DZ-Jay

Gotcha! That's the technique I use to animate the Snowflakes in Christmas Carol: they all share a single GRAM card that is animated by cycling through a set of "twinkling" frames. Once Carol "eats" a Snowflake, its BACKTAB card is changed to another GRAM slot, reserved for cycling the "disappearing" animation. I can see how these techniques may have been new back then, and so felt more novel. I know that when I thought of doing them, to me it was like a "Eureka" moment, though one which was immediately followed by the thought of, "this must have been how they did it back then!" -dZ.

Boy, look at you raking in the points! You're very good at that game! Seriously, it looks cool in a crude sort of way. -dZ.

Not having tried it, could it have something to do with the colour limitations of the Intellivision? Perhaps it assumes certain combinations as verboten.

As one who play-tested Rocketeer in its early stages, I can tell you that it is truly a fun and exciting game. I saw it evolve from a crude "move-and-shoot" demo, to a full-fledge game complete with multiple levels, power-ups, sound effects, music, and even a high-score table. My understanding is that GroovyBee is waiting to complete his cartridge board design and manufacture in order to release his games. As far as I know, Rocketeer was complete, playable, and beta-tested. There may be a few tweaks here-and-there that GroovyBee wants to make, purely for spit-n-polish, but that's all. Although I am of the mind that the pre-orders were taken prematurely, I understand that this is a hobby and that life tends to get in the way. Moreover, I've seen GroovyBee's work before, and know his good reputation in other retro communities, so I've no doubt he will delivery--it's just a matter of when. -dZ.

Actually, no. You need to wait for nanochess to implement the SNOW statement. Without it, the Intellivision is incapable of displaying snow levels. Perhaps in IntyBASIC compiler v0.8?

What do you mean by "making the system work to find the actual object on-screen"?

I used 16 words of stack in Christmas Carol, but I had to do a bunch of wrangling and messy code to avoid using the stack, which is not necessarily conducive to clean and maintainable code. However, all code paths use at most 14 words of the stack at any given time. That said, I also think that a stack of 32 should be sufficient for most games. As for the "high water mark" tracker in the debugger, I used it extensively during Carol's development, and found it extremely useful in identifying the usage ceiling. It was also more than once my first insight into a stack overflow when observing some strange behaviour, which allowed me to focus my debugging effort. -dZ.

Are those actual screenshots, or mock-ups?

Billy Boola - Bono & Gavin Friday

No, no, that was not a song. We're still on your previous one.

Welcome back, Mr. Defender of the Universe!

LOL! Hmm... HEY!

The Man Machine - Kraftwerk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQe9eK_4U0U

Oooh! The Fat Man! I'm tempted to put one of my favourites from him, but I think I should steer this thread into "on-topic" territory... * Surfin' On Thin Ice - The Fat Man * I know! Weird, innit?

But you don't have to ship the apple and oak trees, because pines, ice cubes, and candy canes grow naturally over there. -dZ.

Ah, of course, sound effects! Yes, they always seem to come at the end, and then you experience that moment, like in the movies, when the light shines on the game screen and the camera slowly tracks towards it, while a chorus of angelical voices sing in awe. There it is. Oh, I know that moment. That's when you finally see that it's a game. No, not Christmas, they're much too busy with their own thing then. However, I hear it snows in the North Pole every day of the year. -dZ.

If there only were an "announce" mailing list for LTO... -dZ.

Nooooooooo. Programmer art is great! Programmer art is da bomb! There's nothing like it. I have a bowl of it for breakfast every morning with my coffee and toast. Keep in mind that, unlike Boulder Dash, which has had traditionally a very "blocky" and "programmer artsy" look, you don't have to conform to any particular visual style. Colourful patterns and moving objects will bring this game to live significantly. Yes please! If you include a snow level, I know someone who wouldn't mind making a cameo. -dZ.

Better, much better. -dZ.

I could use a CiB Diner.

Looking good!

And here I thought I was ambitious when looking for a house with a spiral staircase. It never occurred to me to ask for a bridge!

OMG! That would be so cool.

Nice! Here's your chance to tell your wife that you need to move to a bigger house. Because, you know, Running Man!

I seem to remember you mentioned before that for the top of the sign you used a MOB stretched horizontally. I can see it, only because I know it's there. It is amazing the sort of natural, almost free-form looking artwork that can actually be done in an Intellivision at the hands of a talented artist. This is proof that not every background (and specifically, these sort of "splash" title screens) have to look like patchwork, bricks, or tiles. Great work, nonner242 and GroovyBee! -dZ.