Omegamatrix
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Posts posted by Omegamatrix
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19 hours ago, TwentySixHundred said:Im worried about those making breakthrough discoveries like Spiceware - Reveng ect are going to feel deflated/discouraged by the criticism. Just don't want to lose their valuable input as it's essential to progress and development. Even as a bB user i feel a bit on the backfoot and somewhat of a 'cheater' by using these tools because some despise the use of. Personally i like the BASIC language and feel comfortable using it and think it's the best thing since sliced bread.
Here i have been waiting for years that Batari would pick the bB project back up again and continue development. I have a hunch he may have discontinued the project for having the same feelings of those who feel discouraged to continue theirs. No idea but a question that sits in the back of my mind.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they don't feel too great about it. I've not surprised about the difference in opinions, but I am discouraged by the hostility to change. Here we have this amazing tool that can help us build really amazing games, and the discussion just seems to have enabled people to pull out a shovel and start dumping crap all over it out of fear.
When a new homebrew thread gets sidetracked by pages of debates of why a game couldn't have been done in the day, how it is unfair to other homebrews or games of the past, and the insistent need to educate people about these things, then I just think wow we have really missed the point, completely.
Someone has a new game, they want to share it and see what you think. I'm sure they don't post it to have a never ending debate on what an Atari game is.
When someone posts a crappy game usually very few people comment and those that do are usually supportive with ideas for improvement. When someone posts an great game with a different processor it's like WWIII and the fricking nukes are coming out. I just think man you don't have to be that way, you don't have to feel threatened, and if you don't like it why not just leave it alone? I'm sure the author would rather have some feedback on how it plays than a whole pile of shit comments.
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My old flicker test rom should help. With it you can scroll around and select the color you want dynamically.
With flicker in general, avoid it. When you can't avoid it use luminescence that is close for both colors, and it will minimize the flicker.
Other than that there are other methods of blending (like in Boulder Dash).
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14 hours ago, davyK said:I'll be loading these onto my Harmony cart.....any chance of PAL60 versions?????
Well, try downloading the zip file in the first post and you will find that NTSC, PAL, and PAL60 versions are all already there partner. 🤠
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Chess
in Atari 2600
Ah, okay I tried your rom and see that each checker is 5 PF blocks long. For some reason I thought you would be doing 4.
If you don't need to update the playfield then it might be doable. The big question will be if the timing is there for updates.
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By salvageable, do you mean recyclable?
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Hello all,
I've added an updated rom pack to the first post which has the visible game number suggestion from Thomas, and reworked controls from the suggestions of Jstick. Please report any bugs or give feedback, and otherwise enjoy. 😀
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Chess
in Atari 2600
On 1/13/2020 at 10:49 PM, Andrew Davie said:Well, having done all that work - and it was fun so no biggie - I wonder if there's a suitable 8-sprite/line routine that I could use instead.
I'd want something that could exactly position 8 double-width sprites exactly 16 pixels apart, starting at an exact pixel #. Each sprite must have selectable colour. Beyond me - maybe someone who is good at '2600 programming could help
Double wide sprites might be doable, but I would consider using multiple copies of single wide instead.
If double wide, than consider how Meltdown did it. Meltdown drew P0 and P1 double wide, and then at a certain cycle switched to 2 copies wides and then immediately changed it back to double wide. The end effect was double wide copy was drawn for each sprite. The cycles are very specific and might not align to 16 pixels.
It's conceivable to simply flicker two frames of offset sprites like this to get 8 copies. Changing all the colors though and updating the graphics might require a ram kernel. Meltdown used a ram kernel.
The real crux of the problem is still having a playfield for the checkerboard. This is where I really wish the 2600 had additional PF registers and accompanying modes in CTRLPF which allowed the entire playfield to be set with no sharing of Left/Right side. I think the only way around it for using these double wide sprites would be to offset the checker board so that reflect PF could be used. Even then there would still be some clean up to do with adding/removing the extra PF patterns.
On 1/14/2020 at 7:32 AM, Karl G said:I'm nowhere near your level of experience with 2600 programming, but I almost have to assume that you are kidding here. With double-width sprites, couldn't multiplex the sprites, so presumably you would have to do mid-scanline repositioning, which would leave no time to change either the colors or the contents of the graphics registers. If you're serious, I'd be curious how you imagine that working.
Two roms you should check out are Meltdown, and the Care Bears prototype. Meltdown is explained above. Care Bears does a trick with Reflect to produce a huge detailed sprite.
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Darrell, please take whatever time you need and come back. I sincerely, truily, appreciate you and what you've done. The internet is just a brutal place for criticism. It's not always easy to have a thick skin, but sometimes you just have to do your own thing and filter out the nay-sayers.
Hope you still post in the meantime and stick around. If not please come back recharged and renewed of purpose!
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6 hours ago, AW127 said:On some of the questions from different people here in this thread, you can easily see, that they don't know, that the game is enhanced. Not all people here are specialists to the Atari-2600 and it's games.
After learning that the games are marked to their type I consider this resolved and a moot point. In the end people are going to play the game and love it or hate it on its own merits.
6 hours ago, sramirez2008 said:As someone who buys homebrews to play them, all I can say is, my collection includes 4k as well as ARM based games. I decide to buy games based on their gameplay. I purchased Space Rocks and Galagon, because IMO their gameplay is great. I also have Hunchy II, Assembloids and Wall Jump Ninja (all 4k) because again, I consider their gameplay to be great.
I love Wall Jump Ninja. 😎 I'm said this so much in the past few days that I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but once again a great game is a great game no matter how it is made. A great game will always shine through.
6 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:They are comparing apples and oranges, and even tend to believe that some great modern games tower above the master pieces of the developer legends of the past. There is a risk that this becomes mainstream and then will affect the console's history.
Of course it is possible that someone, somehow, will create the best Atari 2600 game ever, and that it will be done today. Hey, it might even be a 1K game! I don't think it's fair to say that masterpieces of the past can never be surpassed.
Honestly, I would expect a game written 40 years ago to look a little less polished than one made today. This is not being offensive to the old game, its just progression. Progression then and now is also part of the consoles history, no?
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2 hours ago, Jstick said:I'm guessing you used right as fast-cycle for things like the multiplayer variants in Space Invaders?
Yes, that's correct. Thank you for your feedback. I'll have to think about what is the most intiuitive way it should work for future games. Maybe I will slow it down when it auto toggles, or only do one toggle on items that only have two choices. Typing this right now it actually sounds like the latter would work well.
57 minutes ago, SpiceWare said:Looks like the words getting out - https://www.facebook.com/groups/Atari2600homebrew/permalink/826566564431178/
I saw the spike in downloads and knew something was up! Thank you Scott. 😀
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1 hour ago, Andrew Davie said:From the viewpoint of a consumer this make sense, but from the viewpoint of a developer this totally misses the point. Writing for "bare bones" '2600 is not a "downgrade". It is a challenge requiring a different type of skill. So yes, it makes total sense. It depends on who you are and why you do what you do.
I didn't say "bare bones" now, did I? I'm not even sure what you would consider "bare bones" either... some people are like 2K with no illegal ops. Others are like any type of format that was availble back in the day (even those like 32SC which was only used for one game after the crash). Still others draw the line at co-processors, yet Pitfall II had one and was a game back in the day.
I don't want to debate what bare bones is with you. My point is just that it a slipperly slope of definitions. It's more or less up to the user to decide what it means.
I'm a great lover of doing challenging things on the 6502. Some of the most fun I had in while was making 32 byte roms. Yep, just 32 bytes. What I'm most proud of is that they not only are displaying something, but that the scanline count is stable, and VSYNC is being done. I made 10 of them. It was fun, and you don't get much more bare bones than that. Note the roms are padded to 2,048 bytes, but are in fact 32 bytes.
Now that I have started dipping my own toe into ARM development I can honestly say the expierence is quite different than I imagined it would be. I'm finding that whatever additional resources you get come with unique constraints of their own, and it is indeed challenging in the right sorts of ways. Overall whatever you gain with the ARM you just end up consuming by throwing more into the game, and in the end you are still squeezing stuff in and don't really have enough time for everything. Typical stuff. So for me the tradeoff is a wash in terms of challenge.
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I won't look at doing another one of these for several months unless I really need bug out and switch projects for a while. Asteroids was the game I was going to do next because of the amount of variations it has.
While I did Super Breakout mostly because I really wanted to draw a logo out of bricks, Video Olympics and Space Invaders were chosen because they each had a lot of variations and needed the menu screen the most.
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Also, Galagon is the game of the year hands down. While John has said a decent port could have been done without the ARM, after seeing how well it came out why would you want anything different? I mean really does it make any sense that we should purposely downgrade games?
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Darrell, your games are great. Space Rocks is one of my favorite 2600 games. The work that you and others have done to make tools that allow us to push the 2600 beyond previous limits is phenomimal. Please keep it up.
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2 hours ago, Keatah said:What a nice idea! ..adding menus to old games.
What about going a step further and doing trainer/cheat versions. The basics like no timers, or unlimited men, or invulnerability. Of course cheats shouldn't be too complex, perhaps something as simple as changing register or byte here and there.
Like for Space Invaders an on-screen option to toggle the normal single-shot or double-shot for firing.
I really wanted to just add a front end to these old games, and selected themes for the screens that I felt were appropriate. It was important for me to leave the game intact as I wanted it to shine on its own. These menus are really meant for people like me who never read the manual, and never got past few the first few select switch presses.
The only modifications I did to the original games was to clean up some glitches so that the background color changes were even. That's just a little cosmetics polishing.
1 hour ago, Keatah said:Menus within menus!
Yeah, I think you remember my full screen instuctions I made as a demo (36 characters max per line). I started thinking about doing this and realized it would be a little bit overboard, and instead of having time for 3 games I might have only done 1 or 2. I also thought it would take away from the main game too much with too many new features... so I didn't do instructions. In the end these hacks are meant to honor the original game while letting people expierence all the modes much easier.
For those that are interested here is some insight into how these games are constructed:
1) Create the menu screen as a new, built from scratch rom. This program runs on its own, and includes functionality such as row highlighting, available options, etc...
2) Disassemble the original game, and expand its size to add more code.
3) Insert the menu screen into the expanded rom. Modify the original game to go to some code that interfaces between the two screens when appropriate (like select being pressed).
The actually amount of hacking done to the original game is quite minimal. By far all of the work is in writing the new menu screen, and writing the two way interface between the original game and the menu screen. The amount of work is quite extensive as each game is different requiring a different approach.
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Thank you so much, Jstick! I never thought about the Matrix connection, but in looking back I can see the topic title was nothing but confusing. So I renamed it "Original Games Updated With Menus".
When I created the topic I chose not to have any pictures of the screens. My thought process was it would be a nice expierence for people to see them for the first time when they open the game. This completely backfired on me. People didn't really find anything interesting so they moved on without trying the games. So I've now added pictures of each screen and placed Super Breakout at the top since it is the most colorful.
With the menu options being greyed out, this is already being done. Here is a screen shot of Super Breakout when 2 players are selected. Progressive mode is not availble so it is greyed out.
The most suprising thing I learned making these menus is that Video Olympics and Space Invaders are mostly multiplayer games. I never knew that. There are actually a lot of variations for each.
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This is a good suggestion, and its something I went back and forth on when I was making the menus. I'm debating implementing it though because truthfully there hasn't been too much interest in these games.
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Well, overall this thread is just showcasing that everyone thinks differently and has different opinions. Nothing wrong with that.
In terms of new tech the only true constant is change. There's no stopping it.
As a programmer it is easy to look at a game and get a rough idea of its construction through a quick peek in Stella's Debugger. The GP don't know how to do so or even what they are looking at. A programmer does and forms a different perspective on what went into a game. Again, nothing really wrong with that.
Shovelware has its place. I personally have no issues with better tools allowing barriers to be taken down and gives more people the opportunity to create games themselves. They can expierence the joy (and pain) of programming. I'm all about letting people expierence this. Truithfully we need much more programmers to help keep the 2600 alive.
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2 hours ago, davyK said:Super Breakout is pretty much the perfect paddle game as far as I'm concerned. Arkanoid et al are very nice games but I still prefer the 4 variations that 2600 game has. Pure ball & paddle gaming.
I place 2600 Super Breakout alongside Asteroids Deluxe (arcade), Tetris and Super Monkey Ball (Gamecube) as my 4 perfect games - requiring no improvement.
Maybe - just maybe - if Super Breakout had 4 player support (even 2 vs 2 as in the original) it would be better, but that's niggling.
You might want to check out the menu version I did for Super Breakout, amongst others. There's a PAL60 version in there too.
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4 hours ago, AW127 said:True. And in my mind really begins a little fear, that "normal" Atari-2600 games, could have a hard time in the future. Don't understand me wrong people, i really appreciate quality games like this here (waiting by myself for the digital download of "Galagon" with big anticipation), but on the other hand, there is this little fear growing inside me, that normal Atari-2600 games could have problems, getting enough attention in the future, no matter how good they are and no matter how much good program-code a programmer has put inside. They simply can't do what the ARM-supported games can do and alot people EVEN DON'T KNOW that certain games are ARM-supported. Maybe this should be made more clearly recognizable on the boxes of these games, or something like that? (just a suggestion) And so, the normal technical limits of the Atari-2600 could maybe disappear, but exactly these limits, defines a retro-system.
I really hope, that i see things somewhat to negativ here and that also normal Atari-2600 games will have a chance in the future, to be real highlights. Sorry for these thoughts, don't want to dampen the fun about this great game, but the fear in this mentioned point, is there in my mind. And it get's bigger, i can't deny it. Even when i am also looking forward, to get this game here.
From observing these forums for many years I can understand your fears. The general public are not programmers and don't know the difference between game types. From what I've seen though they generally don't care to know about the differences either... they just want to see a great game.
I am an advocate that a game should be judged by how it makes you feel. It should not mater whether it is an assembly game, BB game, hack, Arm game, etc. Just judge it for how it all comes together and plays. While you might expierence tears of joy you might also just want to take a sledge hammer to the cartridge. What's important is that it made you feel something. A game is a game, is a game. Play it as such, and judge it as such.
While the ARM gives amazing resources, it still takes a great programmer to make a great game. Have no fear there.
Now I will give you the choice. You can take the Blue pill to wake up in 1980 with all games are being banged out in assembly and the story ends. You believe what you want to believe. If you take the Red pill I will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
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For those who tried, any feedback on the menus? Did you like the styles?
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Darrell, are you able to incorporate FASTJMP into your collect tutorial? I'm trying to get that working for my kernels.
Edit: I was able to get it working. I had a bug where I was trying to set the data but was using the wrong constant.
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A while back Tempest shared a great idea of adding a menu screen for Atari games which had their options laid out in a matrix at the back of the manual. I really loved that idea because it breathes some new life into these old games. Menu screens are great because they take away the awfulness of having to use the select switch to cycle through all 112 options of Space Invaders, and lets you know what game you are selecting in Video Olympics. You can also choose valid game types for the amount of players that you have.
Example:
Games:
- Video Olympics - Video Olympics Menu.zip
- Space Invaders - Space Invaders Menu.zip
- Super Breakout - Super Breakout Menu.zip
- Asteroids - Asteroids Menu
- Combat - Combat Menu
- Indy 500 - Indy 500 Menu
- Warlords - Warlords Menu
- Hangman - Hangman Menu
- Championship Soccer - Championship Soccer Menu
- Outlaw - Outlaw Menu
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Well that is pretty slick that only one of the audio registers is needed for 3 voices. That of course leaves the other register for sound effects such as shots of collisions which could be updated once a frame.
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Legacy versus ARM-based 2600 Game Development
in Atari 2600
Posted
I agree. The challenge/skill of making a game actually fun is universal. It doesn't mater what platform you are using.
People gave undeserving flack to BB for years. Now that has mostly shifted to flack for ARM games.
I am a supporter of BB. I love that it has given people a chance to make games, people who may never had the time or perseverance to learn assembly. Random Terrain, thank you for making games. 😀
I've also helped out people with incorporating assembly in BB when I had the chance. When you pair an assembly person with a BB person you can have a very powerful and rewarding relationship. Years ago I helped Cybearg by creating a custom BB kernel for him for his game Heartbreak. We literally were replacing files in the BB source so that it would build using the custom kernel.
The benefit was that we were able to extend BB beyond what it normally could do, and it gave Cybearg the freedom to make the game he wanted to make. He did all the game logic and I did all the technicals. I created a routine that would use the driving control or a joystick with auto-detection so that you could hot-swap them while playing the game. The custom kernel allowed for a non-flickering multi-colored display that also ran collision detection while it was drawing, and put the collision results in a variable that was easy and ready for the BB game logic. That project was a lot of fun. Oh, and I also did some work for Cybearg on the BB DPC+ kernel to do a split score. That one is useful.