Atari 2600 as a style

[Atari 2600 as a style]

There are so many games using the "retro" styles of NES and SNES games, even if they don't strictly follow the limits of the console they're emulating.  What do you think of Atari 2600 as a style?  Like, it doesn't have to follow the hardware limitations 100%, just looks and feels like an Atari 2600 game, even if it's way more complex than a VCS game could ever be.  There are a lot of games that do this for other styles, why not Atari 2600?  I say this as someone who's interested in graphical styles that people don't traditionally think of using—for instance, I love N64 style graphics and want to make games in that style.

 

Do you think Atari 2600 is a legitimate graphical/audio style?  Do you think it's okay for games in this style to bend the rules a bit, or should they match up with the hardware limits of the system?

 

EDIT: It just occurred to me this might not be the right board for this thread.  Sorry if it's not!

[What type of packaging is it shipped in?]

What is the Harmony Cartridge shipped in? Is it shipped in a box or some sort of manilla packaging (don't know the name—it's not quite an envelope; it's kind of like a bag)?

 

I'm asking because I live in a bad neighborhood and need it to fit through my mail slot.

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

 

Ha!- Lost you where? Do you know how a television draws its pictures?

 

OH

jesus

 

for some reason I read that as putting the pointer 100 lines above where the graphics start in the actual code. I was like "what the fuck that doesn't make any sense" lol

your post makes sense now

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

-snip-

 

This helped a lot, thank you!

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Thank you guys for all your replies! They've been very helpful.

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

When you see < and >, you are seeing the 8 bit 6502 handle a 16 bit number. Think of it like our use of comma when writing a big number- like 65,536. Telling the machine to LDA <... and LDA >... would be like saying fetch the 536 and then fetch the 65 from the above number. Note- since we only use binary, 65,536 is really 11111111,11111111. So that's 16 1s. We fetch 8 at a time to move the whole number.

 

In your case, you are fetching a memory address, those are 16 bits so you have to do it this way.

 

This is a great explanation! It makes a lot more sense now. Thank you!

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

It's kinda useless compared to other methods for sure, but if your sprite is at address 0xF000 you could keep the high byte(0xF0) and increment the low byte

 

I'm really not getting this, sorry. I'll just have to read more, I guess.

My problem has been solved though as I got sprite animation to work. Thank you!

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

I guess I just don't understand why it's used/what it's useful for

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

This stuff

 

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

What's the < and > stuff then?

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

Comes first in RAM. Let's say you have the number 256 (0x100 in hex). You store it in a big endian machine, and in memory it looks like the bytes 0x01 0x00. On a little endian, it looks like 0x00 0x01.

 

How does that affect programming?

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

I've actually been using those exact links lol

They've been very helpful so far.

 

I try to be as self-sufficient as I can, but sometimes I can't figure something out.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Finally, I'll try to explain the high and low bytes. An absolute address on the 6502 is two bytes long. The high byte is equivalent to the 1 in 10, while the low byte is equivalent to the 0. On big endian machines, the high byte comes first, and on little endian it's the opposite. The 6502 is big endian the last time I checked, but I'm probably wrong so it wouldn't hurt to check yourself

 

I don't get it. What do you mean by "comes first"?

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

I honestly have no idea what language you're talking about, but having a general knowledge of what pointers are can go a long way.

 

Sorry, 6502 Assembly

 

For example, if I wanted to animate an 8x8 sprite, I would first set up each frame sequentially (following the first frame). To animate, you would set the pointer to the address of the first frame, and then add 8 to the pointer to go to the next frame, and so on.

 

I've been trying to do this but I'm having trouble with it.

 

I'm pretty sure you've heard that before, so what's causing trouble for you?

 

I'm confused about the whole high and low pointers thing and how to animate a sprite. I guess I don't understand it enough. Any links/resources I could check out?

[Can someone explain pointers to me?]

...and how they're used for animated sprites?

 

I've looked at multiple examples and it still makes no sense.