jaymz887 Posted March 18, 2013 Share Posted March 18, 2013 Hi all, I don't know if anyone came up with this idea for a hack. robotron 2084 for the Atari? I was thinking hacking berserk taking out the inner walls and adding more robots and humans. if for some reason the humans cant be added just adding the robots and giving it a different name like otto's world.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barnieg Posted March 18, 2013 Share Posted March 18, 2013 I think it would need the harmony - along the lines of what spiceware is doing with frantic. I don't know if its just me but I found the speed and movement/animation disappointing on the 8-bit versions - not as fast as the arcade and with character cell movement i.e not smooth. Strangely the spectrum version( expect when it gets overloaded) appears smoother for the majority of the time. I've been thinking of resurrecting my bezerk/robotron hybrid for the mattel aquarius not quite ready for the 2600! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted March 18, 2013 Share Posted March 18, 2013 II don't know if its just me but I found the speed and movement/animation disappointing on the 8-bit versions - not as fast as the arcade and with character cell movement i.e not smooth. I played the 5200 version of Robotron quite a bit, and even though it is not graphically arcade-perfect, I was always impressed by it! Even the screen-wipes and sounds from the original are intact. After suffering with weak 2600 coin-op ports so long, the 5200/A8 coin-op ports were usually quite impressive, back in the day. Just sayin'. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barnieg Posted March 18, 2013 Share Posted March 18, 2013 Yes most of the 8-bit ports were excellent I think I've been spoilt by the Williams Arcade classics version on the PS2 although the stupid Egyptian pyramid into gets in the way!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted March 18, 2013 Share Posted March 18, 2013 I think it would need the harmony - along the lines of what spiceware is doing with frantic. I did a Robotron Test of the 50 sprite kernel used for Space Rocks. It simulates the "converging on the humanoid" that occurs during the game by limiting the range of the asteroids. The flicker is atrocious. Since the key part of Robotron is the mass of robots converging on you, I don't it's worth pursuing on the 2600. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barnieg Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 (edited) Excuse my sorry excuse for a batari basic mockup:) But what about a Robotron like game borrowing elements like the playfield from bezerk which could be used to corner the player and increase the difficulty without having to have quite as many items on screen. The other one I was thinking off was keeping a large portion of the screen invisible with only a proportion of the screen "lit" up by the player effectively hiding enemies in the dark I did a Robotron Test of the 50 sprite kernel used for Space Rocks. It simulates the "converging on the humanoid" that occurs during the game by limiting the range of the asteroids. The flicker is atrocious. Since the key part of Robotron is the mass of robots converging on you, I don't it's worth pursuing on the 2600. Edited March 20, 2013 by barnieg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 I did a Robotron Test of the 50 sprite kernel used for Space Rocks. It simulates the "converging on the humanoid" that occurs during the game by limiting the range of the asteroids. The flicker is atrocious. Since the key part of Robotron is the mass of robots converging on you, I don't it's worth pursuing on the 2600. I strongly disagree. I have seen much worse and much more annoying flicker. Even Wizard of Wor 2600, and that's FUN! Your worse case scenario reports mostly 4 with a slight 5. Perfectly acceptable when gameplay rapidly shrinks the number of enemies. I think it is a beautiful, amazing intelligent flicker routine. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 Have people considered incorporating the playfield for the robots? I don't think using SuperChip RAM for higher resolution is cheating.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 A couple of playfield tests have been done for Robotron. One turned into what is now Omicron. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 The developer could make a concession of simply not drawing all enemy robots from the start of the wave. Draw as many as possible, and then every time you shoot an enemy, have another pop up in another spot, until you finally have thinned the herd and killed them all. Also keep them a bit more vertically separated so that multiplexing can be used as much as possible, preventing unnecessary flicker as much as possible. If playfield gfx could be used, then there is your solution ala the 5200 version. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nateo Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 The developer could make a concession of simply not drawing all enemy robots from the start of the wave. Draw as many as possible, and then every time you shoot an enemy, have another pop up in another spot, until you finally have thinned the herd and killed them all. Also keep them a bit more vertically separated so that multiplexing can be used as much as possible, preventing unnecessary flicker as much as possible. If playfield gfx could be used, then there is your solution ala the 5200 version. That's not a shabby idea... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catsfolly Posted April 1, 2013 Share Posted April 1, 2013 Atari actually showed a prototype version of Robotron 2084 for the Atari 2600 back in 1983-4. It required their add on keyboard gadget (which never got past the prototype stage), and it flickered terrribly... Catsfolly 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted September 13, 2015 Share Posted September 13, 2015 Atari actually showed a prototype version of Robotron 2084 for the Atari 2600 back in 1983-4. It required their add on keyboard gadget (which never got past the prototype stage), and it flickered terrribly... Catsfolly I think this thread is worth bumping if this post is accurate. So supposedly Atari Inc whipped up a proto of Robotron 2084 to work with PVI's "Graduate" keyboard for the 2600. Very interesting. Now if Atari Museum's info is accurate, the "Graduate", before any additional expansion, had 8K RAM included. That was the base version. Now I wonder if this port just used the added RAM and still relied upon the TIA or was the port made to use the later enhanced graphics chipset "Fred" and "Wilma" that came along later in the Graduate's development? It would be interesting to compare the Fred/Wilma vs the DPC in terms of capabilities… And it's really a shame the later Atari Corp - and Activision - didn't use enhanced chips in the post-1984 2600 - or 7800 - releases, at least IMHO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Spazer Posted September 16, 2016 Share Posted September 16, 2016 Robotron is indeed possible on the Atari 2600, I'm working on a version with at the moment 6 enemies on screen, I'm going to bump it up to 9 when I'm done with the alpha stage. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sramirez2008 Posted September 16, 2016 Share Posted September 16, 2016 Robotron is indeed possible on the Atari 2600, I'm working on a version with at the moment 6 enemies on screen, I'm going to bump it up to 9 when I'm done with the alpha stage. Whaaaat? Can't wait to see this! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted September 16, 2016 Share Posted September 16, 2016 9 enemy isn't enough for robotron. Are you familiar with C programming? If so you may want to go through this blog series to get yourself set up for DPC+ development*, or even wait for the more advanced BUS that we're working on. One possibility with BUS that would use 30 Hz flicker for everything would be to use a 128x100 or 128x200 monochrome bitmap display. We just wrapped up a major rewrite to the BUS Stuffing driver - it now fits in 2K (DPC+ uses 3K) which frees up ROM and RAM as the driver must be copied into RAM at startup. The reduced RAM usage is very important as the default allocation for C Variables & Stack went from 1K to 2K. I need to rewrite support in Stella for it, after which I'll be working on additional demos to make sure everything functions as expected. * not bB DPC+, which is just an optional kernel for bB that takes advantage of DPC+. Frantic used DPC+ to get up to 24 sprites on screen at once, while Space Rocks gets 51. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamchevy Posted September 16, 2016 Share Posted September 16, 2016 (edited) Even a limited version on the 2600 would be great to see! Every time I play Robotron on the 7800 I think about how great it would be to play this on the 2600. Robotron was the only reason I purchased a 7800. If you need some $$$, this sounds like a good Kickstarter idea. Edited September 16, 2016 by adamchevy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KidGameR186496 Posted September 18, 2016 Share Posted September 18, 2016 Even a limited version on the 2600 would be great to see! Every time I play Robotron on the 7800 I think about how great it would be to play this on the 2600. Robotron was the only reason I purchased a 7800. If you need some $$$, this sounds like a good Kickstarter idea. i can box a box for a hypothetical 2600 versión for free Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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