retrocon

I don't know. I had an intellivision and maybe 20+ carts growing up and from what I recall most of the games listed in this poll with the exception of Utopia were released after I had already moved onto the atari 800. I don't think these games represent INTV in its heyday, that is pre-crash INTV making the 2600 look bad with its technical prowess. More representative would be games such as Major League Baseball, Utopia, Tron Deadly Disc, Astrosmash, Star Strike, B-17 Bomber, Nightstalker, AD&D, Armor Battle, Frog Bog, Skiing, Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, Space Battle and Auto Racing. These games were really fun and showed that good ol' George P. knew what he was talking about. The 2600 just couldn't come close. Many people such as myself had moved onto 8bit computers after '82. Intellivision was an also-ran by this time.

Don't worry, dot will probably save you if you're nice and don't try to snack on him.

Ok, maybe I'm starting to miss the ol' cpu a little... The hardwood floor is in but I'm not much further along. One step forward, three steps back... I have probably rearchitected and rewritten every piece of this engine three times in the past week except for maybe the joystick interface. It turns out even in hardware there are limitations in how much you can do during each pixel clock. It's very very easy to create a deadend design. However the good news is that I really think I'm starting to gain more control over my designs, especially by using state machines. I have settled on an engine with four hardware sprites with 8x32 pixels. The screen is 1/4th vga at 160x120. The hardware playfield is 32x24, so each pf pixel = 5x5 screen pixels. I don't want any flicker or crap like that so there will only be up to 4 things on screen at once. I don't really want to put in more hardware sprites to conserve logic elements (LEs). Not sure how that will affect things compared to the original adventure yet. Anyone think not supporting more than 4 sprites will be a problem? Things are progressing though. I'm rewriting the playfield logic one more time, and then should be moving into the collision detection and the AI, for which I at least have a plan now. Hopefully there will be screenshots when I have something worth showing. Shouldn't be too much longer before Rhindle is chasing the dot around the screen. Take care.

This is a fun game. If you post this in the homebrew section it will probably get a lot more downloads and you may get more feedback. Don't mention it is a bB game and then those that haven't been following bB will try it and play it on its own terms compared to any asm game. I bet people will accept it and enjoy it without saying something to the effect that you aren't utilizing 100% of the 2600's resources

I actually got one of these at the show in las vegas when they first came out. Having an Intellivision as a kid, I was so excited to retry some of my favorites... God, did this turn out to be complete garbage. Just to make it clear, these games are nothing like the real intellivision games at all. I ended up tearing it apart just to see what the internals were. Never bothered to put it back together and it ended up in the circular storage bin.

Why aren't multicarts that popular right now? The technology is there right? As everyone agrees, no one really makes a cart to get rich. They probably do it mostly for the coolness factor. It's kind of a geek prestige thing, right? With some strong nostalgia mixed in too. I think if you're going to take the trouble to make a 2600 game, you want some credit for it at least. You want a cart for your game alone maybe even with your name on it: http://www.atariage.com/store/popup_image3.php?pID=37 It's kinda an ego thing maybe. David Crane got a whole cart for his game. Howard Scott Warshaw did too. Why does my game have to share a cart with 7 other games? I've never created a 2600 cart, but I used to develop games for the genesis and then the playstation and it was definitely a proud moment when I went down to the local ebgames and saw the games I'd worked so hard on up on the shelf. I don't know, maybe I'm offbase with the mindset of the homebrew developer, but that's why I think a compilation might be a problem.

While I agree with your blog for the most part, I'm tending to lean to the side that this may be bad for the 2600 homebrew community in the long run. If you want to program in basic you can do so easily with any system from A400/c66/vic20 on up. But this first generation, this 2600, is unique somehow. I won't say it's the whole attraction, but a large part of developing games on it I think is the challenge, sort of like working on a particularly nasty crossword puzzle. If you're not counting cycles and bytes (or bits), what is the point? Might as well use Flash right? But then again the games I have seen, Ooze, Solar Plexus, and F-4, have actually been pretty fun, decent games which probably would not have existed otherwise. And why shouldn't they exist? But then comes the question is should they become carts? Somehow I don't think it's fair if they're made into carts and sold alongside the asm games that took 20x longer to create. Maybe they could be released with a label stating that they are part of the "Batari Basic Collection" or at least include acknowledgement that fact somehow and also perhaps sold at a reduced price compared to the regular asm games. Or am I just crazy?

Just a quick update. This project is still progressing and most importantly I'm still having a blast building it I just haven't been able to do any screenshots because I'm getting hardwood installed throughout the house and the wife packed the digital camera away somewhere. In any case, I've got the dev environment set up on the kitchen table so it's still moving forward I've got multiple sprites working well now (major pain, but it was worth it). The system supports eight 32x8 pixel two color hardware-based sprites on screen at once. This seems to have caused a small playfield bug that I have to figure out (the playfield is slightly wrapped around the screen). And I've just started on playfield/sprite collision detection. Overall, I just can't believe how ultra-smooth the sprite movement, how responsive to the joystick it is and how ultra-clear the vga display is. Not missing a cpu at all. An all-hardware based system really rocks.

It is kind of cool, the few things that have been displayed in a finished or wip form are all pretty different and unique. I think the nay-sayers were expecting it to be a Mythicon type deal, minor variations on a theme. 896076[/snapback] Nay-sayers refer to bB as the "Firefly Construction Set".

Supercat, For a division shortcut, does this make any sense to you? This was a response I just got on a mailing list when asking how to optimize out a divide by 5 on a 10 bit unsigned number. I'm not sure I understand it fully, but I'd like to understand the concept. Do you know what would be the cheapest way to calculate a divide by 5? Table not an option of course. "This is often easier to understand when expressed in binary. 1/5 equals 0.00110011001100110011 etc. 0.00110011 etc equals 11 multiplied by 0.000100010001 etc. 0.000100010001 etc equals 10001 multiplied by 0.0000000100000001 etc. This suggests the following result (in C syntax): Y1 = (X + X<<1) Y2 = (Y1 + Y1<<4) Y3 = (Y2 + Y2<< and we have a result accurate to 16 bits with only three adders. Y4 = (Y3 + Y3<<16) 32 bits with only four adders. " [EDIT] Somehow I think this is related to this algorithm here, but I'm not seeing it quite yet: http://www.sxlist.com/techref/method/math/divconst.htm

Ok, been hard at work on this the past few days. Mostly fixing painful bugs and redesigning architecture. It's getting really hard, almost sweat-inducing work. I've worked til 2Am or so every night this week. It doesn't seem like much progress is showing though Here's a video of the adventurer "dot" cruising around King's Zoo. I made it pink in honor of a web site I used to love to order from - pinkdot - may it rest in peace. The Pink Dot I fixed a bunch of things with regards to entering and exiting screens and the display of sprites. Right now I'm working on displaying multiple sprites and then I'll work on collision detection, and then probably ai of the dragon. Take care, Trigun out.

You are perhaps on to something there. I have given plenty of clues, but no one I guess has figured it out yet. The bottom line is that this will probably never see the light of day, even if Atari allowed it, so please don't confuse my marbles for kibble

I can't recall if I said this in this thread already, but I think this is an awesome achievement. It really is an accurate port of the arcade game, but most importantly it is fun, fun, fun.

Thanks. Yeah, that is just a hack for now. Each time you go into a new room it starts you in a hardcoded spot. I had an algorithm to start you in the right spot, depending on where you enter, but couldn't get it to work before bed time. Yeah, this is the level you start the game in. You find that Rhindle is imprisoned and sickly; actually he's dying. To save him you have to find the key to his cage and in the meantime occasionally feed him a goat. This will be kinda tricky because you have to place the goat in a particular spot on one screen and then pull the lever on another screen of the zoo. The thing that makes this tricky also is that a black pudding escaped from its cage and has been crusing around the zoo eating all the animals. Now its still hungry, but the only thing left is the dragon, which it fears, and you which it doesn't. The black pudding will start out like maybe 12 adventurer size blocks and it will move around slowly like a blob does, checking out all the little corners and recesses of the zoo (this gives you your chance to navigate past it). Each time it eats one of your goats or something it will expand one block. You can't kill or fight the black pudding. Rhindle can though. That's basically it for this area I think. You have to capture goats in another area and bring them in here. There will be some sort of way to gauge how sick Rhindle is so you know when he needs food. To get the key you have to defeat the black knight that captured Rhindle (Good luck, Yorgle and Grundle are mounted and hanging on a wall of his castle). Btw, you will pass through this area a lot (it's at the center of the world) so Rhindle will always be there looking at you oh so sickly and sad until you save him.

Oh, that's silly. I'm just not doing anything risky until I talk to Atari and I'm not going to worry about that until/if I finish it. You know what I mean, right? Besides that, it's just not practical for most people to try this even if I put up an sof file. Thanks. It's just a unintended glitch though Let's just call it a happy accident, shall we

Ok, another bandwidth monster is ready Today was mostly a cleanup day. I've been trying to make data tables for everything. Hoping to keep things as organized as possible cause it's already starting to get confusing and I've just begun. The video I have today shows the dragon cruising around the king's zoo. All the data for each screen, including the exit points and room links is loaded from tables now. Yeah! Cruising through King's Zoo This is really way too much fun!!

Sure, certainly. Just thought you probably were interested in feedback Greetings, Manuel 891086[/snapback] Thanks I appreciate the feedback. I wish I could let people try it, but this is just not possible. Someday, maybe, maybe if I finish I'll send one to Al or someone for historical reasons or sell a prototype on ebay or something.

Exactly, do you know how much unused CX40 joysticks go for on ebay? That alone covers the cost of purchase.

Fine with me. Are you coding this from scratch, or did you start with something else? 890998[/snapback] From scratch, literally the bits are being thrown up into the air and sorted, but I'm not a masochist in the way the 2600 gods are. This is my own path to enlightenment. Please don't confuse my marbles for kibble guys

890869[/snapback] What you don't like my shaky camera-work? Not possible my friends I'd still like to share the development process though. It makes it much more fun for me. So is it ok if I keep posting the videos?

Greetings, Manuel 890818[/snapback] Should be fixed now. Please try again!

Thanks. Appreciate the support. Even the Kinkos guy loves you. Now it is time for videos finally. Here is a video of the dragon moving around. It is actually controlled by me right now. It seemed a little more exciting than moving the 'dot' around Makes me think it would be kinda fun to play the dragon in the game. How about dragon-touch football with the 'dot' the ball! Anyway, this is just the player controlled by the joystick moving around the screen. No collision checking yet and no changing screens yet. I did implement the sprite handling logic and the sprites can be up to 8x32 right now. Enjoy. Dragon Moving Video

Goto post #135. That one is the most playable one so far. 890570[/snapback] Thanks, fun game. Shows a lot of promise. Also shows a lot of promise for this basic. I do hope this batari basic is used as a means to gain expertise into advanced 2600 programming, rather than an end to itself. If it angers the 2600 gods they may move on to something more challenging like cobol or channel f or something.

Potatohead, could you post the ooze game as a bin? I'd like to try it, but I don't want to mess with the basic stuff.

Also forgot to mention - don't know if I should give this away, but why not - those recesses may save your life more than a few times. There's something evil lurking around in the zoo and it's hungry, very hungry... Can you say Black Pudding? http://www.planetadnd.com/interactive_books/mm00245.php