Robert M

Hi, Thanks for the kind words. Scott and I enjoyed working on it. I feel I should point out that the collision detection is the one part of thte code I didn't touch from the Venture code. What you see is the same as the original. The key is that the game flickers at 30 Hz. It draws 3 sprites and the ball every TV frame. If the same sprites|ball are drawnon the screen together, then the pixel perfect hardware collision detection is used. If the sprites in question are drawn on alternating screens, then the game uses overlapping rectangles for collision detection. So its about a 50/50 chance you will get the pixel perfect collision detection or the sloppy rectangle collision detection. Have you found the secret level yet? Cheers! Rob

Thanks for the screenshot Paul. It looks great.

Have you considered 4A50 banking? I could probably supply you with a cartridge for development if you want, or you can use a CC2 or a modified Z26. I will certainly have a look at it when I switch to the RPG project. I don't want to think about it right now. I need to stay focused on my 1K game if I am going to have any chance of meeting the end of the month deadline. Cheers! Rob

Hi Paul, Very interesting. I have been itching to do an RPG for the VCS. I want to focus on my 1K entry for the minigame competition, but after that I would be interested in having a go with your display engine. Do you have a way to see the combat kernel in the demo binary? Cheers! Rob

Very well done. Thanks for sharing!

The control scheme in the second binary is much improved. It does act rather weird if you are falling and you hold down the jump button. Cheers!

I do not like the control. I do not like it that my player keeps walking left or right when I am not pressing in that direction anymore. Also the jumps are much too quick. Slow them down. How do you get to the moat screen? All I ever see is the demon terrace thing. Cheers!

Hi, Sorry for the delayed response. I left my previous job, and started 2 new ones in the past week and its been sucking up all my energy. As per your suggestion in a PM I will avoid quoting your prevoius post and simply post a block response. As a base point of reference about this case I propose using the Wikipedia article because it provides a general timeline and numerous links to back up the chronological points made. Please feel free to present an alternative. The Wiki article is here: Terri Shiavo I want to make 4 points: 1. You assert that Judge Greer had too much control over the case and his decisions were not subject to review by other judges and people of authority. I will show that this is false. 2. You assert that Michael wanted Terri dead because he would inherit her trust fund. I will show that Terri's parents had similar motivations in wanting to keep Terri's corpse animated. 3. You assert that Michael changed his position on Terri's health, but I will show that it was really here parents that changed their position. 4. I have an example of the wonderful Texas law I mentioned before that was backed by national Right to Life groups (the same groups that fought to keep Terri's corpse animated) and which gives hospitals the right to take away treatment an leave concious people to die. Even if they have money to pay for the treatment! 1. Nearly all of Judge Greer's decisions were appealed by her parents. That means the decisions were all reviewed by a panel of judges. None of the appeals support the position that Micheal's decision to have Terri's corpse removed from life support was for monetary gain. In addition, at least 3 different guardian ad litem assigned to Terri found no evidence to back your claim that Micheal was after the money in Terri's trust fund. At least one of those guardians for Terri was assigned outside the juristiction of Greer's court in response to a law signed by Jeb Bush in Florida. Another guardian was assigned by the federal court when Bush signed Terri's Law. How is it that all these professional people working on this case do not see what you as a distantly connected observer claim to see? Why is it that the only professionals that support the position of Terri's parents (legal or medical) are those being paid by Terri's parents. Yet all the people who have no financial stake in the case see something else? I think the task is on your shoulders to show that all those professionals were either incompetent or corrupted. About the only way its possible is if Micheal's lawyer really does have supernatural mental powers as you mentioned. 2. If Terri's parents had guardianship of her when she "died", then they would inherit her trust fund. How is that any better than Michael inheriting the trust fund? Terri's parents gained considerable fame from the press coverage. They became folk heros to the Christofacists. If they had control of Terri's animated corpse they would have hauled her body around the country like a freak show exhibit. People would have gathered to pray and donate money and watch the corpse twitch. It would have been sick and a real tragedy. Luckily the courts at many levels saw that Terri's parents did not have any good intentions for Terri and rejected their plan. 3. You point to Michael having moved on with his life and fathering children by another woman as reason that he should not have a say in Terri's medical decisions. You ignore that Terri's parents encouraged and supported him in doing just that . It is only when Terri's parents changed their long held position that Terri was in a PVS, but rather in a minimally conscious state. I think it is up to you to explain why the behavior of getting on with his life which was supported by Terri's parents is relevant. I think you have failed so far. If her parents supported it when he started, they can't later use it against him in court. 4 Here is an example of the Texas law I mentioned earlier: Legal Murder. Note that there is no issue here with money, the woman in question has active health insurance and can pay her bill. The law that makes this possible was backed by all the big national right to life groups. How can that be? Its because as I said in my first post, this is all about abortion and controlling women's bodies. The right to life groups wanted Terri to "live" because it would mean control of her body. They want the law in Texas because it means control of women's bodies. Note that the actions to help Terri (Terri's Law) tried to circumvent the courts with a congressional subpoena. The Texas law takes the courts out completely, and replaces them with an anonymous eithics board that meets in private and produces no public record of the meeting. They have taken the courts out of life and death medical decisions. Its an end run on Rowe V. Wade by removing the courts from the issue. So you see, I think the term Christofacists is starting to have some real meat to it in this country. Unfortunately the facists can't see that they are simply tools of the insurance companies who now have an anonymous way to kill people and boost profits. Hooray! Sorry that this is late and rushed at the same time. Cheers! Rob

I am not a wolf! I am an ermine.

Here we are half way through April and Milestone 1 is still MIA. That schedule is just impossibly tight. Especially since they are planning to use a script generated code base. I think there are some serious technical issues to overcome in trying to do that. Script generated code is notoriously larger an slower than hand written code. The 2600 is short on both processor time and memory resources. How will the the script generated code be partitioned between the memory banks? The scripts will need to be smart enough to solve that problem. Also, how will you limit the execution time of the scripted code to guarantee that the TV display will remain stable, but the game will remain responsive enough to be playable? These sorts of problems are not insurmountable, but they will take time. I would see a project of this size taking until 2Q 2008 give or take 6 months with 5 to 10 hours given to it per week. I hope they do succeed, but I don't see the original timing as realistic. Cheers!

Aye, there's the rub! It would be good if folk could try to figure this out themselves first, so... *SPOILER WARNING* First you have to get the bat carrying a live dragon - then you can use the sword to kill it without it running away. Then get the bat to carry the corpse into the castle, and swap it for an object in the middle of the screen. Do this for all three dragons, and afterwards take all other objects bar the bat and chalice to the castle. Leave the chalice just outside the door and release the bat inside (release the bat from the bottom of the screen so that it flies up - otherwise it might leave the castle again). Go outside, then press reset and carry the chalice in before the now alive dragons can get to the edge of the screen! I've tried to figure a way of doing it without pressing reset, but have so far failed... Any takers? Have you tried living the sword outside with the chalice, and then stack them up and do the old double push into the castle?

How do you get the dragons to stay in the castle with the sword in there with them? Cheers!

Overall I think this is an excellent idea. Only, why not just continue the threads we already have? I've already been posting personal updates to some, even if it was already after the deadline Fair enough, but there may be something to be said for reseting the whole business once in a while to prevent it from getting clogged and hard to navigate. Maybe, once per year start a new subforum for that year?

How about an informal system. If there is a game you like, then create a thread and post your score. Other people can discus and post their scores for that game in the thread for that game. There is no time limit on a game and no formal rankings for the club. You can tally your own rankings if you want to and post them to a common meeting place thread pinned to the top of the forum. You can post a new high score whenever you happen to get one. Sort of a play as you go thing, and you don't have to wait to start posting scores for your own favorite game. All we need is a clean sub forum to start from. Cheers!

I hope I have clarified both my opposition to keeping Terri on life support and why I see it as a wedge to control women's bodies over abortion. I think it is you who really need to reconsider the merits of the case. How can we measure love in a court room? Your position is romantic and noble, but not practical and I would argue that it is also very dangerous. Uggh! The world is not black and white, good and evil, liberal and conservative. It is a horrible gray mish mash. Some conservatives and liberals are both complete trash. I would never give any time to Ann Coulter for instance. I am actually quite fiscally conservative, but I am also strongly libertarian, and I believe in liberal goverment programs that enhance personal liberty by helping individuals to overcome some of the more heinous inequaties inherent in our world. Doing so I believe will make the world a better and more just place. If I came on strong in the first place it was because of all the slandering of Mr Shiavo. I think it has no place in the discussion of what is truly and important issue for anyone in our society. I hope I have clarified my position. Very many of us will be unconcious or feeble at some point in our lives and we will need a safety net of laws to proteect us from predatory people, especially predatory relatives. Cheers! Rob

They were not forbidden from Terri. Terri did not want them and the court SUPPORTED TERRI'S RIGHT to not be forced to endure those actions to her body. You support forcing Terri to receive treatment she clearly stated to her husband that she did not ever want under any circumstances. Terri was an adult. That means she is free to control her own medical care. Being incapacitated, by law, that responsibility falls to her husband. This is no freak case here. We are talking about a situation that arises daily in America. There is a long legal standing that adults have the right to refuse medical treatments. We are talking about Liberty and Diginity. You can't put a price on those things, and we certainly do not let them be bought in the America for any damn price. If a pregnant woman wants an abortion because she can not afford to raise the child, should her parents be able to force her to carry the child to term by putting up the cash to raise the kid? Is a person's body for sale to relatives with enough cash? I thought we outlawed slavery a long time ago in this country for good reasons. Terri did not wish to be on life support. That is her right. You need to respect Terri's right to die with dignity. What is your alternative? Any relation, or maybe even a stranger, can take control of people with medical conditions that they do not want treated and force them to be treated? Is that what you support, because that is what this case is really about. You can slander Mr. Schiavo, but the court heard all the "evidence" and found it lacking. That is the law. If adults should not control their own bodies then who should? If someone had offered to pay for the equipment to keep the people alive, would the government have prevented it? That a person needs something does not imply that the government should compel taxpayers to provide it. I am not the pro-life person here arguing that every life is precious and must be protected at the expense of individual rights or treasure. I am arguing that Terri's supporters who gave plenty of money to Terri's legal fund suddenly became tight wads when another opportunity to save a life presented itself. Why couldn't a special law be written for those individuals? Congress held a special session and President Bush flew in from his vacation in Texas to sign Terri's law. A law that applied only to Terri! Do you think that didn't cost the taxpayers anything?!!!?! A fucking law for a specific person. That has never ever been done in U.S. history BTW and it is a terrible precedent. Since corporations are individuals there is now a precendent for passing a law targeting a specific corporation. I suspect we will see one used to break a Union strike within our lifetimes, but I am drifting from the original topic and I am sorry for that. If Terri's plight was so great, why hasn't there been a follow on law that applies to everyone? Terri's situation is not unique. Do you think family members of other families have not had similar disagreements? This stuff happens all the time. Its why the public approval ratings for this action by the Republicans are so low. The judicial branch of the government (Thank the founders for checks and balances) did its job and protected Terri from being abused and violated by her parents, Congress, and the President. That was Terri's wish, and I am thankful that they did because it protected all of us even you terrible EvilNastyHorribleChristianFascists You guys wanted to strip Terri of her humanity and reduce her to a thing that can be bought. A teddy bear of sorts for Terri's parents so that they could cuddle her and feel all warm and fuzzy. I know you believe you knew what was best for Terri, but only Terri really did. You aren't allowed to control other people that way. Even parents are forbidden to control their adult children that way. That is the law. If the law is so bad, then why don't the Republicans change it to fit the view of Terri's supporters? They can pass any law they please since they control the whole government. I think the lack of a follow up law to apply to everyone highlights the politcal sham festival that this stunt really was. It was a shameful desecration of Terri, IMO. The Republicans passed a freaking law to do exactly what you say you would never want to have done. They overruled Terri's wishes and turned her into a political tool. Was that love? Why should Congress and the President have had any say at all in Terri's medical affairs? Did they truly know and love Terri? If they can mess with Terri, they can do the same thing to anyone. How about forcing gays to attend reeducation camps so they can be cured? If Terri could be forced to live, then its only a small jump to force gays to be cured. After all we love them and they simply can't make their own decisions. I mean they chose to be gay right, and AIDS is a risk to their lives as gays, so they clearly are not rational adults that can make their own decisions. We would be protecting their lives First the gays, and then the jews and atheists, right? You presume to judge how much love one person has for another and use that as a basis for determining the civil rights of person being loved. You presume to know what Terri and Michael shared in their most initimate and private conversations. Are you God? That is not how our law works. There isn't a love meter in the courtroom you have to squeeze and make the top lights turn on to prove you really love your spouse and be allowed to make a medical decision on their behalf. Terri was an adult. She was legally married. Her medical care decisions by law fall to her husband. The amount of "love" and "happiness" in the marriage can not be measured by you or anyone. It is irrelevant. That is one of the major tenets of the marriage contract. What's love got to do with it? Do you want to alter one of the most basic structures of our society? Her parents presented their arguments that he was an unfit husband many times, to many judges over fifteen damn years, they even had access to high powered attorney's paid for by the EvilNastyHorribleChristianFascists, and the judges still all said "No way". If Mr. Shiavo is truly as bad as you say, then how is that possible? Was there some vast conspiracy of judges out to kill poor Terri? What was their motive for forcing her to die? Do you really want these sorts of very common legal battles to resolve down to who has the most love for the incapacitated person? How that hell do you judge that? Or worse, how about the party that brings the most money to the table. This is about basic principles of liberty and dignity. I am sorry her parents feel left out in the cold. They should have built a stronger relationship with Terri when she was capable of making her own decisions and created a living will with her. That is the law. It is precise, it is blind, and it is necessary to prevent total chaos and truly heinous crimes against people incapable of defending themselves. Terri's parents presented only circumstantial evidence that Terri would want life support. That just isn't good enough and we should all be thankful that the judges threw it out in court. Even you should be thankful, or else it very well may come to pass that someone who does not love you would get to make all your decisions for you if you became incapacitated. Do you have a living will? You should. For fun. Let's assume that you are right and the best case scenario is true. Terri's parent's are sinless angels and Mr Shiavo is el Diablo. Terri is given to her parents and a miracle occurs and she becomes 100% healed! It sounds great, but now a precendent is set, and parents can override the medical decisions of their children at will. They just have to tell the court that they love their children and need to protect them. It worked for Terri by God, so the court must give parents control over their children at will for life. What a hellish world that would be and no I am not exaggerating the problem because you propose to use "love" as a standard for making judicial decisions. Holy hell, what a nightmare that would be. JUDGE: So how much to you love this man. Plaintiff1: I love him from my toes to my nose sir. Plaintiff2: I love him from here to the sea, and all around the pretty moon. My love is ever so much bigger you see. JUDGE: I see. Cheers! Rob

IMO, Its hard to top the the simultaneous 2 player gameplay of Mario Bros.

If I may make a suggestion for a format change. What if the top twenty players from the last season all pick a game at once. Then we create a sub forum for season four. In that sub forum we add a thread for each of the 20 games. The player that picks the game can post and maintain the thread for that game to distribute the work load for the club using the standard format that Zero uses to post a new game minus the ranking information because it won't matter at the start. All games are then in play simultaneously for a period of 4 months. If you have a new high score in a game you post to the thread for that game. You MUST have a higher score to post in the thread. At the end of 4 months we count for each game the people in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd positions on each game (should usually be the last three posts, minus errors and personal improvements). Each 1st place is worth 5 points. Each second place is worth 3 points, and each third place is worth 1 points. There should be an additional thread in the season sub forum for chatting and asking questions about any game active that season. The game threads should be exclusively for posting new higher scores. Goals: - I think this approach will yield less work for the manager of the club. Scores are only tabulated once, and they should almost always be the last 3 posts in each thread. - If you are really into a game you have 4 months to compete and don't miss out if you are on a trip or something. There is a minor negative. If you score in what would be the current second place, then you can not post in the thread. You must surplant the existing high score to get into the rankings. I think that difference makes for an exciting shoot-out style of season. We could push to have season 4 start this way on May 1st and run until the last day of August. Any takers?

The whole Terri thing is a farce. There have been a number of cases since Terri where people who were concious,but needed life support were purposely removed from it because they couldn't pay the bills. Those people begged for their lives, and were put to death by the Texas government. No christians were out protesting their deaths. Why not? (partially because they were minorities), but mainly because this whole thing is to build the pretext for complete government control of women's bodies including life and death. This is a wedge issue on the abortion debate. Nothing else. If you want the government to control your body, then please support Terri. If you want to have even basic liberty and control of your body, then please support Michael. He may be a complete jerk, I don't know, but he is on the right side on this issue and I would back him 100% even if the first thing he does everyday is strangle 100 puppies and drink their blood. Cheers!

Okay, so I have less than a month to complete an entry for the 2006 minigame contest in the 1K category. They sure set that deadline early this year. Oh well, If I miss it, then I guess I'll just have to enter it next year. My game idea is a sword fighting themed game with a top down interface. The player myst kill all enemy warriors in the current room and then proceed to the next. There are 8 rooms with progressively harder enemies to defeat. The backstory is the player was betrayed and left for dead. Now he is back seeking revenge. I have drawn up a software requirements document for the game. It is not great, but I think it will be adequate to get through the design stage and most of the coding in short order. The main point of writing the requirements down was to clarify my thoughts on the game and list all the key aspects of the engine that I need to take in to account so that I don't need to do much backtracking later on. I have including my requirements below if you are curious. Cheers! Rob Software Requirements Document This document shall capture the requirements for a simple atari 2600 video game. Backstory Summary: You are a warrior, betrayed by your best friend and left for dead. Now you have returned for revenge. Fight your way through 8 rooms of enemies to face the traitor in mortal combat. 1.0 Title: The name of the game shall be limited to six characters to allow it to be drawn on the screen with 3 sprites. 1.1 Proposed working titles include "Grudge, "Hatred", "Return", "Animus". 1.2 OPTIONAL: The opening screen of the game shall display the title using the 3 sprites normally allocated for enemy warriors. 1.2.1 OPTIONAL: If there is ROM space left, consider doing somehting with the missles to spruce up the title screen. 2.0 The game shall fit into 1K of ROM memory to meet the requirements of the 2006 minigame contest. 2.1 To meet this tight memory requirement, several requirements in this document will be prefaced with [OPTIONAL] to indicate that they can be eliminated to meet requirment 2.0 3.0 Description of display. 3.1 All screens in the game shall use the same display engine/kernel. 3.1.1 The display is divided into 2 regions. 3.1.1.1 The larger region on top is where gameplay action is drawn, and shall be refered to as the room. 3.1.1.2 The smaller region shall display a life bar for the player, and shall be referred to as the status bar. 3.1.2 Symetrical PF graphics shall be used throughout. 3.1.2.1 The room region of the screen may contain obstacles made of PF graphics. 3.1.3 Draw sprites P0 and P1 once per frame to any height which is a power of 2. 3.1.3.1 The display engine shall use a bit mask to determine if the sprite should be rendered such that a staggered rendering of a sprite is possible to create an explosive death animation. 3.1.4 The M0, M1 and Ball objects shall: 3.1.4.1 Be drawn once per frame. 3.1.4.2 The height may be 1, 2, 4, or 8. 3.1.4.3 The width may be 1, 2, 4, or 8. 3.1.4.4 The object may be skewed 0, .5 or 1 pixel every scanlines to create a line segment at 0, 22.5, 45, 57.5, 90, 112.5, 135, or 157.5 degrees. Where, 0 degrees is a vertical line. These angles (when reflected) map to 16 compass directions used for control throughout the game. Skewed missles and ball will be used to draw the swords in the game. 3.1.5 The room region shall have an outline of a rectangle made with PF graphics. The top and bottom lines of the room rectangle shall show the suggestion of a doorway. 3.1.5.1 [OPTIONAL] The doorways are made with recycled sprites to allow a different color door than the wall. 3.1.5.2 The top door shall have the ability to be rendered as being either open or closed. The bottom door is always rendered as closed. 3.1.5.2.1 The top and bottom wall bands shall be 6 scanlines high, and the door shall be drawn in the 2 middle scanlines. 3.1.5.3 The open interior of the room rectangle shall be no more than 128 pixels wide, and 160 scanlines tall. 3.1.6 The status bar shall be 128 pixels long. and shall have an indicator object in the form of a sprite or missle to indicate the present health of the player. 3.1.6.1 The status bar region shall be 16 scanlines high. 3.1.6.2 The bar shall be red in color and shall occupy the middle eight scanlines of the region. 3.1.7 The game play shall run at 30Hz allowing up to 4 sprites and 6 missles/ball instances to be active at the same time. 4.0 Game flow: 4.1 On power up the game shall initialize and play will begin in Room 0. (see room descriptions below) 4.2 Pressing and releasing reset shall cause the game to return to the power up initial state. 4.3 When all enemies in the current room are destroyed, the door at the top of room shall open. 4.3.1 Should the player sprite touch the open doorway the gameplay will proceed to the next room. 4.4 Room 0 and room 9 shall contain no enemies. Exiting room 9 shall return player to room 0. 4.4.1 Room 0 is the title screen 4.4.2 Room 9 is the victory screen. 4.5 Rooms 1 through 8 will have a set of 1 to 3 enemies of increasing strength for the player to defeat. Details are to be explained below in section 6.0 5.0 Control 5.1 The player shall control a warrior sprite using a joystick plugged into the left joystick port. 5.1.1 Pushing the joystick left or right shall cause the player to rotate left or right through 16 facings. 5.1.2 Pushing the joystick forward will cause the player to move in the direction currently faced. 5.1.3 Pulling the joystick backwards will cause the player to move opposite the direction of facing. 5.1.4 Pulling back and pushing the button shall place the player in the defensive stance. 5.1.4.1 While in the defensive stance the player can not move forward or back, but rotation left and right is still enabled. 5.1.5 Pushing the button without pulling back on the joystick will begin an attack by the player. 5.1.6 If the player is pushing diagonally, then the left or right action shall be applied before the forward or backward motion. 5.2 All game objects will have a speed value. This value will be added to a remainder. when the remainder overflows 8-bits, the object state is updated to reflect the current control input and previous state. 5.2.1 Different speed constants will be applied for PAL and NTSC to create equivalent gameplay velocity. 6.0 More Detailed rules of combat. - The player's goal is to slay all enemies in each room. The enemies become stronger and more numerous as play progresses. The number and strength of enemies can be expressed as a binary number corresponding to current room Enemy = DCBA -> A set bit in the room number means that enemy is present. Room 0 = %0000 -> Opening screen. no enemies Room 1 = %0001 -> Enemy A Room 2 = %0010 -> Enemy B Room 3 = %0011 -> Enemy A and Enemy B Room 4 = %0100 -> Enemy C Room 5 = %0101 -> Enemy A and Enemy C Room 6 = %0110 -> Enemy B and Enemy C Room 7 = %0111 -> Enemy A, Enemy B, and Enemy C Room 8 = %1000 -> Enemy D (Final Boss) Room 9 = n/a -> Victory screen (special case) - The enemy and player warriors share common characteristics of Speed, Life, and Power. - Speed determines how often the warrior and corresponding sword are updated. - Life, when life reaches zero the warrior dies and is removed from play. - Power is the amount of damage the warrior does when an attack lands - The table below is a proposed set of values for Speed, Life and Power for the player and the 4 enemy warrior types. These numbers need to be fine tuned with actual play time, and they need to be made proportional for NTSC and PAL versions of the game. Speed Life Power Player 128 128 32 Enemy A 96 64 8 Enemy B 112 96 16 Enemy C 128 112 24 Enemy D 144 128 32 - TBD (The action of swinging a sword, blocking an attack, and counter attacking shall need to occur over many frames with the time for each frame of action to complete being controlled by the Speed attribute of the warrior. We want the number of frames to make the game move at a good but manageable pace. This work is slated to be done later once the main engine is up and running). 7.0 Scoring 7.1 There is no score except the life bar level of the player upon completion of the game. 8.0 Sound 8.1 The following sound FX shall be needed - A whooshing sound for the swinging of a sword. - A metallic ding sound for when an attack is canceled - A thud sound for when an attack hits. - A death sound when an enemy or the player dies. 9.0 End Game: - When the player defeats the boss in Room 8 and exits into room 9, then the game is over and the player has one. T - The game shall indicate victory with either a short message like "Victory" rendered in sprites and missles, or simply flash COLUPF. - Room 9 shall have no door at the top. - The game shall remain in room 9 until reset is pressed. - The game will end if the player's life bar falls to zero. The player sprite will have an animated death. The game will remain on the existing room until the player hits reset.

Yes, that's what I meant exactly

Nice Music. Hey, is there any possibility of making PF0 striped so that there isn't a blank vertical strip on the left and right. I find it disorienting. Good work! Rob

Just an update. I used my connections and have landed a new job already. I will be starting my new job on May 1st if all goes as planned. Now I need to get cracking on my 1K minigame entry. Cheers! Rob

Day dreaming here. If they had considered adding a HMOVE register for the playfield that would shift the display -8 to +7 pixels on every line. Smooth horizontal scrolling would have been doable, and the vertical HMOVE bar on the left would hide data being scrolled on or off the screen. Ah the possibilities.

I finally got off my lazy butt and cleaned up the source code for my 13-character no-flicker technique. I have created a completely unexciting demo showcasing the trick. The detailed description of how it works is given in Draw13.inc so I won't go into it here. I plan to use this trick to display the level names in Little Man. I hope other programmers find them useful too. There is a lot of room for fun effects to be done: bouncing text, whirling colored text, scrolling text. I didn't do anything cool like that for the demo becuase I want to get going on my mini-game entry. I am still hoping to squeeze into the 1K deadline. Enjoy! Rob BTW: This demo will not work correctly in Stella which does not correctly emulate the behavior of RESBL. You will need to use Z26, or real hardware to see it work correctly.