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The power suppliee are identical at the ColecoVision's end, same they have the same physical dimension power markings at each voltage (0.9A at 5V, 0.1A at -5V, 0.3A at 12V). So you can just use any European ColecoVision power supply with your US ColecoVision. Philipp

I added some eye candy and improved the speed. CG3.rom.gz

It's an old project. I had the idea and wrote a prototype in september 2007. It used floating-point first and euclidian metric for distance. The speed was horrible. I switched to fixed-point and did some simplifications, but it was still too slow. However I reused some of the code for the smooth movement in SCJ3. There it got optimized (some parts rewritten in assembler, some compiler optimizations). I now looked at CG again, ported the improvements made in SCJ3 and improved the gameplay a bit (added the bouncing, the concept of energy and some minor stuff). I don't really know where the game will go from here yet. I hope to make something out of it this or next year. So far I have a few ideas I'd like to implement next: - Add music (no sound effects since however strage the gravity may be in the game world it's space and no one can hear you scream there) - Make an AI opponent In it's current, incomplete and unoptimized state the ROM is about 11KB. With the improvements it's likely to grow a bit. I'll have to see how big it gets. The problem is that the spaceship can point in 32 directions, but there's just 8 sprites at the moment, so it looks like you're not shooting straight. The effect is made worse by the distance metric used since circles are not round but diamond shaped there. So when you shoot a projectile it's repelled by your spaceship since it's of the same color. This repulsice force is a bit stronger towards the diagonals. There is no such differene between the colors. Objects of different color are attracted to each other, objects of the same color repel each other. So when aimed at a blue spaceship or missile red and green projectiles will function as homing missiles, while blue missiles won't hit. Philipp

It's mostly C with some functions implemented in assembler. Philipp

It's gzip, but I think many compression tools like WinZIP or WinRAR can handle it too. I didn't compress it to save space, more because of AtariAge not allowing filenames ending in .rom Philipp

Here's a slightly improved version. Missiles self-destruct after some time. This may sound like a minor change, but it improves playability by combatting the slowdown caused by too many objects being on the screen at a time. Philipp CG2.rom.gz

I have done some improvements to a WIP called "Colored gravity". There are two spaceships, each steered by a ColecoVision controller. At the top of the screen there are two numbers. The upper one is energy left. Energy is lost when firing, changing color or being hit by a missile. Energy recharges while the spaceship isn't accelerating or decelerating. The other number is the reload. You can't fire or change color while it's nonzero. There are three colors. Objects of different color attract each other. Left fire button: Fire missile of your current color. Right fire button: Try to change color. Joystick: Accelerate / Decelerate, turn spaceship. Spaceships and missiles bounce when hitting the border of the playing area. The game becomes a bit slow when there are many objects on screen. Philipp P.S.: This is far from a complete game, but spaceships and missiles bouncing around are fun. CG.rom.gz

1. Since the money made from selling games isn't much a license holder that's willing to sue over that will probably sue homebrew authors that give their games away for free. Of course one could try to avoid that by releasing the game pseudonymously or anonymously and hoping it would spread to ROM sites and survive there. 2. Probably most of our effort goes into the free tools we create to make games ourselves and help others make games. 3. Making carts costs money. Some people want the games on carts (most of them even want a printed manual and box), some authors like to make real hardware (I do). Philipp

Though only few such posts have appeared here I wanted to share my thoughts on this topic with you. There have been more such posts on the ColecoNation list. Philipp

In the 80s most ColecoVision games were arcade ports. And arcade-style games are still the most popular, even among games released now. Most proposals for homebrews are arcade ports. Unfortunately it's quite unlikely a homebrew author would get a license to make such a game (Nintendo licensing Donkey Kong 3?). Making the gmae without a license would be illegal, even though the risk of getting caught probably isn't that high. That basically leaves three choices: - Look at games where the rights are not held by big companies (I have a T&T license) - Original game ideas (e.g. Bankruptcy Builder) - Make games that are different enough from the original to not infringe their rights (e.g. Paint Trax ~> Steamroller, Fantasy ~> Search for the stolen Crown Jewels). I think homebrew game idea proposals have a higher hance of being picked up by a homebrew author when they don't require a license from a big company. Philipp

The multidimensional smooth scrolling is really nice as is the smooth car movement. Philipp

Most homebrew authors have ROM images of demos on their homepages or posted to these forums. Just look at them and get the full versions of the games you like. Philipp P.S.: Information about my games is at http://www.colecovision.eu/ColecoVision/games/

Baut doch 'mal die Bahnstrecke Ahlhorn-Vechta wieder auf, dann ist Schneiderkrug nicht mehr ganz so abgelegen! Philipp

In the taboo trademarks thread there seems to be a consensus that we can't use trademarks or copyrighted works in homebrews. I don't know much about US law, so maybe you could help clarify some points. - When there's a film by the name of X is it allowed to make a game called X? AFAIK a trademark applies to a certain class of products or sevices. So the name of a video game shouldn'T infringe upon a trademark used or registered for films (unless said trademark is used or registered for video games, too).* - I think copyrights could prevent game authors from making games that have a storyline similar to one from a film.* - How about fair use rights? Do they allow the creation of a game parodising a film? * There was the case of the widow of the author of "Dracula" suing a film maker for copyright infringement. She succeeded and courts ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. The movie, called "Nosferatu" (the first vampire movie) had a storyline very similar to the parts of the book's storyline (a transsylvanian count that sucks blood coming to a western European town by ship, with the ships crew dying one by one). Philipp

It didn't go - it morphed into an infinite indirect recursion.

Same for Search for the stolen Crown Jewels 2 (and some not yet released games). Philipp

TM is used for unregistered trademarks, for registered trademarks you use R. Philipp

I don't have a Vii, but it seems this could be a great system. While marketing probably intends this to be a cheap Wii imitate (just look at the console and company names) and it is too expensive at 184$ and it's probably illegal not only due to trademakrs, but due to patents I think it's a nearly perfect system: Look at the games' screenshots. They look like Genesis / Mega Drive games. It has a Wii-like controller. So it is an innovative controller combined with a 16-bit system. This is the (nearly) perfect video game console for 2D games. It should have what you need for even the best Genesis / Mega Drive era games, but not more and it has a much better controller (and comparing Wii to Xbox and PS sales you see how much a difference a controller can make). So the console which I think could be successfull today would be very similar: Get patent licenses from nintendo for the innovative controllers (probably impossible), make an improved Genesis / Mega Drive console (might need a license from Sega if the Mega Drive had a BIOS), which is compatible with the original Mega Drive (so it can play all the old games). This hardware should be good enough for all 2D games. It should be simple enough so homebrewers can make games for it. Philipp

Ich werde mich hinter einem Berg von ColecoVision-Spieln verstecken. Philipp

It seems you're talking about the GP2x console. Philipp

Why not just get a Genesis / Mega Drive on ebay. They're cheap, there's lots of games. Depending on what people are looking for they have the whole range from classic consoles to consoles from the generation before the current ones to choose from (master system - dreamcast, playstations up to 2, etc). Philipp

archive.org should have them.

On one hand there haven't been any updates to that site for a long time. On the other hand it might just be a move to another hoster since it's been down for a short time only. Philipp

Looks good. You have used the ColecoVision's graphical capabilities well, especially considering that the MSX better than the CV hardware-wise. Philipp

And here's slower music (and a few minor improvements). Philipp BB.rom.gz