Pacfan97 Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 I really want to know how to make Atari 7800 games without having to give demands on people and get my posting privileges revoked. I am already on indefinite moderator preview. There are some games I really want to make for Atari 7800. Galaxian Bosconian Rally-X New Rally-X Gorf Millipede Better Donkey Kong D2K Jumpman returns Missile Command Tempest Berzerk Pac & Pal Pac-Mania Battlezone Gaplus Mappy Dig-Dug II and more......... Do you think these Atari 7800 ideas are cool? How do I make Atari 7800 games? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 Easy! 1) Download the 7800's technical documents here :- http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/archives-techdocs-7800.htm 2) Read the 7800 programmers forum on AA (especially the sprite handling examples) :- http://www.atariage.com/forums/forum/52-atari-7800-programming/ 3) Learn 6502 assembler (or wait for my "C" game dev system to be available). Away you go... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 I really want to know how to make Atari 7800 games without having to give demands on people and get my posting privileges revoked. I am already on indefinite moderator preview. There are some games I really want to make for Atari 7800. Galaxian Bosconian Rally-X New Rally-X Gorf Millipede Better Donkey Kong D2K Jumpman returns Missile Command Tempest Berzerk Pac & Pal Pac-Mania Battlezone Gaplus Mappy Dig-Dug II and more......... Do you think these Atari 7800 ideas are cool? How do I make Atari 7800 games? How old are you like 10? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 I forgot to add that Curt Vendel's Atari Museum released the source to several 7800 games on this page (all in 6502 assembler apart from Hat Trick which is in FORTH) :- http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/7800/games/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacfan97 Posted January 10, 2010 Author Share Posted January 10, 2010 I really want to know how to make Atari 7800 games without having to give demands on people and get my posting privileges revoked. I am already on indefinite moderator preview. There are some games I really want to make for Atari 7800. Galaxian Bosconian Rally-X New Rally-X Gorf Millipede Better Donkey Kong D2K Jumpman returns Missile Command Tempest Berzerk Pac & Pal Pac-Mania Battlezone Gaplus Mappy Dig-Dug II and more......... Do you think these Atari 7800 ideas are cool? How do I make Atari 7800 games? How old are you like 10? No, I'm 12. And do you think these ideas are cool? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 No, I'm 12. And do you think these ideas are cool? Hmm.... OK... You'd probably be better off learning BASIC on a platform that isn't as constrained as the 7800 (e.g. Blitz BASIC on a PC). Once you get the hang of programming you can then adapt your ideas to "fit" a much smaller/limited machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 No, I'm 12. And do you think these ideas are cool? Sure. But ideas are a dime a dozen (figuratively speaking, of course; their actual value is exactly one dime less than that). Coming up with cool ideas is easy: I've got lots of cool ideas that I think would work great on the 7800. But I realized that, if I spend all of my energy talking about them, or asking other people to do all the hard work for me, or thinking about cool company names or label/box designs before I've written a single line of code, I'd be stuck forever in the land of "wouldn't it be nice." Most classic gaming enthusiasts who have come here with game ideas of their own never got beyond that point, either because they didn't know what to do with their ideas or because they weren't willing to put in the work required to transform them from daydreams into realities. At some point, you've just got to break out the tools and the literature, and challenge yourself to learn the 7800 system and how to develop for it. And if you decide along the way that you can't do it, you can then redirect your energies toward something you can do before you waste any more time and effort pursuing the impossible. In either case, daydreaming isn't nearly as satisfying as showing the world what you can do. Having big dreams is important, especially when you're young, but they're not enough. You also need to be thinking in realistic, hard-headed ways about how you plan to achieve them and what you're willing to do to get what you claim to want; if you don't, you're only setting yourself up for disappointment later in life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 (edited) How old are you like 10? LMAO! Shawn... you meanie! lol BTW: his user name kind of gave away his age from a logical deduction standpoint. @PacFan97... go for it man! Groobybee's already pointed you in the right direction. Games I'd love to see come to fruition on the 7800 (besides adding the tether mode on Space Duel) would be Gorf, Berzerk, Tempest, Mappy (maybe) and some of the other obscure arcade stuff maybe - such as Bagman. Seriously, if you're considering devoting all the time, R&D - I'd start with stuff like this Rehashing Namco ports that can be had on those plug 'n play devices would be lame IMO and Galaxian blows chunks. A better Galaga might need to be ported, but screw Galaxian Edited January 10, 2010 by save2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickeycolumbus Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 I really want to know how to make Atari 7800 games without having to give demands on people and get my posting privileges revoked. I am already on indefinite moderator preview. There are some games I really want to make for Atari 7800. Galaxian Bosconian Rally-X New Rally-X Gorf Millipede Better Donkey Kong D2K Jumpman returns Missile Command Tempest Berzerk Pac & Pal Pac-Mania Battlezone Gaplus Mappy Dig-Dug II and more......... Do you think these Atari 7800 ideas are cool? How do I make Atari 7800 games? How old are you like 10? No, I'm 12. And do you think these ideas are cool? Don't listen to Shawn's negativity. If you dedicate yourself and work hard enough, you should be able to program the 7800 with in a year or two. I started programming the 2600 at 13, so it's certainly possible Good luck! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 How old are you like 10? John Carmack was 12 years old once two. And Jeff Minter. And Warren Robinett. And David Crane. Just sayin ... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 How old are you like 10? John Carmack was 12 years old once two. And Jeff Minter. And Warren Robinett. And David Crane. Just sayin ... And they were all discovering their pee-pee's instead. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cebus Capucinis Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 And they were all discovering their pee-pee's instead. See? They're more advanced than I am even! Someday I hope to find it, some day.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorf Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 (edited) How old are you like 10? John Carmack was 12 years old once two. And Jeff Minter. And Warren Robinett. And David Crane. Just sayin ... And they were all discovering their pee-pee's instead. You just had to go there didnt you? PacFan.....give it a try but a few of those games are covered already. Gorf and Berzerk are being worked on so those are two less you don't need to be concerned with. Edited January 11, 2010 by Gorf 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mord Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 Pacfan - create a Gorf game exactly like the original, but name it Frog. We'll all know what's up... rotflmao! Mind you, that gave me the image of a space shooter where you're shooting out your tongue and swallowing the invaders. Add some button mashing to pull the trapped insectoid looking invader in before it escapes and Gorf clone or not, it'd be interesting to see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacfan97 Posted January 11, 2010 Author Share Posted January 11, 2010 How old are you like 10? John Carmack was 12 years old once two. And Jeff Minter. And Warren Robinett. And David Crane. Just sayin ... And they were all discovering their pee-pee's instead. You just had to go there didnt you? PacFan.....give it a try but a few of those games are covered already. Gorf and Berzerk are being worked on so those are two less you don't need to be concerned with. If you see them, give me shortcuts to them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorf Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 If you see them, give me shortcuts to them. There are no short cuts. If they are to be given away, that will be ultimately up to the authors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacfan97 Posted January 11, 2010 Author Share Posted January 11, 2010 Sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frogstar_robot Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 A list like that is biting off quite a lot. An experienced developer could easily spend a year or more developing just one of those and getting all the kinks out. I'm not saying that somebody really good couldn't do it in much less time but homebrewers on classic system typically aren't motivated by vast visions of dancing dollar signs. That means these things are done when they are done so the level of polish on something like Beef Drop is usually much higher than commercial titles we bought back when. This also means the expectation of quality on new classic ports is apt to be rather high. If you're really serious about this then prepare to spend some serious time first learning 6502 assembler then about as much time learning how to get good results out of the 7800 chips. Then and only then can you truly appreciate how difficult each of the titles you mentioned will potentially be. You'll also have to pick from a small number of cartridge options which further requires that good understanding of what your game needs from MARIA and friends. So rather than cite a list of games sufficient to keep an army of homebrew coders busy, learn your stuff then pick one and prepare to devote a significant piece of your life to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Tomlin Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 Indeed... the 7800 simply isn't a good first system. Learning to program assembly language is enough of a learning curve in itself, but it would be near impossible on a system where you can't debug stuff properly. Note that the difficulty of having emulators support the 7800's limitations means that you can't just use an emulator to write a game. Even more important is that the 7800's video architecture is just plain weird compared to other systems. The 2600 has an unusual video architecture too, but it's not so confusing if you think of it as a 1-D video chip. My opinion is that the ColecoVision and Sega Genesis are probably the most approachable of classic consoles. There should be emulators with good debuggers for them, though I don't see them because I almost exclusively use Macs. What you really need is a fast edit/run/crash/repeat cycle to let you stumble around, and BASIC provided just that. Also, a very important part of learning how to program assembly language is seeing other people's code and tinkering with it. I sometimes say that I learned Z80 assembly language from Bill Gates because I learned so much by disassembling TRS-80 Level II BASIC. You really need an urge to take other people's code apart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 Pacfan97, The best system to program for, for beginners, is the 5200. It's not as hard as the 2600 with it's cycle counting etc. and the 7800 with it's odd display list/display list list setup. The 5200 has the advantage of being VERY similar to the 8-bit line of computers which has tons of programming examples and programming tutorials like here. Plus the 5200 doesn't have a good programmer like Pacmanplus who is pumps out games for the 7800 like Donald Trump writes checks. Give it a try. There are many 8-bit computer programmers here on AA that can help you as well. Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8th lutz Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 (edited) Pacfan97, I can't tell you if the Atari 7800 is a good system to start with in terms of programing since I didn't do anything in programing in 15 years or touch anything outside of the Apple II series, but I think learning BASIC is a good step for working with old computers or game systems. It is based on what I remembered from a computer programing class I took. Edited January 11, 2010 by 8th lutz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacfan97 Posted January 11, 2010 Author Share Posted January 11, 2010 So making 5200 games would be much easier? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted January 12, 2010 Share Posted January 12, 2010 So making 5200 games would be much easier? Yes, although you still need to learn assembly. Try this book www.atariarchives.org/alp/ or this book www.atariarchives.org/roots/ . I like the first one the best. There are a number of useful books on the main page www.atariarchives.org/ . Plus you need an assembler program as well like Dasm or Tasm or Mac/65 or Mads. Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Propane13 Posted January 12, 2010 Share Posted January 12, 2010 So making 5200 games would be much easier? Have you programmed in Basic before? Or nothing at all? I started out at around age 12 or so wanting to make Atari 2600 games. I learned basic first, and made a few simple games there on my computer (tic-tac-toe, connect 4). Once I got a good grasp on that, I moved into the 2600 land. I'm sure you could make the same leap. But, if you haven't ever programmed--- start in Basic on your PC/Mac. It's a lot of fun, and a great way to learn. If that even sounds too hard-- you can take someone else's Basic code and compile it in basic. Then, you play the game. After playing a bit, you can read the code, and start understanding what it does. Those days were some of the most influential of my life. So, how much do you know about programming? -John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacfan97 Posted January 12, 2010 Author Share Posted January 12, 2010 I hope when Gorf 7800 comes out, it will have the Galaxians stage because whoever is working on it should know how much a lot of people miss the Galaxians stage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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