ECS : is there homebrews planned for it?

[JohnPCAE]

A special pass through cart (or Intellivoice interface) with a mouse interface could be killer. Just imagine the genres that would open up.

 

Top-down version of X-COM?

[Zendocon]

On 11/14/2013 at 7:39 PM, thegoldenband said:

I'd love to see more games take advantage of the ECS, though I think some sort of enhancement, 4-player option, or bonus content is more feasible than having an ECS-only game. Joe Z.'s cart designs can supply RAM, so I don't see why a game should depend on the ECS's onboard RAM (which is the main reason for otherwise having a game be ECS-only).

 

I know I've said this before, but text-based games don't need to be ECS-exclusive since ECS owners can use the keyboard, and non-ECS owners can use cell phone texting techniques for text input.

 

And a game with a 4-player option would be incredibly welcome, and would do a lot to justify the ECS -- even if the number of people with Intellivision-friendly friends, an ECS, and two spare working Intellivision II controllers is relatively small. (Heck, I have 4 Intellivision II controllers, and I think only one of them works 100%.)

 

I'd love to write tunes that detect the ECS and supply extra channels of audio if it's present, but as of yet I don't know how to do that. Six channels of AY sound, though, is an embarrassment of riches -- did any other US-released console (if you can call the ECS-expanded system a console) offer that many channels before the TurboGrafx-16?

Once again I'm late to the party.

 

First, @CatPix yes, there are two games out there that take advantage of the 4-player capability of the ECS without requiring an ECS to play.  One is my game FUBAR which I released last year, and which also takes advantage of the extra sound chip for 6-channel music.

 

Second, @thegoldenband there's no need to detect the ECS when playing music.  Just write to the memory range $0f0-0fd the same way you would write to $1f0-1fd.  If no ECS, you just don't hear the extra channels, so write tunes that sound okay either way.  That's what I did for FUBAR.  It can sound muddy though unless you raise everything to a high octave.  I did that with the music I wrote for another multiplayer game I'm working on.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Zendocon
*4-player

[+Tarzilla]

Ultimate Pong from Intellivision Revolution supports a 4 player mode with the ECS

 

http://intellivisionrevolution.com/ultimatepong

 

[Zendocon]

1 hour ago, Tarzilla said:

Ultimate Pong from Intellivision Revolution supports a 4 player mode with the ECS

 

http://intellivisionrevolution.com/ultimatepong

 

Yep.  That's the other game.

[+bhall408]

On 11/14/2013 at 8:12 AM, Intymike said:

 

Bomberman...Bomberman...with..............................4 players.....

Here are the parts we're planning to support in Project Argon (a new emulator we were showing at PRGE last fall and CES in January...)

 

- Extended/extra memory

- Extra sound channels (and in stereo in Argon)

- additional player support

 

Basically, treating it like how the Coleco homebrew dev community treats the SGM (super game module) – extra memory + extra sound channels.

 

A fantastic example is Space Patrol by jz aka @intvnut

 

The sound rocks with ECS support!

 

So we'd definitely encourage homebrew developers to have their games adapt and take advantage of these things when present!

 

[artrag]

Deep Zone supports ECS for 6 channel music and speech 

[RT12 Productions]

Hello!

 

How do you programmers type in characters like ! (the exclamation point) using the ECS keyboard?!?!  I've seen a video on YouTube showing a user having an ECS keyboard (from what I've seen, he used an escape code to input an exclamation point with his); would a similar method be used for inputting other such characters, which are absent from the ECS's chicklet-style keyboard?!

 

 

RT12 Productions

 

[First Spear]

Now that the R&D Division of Intv Prime has worked out kinks related to music, The Minstrel's Legend will feature what's called "2/5 Music", where many background tunes sound good with a stock Intellivision, but great with an ECS providing an extra 3 voices. TML will also have keyboard input capability as an alternative to the stock controller. That serves maybe 10% of the Inty-owning community, but it looks to be worth it, still.

 

https://www.intvprime.com/tml-checkpoint-number-7/ 

[Sinjinhawke]

2 hours ago, First Spear said:

That serves maybe 10% of the Inty-owning community, but it looks to be worth it, still.

 

[Zendocon]

On 4/7/2020 at 8:27 PM, RT12 Productions said:

Hello!

 

How do you programmers type in characters like ! (the exclamation point) using the ECS keyboard?!?!  I've seen a video on YouTube showing a user having an ECS keyboard (from what I've seen, he used an escape code to input an exclamation point with his); would a similar method be used for inputting other such characters, which are absent from the ECS's chicklet-style keyboard?!

 

 

RT12 Productions

 

I don't know about escape sequences on the ECS keyboard.  What was the video?  Maybe the person was using a Music Synthesizer?