Bob's Blog

Hi there!

 

After seeing supercats Missile Command variant I think a good SC project might also be Qix

 

As for 30Hz flicker on everything, try the Robot City Prototype for reference.

 

Greetings,

Manuel

I like the idea, but not the 30Hz flicker (I suffer from migraines occasionally). I think you could get around it by using the SC memory. For example, if you restrict the players so that two appear in the same vertical band you could then draw them both using a single sprite. Normally this would require a large number of predefined sprites for all the possible spacings. However, on the SC you could generate the sprite dynamically in memory. If the sprite is always the same height as the screen, you wouldn't need to use skip/switchdraw to display it. The players needn't completely overlap either - you could use the left 5 pixels to display one player, and the right 5 to display another (with a 3 pixel overlap). My Jetman sprite is 5 pixels wide and would probably do the job. You could go even further and generate all four players with a single sprite by displaying a double sprite and changing the data between copies. Anyway, I'm not sure if this is entirely possible, but there are probably some other tricks using memory that could get around the problem.

 

Cheers,

Chris

Thanks for the comments. I'm starting to think this project doesn't really need a supercharger, just a lot of ROM. Well, a supercharger could be used to make it look fancier, but it doesn't really need it for anything. But I still like the idea, so I'm going to explore it a little further.

 

Your idea of using using one player to display two sprites is a good one, cd-w; but I'm not sure if it would work. That would definitely cause it to require the SC, though

Your idea of using using one player to display two sprites is a good one, cd-w; but I'm not sure if it would work.  That would definitely cause it to require the SC, though

 

I'm not sure if it would work either However, if you are using the SC, then yout probably want to make full use of the available facilities. I will be interested to see how this one turns out.

 

Chris

30 Hz flicker is really no big deal as long as its a high contrast from foreground to background and the background is monochrome. I used to think it mattered, but then I worked on Wolfenstein which is a hack of Venture. Venture uses 30 Hz flicker for the sprites to get 6 on the screen with limitations on horizontal overlap. On a real TV I can't see the sprites flickering.

 

Cheers!

30 Hz flicker is really no big deal as long as its a high contrast from foreground to background and the background is monochrome.  I used to think it mattered, but then I worked on Wolfenstein which is a hack of Venture.  Venture uses 30 Hz flicker for the sprites to get 6 on the screen with limitations on horizontal overlap.  On a real TV I can't see the sprites flickering.   

 

Cheers!

Hmmm...is the non-monochrome background why Espial looks so freaking awful? I thought they were doing some kind of crazy 15 Hz flicker, because it looked so bad, but then I looked closer and saw that it's just 30 Hz.