EricBall
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My Mom (who was visiting from Vancouver) handed out to ~250 trick or treaters between 6 and 8 PM. (Previous years it's been between 150 and 200.) It was a very nice night, around 10C (50F) so the kids didn't have to try to squeeze their costumes over parkas.
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You could offer people the choice of either using a memcard and doing a two-part load after which no more loading would be needed, or else loading each level off tape/CD. The memcard wouldn't be absolutely required, but it would its presence would make the game much more convenient.
Except each level is ~768 bytes (3 pages, spread over 5 pages in SC-RAM), so 4K would only be 5 levels (versus 99 on tape/CD).
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Have you given any thought to using an AtariVox/MemCard to hold level data? You could have one program which puts 4K of level data into the memcard at $3000-$3FFF (the scratchpad zone) and then have the main program load levels from there.
Supporting the MemCard for high-scores is on the wish list, but I'm not sure I understand what your suggestion is or what value it has over the existing Online Level Editor.
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Juggle bank usage is fun - not. I'm at that stage in MM
I think I'm through most of that. SuperCharger puts some additional restrictions on bankswitching in that there are 3x2K SC-RAM plus the 2K SC BIOS ROM, but you can't select all possible combinations.
Bankswitch layout is really a matter of what needs access to what. In Leprechaun I've got 5 pages for level & sprite data. So that's gotta be accessible by the kernel, the routines which scan the level data for movement, and the routines which update the level data. But the 6-digit routine doesn't need access to that data, but has a page worth of character sprites. So that's all stuck in a different bank which can also access the BIOS, so that's where the title and other screens will go.
Of course, standard 2600 bankswitching which swaps out all 4K has bigger challenges since you're looking for routines which don't need access to any large shared data, and where the bankswitch overhead & address overlay can be made to work.
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Rule #1 for buying a new widescreen TV - plan for HDTV and HD-DVD/Blue-Ray.
What this means is you need true HDTV resolution (at least 1280x720 if not 1920x1080) and at least one HDCP compliant HDMI port (preferably two or more, along with several analog component inputs too).
Toss in an 8VSB/ATSC tuner for over the air HDTV, a QAM tuner for unencrypted digital cable, and CableCard for encrypted digital cable (assuming your cableco supports it) and you have your bases covered.
Oh, and before you buy, ask what their dead pixel return policy is.
I haven't taken the leap myself, but try to keep up to date for the day I play & win the lottery.
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I've not had a chance to test the video pin on the 7800 yet (outta town at the moment, just playing with the prop), but I was hoping it works like the sound one does in that whatever is there gets mixed in with the 7800 output. That's what I plan to test with a composite signal when I get a chance.
There's no video pin on the 7800 cartridge port. (Only a mono audio pin, used for POKEY output.) The expansion port has the MARIA video outputs, and a CVIDEO pin, but I don't think you can use those pins as inputs. (Even in 2600 mode the MARIA video pins would be pulled low.) So any mixing would have the be done on your board. (Probably easiest to use the MARIA video outputs (which are digital) rather than CVIDEO, although MCOL might be tricky since that's more of an analog signal.) You could probably use the MSYNC (or BLANK) to genlock the propeller video output to the 7800; you'd just need to modify the propeller code to match the 7800 line & frame timing.
If that's the case, then the prop generated video would get mixed in with the 7800 video, with both images ending up on the TV. One could choose to graphics with either display system, but not have the two interact directly. The case I am seriously considering, if the prop video capability is what I think it is, would be one where the 7800 is not drawing much with the MARIA chip. On screen graphics would largely reside on the prop, using the 7800 for I/O and perhaps some graphic display as well. Sound could come from either place, probably the 7800 would be easiest.
Hmm... unfortunately, the expansion port doesn't have much in the way of true I/O pins. (I'm not sure it has any input capabilities at all...) Now, if you wanted to be tricky, you could use the MARIA video outputs to send data from the 7800 to the propeller board during the "offscreen" rasters. Kinda like closed captioning. (That's assuming that you don't go for some kind of cart+expansion port hybrid.)
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Oh, so you're trying to add a framebuffer to the 7800 which the propeller chip will update. Hmmm.... interesting. Let me have a think.
The 7800 uses a display list concept to display graphics. So, the 7800 stub application would create a dummy display list which would map a chunk of ROM address space to be displayed as a really big sprite. The display list itself has to be in RAM, so unless the stub copies ROM to RAM every frame, the palette bits in the display list entries will be fixed.
Alrighty, 160B mode (4 bits/pixel) will give you 13 colors per pixel at 160 pixels/line. The 320 modes really cut into the color capabilities. Sure the 160B mode is a little whacked in bit-order, but you might be able to handle that in hardware with some creative wiring and buffering.
You might be better off using one of the other consoles which had a dedicated video pass-through (i.e. ones which had compatibility add-ons).
Hardware collision detection has a couple of significant issues. First, for N sprites you need N*(N-1)/2 collision detection bits. Second, does a collision occur when the sprite squares overlap, or only when the non-transparent pixels overlap? (Or do you have a second set of sprite collision bitmasks?)
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Check out the 7800 Schematics and how the expansion port (top right corner - J2 Periphrial Port Output). I'm not sure whether it's an input or output. Also recognize that the 7800 output is a kinda out of spec versus NTSC standards for line periods (half a colorbust clock short) and lines per frame/field (non-interlaced, no half lines).
I will say that the only reason to do anything in this hobby is because you want to; 'cause at the end of the day you're going to have to pour the blood, sweat & tears into making it a reality.
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I enjoy optimizing, but I hate having to optimize unexpectedly.
I feel your pain.
Yeah. There's a difference between figuring out a better way to accomplish a small task (i.e. TJ's CMP #$80, ROR for a signed right shift). But realizing that you really need to find some way to squeeze a hundred bytes out of a K of code is kinda depressing.
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In GCN Mario Golf there's a 1 player Tournament mode in which you have to be top of the leaderboard to unlock the next course. I'm finding I have to be pretty well shooting below par to have any hope of accomplishing that. So I've gotten into the habit of saving my progress when I get a birdie and resetting when I get a bogey. Reminds me of playing blackjack in Leisure Suit Larry.
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I'm part way through GCN Paper Mario, working on Twilight Village - oink! One nice thing is there haven't been too many battles which hinge on a specific item or technique to win. Sure, many of them are much easier with the right "trick", but I was able to slog through many of the Glitzville battles even when I didn't have the ideal setup. (I think I died once, partially because I had to get hit several times.)
OTOH I didn't finish Dungeon Siege (PC) because I got bored of wiping out the entire goblin army.
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And I bet the truck only has a paint smear on the bumper.
However, such are the problems driving large vehicles where your sightlines may be obscured.
Kinda like the guy that rear-ended the minivan that rear-ended me a while back. He said he couldn't stop 'cause he couldn't see that I had stopped around the minivan. Guess who's insurance probably took the brunt of the cost of the accident (including the guy in front of me that the minivan pushed me into).
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So... to date, have there been any other SC homebrews released on cassette, or just CD, or not even that, other than the Stella Gets a Brain CD?AFAIK there are no completed SuperCharger homebrews. Leprechaun is still in development and Prince of Persia is on hiatus. There might be some demos which I've forgotten.
Ooops, how could I forget StellaSketch?
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Console history is rife with examples of add-ons which ended up being used for a couple of games. Occasionally add-ons become successfull (like the N64 rumble pack), but more often they never go beyond the title they were released with.
From a manufacturer's perspective, add-on hardware can provide additional profit. It may also make a particular game unique, provide better gameplay or interaction. But to really catch on (like the rumble pack) an add-on really needs to meet two almost opposing goals:
1. Not be a requirement to play the game. Otherwise you lock out people who don't have the add-on (or lead to frustrated consumers who didn't know you need the RAM expansion to play DK64), or force people who already have it to buy it again as a pack-in.
2. Improve the game sufficiently to make the add-on desirable.
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If there's one thing I'm starting to realize as I get older, it's how to recognize projects that I'm never going to finish, or even start.Yep, time is finite. I'm getting better at not starting new projects, although I still need to work on finishing (or permanently abandoning) those I've already started.
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At my house there's an order to what resets during a power outage. The clock on the stove resets if the lights even dim, while the VCRs will handle being off power for minutes or more. My PC is somewhat in the middle, it restarts if the lights go out for more than a second.
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Goodness. I'll have to dig out my calculators to show off. My two workhorses were a Radio Shack (rebranded Casio I think) which not only had the usual plethora of scientific functions, but it handled precedece, had binary, octal & hex modes, plus native fractions and segadecimal (base 60). That got me through high school, although I also carried it in my pants pocket and broke some connections. I was able to fix it for the most part, although the least siginificant digit doesn't work 100%.
For University I moved to an HP RPN programmable calculator (though I didn't have one of the super-fancy graphing versions). I really only used the programs for quadratic and 3x3 matrix inversion for the most part. However, during one exam we had to solve a weird annuity question. I crunched through the equations by hand and came up with some ridiculous number of negative years. So I went back through my work, programmed the calculator with an early equation and hit solve. It chugged away for a good number of minutes and spit out a reasonable number, which I wrote down for the final solution (leaving my earlier work). I'm fairly certain I got full marks for that question.
The RS is still alive (100% solar), but the HP needs a new set of batteries.
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You're undoubtably correct that messages from New York to London were manually repeated. The way I read it is the message required 17 hours due to the abysmally low data rate of the transatlantic cable (and the rather wordy messages). I wouldn't be surprised that some of the message had to be retransmitted several times. And since it was one of the first messages, I'm sure they hadn't figured out all of the ways to speed up the process.
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Yeah, HDTV has been a long while coming. 10 years according to Wikipedia, but I'm almost certain it's been longer than that. But if the number of true HDTVs (i.e. actual HDTV resolution & HDMI inputs) at Walmart is any indication, I think it won't be long before HDTV is the norm for anyone buying a new bigscreen (i.e. 27+") TV.
Of course, the the Blu-Ray / HD-DVD format war isn't helping adoption rates of them or HDTV.
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Incredibly how hardwired such sequences get in the brain. I found it amazing to realize how many 4-Char spell combinations from The Bard's Tale I still had memorized, after like 20 years
For Dungeons of Dagorath it was one character abreviations A space L was short for attack left. The keyboard input was buffered, so if you were quick you could enter a series of commands while the game was redrawing the screen. We quickly discovered that A <space> L <enter> was faster to enter than A <space> R <enter>, so our hero became left handed. The basic strategy became move to an enemy (or wait until they moved to you), hit them three times and then run away before they could hit you. Three times was also about the most you could do before the hero's heart rate got too high.
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I recall playing (or at least my brother playing) Bards Tale. I don't know how much mapping we did. I think some games were tougher to map than others 'cause they had non-planar features (warps, one-way-doors/walls, halls which were longer in one direction than the other).
The one game I do remember helping to map was Dungeons of Dagorath for the CoCo. A space L! A space L! A space L! forward, forward, forward!
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VBLANK forces the TIA to output black, irrespective of what the playfield and sprites are set to. If the playfield or sprites are non-black during VSYNC, then the TV will probably roll. HMOVE can also glitch VSYNC.
Other than VSYNC, VBLANK isn't required (and even then it's just strongly recommended). Just be aware that when you turn off VBLANK that everything becomes active that cycle - it doesn't wait until the end of the line.
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I thought one of the reasons Chad didn't go with SD for the CC2 was due to the built-in DRM. Or do you have ARM code to handle that issue?
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You're right that it can be very difficult to come up with a truely new idea. When I started Skeleton, I thought I had created something truely unique - a first person 3-D maze game for the 2600. Of course, I wasn't the first, see "Escape from the Mindmaster" and "Merlin's Walls".
But that's not to say there's anything wrong with taking an old idea and making it your own. The question is whether your game is fun to play.
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Hunt and chase returns
in EricBall's Tech Projects
A blog by EricBall
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Hmm... interesting point; I hadn't thought of that. I can certainly add logic for the enemy to try dropping off a rope when they are in hunt mode and they reach the end of the rope. (Though there still could be a problem if the ends of the rope have rock/dirt under them.)
Yeah, I have a sneaking suspicion that the enemies are kicking into hunt mode too easily. The enemies are still dumb in your switchback level 'cause they kick into hunt mode which takes them away from the player. On a related note, falling kicks the enemy out of hunt mode which can cause other issues.
Haven't considered (or tried) anything like that. I don't know how well it will work, though there are four corners and four enemies....