CV Gus

Sorry, I lost count- the letters are of different sizes. What I meant was that the first two tiles were just red and yellow, and that third one- the one all the way to the right- was only black and red, because (if I got it right) you MUST define both colors, you can't just leave it out and get nothing (black, in this case). What I tried to do was a multicolor barrier, with a red cap at the end there. During the weekend, I looked at the 5200 version of Ms. Pac Man. The mazes are multicolor, but I also had a picture of the arcade version- the 5200 is wrong. If you count the dots in the maze, you see that it is not the same as the arcade version. The 7800 version is right, but not the 5200. I checked out Opcode's current version here http://www.opcodegames.com/pacman.html The mazes are not multicolor, but they are right- count the dots, and its the same as the arcade version. So I'm thinking that Opcode chose not to make multicolor mazes so he could keep the dots and shape right- maybe in the CV and 5200 you can have multicolor mazes, OR they can be shaped like the arcade, but you can't have both. Opcode went with the right shape. But you could do multicolor mazes, if like the 5200 you don't care if the shape is different. Or is that wrong? You'd sure know! Thanks in advance!

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR You're making the basic mistake that most beginners make when they start working with CV graphics: You're using more colors than you are allowed! In your example above, you're actually using three colors, namely "R", "Y" and the "invisible" color which you are not representing in your tile diagram. Again, there is no such thing as a "screen color" on the CV. You only have two colors (per scanline, per tile) to work with, and that's it. ************************ Oh, yeah, I see it- the third tile. I'm using 3: black (nothing), yellow, and red- I see now. So each line in your example actually acts as a single color on a mini-screen of its own! I think the C-64 has something like that. So my example would work if it was like this: RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR The red at the end of the barrier here is like a red cap. That tile only has two colors. Or would it work?

I'm not sure I'm following your example, but allow me to try to explain it my way: In graphic mode #2, you could define an 8x8 tile like this: 00011000 --- 1=white, 0=transparent (black) 01100110 --- 1=medium blue, 0=black (non-transparent) 11110011 --- 1=dark red, 0=white 00110001 --- 1=light yellow, 0=dark red 00000000 --- 1=grey, 0=light green (this entire line is light green) 11111111 --- 1=grey, 0=light green (this entire line is grey) 10000001 --- 1=magenta, 0=black 00111100 --- 1=white, 0=black (non-transparent) So for each line inside an 8x8 tile, you can assign a color to the 1s and another color to the 0s. You've got 16 colors to choose from (color #0 is transparent, but if you use it in a tile, it comes out black, like color #1, because transparency can only be applied to sprites, AFAIK). ********************************** Boy, am I learning alot about CV graphics here. From what you said before, I thought that each tile could show one color in each line of 8 dots. You could use a different color for each line, so a tile with several color stripes- like the stripes on the American flag- could be done. Please remember that I don't think of screen color as a color- it just means nothing is there. So the enemy bugs in CV Ladybug are just one color things to me. But your example here tells me that I was wrong- that each line in a tile can have 2 colors, independent of the other lines (in your example, the third line has red and white, and the fifth could be grey and green). You don't even have that 2 dots=1 dot multicolor thing the Commodor computers have. So the CV can do a lot more than I thought. So the right edge of a barrier in Ms. Pac-Man could look like this (3 tiles across): RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR So now I really don't get why the mazes in Ms. Pac-Man can't be multicolor, the CV seems to be better than the 5200, or even the 7800!

In other words, a multi-colored maze is impossible, no matter what?

When you say "two colors," do you mean "screen color" (nothing) and a color? So what you mean is that, in a line in a tile, only two choices are there: A color or nothing. Does this mean all 8 dots in a line in a tile (on-on-on-on-on-on-on-on), or can it be any of the 8, like on-on-off-on-off-off-off-on. So something like this, in a 8X8 tile set-up, would look like this: RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBRR BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBRRRR BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBRRRR These are four lines in three tiles. The third one just has those dots on. R=red, B=blue.

There's no way to have a multi-colord maze, even with lower resolution? But the castle in Mr.Do!s Castle looks better than the 5200 one- isn't that some different mode?

I've seen the Ms. Pac-Man screenshots, and see what you mean by monochromatic. Looks good still. If you had decided to go with multicolored mazes, what would the result have been(no flicker method, just regular put it on the screen type stuff)? Would it have looked like the 5200, multicolored but not as smooth at the ends? Could the two styles be chosen for the player, on the final product? Lookin' foward to it! Keep it up, and for you guys out there, if you want more of this stuff, then buy it, allready!

I was wondering- will the mazes in Ms. Pac-Man be multi-colored, as in the 7800 and 5200 versions? If so, what method would you use to do this? So far, it looks spectacular! I haven't played Pac-Man Plus since, well, maybe 1983 or 1984! This game is on my wish list, along with a completed CV Joust and Daniel Bienvenu's Reversi!