Robert M

What you are seeing is sometimes called the comb or comb effect. It is produced by the video chip in the 2600 called the TIA on every scanline where the software has requested the TIA to horizontally reposition an object on the screen using the HMOVE feature of the TIA. Activision eliminated the comb, by requiring all games to hit HMOVE every scanline thereby producing a solid black band on the left edge which makes the game image appear off center. Many people consider the comb to be a bug, because it can look ugly. I wonder if the designers might have put the comb in on purpose as a means to scroll sprites off and on the edges of the screen. Without the comb, a sprite off one edge will appear sticking out on the other side unless you do some nifty tricks in software. the comb is the same width as a standard sprite (8 pixels). So a programmer can use the comb as a sort of virtual backstage curtain to move sprites in and out as if entering or leaving a stage. Cheers!

I think a main block to programmers picking up ideas from other people to implement is they have no shortage of their own ideas that they want to try themselves first. There have been lots of great ideas proposed by non programmers, Prince Of Persia for instance. I love the idea of POP for VCS, as did many other programmers. Thomas and vdub_bobby demostrated the kernel can handle display of the necessary game element. Now the hard part of making the game remains. Hundreds of hours of work in truth to make it polished. I know its very tempting for many, but that time commitment very big. I think would be VCS game designers should seek to emulate what Scott Dayton (neotokeo2001) did and does to promote his design ideas. For Wolfenstein, he put forth a graphic hack of Venture, and listed some ideas for making it even better. I saw what he had done, and could see clearly that his ideas were very doable. Then the nostalga forWolfenstein on C64 and Apple II kicked in and I couldn't resist his proposal, because I could see how it could be done. What I am saying, is I think a lot of people with ideas don't present a well rounded proposal for a new game that a programmer can feel really comfortable picking up and bringing to fruition. Presenting a well rounded idea (example hacks for instance) just to demostrate the feel or a particular idea from your design, can really spark the imagination and desire of a programmer to make it a reality. Writing the software for a game takes several hundred hours. If you show as a designer that you have put 20 or 30 hours into your design, prototyping and expressing your concepts through hacks, mockups, and text descriptions analyzing game mechanics you will greatly improve the chances of making a programmer fall in love with your ideas. In the end, even if a programmer doesn't pick up your design immediately it doesn't mean they never will. Keep your design in the public eye on a website. Some really famous books were rejected by publishers for years before being printed. Design because you are enjoying it and want to share your ideas. Ask programmers to critique your work, listen and adapt your design to what you hear. Show dedication and have fun! Cheers!

I received my copy and played my first game of M.U.L.E. in nearly 20 years. Simply glorious! Well done! Thanks!

Yeah, Blocko. He's on my list as well. Right now I want to focus on the lander game so I have something to enter in the mini game compo. I think I might aim to insert Blocko as an enemy in the Little Man game. Then follow up with the full on Blocko "Qix-like" game. There are so many things I want to try on the VCS, it gets frustrating trying to find time for them all. Rob

The 2600 has no timer chips. 868180[/snapback] More importantly, if you did under or overclock an Atari 2600, the TV signal would go out of spec and could not be displayed. I believe the margin for the clock tolerance before the image would go bad is < +-2%

When its on the right side of the player its a sword. On the left side its a crossbow.

Hello, Has anyone ever seen the T-shirt design for the Roadblasters T-shirt giveaway? What does it look like? Does anyone on the forum own one? Cheers!

Doesn't OSX readily spport screenshots of just the current window? It's little stuff like that that make me hesitate before taking the plunge from PC-land. 860780[/snapback] Yes, it does. If the program does not support it itself, then there is the Grab utility which allows screenshots of the whole screen, a single window, or any rectangle of the screen you wish to grab.

Hello, glad to see some interest in this baby. Not problems! Challenges! That's what makes this hobby fun. The design shows 20 PF pixels being used because that is the minimum number needed to get 5 game board spaces across. You can just leave 10 pixels unused on each side, which frees up CPU time. Or if you can make a kernel that displays more than 5 spaces then that is even better. You are on the right track here. I think self modifying code is your best bet. You can change the PF color for each space in a row using a self modifying routine in RAM. That leaves the sprites free to draw icons and the player. Note that the spaces are 4 PF pixels wide for the reason that the spaces are then 16 color clocks on center which allows us to use the hardware sprite replication to get 3 identical icons per row. So making them 6 PF pixels wide will block that feature. The timing is a bit touchy with 16 color clocks per space since 16 does not divide evenly by 3 to stay in sync with the CPU. That's the fun part! Consider though that you do not need to change the PF registers at all during the display, only the COLUPF register. Cheers!

Hey Neo, You should post the NES rom you got the core idea for this game from. Playing that ROM clarified alot for me about the flow of the gameplay and showed me how fun it could be. It might help to drum up more programmer talent. Cheers!

I am rather busy at the moment moving from Illinois to New York. Once I am settled I would be able to help some more on this project. I would be willing to write the display kernel(s) and a "fill in the blanks" program/state-machine shell. Are there any (possibly newbie?) programmers who would be interested in taking a working kernel and putting the game code in? It could be a great learning experience Cheers!

I assume then you are using a second controller to activate the map? 836229[/snapback] Definitely. I use the footpedal to be exact, but at least a joystick is a definite must if you want to get far. Forcing the switch to the scanner can save critical seconds, and is needed if a federation planeet comes under attack while you are fighting someone else and you want to break off.

Here's my first posted score: 165020. Here are some more tips: - Corridors are intimidating at first and not well explained in the manual. When you enter the corridor your first instinct is to pull back the stick and try to slow down. Don't do that! Shoot like crazy moving left and right to kill guardians. Each hit will slow you down some. When you see the key, then pull back and steer toward it. - Good warping is critical to success in the game. If you warp into a zone with enemies and warp with a focus of 2 or 3, switch to the map screen and warp immediately to the same place. Repeat until you get a focus of 1 or 0. I especially find this useful for minefields. Your warp focus determines how long you are passing through the mines. - When your scanner is damaged you need to know how to still use it. To line up for a docking or to pick up a pilot. Slide right or left until you see an 'X' on the left side of the scanner. Yo uare now lined up to dock or pick up.

I have been waiting a long time for this. I personally believe I may be the best Solaris player in the world today. I can score over 200,000 without any problem. So I am offering all my HSC points as a bounty for anyone who can beat me this week. If more than one person beats me, then the one who beats me by the most gets all my points. TIPS: - Make a map! The Solaris universe is a twisted up maze. Sure you can memorize it eventually, but making a map will accelerate that process. - Cobra Ships: Don't fight them. They are worth only 80 points, and they are deadly. Cobra ships never attack a federation planet. - There seem to be 3 basic behaviors for Zylon ships in a sector. The rule applies for all ships in a sector: 1. Begin moving from the start of the game. 2. Begin moving when the player enters a sector for the first time. 3. Reset to starting positions each time the player enters the sector, but if there is a federation planet in the sector and the player leaves with Zylons still in the sector, then the federation planet is immediately destroyed. - Read the instructions. Especially the scoring chart. Go for the big points. - Your first goal must be to save most of the federation planets around your starting point. - From your cluster of rescued planets you can now strike out and come back for fuel and repairs. - Wormholes can move. If they do then the destination of the wormhole moves as well. Be sure to map all starting and end points for wormholes. Cheers!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=43051&item=4981554259&rd=1 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...6521695866&rd=1

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=66677

I there any chance the original source will be made public? It would be highly educational to budding 7800 programmers. Cheers!

2082

I have to agree with Wil's review of Midnight Magic. I think a lot of people give it a pass because it has pretty graphics, but the game does have several terrible flaws all touched on in his review. 1. The table layout is horrible. All the targets are in the top third of the board. A row of targets just below the middle spinner or anything would have helped. 2. The physics are unforgivably bad. The game was going for a realistic look and feel unlike Video Pinball. Bouncing ball physics are well documented in any 1st year physics texbook. So why are the physics so bad? 3. The most unforgivable error is the horrible controls. The box art clearly shows gameplay using a pair of paddle buttons to control the flippers. An excellent concept to be sure. The problem is the programmer could not manage to properly write code a control scheme having more than one button. In truth you can play that way, but if you do, then you can not flip both flippers at the same time. Only one button is detected and permitted to be used at a time. Show me a single pinball machine that works that way. Blech! Midnight Magic is pretty to look at, but the gameplay and controls are substandard.

Hello, I was at the store today and I noticed a Play-It-Now music player with 5 Atari 2600 games ported to it. It has Pong, Adventure, Circus Atari, Battlezone and a Lunar Lander game which I suppose technically is an arcade port. Has anyone bought one of these things? Are the games any good? Here's a link: http://www.hasbro.com/playitnow/pl/page.ga.../dn/default.cfm Cheers!

Some improvement: 35,900

New score: 32100 For control I have found it useful to turn all the way to the right, and then use the left and right keys to rotate back and forth between up/left and right. It makes it more like steering the plane left and right. I use the down key as an escape manuver.

OK, the major differences I see are: Stone age lacks the fancy border, has the score on top instead of the bottom, and has a grid of 10x8 instead of 11x8 blocks. Since we can't see the kernel on the screen, please explain for us noobs why these apparently minor differences absolutely eliminate the possibility that Stone Age could be a Pengo hack? That's a completely different kernel. Here is a list of the differences I noted with a quick analysis: - Sprites in Pengo are single wide. Sprites in Stone Age are double wide. - The blocks in Pengo are 2 PF pixels wide with a single PF pixel gap between (Horizontally). Stone Age blocks are 3 PF pixels wide with 1 single PF pixel gap between. - Pengo sprites have single scanline vertical resolution. Stone Age sprites are at least 2 and maybe more scanlines per vertical pixel. - The score bar is at the top for Stone Age and bottom for Pengo. - Stone Age sprite are multicolored. Pengo sprites are monochrome. Verdict: Those kernels are radically different and Stone Age is definitely not a graphics hack of Pengo. I doubt they have any code common between them except by accident. Cheers!

As to the NTSC/PAL thing. Since the game does not produce a steady set of scanlines per frame, on a PAL TV the color goes in and out from B&W. Whereas on NTSC the color remains (crappy as it is). I find it hard to believe (even though the code is extremely poor quality) that the programmer would try to sell a PAL game that could not generate the stable frames needed to maintain a color image. The problem is immediately obvious on a PAL only TV. Or fire up Stella and turn on PAL mode, you can see it happen there. Regards,

First score: 15600 Man, the joystick control is very hard to get used to. Is it just me, or is this game screaming for a hack to support the driving controller? Cheers!