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Great game - really addictive. I hope it went down a storm at the OVGE? Is the PAL version complete yet, as I would love to buy a copy on a cart? A quick coding question for you. How do you make the fish appear and disappear smoothly at the edges of the screen? It looks like you are not using PF0, so I presume you need to mask off the sprites according to how much is visible, or is there a more obvious solution that I am missing? The reason I ask is that I need to do something similar in Hunchy. Thanks Chris

That is around 42degreesC for the metrically inclined! Chris

It sounds interesting, but I haven't been able to find out much about it on the web (or find a download)? There was another 8-bit title called "Hunchback 2 - Quasimodos Revenge", but the gameplay is rather tedious doesn't compare to the original IMO. Chris

Wow - I hadn't seen that before. Do you have any insight into how it is done? The source code attachment doesn't work for me in this post. My guess is that the small flame sprite is actually created by using the missile graphics and resizing/fine-tuning on each line? Chris

Looks good - any chance of posting the source code to show us how it is done? Chris

Yes, that is the idea - you can currently scroll the board using the second joystick, and eventually it will scroll as the player moves around. Unfortunately, horizontal scrolling is not possible without jumping a whole quare at a time due to timing constraints. The next version that I post will constrain the player to the board squares, so we can get a better idea of how it plays. Thanks, Chris

Yes, the sprites are taken from my Hunchy game just to demonstrate the concepts (and the guard sprite was designed by you!). The 5 squares width is the only size that I could find which worked well with two and three sprite copies. Also, to get more squares is going to require some nasty self modifying code tricks. I was hoping that the length of the board would make up for the lack of width ... Chris

I have attached my latest attempt at a dicewar board kernel. There are still a lot of glitches in the code, and it is very ugly, but it demonstrates the main features in action: The board is 5 squares by 16 squares, and each square can be a different colour. The player can be displayed in any position on the screen. Each row of the board can display one, two, or three monsters. The board square graphics can be changed every second line (PF is reflected). The board can be scrolled up/down. You can use joystick 1 to move the player and joystick 2 to scroll the board. There is still a lot to do, but I though I would post it now just to check that everyone is happy with the board layout, and to see if anyone has any suggestions for improvements. Chris dicewar02.zip

Darn, you beat me to it, by about a year . I have attached my latest attempt at a dicewar kernel. It roughly follows the design spec given at the beginning. It displays five independently coloured squares, and two sprites per scanline (without the need for skipdraw). One of the sprites is monochrome, but there are 10 free cycles, so it should be possible to fix this later. Anyway, let me know what you think. Perhaps I should code this up as my next minigame ... Chris dicewar.zip

I have attached a small update to NightRider, based on some of the suggestions here. The changes in this version are: The helicopter moves faster. Your score depends on your speed (faster = more points). The acceleration and braking are slower (proportional to speed). There is a new explosion effect. I will hopefully be able to include more changes in the next version. Enjoy! Chris nightrider02.zip

This is looking really good, and a huge improvement over the old PlayerPal! I will definitely be using this a lot in my future 2600 projects. Chris

It looks very promising. Is there any chance of him releasing a standalone Java application version which would allow you to load/save sprite data from/to files? Chris

The kernel for this game is going to be quite difficult. There are a couple of problems with the design at present: 1) There are 40 PF pixels across the screen (the design assumes 20 pixels). 2) There are too many colours per scanline if you are using PF graphics. You can change the foreground or background, but not both, between squares. The code below is a sketch of a kernel which would draw the board using PF squares that are 6 pixels wide. The timings are not entirely correct, but you should get the basic idea. This kernel could probably be made to work by reducing the size of the squares and ignoring PF0, or using self-modifying code. However, I think it is going to be better to use sprites instead ... Chris Kernel lda SCREEN,X ; [1] + 4 sta PF0 ; [5] + 3 < 22 lda SCREEN+1,X ; [8] + 4 sta PF1 ; [12] + 3 < 28 lda SCREEN+2,X ; [15] + 4 sta PF2 ; [19] + 3 < 38 ldy COL+1 ; [22] + 3 lda SCREEN+4,X ; [25] + 4 sty COLUPF ; [29] + 3 > 32 < 35 ldy COL+2 ; [32] + 3 sta PF1 ; [35] + 3 > 38 < 60 lda SCREEN+3,X ; [38] + 4 sty COLUPF ; [42] + 3 > 42 < 46 sta PF2 ; [45] + 3 = 48 lda COL+3 ; [48] + 3 sta COLUPF ; [51] + 3 > 53 < 56 ldy SCREEN+5,X ; [54] + 4 lda COL+4 ; [58] + 3 sta COLUPF ; [61] + 3 > 64 < 67 sty PF0 ; [64] + 3 > 28 < 70 lda COL ; [67] + 3 sta COLUPF ; [70] + 3 < 24 dex ; [73] + 2 bne Kernel ; [75] + 3 !!

About 8 years ago I foolishly gave all my Atari ST stuff away to a charity shop and moved over to the world of PCs. Naturally, I soon regretted it and have recently been reaquiring my old favourites on eBay. However, there was one particular game that I haven't been able to find anywhere, and there seems to be no mention of it on the Web. I believe the game was called "Sopwith" (possibly "Sopwith Camel") and it was a simple (but addictive) 2D sideways-scroller. There is a PC Sopwith Game which is somewhat similar, but it is much more primitive than the ST version that I used to play. I believe the ST version was created using STOS, but it was sold commercially, possibly through the ST format magazine. Anyway, has anyone else heard-of or played this excellent game? I would really like to get hold of it again as I spent hours of fun plaing it in the past! Chris

That is great news - now I need to go back and polish my other minigames ... Chris

Oops, it does look very similar Purely coincidence though as I hadn't played this before! I guess there are only so many ways that you can do sideways scrolling using PF graphics. Chris

Unfortunately, I don't think so. The lsr is used to make the missile appear on two scanlines in succession, while the optimisation would only make it apper on a single scanline and this would be too small. The /2 value is also used below to calculate the PF display line (cmp #PFKERN), so it can't esily be removed. Thanks anyway! Chris

Thanks for the feedback, I will make this change in the next version. Hass anyone managed to get more than 2000 points yet (I haven't)! Yes, I did think of it after reading the Fonz thread. However, I don't remember any episode where he was chased by a Helicopter! Perhaps a shark instead Thanks for the feedback - I think the jumping problems could be solved by using gravity, rather than a fixed increment, but I haven't figured out how to code this properly yet. I have spent hours trying to get the controls to feel right, but I see that there is still some work to do! I'm not sure what the benifit of allowing the cyclist to duck would be? I did think about using the down direction to make you land faster after a jump. The jumping explosion is a space-saving feature - you can also move the helicopter with right/left after you die! Chris

OK, I will try these other values and see how they appear. I got the $CF value from this page: http://members.lycos.co.uk/leeedavison/6502/code/prng.html Thanks for your other suggestions also. Unfortunately I don't have any spare cycles in the kernel for a colour gradient without moving to a two-line kernel. Chris

Hi Thomas, Thanks for the quick feedback (the game would not have been possible without your excellent SwitchDraw and High Score routines!). Can I ask you to clarify a few of your suggestions? Do you mean that they react too fast? There is a delay factor in the code that can be increased, but I found it difficult to dodge the missiles this way. Ideally this would be done properly with intertia, but I couldn't find the space for it (if you have any suggestions for making the code tighter then I will be happy to hear them). I will do this in the next version. I was planning to have several levels of difficulty where the missile frequency and helicopter speed increase over time. Do you mean combine the sprite data as it is largely the same for both frames, or making the helicopter wider using two sprites (as in your Cave 1K game)? Yes, I will ask jussts if this is possible. Yes, it is possible to reach the upper platform. Thanks, Chris

I have attached a copy of my third 2600 1K minigame to this message. It is not quite finished yet, but I though it would be good to get some feedback on the gameplay and general concept. Unlike my previous minigames, this one is an attempt to do something more original. The aim of the game is to steer your motorcycle over the terrain while avoiding the pursuing helicopter. The controls are Left (Brake), Right (Accelerate), and Fire (Jump). You can jump higher by holding down the fire button. I have attached a screenshot below: The cool Helicopter and Motorcycle sprites were created by the fantastic forum member jussts. The crap explosion effect was my own creation (and will be improved later). Both NTSC and PAL versions are included in the archive (if unsure, you probably want the NTSC one). The full source code is also included as usual. Anyway, let me know what you think of the game, and if you find any bugs. Also, if you have any suggestions then I will be happy to hear them! Chris P.S. The latest version can now be found here. nightrider01.zip

Excellent - I use your PlayerPal and PlayfieldPal tools all the time. It would be great if it didn't delete your work when you do a resize! Chris

This is really good now - just the right balance of difficulty and addictiveness. I just hope the minigame competition is announced soon ... Chris

Excellent music. I am not sure if I am going to try to aim to be faithfull the arcade version or not at this stage. There are certain features of the arcade version (e.g. the guard climbing up the wall) that I don't like, and would be difficult to implement on the 2600. Also, there are certain other features (e.g. sliding bridges) that I would like implement in my version. Chris

I will just add my voice to the crowd, and say that this looks awesome, and I hope a full release will be possible at some point in the future. Chris