BLiP Football Source
Today, I'm posting up the source for BLiP Football.
About BLiP Football. Original name: LEDhead because of being based on LEDhead by Peter Hirschberg. Was released in a small quantity in a beta version at NWCGE 2K6 1.0
I had a lot of help. I was the lead programmer you could say. There is a big contribution from Peter Hirschberg who wrote the PC version LEDhead and was generous in sharing his source code. This gave me a design template and allowed me to shortcut and just focus on the 2600 implementation on the 2600. I originally used a playfield bitmap display (borrowed from bBasic) to get the game 90% up and running. I then contacted Bob Montgomery and he enthusiastically contributed the display kernel and graphics, music driver, title screen subroutines and converted the display elements in the game logic to use BCD.
We swapped the code back and forth. It was a little annoying because our styles are different but it worked out OK, we had cleanly divided areas of work. For me it really helped having the source code in a Perforce server at home (free) so that I was able to more easily integrate Bob's code.
I selected a tune and his brother did the title song. I did the art for the title based on a design by David Exton. Of course, I had to pound out the bugs, alone, shivering in my lonely dark garage.
Bob and Tommy were very quick and I was very impressed with their work.
Doing a sequel - Football II? Or other LED games?
The infrastructure of the game code is already designed to handle Football II without too much difficulty, that is, there is a move up field and move down field for instance. The display code would need some work because Football II uses a 10 yard wide screen and with the extra blip for the ball in the air.
On Football, I made the fire button the run button to get as authentic a feel for running as on the handheld where you would be madly tapping the <> button to go down field. On Football II it would have to be the joystick for the direction control and then the fire button to pass.
I'm probably not going to work on a Football II for the time being, just to get a change of pace. But I wouldn't mind doing it later.
My day job is actually making games but I'm usually the guy writing the 'display kernels' etc and this football project gave me a chance to focus more on the game side.
I'd say the biggest problem I had (besides stupid bugs) was issues with random #'s which I solved after some research and help from postings to the AtariAge homebrew forums.
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