Miner Jumpman
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Posts posted by Miner Jumpman
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8 minutes ago, Ikrananka said:Okay, name me a new game they have made for the CV?
I'm not sure if you are playing a game or are serious. I have multiple paragraphs referencing Team Pixelboy, CollectorVision, and Opcode making games. I end by saying it's a shame Coleco Holding can't market these products because many don't know they make new games for the system.
If you can't infer what I mean from the pronoun, please let's drop this conversation.
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1 minute ago, Ikrananka said:Re-read what you wrote - the two sentences I quoted. I don't see how else that can be interpreted.
Do they make new games for ColecoVision? Yes. Are there significant numbers of people who don't know they make new games for ColecoVision? Yes. Does Coleco Holdings have more reach to market the fact these new games are being made? Yes.
What here is untrue?
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1 minute ago, Ikrananka said:That is patently untrue - Coleco Holdings do NOT make games for the CV.
I didn't say they did. My point is they could market games and products for developers. If Coleco were smart, they'd be selling Opcode's SGM on their site along with games. The fact they purchased 50 Phoenix units from CollectorVision is a good sign. My hope is Coleco will buy more if sales go well.
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45 minutes ago, NIAD said:This dude owes Tony Cruise an apology!
Cavern Fighter is not a 1:1 port/conversion of Scramble, if it was, it would be called Scramble. It is a damn good ground up build and the programmer chose to play within the 32K ROM /1K RAM limits of the CV. An exact 1:1 port would have probably required breaking the 32K rom barrier via the use of a Bank Switching Cart PCB, but not the Opcode SGM.
No, I don't owe an apology. When someone puts a game up for sale, they should be open to feedback. Are you in a cult?
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58 minutes ago, Pixelboy said:Excuse me, did you just call me self-entitled? Really? Your definition of self-entitlement must differ from mine.
Ah, so it doesn't seem friendly to you personally, therefore it's not friendly to anyone else. Sure, buddy, whatever you say. Also, I doubt ColecoVision fans would "abandon" this community over just little old me. I would tend to believe that they move on simply because they want to pursue other interests. I've seen plenty of people move on like this over the years.
Team Pixelboy is not a private club. Anyone can pre-order games but there is such a thing as a deadline for placing a pre-order. And just in case you missed it, I explained my reasons for not accepting new pre-orders in the most recent Team Pixelboy News Bulletin, which I posted on August 7th. Whether you agree with my reasons or not, that's your thing.
Well then, let me attempt to explain things to you as clearly as I can: Team Pixelboy is a hobby for me, not a business, so the term "business practices" doesn't really apply. The number of copies of each game I release is dependent on a few factors, like availability of materials, production deadlines, and motivation (as people will surely understand when they think of Space Shuttle... Really sorry about that...
). And all of that broils down to a question of timing for ColecoVision fans who want to buy these games. I try to leave the window open for people who are interested, but that window eventually closes. If you miss it, then what can I say?
Also, please keep in mind that I want to retire. But I'm not going to just suddenly ride off into the sunset, I have a responsibility to honor recorded pre-orders. If I was a self-entitled individual, I wouldn't care about that, I would just drop everything and go.
I appreciate the response. You probably don't understand there is genuine frustration from ColecoVision fans. I frequently hear from people that they've lost interest in ColecoVision because the games are too expensive and too hard to get. It's not just Team Pixelboy, but CollectorVision, and Opcode as well.
I hear what you are saying about not being a business. Although, I am not sure why Atari developers have figured it out. Their games are cheaper and widely available. How is Champ Games crushing it?
The material cost of producing a game is a few dollars per unit. Once you've recouped the development cost, every game sold after is gravy. It is such a massive ROI; I'd think they would be available for years instead of sold out before even released.
If you are ready to retire, I can imagine you don't want to deal with sales. It seems like Atari developers have turned the sales and marketing over to Atari Age, and from what I remember, the employee was befuddled that you were releasing so little.
Anyway, I am a fan of Team Pixelboy and recognize you've done some of the system's most stellar work. It's a shame that Coleco Holdings is such a disaster because maybe they could've effectively marketed these products. Many fans have no idea they make new games for the system. A larger fan base means the cost of games can drop, and as the price drops, more fans come.
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4 hours ago, youki said:You are not too far from the truth. i speak only for me , i can not tell for others. But personally programming on old console i do it is just for my own pleasure. It is purely selfish. I don't care about "fan" . If a game i do is appreciated by fan i'm very happy ,it is rewarding but it is just bonus , but it is not a problem if the game is not appreciated. I just want take pleasure to code what i want how i want. I don't do business.
I respect that, and if you've created games, I've likely supported them. For me, this issue is limited to essential titles. If releasing games as significant as Scramble or Berzerk, I want to see the best Coleco can produce. I see no evidence that Atari 5200 is that much stronger of a system.
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4 hours ago, Pixelboy said:Your post reeks of self-entitlement. Do the rest of us a favor and get over yourself.
Interesting because you are one of the worst offenders. A few years back, I had seen someone on this forum make a valid complaint about not being able to purchase your games. You responded by berating him for not taking the time to contact you about purchasing because you would always sell.
I've contacted you about games, and you said not a single game you produced or planed on producing was available or ever would be. You've made it like a private club where only a few anointed individuals are permitted admission. Many people have permanently abandoned Coleco for other communities that are more fan-friendly.
I routinely give you high praise because you've done some of the most exceptional work for the community. Yet many of your business practices are head-scratching. I spoke to an Atari Age employee about these issues, and he said, "you are preaching to the choir" and couldn't understand the philosophy.
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2 hours ago, zaphro72 said:Plus why wouldn't you try to target the largest audience with your game? Not everyone has a SGM compatible ColecoVision. I appreciate anything anyone wants to do with a system that lost commercial support in the mid 80's.
Yes, I am with you. I am not even a fan of the SGM. If someone creates a unique game, I support it regardless of what I think of it.
However, when someone takes the most iconic games, like Scramble and Berzerk, how it looks, sounds, and plays are important. My point is, even if programmers could easily add the tech to the cart, many are more interested in engaging in an intellectual exercise than pleasing the fan base.
I've confirmed this idea by a programmer in this thread who stated, "It is purely selfish. I don't care about 'fan.'" This attitude is prevalent from developers in the ColecoVision community and helps explain why games cost double than similar games on other systems and are not readily available.
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7 hours ago, youki said:i don't understand the obsession with "add on" to improve the console.
If you find your colecovision not enough powerful , just play on sega master system for instance or a megadrive.
I think programmers who are "obsessed" with "stock colecovision" like me . It is just because the challenge is more interesting. What programmers loves in retro programming is to jungle with limitation of a machine.
Telling someone to just go play another system is an unsatisfactory answer. Your response is also telling because, for people like you, the endeavor is not about producing what fans want, but playing your own puzzle game.
If someone designs a game and finds they can fit it all without any added technology, great. However, most want developers to pull out all the stops to get it as accurate as possible when copying an existing game (ideally, it surpasses the existing game giving a compelling reason to play it instead of MAME).
I'm glad Tony had fun, but we are left with a version that looks more like the 2600 than the 5200. Normally, ColecoVision comes out ahead or it is at least close when making a head-to-head comparison with the 5200. Here we got absolutely smoked. That's the dead giveaway that Tony didn't grow up with the ColecoVision because anyone who did would not let it happen.
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27 minutes ago, mr_me said:It is a limit. The fifth sprite on a scanline doesn't crash the game but it will disappear. It's up to the programmer to get it do display by alternating their priority ie. flicker. Or they can program software sprites by animating the background.
No, it doesn't "disappear." It's a question of how many frames per second it is visible. Hear about the worst case scenario in Donkey Kong Arcade.
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On 9/30/2020 at 4:46 AM, Tony Cruise said:It really pushed the original hardware to the line, I was literally down to the last couple of bytes of Ram left.
I don't understand the obsession with "stock Coleco." Nobody at Coleco working on the games wanted to release it with that little RAM, but they acquiesced to the accountants with the idea they would upgrade the RAM the following year, when prices dropped, via the Super Game Module. In other words, using additional tech to boost the games is living up to the ideals of everyone at Coleco involved in game production, and focusing on "stock Coleco" is following the accountant's ideal. Those of us who had the system as children understand because Coleco sold the idea of boosting the system using the expansion port from day one.
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On 10/2/2020 at 12:36 PM, ColecoKing said:Miner Jumpman Coleco do not own Buck Rogers, it was port of Sega arcade game.
Wongojack
Holy cow! I was speaking figurately. "Owning" means it has the best ports of the game for both a home console and a home computer. I pretty sure I am more knowledgeable about the game than most here.
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On 10/3/2020 at 6:46 PM, mr_me said:For sure time was a factor in 1982. Another thing to consider is the size of the rom cartridge programmers were given in 1982. They were only 16kB or 8 kB. Now, with bank switching rom, they can have cartridges ten times, even one hundred times larger. Programmers still have to deal with the colecovision four sprite limit on one scanline. Super Mario Brothers is a 40kB cartridge on nes. A couple of years later, zelda was on a 128kB cartridge. Dropping rom prices made a big difference from the early 1980s to later in the decade.
You are overstating the "four sprint limit." It's not like it cause the game to crash. The new Donkey Kong Arcade game has two options: more color or less flicker. The more color option routinely puts eight or more sprites on a scanline. If you try it out, you'll see, Coleco handles it surprisingly well with minimal flicker. I wish they had programmed all the games like this because it looks better, and with F18A, there is zero flicker.
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14 minutes ago, mr_me said:That's because it's a port of the arcade code, so it is actually running the arcade game on a colecovision. There's a version on the tandy Coco3 that's really good too. Not a straight port as code was translated to the native processor. It has new boards and is called Donkey Kong Remixed.
Yes. My point is people thought it was impossible to produce this Donkey Kong on ColecoVision not that long ago. For example, the screen resolution is different on the arcade and Coleco, so it's a significant challenge to fit all the girders in. However, those who claimed it was impossible have been proven wrong and we see the right programmer can do it.
Yes, there is a limit to have far we can push a system, but Coleco never came close to that threshold while the NES did. That's why no new games for the NES come close to the best in its '80s library. While most recent games for ColecoVision are better than the legacy games.
It's doubtful that anyone will push ColecoVision to its limits the way Nintendo did with games like Super Mario Bros 3 because it is an expensive endeavor and not enough profit motive to make it happen.
That's why F18A is the best option. Most of what we see with F18A can be done on the stock Coleco (except the number of colors), but it's far less time consuming for programmers to make it happen.
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8 hours ago, ColecoKing said:
N64 Version???????Someone who owns the DK arcade cabinet and knows the game well claims the new Coleco game (called Donkey Kong Arcade) has the closest version to the arcade. This guy is not a ColecoVision fan, but he loves Donkey Kong. The N64 has a version of Donkey Kong that some consider the best, but this guy disputes it. Take a look at Coleco's version.
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16 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:I think we can take Konami games as examples of TMS9918 games that do look colorful also on the SG-1000
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aenXkD1V-M
So it can be done and Konami did it a lot (check their MSX production all on TMS9918/9928 ... it's really really pretty imho).
As to why not many games on the actual SG1000 went that route I do not know, "the castle" has a very colorful main character on SG-1000 https://www.mobygames.com/game/sg-1000/castle/screenshots/gameShotId,910372/
"As to why not many games on the actual SG1000 went that route I do not know"
It's more work and executives rushed their programmers to get the games finished. -
17 hours ago, mr_me said:If that demo was written for f18a than it won't work on a colecovision without the upgraded graphics chip.
The tms9918 graphics chip can only do four monochrome sprites on one scanline. The fifth sprite gets dropped or sprites can be programmed to flicker. The 100MHz f18a graphics chip can do 32 monochrome sprites on one scanline without flicker. The f18a also has hardware scrolling and programmable colours. The colecovision or any tms9918 based system has a signature fixed 15 colour palette.
I specifically said the demo runs on the stock Coleco. It does NOT use F18A. Thanks for playing.
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6 hours ago, mbd30 said:I mentioned sprites because I've noticed both Coleco and SG-1000 sprites tend to have a signature monochrome look, with NES sprites being a bit more colorful and detailed.
Look at the sprites in Mr. Do for example.
I am impressed by that short demo though.I wouldn't call it a signature. The majority of Coleco games have multicolored sprites. Even the sequel, Mr. Do's! Castle is multicolored. However, it's easier to make them a single color.
Since there were such short development times and usually a single programmer, they cut many corners. If there was a large ROI, they could've afforded to spend more time and make them right.
Again, Donkey Kong Arcade is a vindication of what Coleco is capable of doing. Many would've considered the quality of that game impossible in the '80s.
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5 hours ago, CatPix said:Good observation. Hardware sprites on the TMS chip can only be monochrome (I remember that from the MSX). Tho there always are workarounds, surch as using several sprites and software sprites....
4 hours ago, mbd30 said:Thank you. I figured that having only one character was the trick, or else there would be issues.
It's not a "trick" any more than anything on the NES is a trick. I've already added an enemy, and it works. Most people are dealing with cognitive dissonance. They have their minds made up that a system can't do something, but they don't understand programming power.
Nintendo had a large development team and would spend up to 18 months on a game. That's tens of thousands of hours. I guarantee with an investment of that amount of time, I could create something previously considered impossible.
At this point, enough people have ColecoVision's with an F18A card that moving in that direction seems to be a better use of time. We are already seeing that instead of competing with the NES, Coleco is surpassing it (see Dead Tomb).
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1 hour ago, ColecoKing said:
This doesn't answer my question about why 5200 can do that game better yet is 2x weaker system.
No one said CV could be expanded like famicom so not sure why you mention it. All I know is that there was limited CV launch in Japan whether official or not I do not know. But SG1000 is basically a CV anyway. Of course, Sega never fix CV problems even with Mark 3 other than make pretty picture for screenshots. They could have updated more so games like After Burner are actually playable lol.
Coleco has tiles but it was not designed to play the games NES had even early on that's why only game like Antarctic Adventure look even but any tile sprite game or arcade game everything look different.
I suspect Sega Chack N' pop in above image comparison has same sprite protagonist as Famicom version because it is very early game but the enemies and background all look much better than Sg1000.
"Any tile sprite game or arcade game everything look different."
Look at Donkey Kong Arcade on ColecoVision. I heard two people arguing about whether it is better than N64 version. It shows what the system is capable of doing. A big issue with many Coleco games is programmers cut serious corners. The max development time for any legacy Coleco game was three months. Nintendo was taking up to 18 months for development of NES games.
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4 hours ago, mbd30 said:The main reason is that NES has technical advantages over Colecovision such as hardware based smooth scrolling, better sprites, and helper chips on the carts themselves. Super Mario Bros. was a true next gen console game in 1985 and it didn't even need an extra chip. Colecovision could not do that.
No hardware gives the NES better sprites than ColecoVision. The NES has an advantage of scrolling, but Coleco can scroll just as well if programmers sweat blood to make it happen (what NES programmers regularly did for trouble areas in their games).
Check out this program that runs on the stock Coleco. The code is unwieldy, but if I could get someone familiar with assembler (plus time to assist), we could turn it into an NES style game for sure.
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If you look at early NES and ColecoVision games, they are similar. For example, it's hard to differentiate Antarctic Adventure.
Why did NES games go on to be so good? The answer is four reasons: designers, programmers, engineers, and time. Designers steered games to play to the system's strengths. Programmers need to work with the system for years to learn the hardware and how to overcome limitations. Good engineers can devise technology to add to carts to improve the games further. Finally, business executives need to give development teams a sufficient amount of time to create good games.
The more of those four variables working in a systems favor, the better the games. Late NES had all those things going for it. SG-1000 had none of those things going for it.
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On 9/30/2020 at 10:34 PM, lushgirl_80 said:I dig some SG-1000 games actually. The Castle and Star Force are my faves from that console!
In general, the SG-1000 has a weak library. However, there are a handful of excellent games: Girl's Garden, Bomb Jack, Bank Panic, Flicky, The Castle, Lode Runner, and Star Jacker come to mind. Luckily, all those are now available on ColecoVision, and in some cases, programmers improved them. For example, Bomb Jack was ported from SG-1000, but it looks like a different game with vastly improved graphics and colors.
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On 9/30/2020 at 10:18 PM, DragonGrafx-16 said:Well at least the SG-1000 had a standard game pad:
So does ColecoVision.
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Cavern Fighter for Colecovision
in ColecoVision / Adam
Posted
Okay, I am not looking for a fight. I know of no Team Pixelboy title available right now except on eBay where the price is often over $100.
Meanwhile, Atari 2600 has 100 titles for sale on this site alone. A large percentage of them are listed at $25. I can't remember the last time I paid that little for a Coleco game.
Atari Age is making a profit on these $25 games. How are they doing it?
I recall seeing you state you would only produce 50 games for specific titles. Keeping the number so small is inflating your per-unit production cost. Your products are so good that I am confident I could sell hundreds more than you currently are.
For example, it's unfortunate you didn't capitalize on the Nether Dungeon game. I'm positive you could have sold many units if you negotiated a deal to bundled a cart with the Max Reload DVD. If that weren't feasible, another option would be to include an advert for the game with the DVD. Still, another option would be to produce five times the amount you did, which would drive down the per-unit cost, and aggressively market it.
I have a strong background in sales and marketing, and I've noticed many missed opportunities. However, I understand these things are easier said than done. I would like to see Coleco have some sort of revival before fading into total obscurity, but every passing year makes that less likely. The chance may have died with the Chameleon debacle. Peace.