Jaynz

Regular, classic "Tetris" (as in the one everyone sued one another over) has the 'deck' setting by default. Post Tengen-versions I'm really not sure. I know a lot of the clones are straight-up random, naturally. But I always felt this was one little aspect that made the classic what it was. It was a nice hidden strategy, if you knew what to look for. Sound is... gonna be a tough one. I feel like there should be more noise, but I think the major effects are there. I'll have to run to the Tengen version again to see if there was anything else... I doubt you want to add a custom sound mixer to TIA for this.

Definately coming together. A few thoughts... The 'piece' randomizer isn't as random as you have. Tetris has a 'deck' of seven pieces that's shuffled each time it runs out - so you're guaranteed to get the 'complete run' in random over every seven pieces. This is why Tetris experts can start to predict how the pieces are coming and play off it. Title menu should probably be more '7800' like. Very minor nit there, but it's a part of how Atari/Nintendo/Sega did things back in the day. Sounds work fine, though I wonder if you should have a 'cascading upward' effect for multi-line clearing? (Higher pitch on line #2, then #3, and something special for all 4?) I very much look forward to seeing this coming together. Hopefully you'll add it as a fine addition to AtariAge's lineup.

SEE?! SEE?! I told you someone was out to get them!

Well, I made sure to snag a Ballblazer cart this week... just in case Albert or someone here comes after it to scrounge the POKEY!

I don't think a new piece of hardware is in order on this one - 'tis a bit overkill, and the Baby Pac field isn't all that good for such an endeavour. What I wanted to do was to figure out just how big it would need to be to have an alternate 'pinball screen' in memory ... effectively a 'second game' that switches where appropriate. There are a couple of tricks involved here - with the main restraint being my extremely rusty ASM skills.

That would be Pac-Man and Chomp Chomp, right? Actually, Bob, after you've put this beastie to bed, I would love to pick your brain about getting into 7800 development myself. I'm stuck in the 'try to do it all at once' mode...

Ah, thanks very much. Hopefully next week I can crack into the Ms. Pac-Man source code itself and make this into its own program rather than a hack. That'll allow for some expansion and cleanup and perhaps make way for something to be done about the included pinball game eventually.

I didn't include that one since Bob had mentioned starting work on it right before his job change. Admittedly, I don't know if he still intends to work on it or not... :S

You could start with the Pitfall "jump" and "die" sounds.. see how it fits and go from there. Steps my be a little much ...

Very roughly, I come up to about 13 or 14 characters needed for the entire 60 byte string, using only Alphanumerics. The question of space is really the breakdown/rebuild of the code into usable game data. Again, I can't comment too much farther without seeing the actual structure. (I should look at the game itself again tonight for further thoughts on this.) The password characters themselves need not be unique - just reuse the text and numbers already in the game. Well, the battery backup idea is timely, though you're looking at a whole new card design for the 7800 to do that. Making it an XM option may be possible, depending on how they handle the high-score data stuff.

The first three are relatively easy (particularly since the password gen would rely on 'checkpoints' at the game over state). The last one kinda depends on the number of loot items around. How many are there and are they static? If they're not moving or not randomized, it may be a little easier to implement. If someone can post the data required directly, I can do a little C-based pseudo-code to show what I mean.

Hmm... easier option, and more keeping with the time-frame of the 7800s catalog, is to have a 'level password' which can be entered in from the game's menu screen. Clear a level, you get a new password. (The password is basically an alpanumeric containing any key information required for your save points). For instance "UACCE" could be level 1, save point 3, 5 lives, etc. I used to write tones of these little algorithms back in the day - very efficient way to do it if you don't really need a lot of data for the save game.

Isn't the issue with the sprites primarily that they're too big on the screen (and thus a lot uglier than they should be)? I'm not sure how you can hack that without also affecting the collision detection.

Like I said, the thumbstick will exaggerate the movements (particularly up) because of how the pressure-point works. (The NES pad with the stick screwed in will do the same thing). It takes a little getting used to , particularly for some 'non-forgiving' games like Asteroids. A lot of people really like the GEN controller as well, but you again lack the second button without a fairly involved modding process.

If you can get the gamepad for a good price (they can occaisionally go for 'cheap' on ebay, rather than pay the $30 plus that others charge) I strongly reccomend that you do so. For me, it just make the games a lot easier to manage. Plus, it seems like the pads were far less fragile than the doorstops. It's not a perfect controller yet (the thumbstick tends to exaggerate your 'up' movements, for instance) but it's a far better fit for a lot of games.

The remaining 'pac-man' games from the 'classic age' would be Baby Pac-Man, which requires a pinball screen (which, sadly, there's nothing like on the 7800 to model from), and PacMania, which is a 3/4 isometric view with a bouncing Pac-Man.

Easy, the technology did. It's not that kids wouldn't like the game-styles we did 'back in the day', but why should they settle for 16 colors, pixels the size of a quarter, two-tone sound, etc., when their fraggin' cell phones blow that tech away. If you're going to sell retro-style gaming to today's audience, you best get ready for HD resolution, 5.1 sound, and a decent music soundtrack. (At the very least, your games can't look and sound worse than an SNES title...)

Possible eventually. It's not exactly a complicated table... just pretty well beyond my current capabilities and what the editors can do.

I would be more interested in putting more money forward to this if I had an idea of the total cost of Atari's assets, what we would actually be getting (IE, are we really getting the IP or they trying to pull an Interplay here), and what a 'profitability' plan would be. We're pretty much past the nostalgia market's profitability for the Atari hey-day, so what would the plan be going forward?

Version .002 * Changed Title Screen to "Baby Pac Man" * Replaced ghost graphics with Tim graphics from Jr. Pac Man * Replaced Ms. Pac-Man graphcis with "Bonnet" Baby Pac-Man (not happy with this one) * Replaced blinking ghosts with Pac Man Plus graphics * Replaced ghost names with "Dinky, Spunky, Funky, and Tim" Getting close to the end of what I can do in the editor, might be time to look at hex-editing soon for some other changes. Cosmetics are pretty much done, though - unless someone can figure out a better way to do the bonnet at this scale. :S Also, if there's an easy way to add a fruit to the game, I would love to hear it. I don't like the missing Watermelon... :S Baby Pac-Man.bin Baby Pac-Man.A78

I may do that tommorow (or much later tonight). I just wanted to do something 'light' since my time to relearn ASM has been non-existant. I'm not sure where to look to change the fruit names for the options screen, either - which would come up once the fruits themselves changed around. Note to self: Cherry, Strawberry, Peach, Apple, Pear, Orange, Watermelon, Banana... Edit: Did the shapes, but I'm short one slot.. right now I'm doing without the Watermelon, but thinking I should mix it up by losing either the peach or apple instead. Thoughts? I'm also getting a weird glitch in the text editor where it won't recognize 'end of line' correctly for the fruit names. Copy-pasting isn't working. Fleh.

Very modest level hack using the Pac-Man editor. I swapped out the levels of the game with the levels from Baby Pac-Man (minus the pinball, of course). Much tougher collection of three mazes here. There's a slight tweak on the second map, due to where Ms. Pac-Man starts out, alas. But still came pretty close this time out. Not sure if I'm going to do much more with this one... just something to play around with. baby pac-man.a78 Baby Pac-Man.bin

I would honestly be interested in one of each.

My last post on the XM, for good... Fine. Thanks for confirming that it's never been about the game or enjoyment, but instead about who're the "important" people in the 7800 fandom and who is not. Sad to see it, but there it is.

That means that the code may be checking the controls too tightly, which can cause issues even with a new and perfectly-working controller if its not hitting the sync right. These old machines don't have buffers and read-states like the newer consoles do. "Direct to hardware" can have issues that you have to make some allowances for. Edit: Anyway, tried it out this morning and it is a lot smoother in the controls already. Tweaking from this point may be a never-ending process and you're probably better off just wrapping up the game and getting it under the best, as it were.