gliptitude
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Posts posted by gliptitude
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In response to a tiny bit of renewed interest, I am starting this thread for:
NEW VECTREX GAME IDEAS
This had previously taken place in a thread that was not really intended for this. Well THIS is the thread for anybody's ideas. Programmers of course are welcome, but I wanted to set aside a place for the novices (idea peddlers) as well. I'm interested in sharing my own ideas, which range from fairly complete concepts to simply vague ideas and untapped genres.
Personally, I am most interested in new concepts, rather than ports/clones.
Please post any ideas you have and join the discussion! I'll start posting my own soon if you don't.
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Hey really cool to see more interest in Vectrex development. I saw your post in the "Vextrex Idea" thread, and you quoted an old post I made about starting a new thread for Vectrex game ideas. I will do that shortly, and post in the old thread when I have done so.
Very busy at the moment, so I haven't looked at your projects yet. I will try to do that this evening. I do think it's cool that you put your assembly out there, so people can actually see the program. But I suppose .bin's would be easier for some people to look at on an emulator.
Also I quickly looked up the Atic-Attack game you mentioned in the other thread. (Never heard of it, never played any Spectrum games). I don't know of anything like it that has been made for Vectrex and it looks like a great candidate for adaptation (or even better - just the inspiration for a NEW game, with similar features). ... It actually has a couple things in common with the Vectrex game design I have been working on ('flip-screen' levels and overhead perspective views), although mine is a totally different sort of game (arcade shooter). (I see in your post here 'no brand-new idea pitches please', so i will hush now).
I look forward to checking out your stuff later!
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Excuse me? Settle down?
Take it easy.
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They do work great as a media system and that's how I used it for a while. I have the first generation of the Intel minis, which has problems with XBMC, so I ended up get a WD Live Hub for my video needs. The recent model doesn't have these problems and would also make a fantastic emulator box.
My mini is now a development box, which I use for QMC2, as well as other projects I work on.
If they come out with a Core i7 mini, I'll jump all over it.
Cool. ... I'm looking at the apple store right now and the "Mac Mini with Lion Server" ($999) says: "2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7". ... What is QMC2? You use your Mini to program games?
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You're saying you have a G4 machine, which frankly, is completely ancient history at this point,
Ok, settle down. I'm not arguing or comparing my machine to a Mac Mini, just mentioning a few points and my experience and like I said, Windows environment is viable now. I was trying to spell some of the ancient Mac myths here, (except for the controller thing I just haven't looked into, SORRY). Some in this thread are using a G5 which is not a whole lot less ancient than G4, and NO ONE is using a Mini.
...I would love to know how a Mini functions myself, preferably hearing from a fellow computer-illiterate Mac user who owns one. I had thought they were mainly promoted as some kind of media console rather than a desktop. Kill me if I'm wrong.
Nice to hear that Windows is seemless now and many controllers available too.
How about console flash card loader software? Any reason a current-gen Mac user can't rely on their regular machine to mess with their flash cards? I used to have to move to a PC to write to my GBA flash card. (I don't anymore because the flash card broke)
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Mac Mini is probably the least common Mac machine. Not sure how this figures into the conversation or how it compares to MacBooks or desktops, but I would guess that most, if not all of these responses are coming from people using different machines. I use an iBook G4 and some of the emulators I try to use initiate "classic environment" which does not ever successfully load for me. The Windows environment on the Macs is something that used to be totally disfunctional but is now possible, from what I understand.
I seem to remember back when I was more into emulators that there was a only a very small range of joysticks/controllers to be used on a Mac.
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Also Protector for me. Actually never really liked Defender, but Protector reintroduced me to it, now I love Defender (and Protector). The vertical screen of the Vectrex is not ideal for this title, but it works, and the slick vector rendition is amazing. I like the little people you are defending in Protector, they're so small they almost look like little LED patterns like on the tabletop games, rather than vectors. $12 on cartridge from Classic Game Creations? Outrageous!
2nd fav is I, Cyborg. Beyond that I'm not sure. Sectis is cool. Haven't played Vector Pilot. Haven't played Spikes Circus. Both look awesome.
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Heh if i made even league minimum MLB player salary, (and played ball for a living) i'd pay approximately the salary of a school teacher for my own personal Vectrex game programmer.
Perhaps custom programming for the super wealthy gamer could support the ambitious retro programmer. Basically find a patron, the way artists do.
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Gliptitude mentioned that the buttons are not as responsive as he would like. This is a known issue I have where the button contacts on my boards sometimes oxidize because they don't have enough tin on them - especially of they don't get used much. What AX said is true about the existing boards being perfectly good and I have, indeed, already changed my manufacturing to simply modify the existing board by adding on a small daughterboard instead of making a whole new board myself. On the SNES controllers this means that the buttons use the original carbon button contacts and the Genesis controllers are split between gold and carbon contacts depending on when and where they were manufactured. The labor to do this, however, is actually substantially more than just making my own boards. Reliability on these new controllers is much higher.
Glibtitude - PM me your address and I will ship you out one of the SNES Vectrex controllers that uses the existing board. If you like it better, just ship back the old one so I can use it for a donor. This goes for anyone else having issues with one of my controllers - contact me and we'll work something out.
PM'd my address to you last night. Look forward to your response! I didn't mean to bad-mouth your product, it is still quite useful and I use it all the time. Just that it could be a bit more responsive
. I love that you are doing this stuff and that the Vectrex community has a guy like you! -
It sure would be cool if one of y'all would do a animation and video it, so those of us without a lightpen could see what it's like.
http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=N6latV2IQ5A
There's lots of stuff on youtube.
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How did this work?
Plugs into player 2 controller port. Used in conjunction with a regular controller in player 1 port. Sensor in tip of the pen detects a cursor on the sceen.
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NES:
legend of zelda
Bionic commando
Marble madness
Super mario bros 2
Goonies 2
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I have the repro light pen and art master and animaction. Have had a lot of fun with it, though it can be quite tedious at times. It's difficult to be precise. Both programs have crazy limitations, but i've actually found the art master animation mode to be more useful than animaction. The stuff i've been doing in art master can't be done in animaction.
It would be sweet if somebody developed a new animation cartridge for the vectrex.
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I look into this every now and again. I've often wanted something to tinker with creating GB/GBC romhacks and homebrews, but I usually don't get too far into the buying process. It seems most of the good GB/GBC flashcarts are out of production, stupidly expensive, and/or require tons of hardware/software I don't have. Looks like the time to get in on that game was about 15 years ago... :-/
This looks current and reliable:
http://r4-3.com/ez-flash-iv-mini-gba-card-ez4-for-nintendo-gba-ds-ds-lite-p-19.html
At $38 including shipping that's about half what I paid 6 years ago for a GBA flash cart that stopped working after a year or two.
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EzFlash IV has a few weaknesses, like not supporting 256mbit roms and lack of rtc, but is overall one of the better cards for the system--especially since the M3 family is no longer available. It won't do b/w or color games in 'legacy GB mode,' however GBA does have software emulators for them in GBA mode.
What exactly does it mean to support or not support "256mbit roms"? I have an EFA gba flash cart that I bought years ago, but it no longer connects through the USB port, so I'm stuck with the last stuff I wrote to it. I seem to remember "256" appearing often when I was writing files to it in the past. Mainly trying to run the various emulators. Can I do this on the EZflash IV?
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I'm not an expert on the technology, but one thing I'm aware of that is some advantage to the new programmers is that the cartridges can be bigger than the originals. I believe the originals were 16K and most new games are 32K, a couple of them larger than that I believe.
The machine always was able to handle up to 32k in one bank, it's just that no original game back in the day came anywhere near filling that. The largest commercially released game was 8k, and the unreleased Dark Towers was 12k. Since then, homebrew has filled the void heh... and a few games do use bankswitching to deliver 64k in total.
Pretty much no idea what any of this means, except that 32 is larger than 16, which is larger than 8, smaller than 64. I'd just imagined that technological progress made RAM or ROM or memory or whatever more accessible, and that one of these things was inside of the cartridges. I don't understand how a cartridge interfaces with a console, or how one could compensate for the other. What's bank switching?
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nevermind
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I bought Recycledgamer's SNES pad a few months ago. Although I use it all the time I've actually had a problem that the buttons are not as responsive as they should be. The compact layout of the SNES pad makes it great for a majority of Vectrex games, and the orientation of the corresponding buttons is acceptable. Not the ultimate Vectrex controller, but pretty darn good.
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As for the reason, I'm guessing its just that it's not that easy to get Vector monitors, and the Vectrex was handy.
I think you can do this with some Osciloscopes as well...
desiv
Cool. Since my last post I did see on the Zektor website that it works with oscilloscopes. ..I started looking at "vector monitors", "xy monitors" and oscilloscopes on ebay. I noticed a majority of oscilloscopes are small screens, maybe 5".
... Then I searched net for "huge oscilloscope" and eventually found an instructable for converting old televisions to oscilloscopes.
http://www.instructa...scope/?ALLSTEPS
I remember reading that the original Vectrex production was kind of out of convenience using a stock of regular BW television monitors which were modified to be vector displays. I wonder how reliably this could be done by a diligent hobbyist. ... The article I linked doesn't specify that this monitor could take an xy signal and display it. I have no idea how particular of a capability that is. He is just demonstrating its use as a waveform audio display...
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As for using the Vec as a monitor for original vector games, it's the (From memory here, so might be wrong) Zektor ZVG???
With that and Vector MAME, I think you can play any of the old games on that screen...
Wow, this is awesome! ... What would be the reason for using a Vectrex in this setup though (rather than a vector monitor)? ... Would setting it up this way involve rededicating the Vectrex to this purpose, and separating the Vectrex monitor from its console?
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The Vectrex actually has an Asteroids clone BUILT-IN to the console. It's called Minestorm and it's pretty sweet. There have been a couple other homebrew Asteroids clones also. ... Protector is absolutely amazing, better than any other version for me.
I'm not an expert on the technology, but one thing I'm aware of that is some advantage to the new programmers is that the cartridges can be bigger than the originals. I believe the originals were 16K and most new games are 32K, a couple of them larger than that I believe.
Not sure what you know about the Vectrex atarilovesyou, so you can let me know if I'm stating the obvious. But I think the Vectrex is pretty capable of doing what you are talking about. There was someone working on a Battlezone clone, but I think that person kind of disappeared. I believe there was someone else who worked on a Tempest clone. (If not there are a couple of great Tempest-like games in the original library with Web Wars and Bedlam).
You might check out this vector/vectrex forum:
http://vectorgaming.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=vectrex
It's a small community, but there are definitely people there interested in the subject and people who would be able to tell you the history of this sort of thing.
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Thanks for replies guys. PM sent to PsychedelicShaman.
Does the vecmulti use a standard GCE cartridge shell? I've actually got an empty, never used shell at home. I figured I might have a use for it at some point.
No Desfeek it's not Battlezone. It's an original game of my design. We intend for it to have a unique overlay, which I am in charge of producing and which will make it kind of a pricey title (unfortunately custom screen printing and die cutting is a pretty big deal). Can't tell you anything more right now. I'll let you know when there is an official announcement, which could be soon. Could be 8 months to a year before it is released though.
... I don't know if you saw my thread asking for damaged GCE overlays? The screen printer needs these to experiment with. If you have any you might sell me cheap please let me know.
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Yes I'm aware that his newest cart supports Animaction rom, but he is sold out and not taking new orders. I certainly intend to buy from him (for this and other purposes) and have already talked to him and gotten on his list. No idea when he will be selling again though and I am looking to move forward right away.
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I'm trying to get my hands on Animaction for the Vectrex. Box and manual are not neccesary.
There is one on sale for $65 + shipping on ebay, more than I am willing to pay. I might pay $40. Also have some other Vectrex stuff for trade, CIB games. For straight trade I'd consider LNIB Berzerk or Rip Off. LNIB Spinball is available, but more valuable than $40 to me. Some other CIB games in less than like-new condition. Possibly straight trade my converted vectrex SNES pad. Ask if interested!
See the forum thread with my screen name in the title for some reference on my dealings on here.
I have been prototyping a new game for the Vectrex using (in addition to hand drawn concept images and text) Art Master video demos of the gameplay, which I video tape and then send to the programmer for review. It's hard for me to imagine that there are very many people getting as much use out of Art Master as I have been getting. However, there are some pretty significant things I could do with Animaction that I can't do with Art Master, so I need your help!
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Vectrex game idea?
in Homebrew Discussion
Posted
http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/204185-vectrex-game-brainstorming/