Zach

Hey Chris, would gameplay change much if you rotated and used a 7x10 grid?

I'm not familiar with Pipe Mania, but based on your description and your kernel, I wouldn't give up on solid colors right away. I think some of the techniques I picked up while designing various board game kernels could help here. It may turn out that solid colors are not possible, but I'll toy around with it for a while and get back to you. If vertical gridlines are essential, that complicates things. I agree with Bob BTW that horizontal gridlines alone should be changed. Either draw both horizontal and vertical or neither.

Wow, You've been busy.

Most of the new FB2 games use the superchip, right? Putting these games on a cart will not be easy until a new circuit board* is available. * I believe people are working on it.

Just got Reindeer Rescue in the mail yesterday. Great job on the sprites Nathan! (Did I see an <spoiler deleted>? )

Number 24 just arrived on my doorstep, and I've been having fun with it. Fantastic job, Bob, especially with the music. I can hardly believe you did this in a month.

She's a better Batgirl than Alicia Silverstone!

Glad to hear Globetrotter is enjoying his stay in Scotland. What kind of AI work do you do? Do you actually get to work on the Sony Aibo?

If an NTSC version of this is ever found, it'll make headlines here at AA.

Thanks for posting. I'm always interested in updates.

I tried Decathlon on my Kroko Cart and four-switch console. I can't say I tested it thoroughly due to the monotonous nature of the game, but I did play for a while.

This one is finished and waiting on my HD until Marc recovers. 848693[/snapback] Was this ever released, Thomas? And while I'm the subject, does Thwocker use the same bankswitching as Decathlon and Robot Tank? I have not been able to run it on my Kroko Cart.

I look forward to seeing it.

Way to go Tim! I'll have to nominate Fred for Batari Basic. Perhaps in future years we could have an award for best BB game.

Interesting. This is news to me. Can you elaborate?

Yeah, Four-Play AI is more difficult than I anticipated. I thought it would be simple to do a search because there are only 7 moves. But as John points out long term strategy is important. After playing a while, I learned that a game between two experienced players usually finishes in the last open column, but the winning position is started early in the game. The current heuristic tries to anticipate these positions. I will continue to use multi-ply analysis. That is primarily why the AI takes so long now, because the heuristic measures multiple positions at the leaves of the search tree. I have found an excellent paper on 7x6 Connect Four, and it is not hard to adapt to 7x7 Four-Play. I've begun to appreciate subtle differences between an odd and even number of rows. The current heuristic uses basic ideas from that paper, but it looks like I'll have to get deeper into it.

I strongly believe we should have awards whether or not Stan comes back.There have simply been too many advances in the hobby to consider otherwise. Whether we continue to use his name is debatable. It seems to me that we could use polls to chose the award recipients with minimal effort. I wonder if it's possible to set up a poll where the results are concealed from the public until voting is over?

This reminds me that I must get on with my contribution to the PAL version of the cart. However, I am still confused about how we are going to do this. I could add a PAL/NTSC switch to my games without too much difficulty, but this would take them beyond 1K (though perhaps this doesn't matter for the multicart)? Chris The PAL/NTSC version of Marble Jumper is between 1K and 2K. We aren't making these for the contest anymore.

Impressive that you wrote it in such a short time, Bob. I can hardly wait to play it. Chris, Are you sure you don't want a copy? You won't get a chance later. I'm sure you can buy it with your royalties if you haven't spent them already. (It is offered alone for $25.)

I'd love to go when I'm not so broke. Maybe next year. It was nice seeing you at CGE, Rick.

Thanks for the suggestions. I do plan to show something besides a blank screen while the computer is planning a move, unless I can reduce the thinking time to very short. I want to hone the AI before focusing on cosmetic concerns. John, I think I'll be able to calculate the heuristic more efficiently if I use the technique we discussed in PM's. I can reserve a byte for each possible four-in-a-row and keep track of how many pieces are there. It will take a while to overhaul things, but I'll keep you all posted.

Check the category. BTW, that is a sweet set of games. EDIT: Phew, it went for $108.06. I don't have to regret letting it go now.

The shift during reset doesn't appear on my TV (a Sony Wega, 2 yrs old), but z26 clearly shows 261 lines. The lesson here is not to rely on just one TV while testing. I recently finished the PAL/NTSC version of Marble Jumper and have tested the scanline count extensively with z26. I've not seen any deviation from 262 or 312 lines. BTW, has anyone solved all the puzzles yet? I'm up to 20 myself.

I just noticed today that Swoops! and Crazy Balloon do not carry the XYPE label, although the authors' previous works do.

Cool! I should note though, I probably won't have time to work on it until after the holidays. I actually found out about the contest a few days ago. John liked my label, but just couldn't get into having cartoon faces on the gems. As a consolation though, he wants to use my AtariVox logo. Don't worry if it takes a while to design a label. The software has a long way to go.