Zach

I'm interested. I'll have more time to contribute around the end of the month.

Once again, Nathan, . Can't wait to see what else you have been up to.

I don't have any inside information, but the title suggests something similar to the old LED football game from Mattel. (Although, judging by the label, Blip Football may be more colorful.) Until Al gives us details, all I can offer is speculation.

That's a nice collection! Thanks for supporting homebrews.

<--------- See avatar. (Shameless plug)

Pretty cool idea. Needs a cameo from Teen Girl Squad.

A colleague of mine at work has postulated that E.T. would have been better received if the level with no humans but Elliot had been the default. I only played this level as a kid and loved it. Got good at the other levels later in life.

And I thought Blip Football was an NWCGE exclusive. Can't wait to see some screenshots.

SynthCart is 32K too. Of course, it doesn't go on a game list.

Maid In Voyage is a great idea. The made/maid thing is overdone, no offense to anyone here.

That's a good point, but it still limits the possible values of Y. FWIW, I did test the SHX version of my kernel on a 4 switch system, and it looks good so far. I used the instruction SHX $FFC7,Y when Y=3A and X=06, and it did indeed clear VBLANK. Since bit 1 of X is 1, the bitwise AND with (FF+1) must have worked, even though the page boundary was crossed. Maybe we would get different results on different systems. I guess SHX is not thoroughly understood, and it'll be safer to use PHP. Besides I haven't found anything useful to do with the 2 cycles I save in my kernel. (SHX takes 5 cycles, PHP takes 7 when you account for resetting the SP.)

How about the game programmed in straight assembly? I wouldn't use the trademarked title, though.

Hi Darrell, Sorry for taking so long to respond. When I described using the PF for masking, I meant something like this, only the PF would be black instead of white, and would have priority over of the sprite. I'm not sure if it's feasible to actually code this. If it's not, I'd say that no mask is better than a mask on the same side that Scarlett comes from.

Beauty! Will they be in the AA store and/or the AtariService store?

That is a lot. The book looks interesting, and I look forward to reading more about what you've been up to. Are you still in Edinburgh? The high score feature could be useful for my next project. I'll have to look into it. BTW, my next project (meaning the one currently at the top of the to-do list) is something I only imagined a few weeks ago and have not announced yet.

Thanks Fred, unless Y is 0 or 1, I would have to cross a page boundary to reach VBLANK. So it seems that I should not use SHX for this purpose. No problem, I'll just use PHP.

I’ve been working on a kernel where I want to clear bit 2 of VBLANK, but A, X, and Y are all being used for other purposes. I figured out a couple ways to accomplish this, use PHP and make sure the last value loaded was non-zero, or use SHX VBLANK - #OFFSET, Y. Both approaches have pros and cons. What I’m wondering is whether it is a good idea to use SHX? Searching the forums for the SHX, I found that supercat had some ideas for using it (actually similar to the use I am describing). On the other hand, Thomas mentioned that $9E is unstable, and sure enough, that opcode is SHX. Any thoughts?

Remove the playfield when the sprite is fully on screen?

It's too bad none of the authors of the Tetris clones allow carts to be made anymore. Maybe I should just program the game myself.

Astounding animation! Spiceware, any chance you can make the sprites come in from the edge of the screen instead of just appearing whole? Maybe you could place black playfield blocks on other other side, to cover wrap-around.

Five days left! (including today.)

I've never seen one of those before. Thanks for the photo. Interesting that the label says "Distributed by God Does'nt Play Dice". Never heard of them.

Synthcart has been the top selling homebrew for a long time, above all the games. Made me wonder...

Thanks for the positive review of Four-Play. JohnnyWC's games are some of the best homebrews yet, and I don't think FP quite deserves the same rating as them. Maybe FP is a 4.6, the ChampGames are 5.0, and you rounded to the nearest integer. Not many people have noticed the extra work it took to make 52-pixel artwork, except those who followed my blog. Or maybe people enjoy the artwork, but not conciously realize it's wider than usual.

Me neither. I trust that includes "Happy Holidays". You may be right, but I find it odd that many call the secular celebrations Christmas.