Battlesphere

[Battlesphere]

The video above that includes the bit from Star Raiders... it reminds me a LOT like the Atari 2600 game "Solaris."

 

It should, they were both written by Doug Neubauer.

[Inferior 8-bit games converted to the 5200?]

The 5200 version was ported to the 800 and released by DataSoft, somehow.

 

[Spy VS. Spy converted?]

No, your sealed copy of Spy vs Spy has never been converted to the 5200.

[Need Help With A Skiing Game]

It's "NUSIZ", not "NUISZ".

 

NU SIZ = "new size"... get it?

[Battlesphere]

I know, right? I just couldn't get into Tempest 2000 due to the lack of plot.

[Battlesphere]

So you prefer the "Star Raiders" that is generally considered to be inferior and forgettable, over the groundbreaking one that inspired the entire genre of space combat sims. To the point that when anyone talks about Star Raiders you actually think they're referring to a completely different game.

 

This explains so much.

[Need Help With A Skiing Game]

1 I can't figure out how to make slalom hit detection work right, VBB doesn't like if then statements that are triggered by other if thens (ex: if x = 1 then if b = 4 then score = score + 1)

 

IF THEN THEN is nonsense syntax that wouldn't work in any BASiC dialect. Conditional code blocks are explained in the BB documentation.

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-batari-basic-commands.html#if

[Road Rash pre-alpha on Jaguar at 30 fps]

Higher MHz but the 3DO CPU is both RISC and ARM

 

All ARM chips are RISC. That's like saying something is both sugary and sweet.

[Square shaped pong cocktail unit in Airport 77]

Since Brad can't be bothered to supply a picture of what he's talking about...

http://www.tepg.se/airport-77-1977/

 

Probably a custom job. It's not like slapping a piece of wood on top of a monitor would take much effort.

[Battlesphere]

The only Star-Raiders thing I see there is the galactic map. The combat is still full 6 DOF simulation style (which is nothing like in SR)

 

You're doing that thing again where you say really obviously very wrong dumb things. Stop.

[The most ANNOYING sound effects/music/voices in video games.]

Psychonauts. Little Ollie.

[Loderunner on Atari 2600?]

Since the image attachments are gone from the original thread, here's the mockup I did years ago, and the Apple II reference screen.

 

 

[If Battlesphere were all that...]

By the way, didn't you used to be their biggest cheerleader?

It turned out that Battlesphere: The Anticipation Game was more fun than Battlesphere: The Actual Game.

[The most ANNOYING sound effects/music/voices in video games.]

5200 Galaxian. It's like the programmer was trying to screw up all the sound effects on purpose. "BONG" for the explosion sound? Seriously?

 

Not a sound effect persay....

 

"Per se", cripes.

[If Battlesphere were all that...]

I occasionally wonder which member of 4Play was most responsible for their eye-rollingly puerile naming schemes. 4Play... Scatbox... JUGS... Ocatanut, etc. Made them seem like a bunch of tittering pre-teens. And then they complained when other companies wouldn't take them seriously. Gee, I wonder why.

[Loderunner on Atari 2600?]

Sigh...

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/23306-lode-runner/

[If Battlesphere were all that...]

Snowflake meant to represent the programmers. I'm a programmer, and snowflakes (the non-political meaning) in my area of employment represent computer programmers who have crazy demands (IE: I only want blue M&Ms, etc...)

 

Dude, give up on "snowflake". The Trumpsters have ruined that word for the next few years.

 

"Prima donna" is a far better term in this case anyway.

[Just a note about KC Munchkin...]

Hey, I only ever complained about the spastic animation of KC when using the multicolor sprite set.

[If Battlesphere were all that...]

I got a copy of the original BattleSphere when it first came out, and I don't think I've even played it a dozen times. By that time I'd been playing Freespace 2 for years, and by comparison the gameplay was just so bland.

 

And seriously what the hell, a space combat game that doesn't even give you range to target? Even the original dinky little 8K Star Raiders had that. And the obnoxious weirdness of friendlies being red and enemies being green on the radar. And the pointless demoscene visual effects littered throughout the UI where they made no sense at best and often actually made usability worse.

 

Yeah, they got the Jaguar to reliably support huge multiplayer networks, which was a great technical achievement, but in the end that was the least-used feature. All that effort would have been better spent implementing a more interesting purely single-player game.

[Wilmunder's Star Raiders II released]

Great to see progress being made on this. I would love to see this finished, it's such an amazing game. Truly the Elite that the A8 bit never got.

 

Elite is the Elite that the A8 never got.

[M Network Electronic Football]

...never existed. April Fools!

But wait, some of you may remember seeing this old catalog scan.



Yeah, about that. Back in September of 2003, for reasons I've now completely forgotten, I decided to start a hoax that Mattel had been working on a port of their Electronic Football handheld for the Atari 2600. Perhaps because it seemed like an idea that was goofy, yet somehow plausible. So I found a suitable old M Network catalog scan...



Next I opened up Paint Shop Pro and eventually ended up with this, which I'm like 90% sure a 2600 could actually do without any flicker.



I scaled that down, filtered it a bit, resaved it as a low-quality JPEG, and pasted it into the catalog scan. I casually referenced it in the forums here a few times, and that was that. End result, not as much mayhem as I'd hoped, but it did apparently inspire the creation of the Blip Football homebrew, and was briefly mentioned in the Letters section of 2600 Connection #87.

 

 

So now you know... the rest of the story.

[Bosconian for the 8-bits]

As expected max. 3 channels with a perfect frequency offset at a higher frequency range. Octave 3-4.... Something POKEY can only do correct with some trickery.

 

Dear Crazy Person,

 

Even IF there are any notes in the Bosconian opening theme that POKEY can't get close enough, it's only a three-voice song. Just run POKEY in 16/8/8 mode and assign any problem notes to the 16-bit channel.

 

But precise note matching is really less important than you desperately, obnoxiously cling to believing. As long as the notes used aren't horribly off-key, and everything else is right... the timing, volume, and envelopes... a song will be recognizable as itself. This principle is why, for example, even a TIA trying to do the Galaga theme can sound "good" to most ears.

 

[Bosconian for the 8-bits]

And now hopefully Emkay understands why I specifically said an MSX, not a Konami Nemesis board.

 

Just kidding, he'll never get it.

[Bosconian for the 8-bits]

I can't believe I'm actually responding to Emkay drivel, but here goes...

 

Arcade Gradius uses two AY-3-8910s, driven by a dedicated Z-80 CPU.

 

MSX computers had a single AY-3-8910, controlled by the main CPU. Which is why the MSX version of Gradius sounded like this:

 

[Bosconian for the 8-bits]

One of my favorite methods is to grab the audio out of MAME and analyze it. Then you can get exact pitch, waveform, and duration of sounds. Studying the waveform gives you hints as to which Pokey sounds might be the best match.

 

I was doing some reading on Bosconian's sound, and it should be possible to get very close with POKEY. It has what's called a three-channel WSG (waveform sound generator), the same sound hardware Pac-Man used. Here's a technical description: http://www.lomont.org/Software/Games/PacMan/PacmanEmulation.pdf