Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store
  • entries
    657
  • comments
    2,692
  • views
    898,642

Holiday Qb

SpiceWare

Entry posted by SpiceWare

1,197 views

 Share

Holiday Qb, by Andrew Davie

4/5

 

Ho! Ho! Ho! It's Christmas Time at Atari Age and you've been tapped to take on the role of good ol' St. Nick! For some reason, instead of preparing for Christmas Eve, you're solving puzzles by sliding blocks while collecting goodies and avoiding baddies.

 

Holiday QB is the holiday cart for 2004. This was the second year of what's become an annual tradition here at Atari Age. Sadly I missed out on the first year, but I won't let that happen again! For this year's holiday cart Andrew Davie took his original game, Qb, and spruced it up with some holiday themed graphics. Even the digits in the score have been jazzed up.

 

When you power on Holiday Qb you're presented with the main game screen with a nice demo of the game going on. The larger area on the left is the playfield, with a smaller target grid located in the upper right. Santa starts out in the lower right of the playfield and can slide the block he's standing on in any direction until it hits the edge of the screen or another block. If you slide up against another block you can jump on it to take control of it. The goal is to arrange the blocks in the playfield to match the arrangement shown in the target grid. The target grid will helpfully flash blocks that still need to be positioned.

 

Sounds easy, but snowballs will pop up on some of the blocks. When the snowball melts a goodie or a baddie will appear. The goodies are items like gingerbread men and candy canes. The baddies are characters like snowmen and Santa hats that have taken on a life of their own. Collect the goodies for points, or even extra lives if you can figure out the secret collection sequence. While you may want to avoid the baddies, don't. They have a habit of moving around the blocks, thus hampering your quest to match the patterns. Banish a baddie by jumping onto their block while holding down the fire button - but be careful, holding down the button will decrease your score. If it gets down to zero the banishment will stop working.

 

While the playfield is pretty sparse, the characters are done using a flicker technique to create some slick multi-colored sprites. It's a neat way of working around the Atari's single color sprites, at the expense of characters that look a bit ghostly due to the flicker. Sound effects are functional, but nothing to write home about.

 

One thing I found really odd was the lives indicator that appears at the start of each round in Qb was left out of Holiday Qb.

 

All in all it's a fun puzzle game.

 

Next up, AtariVox Speech Synthesizer

 Share

10 Comments

Recommended Comments

vdub_bobby
the characters are done using Andrew's "Chronocolor" to create some slick multi-colored sprites. It's a neat way of working around the Atari's single color sprites, at the expense of characters that look a bit ghostly due to the flicker.

What does that mean, "Chronocolor?" It looks to me like they are just flickering between two colors - I thought Chronocolor was something more than that...

Link to comment
SpiceWare

As I understand it, ChronoColor is just changing colors over time. In this Andrew mentions ChronoColor in relation to an update to QB, so I gather changing between 2 colors is the bare minimum for his ChronoColor definition. His other examples I've seen used 3 colors - red, blue and green.

Link to comment
Nathan Strum
What does that mean, "Chronocolor?" It looks to me like they are just flickering between two colors - I thought Chronocolor was something more than that...

I think "Interleaved Chronocolour" is the other one that he used (for the 2003 Holiday cart).

Link to comment
dwh

Quote,"Holiday QB is the holiday cart for 2004. This was the second year of what's become an annual tradition here at Atari Age. Sadly I missed out on the first year, but I won't let that happen again!"

So did I, but got very lucky on e(vil)-bay and got a copy.

Link to comment
vdub_bobby

Based on that explanation, I don't see how the sprites in Qb are "ChronoColour" - they aren't interleaved, they aren't red, green, and blue images flickered in rapid succession...?

 

Does Andrew call them ChronoColoured sprites somewhere?

Link to comment
SpiceWare

I think there's "ChronoColor" and "Interleaved ChronoColor".

 

"ChronoColor" flickers between 2 colors,with the end result being 3 colors.

 

"Interleaved ChronoColor" uses striped RGB and rotates the colors each frame.

 

I've dropped Andrew a note asking if he has the time if he'd care to clarify it for us.

Link to comment
Andrew Davie
I think there's "ChronoColor" and "Interleaved ChronoColor".

 

"ChronoColor" flickers between 2 colors,with the end result being 3 colors.

 

"Interleaved ChronoColor" uses striped RGB and rotates the colors each frame.

 

I've dropped Andrew a note asking if he has the time if he'd care to clarify it for us.

 

Qb does not use ChronoColour. Qb just flashes two different sprites alternately, each with different colour. ChronoColour is a whole different and much more sophisticated kettle of fish, involving three frames, each of those interleaved with each other into red/green/blue scanlines, and generated as a 1-bit dithered version of the original. No comparison can be made between the techniques - it's like comparing a pushbike and a ferrari and saying they both have wheels so they're essentially the same.

Link to comment
Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2023 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...