Warren Robinett's book about making ADVENTURE

[Warren Robinett's book about making ADVENTURE]

You didn't know that everybody who buys a book ostensibly about a nearly 40-year old video game is actually interested in reading a diatribe/screed about contemporary political controversies? I thought that we engage in hobbies to escape from that kind of junk, not immerse ourselves in it further. But what do you expect, politics is almost like a religion for these types, and they don't have an off switch for proselytizing.

[Warren Robinett's book about making ADVENTURE]

I'm not sure why his teaser chapter has to be 100% liberal progressive political rhetoric... In a book targeted at aging hobbyists who love classic video games? Is the concept of appropriateness of venue foreign to him or does he realize that he just alienated 50% of his potential audience? I suppose that for people with his worldview, politics "trumps" everything else in importance (including profits) and it's pre-eminence in his everyday life precludes him from being civil to anybody with a differing viewpoint. Nice guy, and very open-minded. Count me out on the book release.

[Tool for extracting sprite graphics from a 7800 rom]

You can try Omnivore for Atari XL/XE

https://playermissile.com/omnivore/

Click right button on "Bitmap" window and set Bitmap Width=256

Go to View->Bitmap Display->2bpp

You can change colors in View->Bitmap->Color->Choose Colors

Remember, the graphics is upside down.

 

OK, I downloaded Omnivore (the 1.0rc4 version) and followed your instructions up until the part where you said View->Bitmap->Color->Choose Colors (it doesn't have those options under View), so the colors are wonky but more importantly how do I edit the bitmap or save/export it for editing in another program? Thanks.

[First attempt at Atari 7800 pixel art]

Your depictions of the female characters is distasteful.

 

I find it ironic that someone who idolizes John Stamos (whose ex-wife Rebecca Romijn made her living and fame as a bikini model and being nearly naked in blue body paint as Mystique in the X-Men movies) has such prudish views about displays of female pulchritude... If I were you R_Leo_1, I wouldn't feel obligated to pander to every politically correct individual who gets self-actualization from giving someone they don't really know and never met in person grief on a public internet forum about what a terrible person they are. I say tune out the noise.

[Tool for extracting sprite graphics from a 7800 rom]

For example, among these projects, I think you'll be glad to know that some time ago I started working on the graphics of Perry's Dig Dug XM ( I'm looking at your avatar ).

 

I love you, man. Now I know that will be a must-purchase.

[First attempt at Atari 7800 pixel art]

 

I used paint.net for the 7800 pixel art, but the others was either MS Paint (Believe it or not lol) or a program called PIROPaint for the MSX pixel art.

 

I never understood the snobbery about MS Paint, but you do encounter it a lot out in the wild. Funny story, I was active awhile back on a homebrew game development forum where all of the posters and contributors were constantly slamming MS Paint, and doing PR for their application of choice. Well, there was this one (I think French/European) guy who was making sprite art for the game and he was far and away the best artist of the group, his pixel skills were so good that his sprites looked like a professional game developer made them. So the numbnuts there proceeded to ask him what program he used to make his sprite art, and when he matter-of-factly stated that it was MS Paint, you could imagine that you suddenly heard crickets chirping, they were so dumbfounded with egg all over their faces. It just goes to show, it's the skill of the artist that matters, not what program or tool he uses.

[Tool for extracting sprite graphics from a 7800 rom]

Which game are you thinking?

 

I don't know if I want to disclose that yet... I might want to keep it a secret until the unveil.

[Tool for extracting sprite graphics from a 7800 rom]

Is there such a thing? There is a game whose sprites I'd like to have a go at editing, but unfortunately I don't know where to begin. Thanks.

 

[A Two-Player Competitive and Co-Op "Tetris" for the Atari 2600 VCS]

Yup, the pieces definitely looked better with the fewer gradient changes... I tried the old "two-T-block-test.bin" with TV mode enabled in all iterations (Composite, S-Video, RGB) and even in the crappiest video quality they still had a nicer overall appearance and a more convincing 3D effect than the current gradient method that you have been using for your more recent posts. Just my two cents.

[What Castlevania Rondo Of Blood would look/sound like on 7800+POKEY :)]

This is cool! Now make the damned game already!

[First attempt at Atari 7800 pixel art]

 

Wow, thank you very much! I haven't done a lot with the bug characters in a while, maybe I'll try picking them up again. Also, I'm assuming by Hudsonesque you mean Hudson soft. right?

 

Well of course I meant Hudson Soft, cousin, don't be ridiculous! (Apologies for the Perfect Strangers reference...) By the way, the bug characters have a bit of a Fleischer Studios feel to them, but the big one also reminds me of the Fighter Flies in Mario Bros.

[First attempt at Atari 7800 pixel art]

Thanks a bunch! If you don't mind me asking, why did you pick those as your favorites?

 

The overall aesthetic... The animation on the bug creature is well executed, and the styling for the characters in that game is extremely nice. The anatomy on the girl with the twin ponytails is excellent, and the characters from the Virtual Boy game have a quasi-Hudsonesque feel to them, but with nice texturing and proportioning (the girl character almost looks like a living chess piece).

[First attempt at Atari 7800 pixel art]

 

Absolutely! I hope these give a decent idea of what I can do. Here's some of what I've done:

(MSX/Colecovision/SG-1000)

 

 

(Master System)

 

 

(Virtual Boy)

 

 

I'm sorry if these seem a tad unorganized, I haven't gone through some of these files in a long time and some images are smaller than others, I tried my best lol

 

Some really nice work there, the ones shown above are my favorites of the group.

[First attempt at Atari 7800 pixel art]

Thanks! I haven't done too many for the Atari systems with the non-square pixels and all, but I have done a bunch for other consoles like the NES, Master System, SEGA Genesis, and MSX computers

 

Would you be willing to share some examples here, or at least some links to examples? I'm always curious to check out other people's work as the pixel art community doesn't exactly have a high profile or get a whole lot of attention most of the time.

[First attempt at Atari 7800 pixel art]

It looks stunning... The colors are so vibrant, and the shading and line texturing are nicely done. Art like that would be ideal for intermissions or storybook/text adventure type games. Or I suppose even an extra-fancy title screen?

[Stella and 0xc000007b error on Windows 7 64-bit]

I finally got Stella running on my notebook! It turns out that I had to do what's called a "clean boot" of Windows with most of the services disabled before I installed the MS Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable, because one of those services kept interfering with the install and corrupting it.

[A Two-Player Competitive and Co-Op "Tetris" for the Atari 2600 VCS]

 

Well, recently I've been using as many color changes and gradients as possible in my tests... Some of the previous examples only had a handful of color changes. Most of these recent tests are showing every possible luminance value across the full spectrum afforded to the VCS... Just wait until I have to figure out a PAL color scheme!

 

Maybe less is more in this case? Is it possible that fewer gradient changes over the surface of the pieces results in a more 3D appearance? I am a pixel artist so I understand that subtle changes can have huge impacts on how the human mind interprets the images that it receives from the eyes. Believe or not, a lot of the success in what we do results from trial and error; just testing different iterations to see what works best. You might find that same sort of approach will pay dividends for you also in this instance.

[A Two-Player Competitive and Co-Op "Tetris" for the Atari 2600 VCS]

Oh, so the recent screenshots are with scanlines enabled, that's what the difference was... I didn't realize it would have that much of an impact on how the pieces would appear to the eye, that's interesting.

[A Two-Player Competitive and Co-Op "Tetris" for the Atari 2600 VCS]

Hey Akashic, the blocks shown in the below image had more of a 3D appearance than the screenshots that you've been posting lately:

 

 

Was this something that was achievable on actual hardware or was it also a mockup of some sort? I guess that I'm a bit confused.

[View from a 5-year-old]

I can't wait for him to try out Chaotic Grill when it's finished, splendidnut is working really hard to make it extra-special for old and new BurgerTime fans (and I helped, too).

[A Two-Player Competitive and Co-Op "Tetris" for the Atari 2600 VCS]

Converting to code, I stumbled upon a slightly different way to shade the "T" blocks when in their flattest orientations. This is almost better, because I am not changing the sprite and the color at the same time on any scanline. It might not even be possible to have that many changes on one scanline...imagine where both players have a T block on the same line...it might be too many things to change. I'm not using VDELPx *yet*, though I do have that at the ready when necessary.

 

Here was the old output (again) of a strange double "T" block test...you can ignore the "fake" duplicated sprite because it was just something in there for testing:

 

 

Each color change going down is simply decrementing the color value. Starting with a specific color value for the first color causes a nice single-scanline edge gradient at the top and bottom. I still need to draw the other two rotations, and I should probably avoid changing NUSIZx too much (if at all), because that will cause some off-by-one pixel positioning issues which could get really annoying...

 

As it stands right now, drawing the "T" block is simply a matter of changing from 3 to 1 pixel with a color change decrement each line, and the other two vertical orientations will have a 1 pixel block of scanlines, changing to 2 pixels, and then back to 1. (Recall that these are using quad-sized player objects.) Color changes would be a little less frequent for those two orientations and could be moved out of the way of the simple sprite changes if necessary.

 

Hey Akashic, I've been reading this thread with much curiosity (even if it does tend towards information overload ), and I just wanted to weigh in to say that the above screenshot of the playing pieces with the code-based gradient that you devised looks gorgeous, and much better than the original mockups that you posted. Here's hoping that it is actually possible to achieve in the finished game without compromises/sacrifices in other areas. Keep up the amazing work, I think that this title is going to turn out epic in the end.

[WANTED: Feedback for Froggie]

Seconded, Froggie is an amazingly faithful port and an incredibly fun game. I just wish that we could buy the damned physical cart already!

[Stella and 0xc000007b error on Windows 7 64-bit]

I tried downloading and installing 5 different versions of Stella, and I also installed the Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable that they require (both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions), and no matter what when I double-click the .exe I keep getting a message saying, "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b), Click OK to close the application." I have Windows 7 64-bit on my notebook, and have downloaded and used emulators for so many different systems in the past, but for some reason I can never seem to figure out how to get Stella to work. Do you happen to have any idea what I am doing wrong?

 

[Sick Pickles WIP]

+1

 

Hey Marc, are you going to make a box for this title?

[Comparing Homebrew Scene - Nes vs. 7800]

If I had the skillset, I would so make a Midnight Mutants sequel. That is one game that I wished had become a franchise.

 

I'd love to see a good Zelda/Golden Axe Warrior type game on the system too.

 

 

I'd love to see a side-scrolling action/adventure game (not one of those trite 3-D dungeon/maze crawlers) based on D&D/AD&D with all of the classic monsters included, like beholder, chimera, displacer beast, manticore, otyugh, owlbear, roper, shambling mound, umber hulk, etc. That would kick major ass, especially if it was multi-player with each player able to select a different character class (fighter, cleric, magic-user, thief). Yeah, I know Capcom already made games like this for CPS, but those were basically Final Fight clones with AD&D trappings, I was thinking of something more along the lines of a Zelda/Pocky & Rocky type game instead.