet. (2nd only to Fields of the Nephilim that is!)They lost songwriting sometime after 1994, I think. Masque was their best album IMO.
Hi there!
Another small step is done, I'm just done smoothing out the particle code.
The attached demo shows 6 particles at once on the screen.
Note: Only 4 of them make it down to the bottom. 2 of them are reserved for the players shots, so there's no need to display 3 particles below the cannons.
There's also occasionally a barely noticable tearing effect on particles on the left edge. But I think it's ok like it is.
I'm currently thinking about a tradeoff, but I'm not sure if
Hi there!So I decided to analyze (i.e. reverse-engineer) Super Cobra first, to see what potential a Scramble port would have.In a first step, I distella'd as much as possible of the code and made it compile into a bit perfect NTSC binary.Next thing I need to do now is learning how Parkers b/s scheme works ;)Greetings,Manuel