Zach

Good luck with the kernel rewrite, Chris. One of these days I'm going to download MAME so I can understand the games people are doing.

First I'll get the game working, then I'll see if anything needs to be compromised. But yeah, if it's a choice between graphics or AI, AI should prevail. However, compromises would only be for the minigame compo. If I have to use rectangular pieces for 1K, I'll still make a version with full graphics. Perhaps I'll publish it as a bonus game with Four-Play. Anyway, I've attached a new version, fully playable with dumb AI. To move a piece, place the cursor there, hold the fire button, and push left or right to move diagonally or up to move vertically.

Got 23000 today. Haven't taken a photo yet, but the evidence is on videotape.

Ladybug looks great so far, Johnnywc. What a tease!

If you need four cycles, indexed addressing also works when X or Y is constant, plus it's only 2 bytes whereas STA.w is 3. For example if X=#$10, then STA Temp4-16,X would be your code.

Thanks John, unfortunately I am having trouble finding time to update GRP0, GRP1, HMM0, NUSIZ0, and ENAM1, plus doing a STA HMOVE and a branch. It would have been nice to forgo self-modifying code.

Thanks Bob. This'll be useful when I get back to my 4K game.

How can you call Cyplix a Homebrew?

Looks good, supercat. The details are a little different, but you got the gist of it. The 7th sprite is indeed drawn with missiles. M0 is shifted and changes size, and M1 is constant at 2 pixels and shifted to the left rather than disabled. Your way looks like it might have some advantages in terms of saving code space.

Uhm... but you can I don't remember the trick in detail, but there's a demo in the [stella] archives that does it, showing two big dragons. I think the "meltdown" prototype also does that. Greetings, Manuel I've heard of that trick used in Meltdown, but as I recall z26 does not support that trick. The kernel posted here does work in z26.

Good guess. That's close to how the Four-Play demo works, but as far as I can see, to form the shields you would still need more than six sprites+color changes.

Excellent music! I look forward to the release.

I got 19250 today, so it won't be much longer. One thing I found helps is to use a FB2 controller. My score immediately went up by about 2000 when I switched joysticks.

I did take a look at 3D Tic Tac Toe on the FB2, and the HMOVE blanks are definitely gone there. I was surprised to see this because Pitfall! and River Raid still blank out the left edge of the screen. I wonder if the Activision games are using something else?

Is this true? Some of us use HMOVE blanks for masking in our kernels.

Wow, there's a lot to reply to here. My new custom status should suggest that it's not a racing game. I'll PM you such a version. I found that problem yesterday too. My fix was adding TXA and ASL to restore the carry bit, but I'll definitely look at your solutions too. Thanks for all the ideas for squeezing out memory. I made a quick list of information that would need to be saved during the kernel. It's possible I overlooked something. 1 bit for current player 6 bits for cursor position 4 bits for piece under cursor (assuming cursor will blink) 4 bits for castling conditions (for example, one bit is cleared if the black queen's rook moves) 4 bit for en passant condition (At most one en passant capture can be done at a time. One bit will indicate whether en passant is legal and 3 bits will indicate where.) 3 bits for up to 8 skill levels 3 bits for up to 8 chess variants Total: 25 Thanks. Yeah, if I ever get around to doing the logic it'd start with a standard opening and then use a minimax search to select moves. Looks good. You'll see these pieces in the next version.

I'd like to see a remake of The Pink Panther based on the surviving screenshots.

Might it be related to my new avatar? I'll post details when I either get it working, or I decide it's not feasible.

Thanks! That means a lot coming from the author of Strat-O-Gems. Yeah, freeing more bytes without compromising the height of the pieces would be nice. Right now there are 17 bits free (2 bytes of RAM plus overflow flag), and I think that is barely enough for a playable chess game. However, it would be nice to have more memory for difficulty levels and chess variants. (I'd like to include Losing Chess at least.) I'll post some code to show how the unpacking is done. Right now there is barely enough time to unpack everything. A few more cycles and I think it'd go over 262 lines. Thanks again. Sorry if the code was hard to follow. I put in some more comments to help clear things up. I think the solution came more from refusal to give up than cleverness. I can't tell you how many ideas I tried. Like I said, I was able to take an advantage of a lucky coincidence that #$0F could be used both for the color white and for masking the right side PF2. The obstacle to a 4th PLA was the number of cycles between color changes. I tried a lot of things, but couldn't squeeze four cycles in. Your right that it would have been more elegant.

That's quite a compliment that the screenshot doesn't look realistic. Actually the way the board is drawn is simple. The darker squares are made of players and missiles. (Can you imagine how it works?) The pieces are all done with the PF. I tried to keep the queen's ring, but that made it harder to distinguish between the queen and king. I'm open to suggestions. Still working on Four-Play, and possibly another game for the 2006 1K contest.

I had a couple of kernels I wanted to test anyway, so I fired up the Kroko Cart. Juno First looks good on the TV (hacked to 262 lines). It's too bad the vertical movement is jumpy, but it's better than I could have done.

I think this isn't quite enough time. I'd suggest 3 months... Well, just start now Yep, I recently rearranged my priorities to start working on a 1K game. I have a hunch the 1K contest will be first.

I think spreading out the contests will turn out to be a good move. I will try hard to finish Four-Play in time for the 4K comp. I might try another 1K game too. (And this time I'll know that sound effects during the game are more important than music after a victory.) @Cybergoth, any chance you'll try your hand at a 1K game this year?

Hey Nathan, I finally finished Reindeer Rescue tonight. Nice job on the victory screen too. (And I caught a glimpse of another one of your guest sprites in the city level) I'm going to leave the Atari on that screen for a while, since it was so tough to reach.