+Defender_2600 Posted December 6, 2013 Share Posted December 6, 2013 Man, that blue (teal) does look sexy... Indeed, keep it teal and with the 'orange' it will have the appearance of nearly every action movie in the last 5 or so years Seriously, that combo does look great. The grey ain't shabby either...Pretty darn fine in its own right. You will be able to select the color teal or gray through the options menu! Seriously, not an easy choice. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted December 6, 2013 Share Posted December 6, 2013 Hi Bob do not care about him You are the BEST 7800 programmer and he normally never finishes his projects and it seems he disappeared into Intellivision But i woul like to see him back here.Somehow i miss him and i would like to see his roms of the projects he started and not only a stupid video greetings Walter You could have simply visited e-Jagfest. You're in Germany even! There you could have tried out ALL his 7800-/XM-games on real hardware. He is good at what he does. But it seems like he gets distracted and moves on to other things quickly when bored. I can't fault him for that - I have the same problem. :-) Hope he comes back. Some of the things he was working on for the XM were quite nice I am pretty sure he will be back eventually, he did not show his XM stuff for nothing at Jagfest. He's just enjoying the Inty more atm, but I can honestly say that it really impresses me what GroovyBee did with the XM. The graphics look like from a whole different console from the stock 7800. Also quite a few of his games seem to bevery advanced, but as they say the last 5% of development take the longest and are the least fun. I'd bet that once there is a set date for the XM release Groovy will be motivated to finish up his games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted December 6, 2013 Share Posted December 6, 2013 Well 108. We all hope so. The thing is everyone aside from 5-10 AA members seen more than 5 seconds of any of the xm games from Mark . So how would we know better. The quick clips do look impressive tho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAC-MAN-RED Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 Prince of Persia - 4 colour 320b mode: Seems legit... illya 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 Looks good! How many frames of animation does the prince have? With the prince plus at times an enemy, maybe the RAM won't be enough without XM? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAC-MAN-RED Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 (edited) Looks good! How many frames of animation does the prince have? With the prince plus at times an enemy, maybe the RAM won't be enough without XM? The first and last frames are the same standing still frames. Without them we have a total of 12 frames in his step animation. Edited December 8, 2013 by PAC-MAN-RED Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 That sounds like a lot. And then there must be the running, jumping while running, jumping while standing, hanging, drawing the sword, swinging the sword... This could be somewhere between 50 and 100 frames overall. I have no idea of what the stock XM can handle, but I fear for a console like the the animation frames may have to be reduced. Would be good to know the number of frames the "big" versions had and to compare them to the animation from "small" versions like on Master System or Game Boy... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 (edited) Found complete spritesheets of both the Genesis version and the Master System version. Doesn't seem to be much different, although I didn't count the frames.^^ Edited December 9, 2013 by 108 Stars 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 Given that the original system was a bitmapped screen on a 1.02 MHz 6502... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 That's not the point. I don't doubt the 7800 could display the graphics because it's not fast enough. It's about memory, about whether you can squeeze all those animations into the RAM at once. Not saying it's not possible, just saying that RAM may be an issue. It often is with old consoles. Looking at the 7800 it apparently has 4 Kbyte of RAM, while the Apple IIc where PoP originated had 128 Kbyte. The Master System for example had twice as much main RAM as the 7800, plus 16 Kbyte Video-RAM... I don't know if the 7800 has any Video-RAM at all. PoP's big selling point was the lifelike animation, so I wonder if it is possible to squeeze all the animation into the memory at once. Not only the player character must fit, but also the enemies. That's a question for the programmers though. If it doesn't fit or would have to be reduced too much, it could always be on the XM. That has 128KB of RAM like the Apple II, should be easy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 How much RAM does the NES have? That got a port. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YANDMAN Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 I really thought PoP was choppy and full of death.. extremely frustrating and actually a bore. Maybe played on wrong system?? I dont know for the bang for buck there is lots of other great games that are fun. But maybe thats just me. Dig dug xm woud be great!! Im with you on this, I did play it a fair bit on my snes because the animation was a spectacle at the time but its hard as hell and is a bit choppy, There are many many greater games that could be converted to the 7800 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 Prince of Persia - 4 colour 320b mode: PoP_Step_7800.gif Seems legit... illya Nice. Using only a palette maybe it is preferable to give up the anti-aliasing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 (edited) How much RAM does the NES have? That got a port. 2 Kbyte of main RAM and 2 Kbyte of video-RAM. But NES-cartridges often had extras on board, it could very well be that the PoP cartridge contained extra RAM. Here's the NES versions animation; could be that it has even been reduced a bit. EDIT: Where's PacManPlus when we need him? He could probably tell if fitting all the PoP animation into memory would work. Edited December 9, 2013 by 108 Stars 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 2 Kbyte of main RAM and 2 Kbyte of video-RAM. But NES-cartridges often had extras on board, it could very well be that the PoP cartridge contained extra RAM. POP cartridge for the NES contained 128K PRG set up as UNROM. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 I don't doubt the 7800 could display the graphics because it's not fast enough. It's about memory, about whether you can squeeze all those animations into the RAM at once. Why are you babbling on about RAM? The game only needs enough to RAM to display one frame of player animation at any given moment. The limiting factor is having enough cartridge ROM space to store all the frames. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 (edited) Why are you babbling on about RAM? The game only needs enough to RAM to display one frame of player animation at any given moment. The limiting factor is having enough cartridge ROM space to store all the frames. I don't think that's how it works. Usually all the data for an entire level is required in the RAM, meaning everything that can be seen before the screen fades the next time (=the next section is loaded). All the backgrounds, animation, music and game logic must for the current screen must fit into the RAM. I never heard of games streaming the animation frame by frame from cartridge during play. Again, if a coder can correct me on this, be my guest. I know from all the games I did graphics for that the RAM was the major constraint as just streaming new graphics on the fly during gameplay was not an option. POP cartridge for the NES contained 128K PRG set up as UNROM. Thanks for looking that up! So this chip basically enabled the NES to load new graphics while playing? Edited December 9, 2013 by 108 Stars Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAC-MAN-RED Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 (edited) After seeing Marco's inspiring handywork I had to contribute my own mockup. Remember this is just a mockup.. so don't go feeding this into any Atari 7800 mockups -> Instant Money Machine or it could implode the universe... please... program responsably. illya Edited December 9, 2013 by PAC-MAN-RED 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tep392 Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 I don't think that's how it works. Usually all the data for an entire level is required in the RAM, meaning everything that can be seen before the screen fades the next time (=the next section is loaded). All the backgrounds, animation, music and game logic must for the current screen must fit into the RAM. I never heard of games streaming the animation frame by frame from cartridge during play. Again, if a coder can correct me on this, be my guest. I know from all the games I did graphics for that the RAM was the major constraint as just streaming new graphics on the fly during gameplay was not an option. Thanks for looking that up! So this chip basically enabled the NES to load new graphics while playing? The display list's are stored in RAM but all the graphics data is read out of ROM. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 After seeing Marco's inspiring handywork I had to contribute my own mockup. Remember this is just a mockup.. so don't go feeding this into any Atari 7800 mockups -> Instant Money Machine or it could implode the universe... please... program responsably. Pop VGA to 7800 320b mode comparison.PNG illya Illya, you did a good work with the grout bricks! (When I reduced from 6 to 4 colors I was not fully satisfied with the result of the grout) I gave it another look, I reduced some light sources and changed a bit palette. I hope you like it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dubxcube Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 Pac-man-red, I love your avatar. Is that King Graham? That would be amazing if someone could de-make a KQ game for the 2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 Nice work! Loving the mockups! Regarding sprites, like tep392 said the display lists (and the display list list) are stored in RAM but the sprite tables are in ROM. There is more than one way to do it, but 99% of the time this is the case. Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest, for example, has most of the sprite bitmaps in the $4000 - $7FFF ROM address area. I refer to that directly for all animations, for each frame. The *only* time I've seen differently is the 7800 Ms. Pac-Man. They have the graphics stored in ROM, but move the data to RAM and reference it there. The graphics data itself is stored in a non-standard way (vertical data instead of horizontal), so this may be the reason. It's the only game I've seen like that for the 7800. Hope this helps! Bob 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAC-MAN-RED Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 Illya, you did a good work with the grout bricks! (When I reduced from 6 to 4 colors I was not fully satisfied with the result of the grout) I gave it another look, I reduced some light sources and changed a bit palette. I hope you like it. Thank you. I know exactly what you mean about the grout. Having only 2 colours to work with is limiting to say the least! All in all though I think there are enough visionaries around this place to see this idea to fruition. Pac-man-red, I love your avatar. Is that King Graham? That would be amazing if someone could de-make a KQ game for the 2600 Why yes it is. KQ for 2600 would be awesome, but I have a feeling the 7800(XM probably) may be a better place for it... illya 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted December 11, 2013 Share Posted December 11, 2013 Therefore gentlemen, select the color through the options menu before playing! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7800Lover Posted December 13, 2013 Author Share Posted December 13, 2013 Love the mock-ups I'm seeing so far. The genius I see here on the Atari Age forums is nothing short of impressive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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