catsfolly

Is there a version of C for the Intellivision now? This should work, assuming that "whichtile" is a 16 bit number. whichtile=((franky/8)*20)+(frankx/8); tilevalue = *(BACKTAB + whichtile) ; Catsfolly

Actually in 2016 GroovyBee wrote a Coloured Squares library for Intybasic, which allowed people to plot points on the Intellivision colored square screen like it was a blocky bitmap. I used his routines to write a colored squares "Snake" game and "Mirror Snake" game. The routines were easy to understand and use. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/248436-colored-squares-snake-game-wip/?tab=comments#comment-3436089 Back in 2014, I wrote some assembly language routines to do colored square sprites on the Intellivision. These routines would draw colored square sprites, including transparent areas, on the colored square screen. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/228743-big-blocky-things-on-my-intellivision/?tab=comments#comment-3055184 I have never released the assembly language routines, but I am tempted to rewrite them in IntyBasic just to see how fast they would run... Catsfolly

If you make a system with 2 Z80's, isn't that a dual boot system too? I think a system with a 68000 and a Z80 sounds like a Sega Genesis copy, while a dual Z80 machine would be a unique system. Clive Sinclair made 3 successful computers based on the Z80 ( the ZX80, the ZX81, and the Spectrum) , but he got into trouble when he tried to make a 68000 based machine (the QL). I think this was partly because he kept the 8bit data bus, which slowed down the 68000 quite a bit. How wide is the data bus on the SGM2? How do you address more than 64k of Ram with the new Z80?

So, in this picture, is the graphics chip just sitting on top of the pc board, or is it mounted at an angle? (I'm assuming the black square thing is the new graphics chip...)

Thanks for the answers. I'm thinking that one use for "plane B" would be as a non-scrolling text overlay on top of the game screen - for displaying player scores, lives, and other information - like many arcade machines had back in the day. I guess I should read up on Super Nintendo scrolling and zoom to find out how this sort of thing was done on other systems...

Random hardware questions: 1. If sprites have 16 colors, is color index 0 transparent? How about for tiles? 2. If I want my sprite to walk behind a lamp post, does the lamp post have to be a sprite too? 3. Can the framebuffer be wider than the number of tiles displayed on the screen? Just trying to get my head around this new hardware...

RoadBlasters? Do you mean "Road Runner"? Road Blasters was not a Laserdisc game. In the mid 80's, Sega and Namco had sprite scaling arcade hardware - the game would store one image of (for example) a tree by the side of the road, and the hardware would scale the sprite image up or down when the object was supposed to be close by or far away. Atari Games didn't have sprite scaling hardware in 1987- so they faked it in Road Blasters. Every side of the road object was rendered at many different sizes - and they just switched the graphics for the sprite as the object got closer. Since the Omni has scalable sprites, I imagine it could do Road Blasters much more easily than the original arcade hardware. Edit - oops. Sorry about that. I was confusing Atari Games' Road Blasters with Data East's RoadBlaster, which was a Laser Disc game. Sorry.

Hey, I programmed this game back in 1982 (with help from Jeff Ratcliff)! Thanks for the positive review!

This is fun.. It reminds me a lot of the original game. The green robots give me trouble because I am in the habit of always chasing robots. Some suggestions: 1. It would be nice if the game screen would initially pause for a second or two to give the player a chance to find their position. 2. The tip about "different robot colors meaning different movement patterns" seems misleading since some robot colors are deadly. 3. The "How to play" section needs better key debouncing so the player can easily see each page. Wait for like one second of no key pressed before accepting a new keypress that advances the page. 4. If the power up icons were in the same order as their descriptions, it might be easier to follow. So far so good. I have seen the boss a few times,but haven't beat him yet....

Happy New Year! 2019 could be a very interesting year...

Hockey Robots of Death had 16 robots on screen at once (I could have done more, but the screen felt cramped https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIj5lgdvulc Here's an example in Intybasic: The robots can't overlap, so it's not really like Robotron. But it might give you some ideas... Catsfolly

I think this is referring to the Collectorvision Phoenix. At one point Collectorvision was contemplating adding more memory and another sound chip to their FPGA core, in the same locations as in the SGM, so that SGM compatible games would just coincidentally run on the Phoenix. After a very long discussion (I think it's on the Collectorvision area, somewhere), Collectorvision agreed to license the SGM so they could say they were an "official SGM compatible system", and Opcode will get a license fee for each Phoenix system shipped.IIRC...

I was a big fan of Ed Averett's games on the Odyssey 2 - games like UFO, Monkeyshines, PickAxe Pete, and Attack of The Timelords. He was for a while almost singlehandedly competing with Atari and Intellivision, writing like 24 games back in the day. I'm excited to see what he can do with this new console. I think in many ways a console is like a musical instrument - each one has strengths and weaknesses and unique characteristics the help define the nature of the games that are done for that system. Just as the electric guitar didn't make the acoustic guitar obsolete, the existence of modern consoles doesn't make the old consoles obsolete. That's one reason why there is still interest in games for these older systems. I'm looking forward to seeing this "new, 80's style, what could have been" console!

The rights to Klax are owned by Time Warner, so I can't just make a version of it. On the other hand, Mark Pierce (the designer and producer of Klax), started his own game company years ago and made a "Klax Inspired" game for iphones called "Starburst" which was similar to Klax except the game pieces moved up instead of down. So maybe something could be done,,,

The Air Hockey game on Paddle Party was primarily designed as a two player game, with the single player mode thrown in so people could practice the controls by themselves. Shuffle Puck Cafe is a single player game, so it can use first person view, and it has a variety of interesting opponents with different graphics, strengths, and weaknesses. This kind of game is best suited to a mouse, or trackball, or some kind of analog controller. The Intellivision has only a digital "on/off" controller. Some tricks can be done such as having the movement speed up the longer the disk is held, or moving at different speeds based on the position pressed on the disk, but it will never be as natural as an analog control.

Keith Robinson published tons of information about the Intellivision on the Intellivision Lives website. I'm sure it could have filled a book if he had gotten around to making one... http://www.intellivisionlives.com/history.php Catsfolly

It cool that there seems to be enough money behind this that Intellivision can finally get the licenses that they couldn't get before - games like Super Burgertime and Tron Deadly Disks, and even Toe Jam and Earl (I'd buy that one just for the music).

Whenever Blue Sky Rangers played the original Intellivision Football game, and had to select their plays and options on the TV screen while hoping the other player was too busy to notice what moves they selected, the players would always say - "What we really need is a screen on the controller that shows information that only the player can see." Looks like this is finally going to happen. (The dreamcast had memory cards in the controller with displays in them, but the resolution was really low. There was a Pac-man game for the Gamecube where the players used Gameboys as the controllers, and they saw a different view of things on the gameboy screens than on the TV screen.) I'm interested in seeing what can be done with this little screen... Catsfolly

It's basically a small box with two controllers on top, I think if they made it more angular, it would look like an Intellivision 2.

Thanks, m"r_me, that was exactly the kind of commmerical I was talking about. It brings back memories.... (In case someone doesn't know, the code name for the ECS keyboard was LUCKI (Low Cost Keyboard for Intellivision) pronounced "lucky". The commercial is making an inside joke about this when it says that "Intellivision owners won't believe their LUCK!")

In 1983 in America, the Atari 5200 and Colecovision were released to challenge Intellivision's status as the high-end system. So Mattel made some commercials showing in-development projects like World Series baseball and the system changer, since they had no new system to show.

I vaguely remember Adventures of Tron having somersaults. Either they were taken out, or I'm remembering it wrong...

Sounds like the intellivision version of the Atari 2600 "Adventures of Tron" game.

I wasn't suggesting that the jump speed should change - I said it LOOKED fast when I first saw it, but when I played the game it was fine. My Japanese keyboard doesn't seem to have a "Right option" button. I guess I'll have to try out a controller test program and find out what keys respond to the "lower action button". I like mr_me's suggestion that maybe any action key should start the game.... Catsfolly

I did an experiment something like this years ago, when IntyBasic was just a baby: Of course, it was just a hack of clowns and balloons, and I never did anything with it... So I had to check out this game. I tried out version dj31. Initially I had some trouble. When I pressed '1', I got the ending animation instead of any game play. I tried many key combinations, and finally got the game to play by pressing 9 and 0 at the same time on my keyboard (running jzintv on windows). Not sure what this equates to on the Intellivision. My visual first impression of the game was that it was running too fast - the player quickly accelerates to max speed so it is hard to appreciate the gravity effects. But when I actually played the game, it seemed well tuned. I always felt like I could do better next time. I finally made it to level 3, and I had a good time getting there! Here are my suggestions: 1. When the bird hits the player, the player disappears and the game freezes. This looks like a bug or a crash. I think something should happen here. For example - a. the player sprite turns upside down and falls off the bottom of the screen. b. the player sprite explodes. c. the player sprite bounces away from the main bird and then falls of the screen. d. a sound effect. If possible, the bird should keep moving... 2. In clowns and balloons, I varied the frequency of the bouncing sound effect based on the vertical velocity of the player sprite when it hit the trampoline. This gives some variety in the jumping sound. If your jumping sound is a musical type sound, maybe you could chose from a list of sounds based on the player sprite's velocity.... 3. Maybe a few frames before the beam up, all the clouds could disappear and the player sprite could drop for a couple frames, and then get hit by the beam and beamed up. Just to add a little drama to it... That's all I can think of at the moment. Looking good... Catsfolly