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My 8-bit Games Porting to 7800 in the works


peteym5

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I am currently working on learning how to port my prior Atari 8-bit releases to the Atari 7800. The possible games include: "Amok Bots", "Delta Space Arena", "Laser Blast X", "Putt 18 Miniature Golf", "Tile Smashers", and "Venture". These are work in progress as I learning what is going with the game running on the 7800. I am in the process of learning a new platform and porting graphics and art over. I am starting off by using the 7800 Basic, using GIMP to port over graphics to PNG format. Will be using some inline 6502 assembly code also to help do some custom operations. As with the 5200 porting, the first thing I did was get it to the point of getting the games own title screen to come up on screen with some banners I created for the banner. I am focusing on using 40x24 character set displays because those are very similar to the 8-bit Antic 4 screens. There will be announcements as I make progress with porting the games, and I may post some screen shots and videos.


I am not doing all the games at once, but when I see some code that can be used by two or more games, I copy and paste stuff between programs. I currently do not have much for game play itself at this point, only thing I got done was make a screen with the ship continuously rotate for Delta Space Arena.


I am planning to do more games later, like a Secretum Labyrinth RPG/Adventure game tailored to take advantage of the 7800 display.


I am posting right now to get some feedback and an ideal of which games to focus on first. However, there are not promises as things are changing every few days as I figure out more and more about the 7800, limitations, advantages, etc.



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Those are all just Video 61's photos. Lance has them posted on his site. None of those are 7800 images of any sort.

 

When I set up title screens like, I now state platform Version. As you can read, they state 7800 version. The 8-bit is not capable of generating a different colored text over a black background. The texts would be grey or white. The title screen shots are from the 7800 versions running some test in an emulator. Game development is ongoing as I learn how things work on the 7800 and 7800 Basic. I am doing a few test animations and movements. Currently working on something that can manage sprites and prevent too many from displaying on a same line.

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Those other screen shots are using 20 column mode texts or 4x8 multicolored characters. I am referring to the modes that have only 2 luminescences in 40 column (Antic 2,3, or 15) on the background/foreground. The 7800 screen shots have texts below in 40 column mode made with 8x8 pixel characters. Have texts in different colors. Also the title banners for Putt 18 and Laser Blast have more than 4 colors at 160 mode. Nevertheless, the screen shots clearly did not come from any of the 8-bit games.

 

Well here is a screen shot from a few other title screens and an in game screen shot of Delta Space Arena of the work completed so far. I am looking for an emulator that I can make movies with and post them up on YouTube. I do like to demonstrate my work in-progress from time to time.

 

Megaoids, I only developed as far as a title screen, as I am currently porting 6 other games at this time.

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Edited by peteym5
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A miniature Golf game is on my list of the games being ported from the 8-bit/5200.

 

I see many people asking for Arcade and other platform games to be ported to the 7800. Venture and Laser Blast are on my list. Delta Space Arena is similar to Omega Race. I started changing some game titles with my more recent games after Nintendo came crashing down on "Princess Rescue" on the 2600. Need to keep an eye on if original copyright holder is around or even cares about what goes on with these old consoles.

 

I am attaching the updated title for 7800 version of Delta Space Arena. Very colorful screen.

 

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A miniature Golf game is on my list of the games being ported from the 8-bit/5200.

 

I see many people asking for Arcade and other platform games to be ported to the 7800. Venture and Laser Blast are on my list. Delta Space Arena is similar to Omega Race. I started changing some game titles with my more recent games after Nintendo came crashing down on "Princess Rescue" on the 2600. Need to keep an eye on if original copyright holder is around or even cares about what goes on with these old consoles.

 

I am attaching the updated title for 7800 version of Delta Space Arena. Very colorful screen.

 

Instead of such a long name...can't you just simple call it:

 

Delta Race?

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... after Nintendo came crashing down on "Princess Rescue" on the 2600. Need to keep an eye on if original copyright holder is around or even cares about what goes on with these old consoles.

 

 

 

Nintendo has lightened it's approach to homage derivative works since that happened. They did make someone take down a Metroid remake but that was because Nintendo had

the same idea coming down the pipe at the same time.

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I see many people asking for Arcade and other platform games to be ported to the 7800. Venture and Laser Blast are on my list. Delta Space Arena is similar to Omega Race. I started changing some game titles with my more recent games after Nintendo came crashing down on "Princess Rescue" on the 2600. Need to keep an eye on if original copyright holder is around or even cares about what goes on with these old consoles.

 

There are multiple things about Nintendo and homebrews that you need to know.

 

Nintendo didn't go after the Intellivision homebrew scene for the multiple Donkey Kong homebrew games despite selling them on cartridge. Nintendo didn't go after the Colecovision homebrew scene for Mario Bros either despite being sold on cartridge also. I believe the Mario Bros. Colecovision games and the Multiple DK games on Intellivision are sold out with Nintendo not able to do a thing about it now. At the time the DK games were made on cartridge, I was surprised Nintendo didn't stop the sale of the homebrew DK games based on how Nintendo is with anything from a legal standpoint.

 

What happened with Princess Rescue was the video game media made a big deal out of Princess Rescue unlike the homebrew games because the 2600 is a very famous system and combine Princess Rescue being a Super Mario Bros clone. Those two things would make the video game media cover a homebrew game considering the 2600 was not designed for anything like a Super Mario game in mind. IGN matter of fact did a video on Princess Rescue before the game was pulled.

 

The Gaming media didn't cover the Intellivision homebrew scene for the Donkey Kong games and the Colecovision homebrew games was due to a combination the 2 systems are not on the same level as the 2600 in popularity and Nintendo IP's in question didn't push the systems limits like Princess Rescue did for the 2600.

Edited by 8th lutz
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Depending on what game title that is ported and used, the seller is still risking copyright infringement. Nintendo went after Princess Rescue because of using the Super Mario music. If I re-title a game, I also make some changes. Amok Bots being a Berzerk/Frenzy clone, I made it remember which robots were killed in a set of room and need to kill a master robot somewhere. Delta Space Arena had thicker walls, more types of enemies, different center walls, and power ups. Laser Blast X has many more options like adding more tanks and enemy space ships.

 

I feel Delta Space Arena is different enough from just being Omega Race clone so I am going forward with it. I feel I already have something better put together already. I am linking the video from the 8-bit version. With the 7800 version, I so far have ship rotating and showing those 4 frame animations. I am doing tests with up to 24 sprites on screen at once.

 

Edited by peteym5
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The 7800 plays VCS games. Laser Blast already exists for the VCS. Plug Laser Blast in to your 7800... and there you go! :grin:

 

Of the titles shown, and since you asked... Miniature Golf sounds the most compelling. :)

 

Each of the game I listed here may be finished eventually, a few more be added later on. Learning about the 7800 and the Basic is an ongoing process for me right now. The Laser Blast X will be done with more enhanced graphics than the VCS version. Here is a video of the 8-bit version.

 

This is a video of the 8-bit version of Putt 18.

 

I know the 7800 can do a few things better with more multi-colored sprites on the screen.

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Very, very cool! I don't know a thing about programming so I'm afraid I can't offer any feedback on that matter, but what I do know is that Venture is my favorite arcade game so I'd be thrilled to see it on the 7800!

Cool! So all these years... did you ever play it on the 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision, etc.?

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Cool! So all these years... did you ever play it on the 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision, etc.?

 

Yes to two of those. :) The first time I ever played Venture was on my older brother's ColecoVision when I was probably 6 or 7 years old, then when I got into the Atari 2600 five years or so I got a Coleco produced copy of Venture for it right away. I've always been kinda bummed out that the Atari version was missing the third level though, so having Venture ported to the 7800 with the third level present would be a real dream come true.

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I found a way to record videos with the ProSystem emulator. I have to use a program like OBS Studio to make a recording.

 

 

This is an early Work-in-Progress. I am trying to see how many animated objects I can have onscreen at once. They will be moving around once I figure out more stuff.

Edited by peteym5
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I found a way to record videos with the ProSystem emulator. I have to use a program like OBS Studio to make a recording.

...

This is an early Work-in-Progress. I am trying to see how many animated objects I can have onscreen at once. They will be moving around once I figure out more stuff.

 

The emulator, ProSystem, can be very misleading as a development environment.

It is over generous regarding timings and vastly different results may be experienced under real hardware.

 

A7800 is a very accurate 7800 emulator, providing near exact, if not exact, hardware timings and results.

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