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Cafeman

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Posts posted by Cafeman

  1. Posted

    I'm torn on ideas. My first 'real game' will probably be that mazechase. think about it -- No scrolling and easy collision detection, my kinda first game.

     

    Due to making these recent demos, I started to toy with the idea of an Airwolf game. I made one in Basic yrs ago, it was just kind of a gag game for a buddy who loved the show. It's just an idea at this point.

     

    I'd like to make an adventure game, too. Something like Adventure, which honestly I never played much of. Or something like Pitfall, with the screen flips. I figure if David Crane could make a game like Pitfall on the 2600, I could make something kind of similar on the more powerful 5200.

     

    I think a super hero game would be cool. Problem is, what kind of game would it be? Lots of those early 80's licensed character games were just reused Pacman engines and crap like that.

     

    Anybody else got some ideas? I patiently wait...

  2. Posted

    Hi folks. I am currently attempting to refresh my memory of Atari 8bit computer programming, and apply my knowledge to creating some new 5200 games in Assembly language.

     

    Now, before anybody gets excited or anything, my disclaimer -- I just started last month! I am working in conjunction with the efforts of a few other folks with similar interest in coding for the Supersystem (check the programming forum), but it will be a while before I'm 'good enough' at coding for the system to make a real, playable game. I'm starting off slowly!

     

    Still, I'm looking to the future, and I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts -- what kind of game would you like to see? Wouldn't it have been neat to have, say, an Airwolf game? Or a superhero game, like Superman on the 2600? Or a 5200 version of 2600 adventure (or something similar)?

     

    throw me some ideas.

     

    For now, I'm just coding demo's. My first attempt at a real, playable game will no doubt be a mazechase game in the vein of PacMan. Something simple to 'get my feet wet' -- but once I get the skills, I'd like to try something more aggressive. Wouldn't it be cool if we do create something and get Sean to put it on his multicart someday? Hey, you never know!

     

    Thanks,

    Cafeman

     

    PS -- I've posted this here, at DP, and AGH, to try to catch all the 5200 fans with opinions!

  6. Posted

    I just spent 15 minutes searching for info on this game. Here is my conclusions -- I played both the 2600 ET and the 8bit ET phones home and my memory 'mixed them' into one game.

     

    I remember falling in those holes, that must have been the 2600 version. I also remember the computer version, picking up pieces of the communicator or whatever. Nevermind!

  8. Posted

    I had the Atari 8bit version. What were the differences, if you know?

     

    I only remember falling into those holes and trying to get out; in fact, on my 1200XL, I think the game crashed a lot, if my memory serves me.

  10. Posted

    Oh yeah, when I used to program in Basic, I also referred to those Atari graphics modes, but now that I'm using ASM, it's too confusing for me to use both, so I just use the Antic mode number. Antic mode 8 = $48, Antic Mode 2 = $42, easy!

     

    Another thing about your saying 'mode 8 graphics' was that I knew it only offered one color -- and that example is clearly NOT in that mode! I understand what you were saying now.

  11. Posted

    I thought that the Armadillo was a Melbourne House symbol (Infogrames Melbourne House) -- is it the official Inforames symbol as well?

     

    Melbourne House is an Australian dev team that made the fantastic Test Drive: Le Mans on Dreamcast, released last fall. THe main man there used to frequent the Dreamcast TEchnical Pages, he answered all our questions about the game's incredible engine which allows 20 detailed cars onscreen, no slowdown, with great weather and lighting and smoke FX and a fast sense of speed. This last paragraph FYI.

  12. Posted

    Infogrames bought Hasbro which owned Atari.

     

    Infogrames -- I actually like the company. They are like an Activision now, they buy up smaller dev teams & companies, like, errr, Hasbro and Atari!

  13. Posted

    One more thing is that it seems to me that Antic mode A is a good one to use for good graphics -- twice the resolution as Mode 8 it seems, with 4 colors. Sure it eats up twice the memory, but we have a whopping 16K!

  16. Posted

    As far as the boring part, I'm not concerned with that yet. I'm trying to just get the technical skills for now. once I feel more confident, I'll start my real first game.

     

    I have a number of ideas I'm throwing around, but right now all are too ambitious for me to accomplish.

     

    One game idea I'm mulling over:

     

    Did you read the recent Crichton book, Timeline? Scientists travel in time to the middle ages, where (as in Jurassic Park) things are not exactly as we thought, much more dangerous with the extremely strong and huge knights and archers ...). Well, I thought about warping in and out of different times, trying to avoid arrows, running from fast knights on horseback, crossing rivers and bridges.

  17. Posted

    I'm not sure yet, myself. My next goal is to alter the vertical movement of my player,then I'll move on to Joystik control. on the Atari 8-bits, you checked the value of stuff such as "strig(0)", etc. if it read some weird value like 11, for example, it was a press UP on the stick. I know I read all that stuff about the 5200, but I don't have my folder right now.

    What would be great is if we could start saving parts of our code as little includes/subroutines, such as one which read the joystick values and changed the position of a character in screen RAM.

     

    I have a question, and I'll use Joust to illustrate it.

     

    1. The stone clouds in Joust are probably bg graphics, right? Draw bit by bit across the screen from top to bottom?

     

    2. So then, are the ostrich , stork, pterries,and buzzards all players? How in the world are so many sprites able to be put on-screen at once, in a nutshell? I mean, sometimes they blink a bit, but only when the screen is very full.

     

    3. Are eggs considered players too, or missiles? Guess , I know you guys never programmed this game.

     

    I guess what I'm trying to gather is a series of methods one could use to get all those sprites on screen, since there are only a limited number of players and missiles the 5200/8bit hardware actually knows about.

  19. Posted

    I'm not ready to mix Graphics modes yet. I'm sticking with Dan Boris' demo example and learning how to do the basics, then I'll get fancy.

     

    Is the following correct?

     

    The PM demo is in Antic Mode 8. That means there are 8 scan lines per mode line. It also means there are 40 pixels on each line. the dlist starts with $70, $70, $70 which means 24 blank lines. I assume that somehow $70 means 8 blank lines then. Why?

     

    Then the dlist has .byte $48,$00, $18 which means Antic mode 8 and Load Memory Scan (LMS) of $1800. It then has 23 $08's, for a total of 24 Mode 8 lines on the screen, which make up those colored bars.

     

    Okay, if I wanted to make a display list in Antic Mode A, which has 4 colors (like Antic Mode 8) but 4 scan lines per mode line and 80 pixels per line (double Mode 8's pixels). If I used this mode,

     

    1. Would I still (regardless) start my dlist with .byte $70,$70,$70 ?

    2. Would the next line be: .byte $4A,$00,$18 (I'm assuming if $48 is Antic mode 8, then $4A is ANtic Mode A) ? Starting at screen memory location of $1800 again, simply for the reason that I'm mimicking Boris's example.

    3. Since I have 4 scan lines per mode line, if I divide 4 into 192 scan lines I get a total of 48 Mode Lines available in Antic

    Mode A. Correct?

    4. The pm in the Boris example (Antic Mode 8) is 8 by 8. Is that because there are 8 scan lines per mode line? If so, would my pm's in Antic mode A have to be 4 by 8? or 4 by 4? or what?

     

    I'll stop with my questions there. I'd appreciate if Tempest or Debro could try to offer a few answers to these!

  20. Posted

    If you again click the link to my 5200 development page above, you'll see what I accomplished last night. I was able to change the coffee cup into a right and left arrow, changing it before each loop which moved it horizontally back & forth. I also fooled around with the shape of the three color bars in the background and made them look more like columns.

     

    A few things I couldn't figure out:

     

    1. Is the arrow (which was a face in Dan's original example) a Player or a missile. Or is it called a Player Missile?

     

    2. How do I move the arrow vertically? I see that HPOSP0 controls horizontal plotting. I messed around with the base address of the PM, with the SIZEP0 value (which never seemed to have any effect on the demo, no matter what I made it!).

     

    Any thoughts on that?

  21. Posted

    Is there any way to save a screen picture while running these things via DOS?

     

    I tried the usual ALT+PrintScrn but it kept giving me memory errors -- and I have tons of RAM. Any suggestions? It's be great to be able to show some pictures as we develop!

  23. Posted

    Heh, this is getting fun. I'm a bit behind you, Tempest.

     

    Run a version of Dan's PMtest but replace the pm bitmap with this:

    pm1 .byte %11111100

    .byte %11001111

    .byte %11011101

    .byte %11011101

    .byte %11001111

    .byte %11111100

    .byte %11111100

    .byte %01111000

  25. Posted

    How embarassing! I cannot even get Dan BOris' example to work! Help me! Here's what I'm doing:

     

    I run in DOS DASM.EXE like this:

     

    DASM 52PM.TXT

     

    This produces a default output file name A.OUT. When I try to run this using VSS like this:

     

    5200 A.OUT

     

    I get an error because VSS only works with 5200 binary images that are either 16384 or 32768 bytes long. And A.OUT is not. As you can see, I'm not well versed in doing this sort of thing yet.

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