DZ-Jay

So, what you do is implement something called a "state machine." In simple terms, your sprites exist through various "states," depending on conditions in the game. A simple example could be a player sprites that can be in one of the following states: * Inactive - out of the play field, or just not participating in game play yet. * Rest - standing still. * Running - actively running around the play field. * Dead - killed by enemy bullet. Depending on the current state of the sprite, it could behave differently. For instance, while "Running" you could have the running man animation active, and then skip it when the state switches to "Rest" or anything else. Or, while "inactive" the sprite may skip collision detection; etc. If you implement such states are sequential numbers (and use constants for them), you could use something like the ON GOSUB statement to call an appropriate routine based in the current state. This is basically what the TRON game does. When the player presses the disc, it switches the state of the sprite to "Running," and when the player lets go of the disc, it switches it back to "Rest." The animation engine then only has to say, "is it 'Running'? If so, then animate it; else skip animation." Does this make sense? dZ.

I want a T.O.M.Bot 3,000!!

That only applies for animating on the background. The Running Man is most likely to be animated as a MOB. dZ.

The Running Man animation is not in ROM. Whichever game uses it, has its own copy of the animation graphic cards. Those old Mattel games utilized the EXEC operating system of the Intellivision, which allows you to give it a pointer to an array of animation cards, and it would animate them for you automatically. Nowadays, with IntyBASIC, you will have to write your own animation routine to do so. There are two common techniques for animation: card cycling and GRAM cycling. Card Cycling: You load all your animation cards into GRAM contiguously, and on every animation frame, you update the card number on the sprite to point to the next card, recycling back to the first one at the end. GRAM Cycling: You point your sprite to a single GRAM card, then on every animation frame, you upload a new card into that same spot on GRAM, replacing the previous one. Both are effective: the first one is faster, but requires a big chunk of GRAM at once for all animation cards to be pre-loaded. Since there are only 64 slots available in GRAM, some prefer to conserve them for other sprites or additional details. I know I do. The second one requires you to update GRAM during the vertical blanking, which can be costly if you have many animations to perform at once. The upside is that each animated sprite or background card only takes a single slot in GRAM at a time, allowing you to maximize its use. Take a look at some of the examples with sprites. They should show how to load cards into GRAM and animate them. -dZ.

Those four colors are the "color stack." The Intellivision has two screen modes, "Foreground/Background" and "Color Stack." IntyBasic calls these "Mode 1" and "Mode 0," respectively. The default, as you noticed, is Color stack Mode. The color stack is a 4-color circular array that sets the background color of all tiles. Here's a brief explanation of the Color Stack I wrote some time ago: For a simple scene with a single background color, you only need to set the first color of the stack, since everything will use that. The "MODE" command accepts five arguments: MODE <Screen Mode>, <Stack #0>, <Stack #1>, <Stack #2>, <Stack #3> As you may imagine, only the first argument is required, to set the mode. The last four are applicable only when you use "SCREEN_CS" which is "Mode 0" or Color Stack Mode. In my example, we set all four colors to the same value, but we're only using the first one. The rest are just set because the "MODE" statement requires either no colors or all four. -dZ.

Or ... like I mentioned above, he is preparing to re-release it and is trying to maximize the take before he floods the market and dilutes the price. -dZ.

I wonder if someone is reviving that thing in preparation of making a re-release. It's been out of circulation for a while.

I can't believe I've made 30 entries on this topic since I started this blog. I probably wrote as many words on them as I did on the story itself! Talk about procrastination, with an emphasis on pro. Anyway, in this entry I have some good news for anybody still reading along (yeah, I know, 30 entries can get exhausting). Wait -- hold your horses, I'm not talking about that good news -- I'm not done with the story yet! However, I have some news which are almost as good: I completed Chapter 13, the penultimate chapter! The set up for the thrilling confrontation between Carol, the Bad Toy, and the Snowman is in place, and all we need to finish the story is the exciting climax and conclusion. After that, then there's a short epilogue to serve as a nice bookend to wrap up the entire arc of Carol's adventure. I'm not too worried about that, since it should be short, only a page or two. So there it is, good news, uh? I'm excited! I really can't wait to finish this thing. No, really. I reeeeeaaaaaaally can't wait to get it out of my task list so that I can move on to procrastinating on other things. See ya', -dZ.

Not at all! My wife and I have a rule that "everybody should get a toy on Christmas," so amidst the ties and socks, the kitchenware and iPads, we always give each other some sort of toy -- even when it's just a small thing, like a stuffed animal, or a Lego minifigure. -dZ.

Send cheque or money order to me, in care of DZ-Jay.

AtariAge Secret Santa Check List: Themed, personal gift tailored to recipient's likes ... Treats inspired by profile details ... Little stocking-stuffer toy (because everyone should get a toy for Christmas!) ... Assortment of Christmas stickers and other festive decorations ... Parcel box and cushioning filler ... Personally dedicated and signed Christmas card ... Heart full of Christmas Spirit and warm seasonal wishes ... Well, I think I'm ready! -dZ.

Ah.

I think the game would be the same. I believe they had finished the game and re-branded it when the licensing went through. This is why the enemy ships look like Cylon Fighters. -dZ.

Yes! Congratulations, Arturo.

Looks good. I did notice a few glitches in the sprite priority function. For example, at around 0:14 in the video, you can see Papi momentarily go on top of the tree canopy for a few frames, before switching its background priority on. This happens in a few places only. By the way, for the benefit of other new programmers, would you mind posting some technical information on the Programming Forum about how you built your collision and priority engine? I am sure that many here can learn from your experience. -dZ.

I got some stuff for my victim Secret Santa recipient, I'm almost done with my shopping! Yay! I expect to ship by early next week. -dZ.

Or ... you could really help people by creating macros or patches to the IntyBASIC epilogue that provide useful information. That's the sort of thing we tried to do with the SDK, but there doesn't seem to be much interest now in continuing that community effort. Even the "Constants.bas" file are not being mentioned by people anymore, instead everybody seems comfortable throwing "magic numbers" around to newbies. I think good abstractions and intuitive interfaces go a lot farther in helping users than just forcing them to learn the guts of the system. However, like I said before, in the absence of anything, even just a macro for "ROMSEG" that encapsulates "ASM ORG" statement and uses a default memory map (like the one in Cart.mac) would still be better than nothing, no? Most users wouldn't really care, and if they are interested in the details, the docs provide plenty of technical gore. -dZ.

Yes, there are a lot of glitches in some of those games. The Armored Battle game has sprites flickering and distorting as they fire.

To the death!

I believe that the unit in the video is a fancy mock-up. Notice that there is no transport mechanism inside; the tape just plops in. Also, the KB software videos are probably graphical renderings created outside the machine -- with the obvious exception to the "Conversation French" title screen. Even the physical fitness program does not look like the screenshots of the Jack LaLanne software (it's not even called that in this video, so perhaps branding and licensing had not been done yet). The animation looks more like a cartoon than a computer graphics sequence. Perhaps neither the software nor the hardware were ready at the time of producing the marketing video, or maybe not completed to a point in which it could reliably show off their capabilities. -dZ.

Wow! You guys are aware that a lot of people jump to BASIC to get away from convoluted arcana like that? That's not to say that Vetea can't do it, but perhaps it's time for IntyBASIC to support some simple interface to define ROM segments and switching between them. It doesn't have to be something fancy -- even something like what "Cart.mac" does, which is handled by the assembler instead of the compiler. I mean, rather than having everyone adding "ASM ORG" statements all over the place, include a way to define a memory map (and include a good default, like "Cart.mac"), and then let programmers use "ROMSEG 0" and "ROMSEG 1" to switch. Even that, with no boundary checks underneath, would be an improvement to the current state of affairs, where most IntyBASIC programmers don't even know what the memory map of the Intellivision is. -dZ.

Phew! We're good. We can finally unclench now -- it's all good. As mentioned in the last entry on this topic, my grand-stepson step-grandson grandson-step -- Aargh! You know what? Let's call him Timmy. So, 9-year-old Timmy came to visit last week-end and he read the story in progress, which was up to 12 completed chapters by then. When he finished, he pronounced his final judgement. In his own words: "it's pretty cool." My wife immediately responded with, "so ... 'pretty cool' only. Do you think there's something wrong with it? Can we make it 'very cool'?" His response was rather immediate: "No, no, it's very good. It's very cool!" (Yeah, verbatim. He spoke the words with an underline and all.) A bit suspicious, imagining that he was just trying to please us, my wife prodded again: "Are you sure? You're not just saying that? Really, it won't hurt his feelings. If there is anything wrong with it, you would do us a great favor by letting us know so that we can fix it and make it even better." "I swear. It's very, very good. I really liked it. It's just like the game!" OK, fine. We then followed up with a brief questionnaire to gauge his interest, understanding, and estimation of particular aspects of the story. It turned out that he really got into the story, answering the questions with plenty of details and enthusiasm. What was your favorite part? When Carol froze the Snowman with a snowball and ... and ... and the Ghost ran around with his arms on its head like a reindeer. That was very funny! What did you think of the map? You mean Finnley's map? It's cool because you can follow it along as you read. What about the little girl elf at the beginning? Trisha? She's cute. I like that she gets scared when she hears the spooky story. Was there any part that you didn't understand or couldn't follow? Hmm ... nope. Not that I can think of. It was easy. Which one was your favorite cave? The Candy Cove! The one with all the candy! I like that Carol went around eating candy and saving some for later. Ha! Ha! Would you pick this book at the library to read? Yeah! It's kinda like Percy Jackson -- with all the adventure and monsters and all. How do you think Carol feels about the Ghost? You mean, after meeting him? I think she feels he's lonely, because he doesn't have any friends. I also think that's why he's pranking the Snowman too. She probably feels sorry for him and wants to be his friend. But when she said "Hi, I'm Carol," he ran away! Ha Ha! That was kinda funny. Call me crazy but ... it looks like he really, really liked it. What this means is that we found our audience. My original instincts of a target readership of seven to nine year-old children was right on the money: Old enough to know how to read and follow a narrative, yet young enough to still enjoy reading for fun -- and still within that magical early childhood stage when things like elves, magical snowflakes, and evil snowmen could capture your interest and spark your imagination. My 12 year-old nephew and his friends can then pick it up when it becomes popular and famous and achieves "Harry Potter"-like coolness. In the meantime, I'll build up a following of fourth-graders. Phew! "Sweet candy canes!" as Carol would say, "that was scary!" Now I know: we're good, and all is well with the world. See ya', -dZ.

You are assuming that no child has ever played with a hen's tooth.