Cybergoth

Nathan Strum · February 6, 2006

Of the three songs, only Satisfaction is a good song - the others are/were propped up by their strutting, sexuality, and generally enthusiastic performing.

So the other two were Brown Sugar and Honky Tonk Woman?

Mezrabad · February 6, 2006

With Odyssey 2 games, I always find this question interesting: "Would this hold any potential for a 2600 port?"

I think here we have a clear "no". Indy 500 and Street Racer more than cover the racing parts already and I assume the market for 2600 word scramblers is rather limited

Nathan Strum · February 6, 2006

It's easy to see why the programmers chose these games

So, did you try some rounds of Water Ski already?

Mezrabad · February 6, 2006

A, ROBOTS, GEE

batari · February 5, 2006

I think for a really close port you'll need some sort of intelligent flicker for the enemy cars. I think the Arcade adds one additional car each level. If you play to the bonus round (level 3?) there's lots of cars sitting there, on top and bottom, that might be the maximum. Might be less cars in "New Rally-X", at least it starts easier.

Cybergoth · February 5, 2006

Fun little quirk: if you lose your second cannon while holding the fire button down and it happens to be on the frame where your cursor is a solid shape (not cross-hairs), you can keep on killing stuff just by moving the now "permanently deadly" cursor over them. It looks like the cursor "sticks" at the last condition that it was in when your last cannon exploded.

Thanks for catching that!

Sweet looking game, though it seems impossible to really defend the cannons.

Are the missiles/ball going to travel in more than one direction?

Yup. Right now that's just a particle storm to test the collision detection

Later the fighter ships will run strafing attacks on your colony and you have to shoot them as fast as possible to protect it.

BTW: Should there be an attachment for your bb update?

Cybergoth · February 4, 2006

Looking cool!

Thanks!

Is there a change for supporting the Trakball?

You may use any trackball you want in Joystick mode

As for native TB support, I won't even try. I hate trackballs. (Didn't we already talk about that? Or where is this Deja Vu feeling coming from? Bob would post "Blasphemer!" next, or? )

vdub_bobby · February 4, 2006

I really hope you're not talking Dig Dug here?

vdub_bobby · February 3, 2006

Hm... not sure about Galaga... maybe if it had a Galaxian kernel on the upper half...

TROGDOR · February 2, 2006

My pixel maps for this kernel are a pain. I have to split the graphic tables into odd and even rows. I'll probably write up a small perl program to do that for me. It's tedious work for 16 sprites, and I'll likely be doing a similar odd/even algorithm for Battle of Midway.

Is that because you don't have a line-counter matching the resolution of the sprites? You may consider using FlipDraw then, as it doesn't require a line-counter

Sayton · February 2, 2006

For an easy world record try "Bank Heist". I had beaten that in a few tries. I have it even taped, I'm just not going to submit it as long as TR is the 2600 referee...

TROGDOR · February 2, 2006

You could run a perl script over the output from PCX2GRP transmogrifying the color and shape data it produces into whatever form you prefer. Of course, the example you give won't work, as it uses more than one color per scanline.

Of course, you can also run a perl script over plain PCX or BMP data as well.

Third you can adopt Eckhards tool to any output you want it to, since he included the source

TROGDOR · February 1, 2006

Also, do you know if there are any command-line utilities that will easily convert a graphics file with a small number of colors into a text file (one line/row) and/or a "raw" RGB file? Could be very handy as part of a toolchain.

Oh, I thought I already told you that, it can be found here

Nathan Strum · February 1, 2006

Phew, that is a pretty impresive list!

Feel free to publish any C7 sprites in your blog or elsewhere, just as you wish - they're your creations after all

As for researching a certain kind of sports sprites, there's a NES game of the same name that has pretty small and cutesy sprites, well worth some rounds of ... research

4a) Make a list of what sprite artists need to know from programmers, in order to make 2600 sprites.

Greetings,

Manuel

TROGDOR · February 1, 2006

It's also a cool workaround of hardware limitations, with the animation then being 9 or 10 pixels wide instead of 8

Sayton · February 1, 2006

Interesting. I thought you'd give up on that within a week or so.

Mezrabad · January 31, 2006

Looking forward to the review of the first ever home Video-Golf game!

Nathan Strum · January 31, 2006

Uihjah! Coleco did a C64 game?

TROGDOR · January 31, 2006

Have you thought about trying Driving Controllers for this (or Star Fortress BTW)? I did a DC hack of the Combat plane scenes called "Ace" a few years ago that was good fun for two players.

The bomb could be activated with foot pedals in the second port. Or is this going to be a 2 player game? Actually, is this going to be a Wings of Fury type of game or will it be no-scroll single screen?

vdub_bobby · January 30, 2006

Ooopsa. Guess I just noticed "Edit II" today, when reading message 18

vdub_bobby · January 30, 2006

Hi Bob!

That is definitely an improvement now!

It still seems to be a bit buggy, though. If you're not moving the ship, it seems like there's some blind spots where never a shot is shown. They just seem to jump over it. I thought with an even flicker distribution you should be able to see shots on any vertical position eventually, no?

Greetings,

Manuel

Nathan Strum · January 30, 2006

Hi there!

Global Thermonuclear War for the VCS sounds fascinating.

Try porting the legendary Amiga classic Nuclear War

Greetings,

Manuel

Mezrabad · January 29, 2006

Hi there!

This is my favourite column of RTM. In fact I just started collecting for the NES and after his reviews I already bought me a DK Classics, Popeye and Mario Bros.

Can't wait for the next issue!

Greetings,

Manuel

vdub_bobby · January 28, 2006

Those are some pretty good ideas. I think it comes down to the game you're actually doing then, to find the best mechanism.

- How many sprites are tracked by the engine?

- Which movement patterns do they have?

The first is most essential. Tracking 24 objects, the engine can't use more than 3 bytes per object or you're busted for example.

Also, don't underestimate the object-handler. From all my experiences can it easily consume more cycles than the sorting

vdub_bobby · January 27, 2006

Uhm... beware though... I'm not granting that it's really possible...

So far I've only done that with one sprite

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