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Tempest mock-up


iesposta

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Csonicgo asked if a 2600 Tempest could be done with the tools we have now.

 

If we have enough ram and a 96+ x 192 bitmap, it could be quite nice.

 

I have this quick mock-up for the "severe compromises" version. It is showing a blue Playfield segmented shape with different color green spikes, and a yellow player shooter. All the virtual sprites are left for the enemies.

Tempestfault.bas.bin

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Of course the 7800 could make a more faithful version, the wow factor for me is something fun and playable on the 2600 (more than that disappointing prototype) maybe with an unusual display technique like a bitmap display.

 

I'm not done with the 2600 yet. We've barely done DPC-style music (Chetiry, Stay Frosty 2), and I'm dying to see how much more can be done using the bus stuffing technique (a lot more according to Spiceware's chart).

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Sorry didn't mean to rain on anybody's parade. I love the 2600 but I recently invested in a 7800 system that I'm becoming obsessed with as of late. It will be awesome to see what the "bus stuffing" technique can really do.

 

The main problem I see with porting Tempest to the 2600 is all the tiny lines which the TIA doesn't have enough balls, missles, and sprites to draw, and cannot be accurately reproduced with chunky playfield graphics. If the cartridge port could somehow use bus stuffing to write directly to the TIA registers updating it multiple times per scanline, we could get around the sprite limitation, but every write instruction to update the TIA costs valuable clock cycles.

 

You can't just say change the background color on every "clock" to create a full motion video effect. Even if such effect were possible, it would cease to be a 2600 game and instead your just playing games on the ARM CPU using the Atari as a front end. Maybe the ARM could run a 7800 emulator, like some sort of hybrid Frankensteined expansion module. It would make for an awesome tech demo!!! :evil:

Edited by stardust4ever
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