Legacy versus ARM-based 2600 Game Development

[+Gemintronic]

19 minutes ago, thegoldenband said:

 

To paraphrase something I said ages ago, there's a difference between writing a piece of music for two pianos, and writing a piece of music that could easily be played on one piano if it were rewritten carefully, but you don't want to be bothered slowing down and learning your craft.

 

As someone who uses compiled BASIC for multiple platforms I can say you're vastly underestimating the challenges of working within someone elses game engine.

 

UPDATE:  I realize that might sound like fighting words.  What I mean is: canned kernels and higher level languages present you with different challenges.  The advantages and disadvantages balance out whether ARM, classic bankswitching or flooby snap.

[+thegoldenband]

1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Hm..., wouldn't that eliminate most bBasic games using DPC+?  

Perhaps it'd eliminate some, I suppose. I'm sure there are games that use it to achieve results that couldn't be done without DPC+ in any context, and games that use it to achieve things that are trivial for a skilled programmer.

59 minutes ago, Random Terrain said:

I'll take all the crutches I can get. When your brain is broken, every crutch you can get your hands on is a necessity.

Fair point -- I'm all in favor of maximizing accessibility for anyone who's non-neurotypical or has a disability.

57 minutes ago, Gemintronic said:

As someone who uses compiled BASIC for multiple platforms I can say you're vastly underestimating the challenges of working within someone elses game engine.

I'm not sure how "challenges" are relevant here -- at least not as experienced by any individual person: what's difficult for one person is trivial for another, and vice versa. I'm fine with tools that make things easier, and have done plenty of music coding in BASIC on various platforms, including bB.

 

On an aesthetic level, I'll freely admit that I'm put off by the "sameness" bred by any toolset that lets you abstract technical details at the cost of precise control. Take the GEMS music driver for the Sega Genesis, designed to be easy to use and abstract the process of music-making away from needing to deal with the niceties of programming FM synths.

 

Problem is, the music generally sounds like exactly that: the underlying compositions might be plausible, but the sounds are generic and lack careful crafting. As a result GEMS soundtracks are famously mediocre, with some exceptions. They're not written for the hardware, but despite the hardware.
 

I'll also admit that my own efforts have been hampered by relying on other people's high-level tools. There are things I'd like to do that could use sub-frame timing, but that would require coding skills I don't have. There are things I'd like to have in the trackers I've used for Intellivision music, but I don't know how to code them. There are things I'd like to do with NES, Genesis, or SNES music that would require technical knowledge I don't have. I'm not going to get defensive about it; it's just reality.

 

Understanding the hardware has an effect on the quality of the output. It's not a linear, 100% predictable thing, but it's definitely there, and no doubt is a factor in my work, and yours, and everyone's.

[mika15]

I know i’m in extreme minority here, not being a techie person myself, so probably best if I leave this discussion to pros, but just wanted to point out the obvious fact that all the suggested category divisions above are very technical and rarely (if at all) acknowledge the typology (with maybe category of “ports” being a notable exception but that seems to also be very imprecise; just look at “Awakening” this year, whoever decided to classify it as port i’ll have what they’re having).

 

From a player point of view Arcade/Action/Adventure/Puzzle/Sports game of the year probably makes more sense.

 

But then, not only this would mean even more categories, even more disagreements where the game crosses the standard genre boundaries that I only mention it once as a side note, maybe to just point out that if one were to increase popularity of the awards at all, maybe the technical issues are not even that important for the “general public”, whoever that may be.

 

Personally I think that the format this year was actually spot on.

 

 

[RevEng]

21 hours ago, thegoldenband said:

To paraphrase something I said ages ago, there's a difference between writing a piece of music for two pianos, and writing a piece of music that could easily be played on one piano if it were rewritten carefully, but you don't want to be bothered slowing down and learning your craft.

I've always said that in addition to the typical resources we balance in a design - cpu, ram, rom - one more resource I'm balancing is development time. At least in my case, there's not a limitless supply of it. I've spent many hours optimising code that needs to be as lean as possible, but equally I have no problem with trading off other resources for development time too. I'm capable of doing that hard thing, but taking the easier road is going to increase the odds the game actually gets finished.

 

I think your piano piece analogy breaks down, because games aren't performance art; our game players don't recode our games. An closer analogy would be a recorded song - if a song sounds good in the end, most people aren't going to care at all that two pianists (or multiple tracks) were used when one would have served equally.

[+thegoldenband]

1 hour ago, RevEng said:

I think your piano piece analogy breaks down, because games aren't performance art; our game players don't recode our games. An closer analogy would be a recorded song - if a song sounds good in the end, most people aren't going to care at all that two pianists (or multiple tracks) were used when one would have served equally.

Well, most people aren't going to care what's inside an Atari cartridge either. That is, once we get within the small subset of people who care about Atari games at all.

 

I'm sure we all have fields of expertise where we can tell the difference between someone who understands the technical material of what they're trying to do, and someone who doesn't. As a listener with musical training, I can certainly tell the difference between someone who knows how to write for piano (or trumpet, violin, etc.) and someone who doesn't.

 

Even a MIDI mockup makes the difference fairly obvious: one piece sounds "pianistic" (idiomatic), while another sounds like the person had no idea how the instrument works and what the human body can do. Instead they threw whatever notes they wanted at it, without regard for the physical instrument, and called it a "piano piece", relying on the computer to cover their lack of technical ability.

 

Writing whatever you want is a reasonable way to write, of course -- no reason to limit one's imagination -- but then why write for piano at all, rather than synthesizer or computer? What's the point of writing a "piano piece" if you're not writing for piano? Is the point to unlock the "wrote a piano piece" achievement, to enjoy the cachet of having done something that sounds fancy?

 

And that's sort of how I feel about people who seem to be writing despite the Atari hardware, rather than to it. Atari 2600 graphics can look amazing if they're designed for the system, and the VCS can do things no other system of the era could do, like put an incredible number of colors on the screen, if your code gives you fine-grained control to make that possible.

 

But there are a fair number of games out there whose graphic design seems to be planned despite the VCS, with a net result that often makes the system look like little more than a meme/joke version of the NES. I think that approach does the system a disservice, frankly, and it's that I'm really grousing about: bad graphic design that seems to come from an unwillingness to put the work into grasping the hardware as it is.

 

My only reservation about extra cart hardware is the extent to which it further enables that problem -- not that I have any alternatives to suggest, because I don't.

 

(And to be very, very clear: in the past 15 years we've seen some seriously high-class ports like RobotWar:2684, LadyBug, Star Castle, Zookeeper, Bosconian/Draconian, Boulder Dash, etc., all of which are magnificent achievements. If hardware advancements were necessary to make those happen -- and some of them don't use any! -- then I'm all for it. But they also reflect what I assume is a deep understanding of the VCS's display hardware, a willingness to figure out complex problems, and the skill required to make these games look good.)

[+thegoldenband]

By the way, to strike a more positive note, Doggone It is a current homebrew that (to me) succeeds in having a distinctive style and sense of TLC put into the graphics and presentation. It's not flashy, yet it doesn't look at all generic, and is utterly Atari in its aesthetic.

 

I have no idea how it was programmed, beyond knowing that it's 4K. Regardless, to me it meets the threshold of "the person behind this game cared", and that's what I'm looking for.

[+Pat Brady]

3 hours ago, mika15 said:

I know i’m in extreme minority here, not being a techie person myself, so probably best if I leave this discussion to pros, but just wanted to point out the obvious fact that all the suggested category divisions above are very technical and rarely (if at all) acknowledge the typology (with maybe category of “ports” being a notable exception but that seems to also be very imprecise; just look at “Awakening” this year, whoever decided to classify it as port i’ll have what they’re having).

 

Stay. It's good to have different perspectives.

 

Awakening categorized as a port got a sharply raised eyebrow from me.

 

Would it make more sense to you if the formats were described in terms of when they became feasible, or the other games using each cartridge type? For instance, instead of 2K we could say 1977 (or: Air-Sea Battle, Combat, Surround), instead of 4K we could say 1980 (Adventure, Pitfall!, Yars' Revenge), instead of F6SC we could say 1983 (Dig Dug, Millipede), instead of DPC we could say 1984 (Pitfall II), and instead of ARM we could say 2000 (Draconian, Galagon, Space Rocks, Zoo Keeper). It's a bit imprecise because a lot was happening in 1982 and 1983 but it's a decent way to look at it. Does that help?

[+batari]

It’s true that analogies fail to capture the issues fully, that’s why they are analogies, but often I think that wisdom can

be derived from them even though it’s never a 1:1 comparison.

 

For instance in music awards I assume there are categories for acoustic music and synthesized music, right? Each requires a certain set of talents and compromises and there are certainly fans (and detractors) of either. One distinction here between the two could be low vs high tech. 

 

Regardless I think where I’m landing now in my opinion is to wait until next year, and as Thomas said, see what games are nominated then try to find a way to divide the pack into two near-equal piles based on tech used. Perhaps the two categories can be low and high tech, simple as that.

[CapitanClassic]

20 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

See, we will never agree on something.  

I can agree to that.

[CapitanClassic]

I like the current categories,  I think the split between original/port was a good addition. The only changes I would make is to clarify that 4K games category should be 4K/128b RAM and no additional RAM / ARM support (which may not be necessary, as making a game fit in 4K ROM that can utilize additional RAM may be quite difficult). I don't see the necessity of splitting the 4K games into Port/Original, but I guess 2600 popularity means that 6 games can be found in those categories. I think the ideal 2600 categories would be.

• Best 4K ROM/128b RAM game
• Best Original Game (WIP category too)
• Best Port Game (WIP category too)
• Best Music & Sound
• Best Graphics

 

[+thegoldenband]

14 hours ago, batari said:

For instance in music awards I assume there are categories for acoustic music and synthesized music, right? Each requires a certain set of talents and compromises and there are certainly fans (and detractors) of either. One distinction here between the two could be low vs high tech.

It isn't usually differentiated in exactly that way, but I think there are different expectations for different genres of music. I think the biggest question is, does the recording attempt to present itself as a creation of the recording studio, or as a document of a live performance?

 

In pop, rock, EDM, film music, etc. anything goes. These are studio-based art forms, so there are no rules about authenticity and the like.

 

In classical music, you're allowed to edit the living hell out of a performance by cutting between multiple takes, but it does need to be played by the people credited on the album. Swapping in a synthesized instrument would be a big no-no, for example. Still, no one cares that much if editing makes someone sound better than they are, and even AutoTune and other forms of pitch adjustment get used.

 

In jazz, you're not normally "allowed" to micro-edit a performance that's meant to appear improvised. It would be very controversial for someone to play a "solo" that turned out to have been sequenced on a computer or otherwise assembled note-by-note. Still, even that may be changing -- but if I were to go into a studio and record a piano part one hand at a time (which I can do), and present that as a jazz piano solo by a player highly proficient at playing with both hands simultaneously (which I'm not), it'd be viewed as dishonest.

 

Similarly, anything that presents itself as a field recording -- e.g. indigenous music from a non-Western culture -- isn't normally supposed to be edited into oblivion or overdubbed. Authenticity and all that.

[RevEng]

I see most of this as a schism between those that produce art, and those that consume it. Popular taste doesn't care what technical prowess is needed to pull off a particular song, game cart, tv show, or whatever - it cares about the result. Segmenting the voting categories won't make the public value an amazing use of period hardware either. It will allow some shine for games that are less popular due to constraints adhered to. If that's the desired end-point, and the trade-offs are worth it (smaller number of entries per category, and sometimes imprecise fitting) then add the category segmentation.

 

If the desired end-point is a recognition of skill, then perhaps there could be a new "best technical achievement" category. All games on the platform that year would be eligible, and it would be voted solely by "the academy". The achievement might be a massive squeeze of functionality into old-school cart formats, or it might be an advanced hardware hack. I also think academy discussions about the nominations could be stimulating, and the award might also bring more public appreciation of the more technical side of things.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

48 minutes ago, RevEng said:

I see most of this as a schism between those that produce art, and those that consume it. Popular taste doesn't care what technical prowess is needed to pull off a particular song, game cart, tv show, or whatever - it cares about the result. Segmenting the voting categories won't make the public value an amazing use of period hardware either. It will allow some shine for games that are less popular due to constraints adhered to. If that's the desired end-point, and the trade-offs are worth it (smaller number of entries per category, and sometimes imprecise fitting) then add the category segmentation.

Absolutely! The separation of "Ports and Original" and "≤4K and >4K" categories were created using this logic to allow overlooked games to shine.

 

48 minutes ago, RevEng said:

If the desired end-point is a recognition of skill, then perhaps there could be a new "best technical achievement" category. All games on the platform that year would be eligible, and it would be voted solely by "the academy". The achievement might be a massive squeeze of functionality into old-school cart formats, or it might be an advanced hardware hack. I also think academy discussions about the nominations could be stimulating, and the award might also bring more public appreciation of the more technical side of things.

We did have a "Best Technical Achievement" in the first edition of the Awards but it was dropped after low voter interest. It's an idea definitely worth revisiting as a Nomination Committee judged category, I'll add it to the list of discussion topics for the AHA4 post-mortem.

 

- James

[+thegoldenband]

1 hour ago, RevEng said:

I see most of this as a schism between those that produce art, and those that consume it. Popular taste doesn't care what technical prowess is needed to pull off a particular song, game cart, tv show, or whatever - it cares about the result.

I'd say that's generally true with two big exceptions: (1) when art is marketed with an eye towards its virtuosity, or (2) when the genre itself is preoccupied with virtuosity. In cases like those, people really do get invested in technical prowess, and feel cheated if they believe the virtuosity was achieved illegitimately (whatever that might mean).

 

In the case of Atari 2600, I suspect that for a lot of people buying and playing homebrew carts, the tech angle is on their minds to some degree. Certainly reviewers lean heavily on the "I never thought this was possible on the Atari!" angle, where applicable.

 

The average purchaser probably didn't care about details in 1982, but in 2022? I'm genuinely not sure, since Atari fandom doesn't reside in the broad community, but in a narrow, nerdy niche. Nor am I sure what "popular taste" is within that niche.

 

Technical prowess is sometimes on my mind when I play a homebrew game, but it's more than possible for a humble-looking effort to scratch that itch by being really well-designed with excellent controls, rewarding gameplay, attractive graphics, and careful level design (as applicable). The main thing that puts me off is the appearance of low effort (though whether that's a product of low skill, low effort, or a rush to market/completion isn't for me to say).

[RevEng]

Quote

I'd say that's generally true with two big exceptions: (1) when art is marketed with an eye towards its virtuosity, or (2) when the genre itself is preoccupied with virtuosity. In cases like those, people really do get invested in technical prowess, and feel cheated if they believe the virtuosity was achieved illegitimately (whatever that might mean).

[...]

The average purchaser probably didn't care about details in 1982, but in 2022? I'm genuinely not sure, since Atari fandom doesn't reside in the broad community, but in a narrow, nerdy niche. Nor am I sure what "popular taste" is within that niche.

[...]

I think you probably have a better feel for the popular taste of our hobby than you think. To tease it out a bit, what's more important to 2600 game purchasers, nostalgia or virtuosity? I'm sure both are a factor, but generally would purchasers prefer an original game the author slaved over for years to make fit within 4k, or do purchasers prefer a bloated 32k port of an arcade game that never made it to the 2600 before? What if I sweetened the pot and told them that the 4k game author managed to write it without using opcodes that contain the letter E? I think they're still picking the bloated arcade port. (and good on them. no judgements from me)

 

I put it to you that the public at large says they want the virtuous and skilled artist, suffering maximally in order to produce the most perfect works, but it's only true as a theoretical idea, when it isn't costing these folks anything. When it comes down to it, they'll pick mass-produced items over handcrafted, and prints over paintings . When their 2600-game-buying brethren are choosing how to spend their games budget, the finished product - how fun they think it will be, how amazing it looks - is their focus, not the virtuosity that was poured into it.

[+Gemintronic]

In deference to the arm is cheating crowd I let it rest with only the remote in my hand whilst snoozing today.

 

Not a jab at anyone in particular

[+thegoldenband]

2 hours ago, RevEng said:

I think you probably have a better feel for the popular taste of our hobby than you think. To tease it out a bit, what's more important to 2600 game purchasers, nostalgia or virtuosity? I'm sure both are a factor, but generally would purchasers prefer an original game the author slaved over for years to make fit within 4k, or do purchasers prefer a bloated 32k port of an arcade game that never made it to the 2600 before? What if I sweetened the pot and told them that the 4k game author managed to write it without using opcodes that contain the letter E? I think they're still picking the bloated arcade port. (and good on them. no judgements from me)

To be clear, I'm on the side that if the end product is good and skillful, that's what matters -- I don't need to know how it was made to enjoy it. Of course I'm aware that a 1K game is a 1K game, and respect and appreciate that as a kind of video game haiku form. But if someone's able to get a game like Robotro...

 

...I mean, "human-saving-twin-stick-shooting-game" on the 2600, then that's a triumph in 4K, 32K, or 512K. And it's made sweeter by the fact that the 2600 isn't capable of being just a video passthrough; I think even casual fans are unlikely to think much of the NES "running Doom" when it isn't really (though it's still a cool achievement). Everything on the VCS still has to run on the VCS in some meaningful sense.

 

Like I said, I'm mainly just irritated by ugly, hastily-designed games that don't play well, all the more so if they use other people's IP without permission and seem more like memes than games.  And even that doesn't bother me that much as long as a free ROM is available so people can try before they buy.

 

I'm not sure I've articulated well why it irritates me to see advanced cart hardware in the hands of the lazy or cynical -- I'm not even sure I can justify that feeling in any empirical way -- but it does, for better or worse, and especially when crap games are marketed as collectibles.

 

That's one of the things I really like about AtariAge and the VCS community, though; most games are downloadable, and very very few are limited-edition. Not every community is that way, and there's unfortunately a lot of trash being sold with FOMO as a motivator.

[kisrael]

 

14 hours ago, RevEng said:

What if I sweetened the pot and told them that the 4k game author managed to write it without using opcodes that contain the letter E? I think they're still picking the bloated arcade port. (and good on them. no judgements from me)

I think that's a well-stated point; I'm certainly impressed but not that interested in the "wrote the book without the letter e" type stuff (sort of like the dancing bear- people don't talk about how well it dances, just that it's a bear that's dancing) so this is a good argument for not caring about adhered to limitations.

I think the question it raises, though, is then why bother messing around with it on the Atari at all?  Like personally while I'm proud of my Atari games I've had more fun with Processing/P5, stuff that runs in a browser and I can share (see https://toys.alienbill.com/ ) 

But thegoldenband kind of addresses this:

11 hours ago, thegoldenband said:

...I mean, "human-saving-twin-stick-shooting-game" on the 2600, then that's a triumph in 4K, 32K, or 512K. And it's made sweeter by the fact that the 2600 isn't capable of being just a video passthrough; I think even casual fans are unlikely to think much of the NES "running Doom" when it isn't really (though it's still a cool achievement). Everything on the VCS still has to run on the VCS in some meaningful sense.

I guess I'm a little more skeptical about "on the VCS in some meaningful sense". When I see Star Wars the movie playing back on an Atari- (see below)... I start to think we're not too far away from Quake on an Atari Cart. Now, to be fair, Champ games are doing things in a way that ARE much more Atari specific, it's a delight to read about some of the Atari Stella/TIA chip reuse, repurposing Playfield graphics and Missiles and what not. But since an arbitrary video stuffer could exist, what's the best language to talk about games that are in that kind of achievement space, vs ones answering the (to me somewhat more interesting question) "what COULD the *software* folks who just had maybe some bankswitching have done had they but known? Just how miraculously open-ended was this mid-70s machine to play TANK and PONG and OUTLAW, by itself? 

 

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

18 minutes ago, kisrael said:

I think the question it raises, though, is then why bother messing around with it on the Atari at all? 

That's exactly what I'm wondering about, too.

 

Where does the enthusiasm come from for works that were achieved with modern hardware and run on old hardware? Yes, the result is impressive. And as an uninformed person, it probably seems like a miracle. But when you know what's behind it, there's not much left of the miracle. All that remains is the often highly professional result of highly professional work (hardware and software). And you might as well admire that directly on modern hardware.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Thomas Jentzsch

[RevEng]

8 hours ago, kisrael said:

I think that's a well-stated point; I'm certainly impressed but not that interested in the "wrote the book without the letter e" type stuff (sort of like the dancing bear- people don't talk about how well it dances, just that it's a bear that's dancing) so this is a good argument for not caring about adhered to limitations.

I think the question it raises, though, is then why bother messing around with it on the Atari at all?  Like personally while I'm proud of my Atari games I've had more fun with Processing/P5, stuff that runs in a browser and I can share (see https://toys.alienbill.com/ ) 
[...]

Thanks. I really did want to encapsulate how any particular dev's constraints are arbitrary. The allusion to Gadsby seemed the best way.

 

I do regret the allusion on one count - I proceeded to spent the next hour or so thinking about making a Gadsby game that didn't use opcodes that contain the letter E, and how one might compensate for that, and whether references to #$Ex, #$xE, $EE, $xExx, etc. in hex or even non-hex representation would be cheating.

 

The "why bother messing around with it" bit is easy. People need fresh hobby territory, or it gets old and they leave. I started off with the 2600, and even worked on the bB DPC+ code. But at heart I resonate with "why bother at all" when it comes to non-period-possible enhancements (my own personal constraint) which was a big factor in my moving to the 7800, where there was a lot more virgin territory with stock hardware and period-possible enhancements.

 

[edit - just to clarify, my personal "period-possible" preference does include arm tech implementations, but I like to see it running something that could have be pulled off with period hardware. e.g. batari's hokey chip has me very excited at the possibilities.]

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

All that remains is the often highly professional result of highly professional work (hardware and software). And you might as well admire that directly on modern hardware.

The beauty comes in that the ARM-enhanced games are maintaining the 70's and early-80's look. When classic games are remade on modern hardware they are contaminated by Pixel Art, NFT, online requirements, and IP dilution/modification, and modern re-interpretation.

 

Anything relating to what is possible in a certain period is very vague and can span a wide range of options.

 

My original suggestion of "if it fits in the cartridge slot it is valid" still stands. It's up to the end-user whether they accept it or not. I personally do, until the look and feel deviates from the vintage look. The blocky, low-resolution, noisy NTSC & RF artifacting look.

[Keatah]

15 hours ago, thegoldenband said:

To be clear, I'm on the side that if the end product is good and skillful, that's what matters -- I don't need to know how it was made to enjoy it. Of course I'm aware that a 1K game is a 1K game, and respect and appreciate that as a kind of video game haiku form. But if someone's able to get a game like Robotro...

 

...I mean, "human-saving-twin-stick-shooting-game" on the 2600, then that's a triumph in 4K, 32K, or 512K. And it's made sweeter by the fact that the 2600 isn't capable of being just a video passthrough; I think even casual fans are unlikely to think much of the NES "running Doom" when it isn't really (though it's still a cool achievement). Everything on the VCS still has to run on the VCS in some meaningful sense.

Video passthrough is so lame. Doom on the NES raised an eyebrow for a moment. Really? Ohh ok.. Then I moved along. Next time I played Doom it was on its proper platform. I hadn't thought about Doom on NES till I read this post. The wife thought it more of an attention-getter than any technical achievement.

 

Quote

Like I said, I'm mainly just irritated by ugly, hastily-designed games that don't play well, all the more so if they use other people's IP without permission and seem more like memes than games.  And even that doesn't bother me that much as long as a free ROM is available so people can try before they buy.

 

I'm not sure I've articulated well why it irritates me to see advanced cart hardware in the hands of the lazy or cynical -- I'm not even sure I can justify that feeling in any empirical way -- but it does, for better or worse, and especially when crap games are marketed as collectibles.

Hastily designed games, any kind, on any hardware are just time-wasters. There are many many games on the market that.. Just. Shouldn't. Be. Back in the day, until several years into the internet, we had the luxury of physical distribution and all the tedium and costs associated with it - to act as a filter. Filter out the crap. If your game wasn't good, it didn't stick around long.

 

Some companies and individual authors tried forcing and flooding the system. Thankfully the system broke and took the market with it. In this context "system" is consumer demand.

 

On collectibles. Hmpff.. That's a whole beast in and of itself. Not seriously interested in what makes a collectible a collectible. It's so arbitrary and often boils down to "because someone said so". I prefer the rich and meaningful playfield of sentimentality. Material that is important to me. Devoid of nonsensical rules and market-driven schisms and internet pronouncements of grandiosity.

 

Quote

That's one of the things I really like about AtariAge and the VCS community, though; most games are downloadable, and very very few are limited-edition. Not every community is that way, and there's unfortunately a lot of trash being sold with FOMO as a motivator.

FOMO doesn't do much for me. A few times I got all upset. But I quickly learned. You know.. Something better always seems to come along. FOMO targets drop off my radar as achievable and available items pop up. And we all move right along. There are no evangelistic speeches to be had. No praises of any technical achievements. No schoolyard discussions beyond a casual mention. It just doesn't happen.

 

FOMOs are flawed and extreme. Instantly vertical, silo'd into their own oblivion.

 

Given something like A2-FS1, and all the good times and sense of discovery and adventure. It's almost a tangible valuable thing. I would not give up the memories (and future nostalgic excursions) of experiencing it for even the most rare, LE, OOP, HTF, expensive Atari VCS cartridges.. After all, "Unobtanium!"

 

The time and energy expended would overshadow the fun experience of (like how we used to buy carts) getting it. The whole setup averages out to be meh. In simpler terms, keep it real, not stratospheric.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Keatah

[Keatah]

On 1/31/2022 at 10:44 PM, CapitanClassic said:

I believe you are talking about NES Doom. Which runs Doom on the Raspberry Phi, and then has a VGA to Picture Processing Unit (PPU) driver to encode the video and push the pixels to the NES's display hardware. This is like a bus stuffing, or what the Movie Cart does, but definitely not "impossible for the console" to do. Although,  I guess that boils down to what is meant by the console "doing it." The console is doing it if you interpret that as using the consoles display hardware to draw the screen, it isn't doing it if you are talking about running all the 3D calculations to draw the screen (but under that definition,  is Star Fox a SNES game or a Super FX chip game, is Mech Warrior 2 a x486 game or an ATI/VooDoo game?

In common-knowledge terms they'd be SNES or x86 games. Moving to the specific, they'd be Super FX and ATI/Voodoo games. And we all know ATI & Voodoo games require a host PC. And Super FX needs an SNES console.

 

SuperFX and Voodoo are enhancements. The game still requires the console's CPU.

 

This whole topic is rife with semantics and wording angles. Ignorance can be bliss and maybe its best to just judge the final results. Is the game playable, worthwhile, good?

 

Doom on NES is not. You've lost the versatility of the DOS prompt and loading levels, among so many other features & amenities. Doom on NES is full-blown cheating and framebuffer stuffing.

[+batari]

3 hours ago, RevEng said:

Thanks. I really did want to encapsulate how any particular dev's constraints are arbitrary. The allusion to Gadsby seemed the best way.

To some extent, there are positively some decisions that are not at all arbitrary.

 

If, for instance, the dev wants to design a game that can be released in a hobby-friendly way (such as on through-hole ICs that are widely available, cheap and easy to solder, on boards where the gerber files can be downloaded and used), then the limitations are obvious: stick to 4k, or 8k-32k F8/F6/F4 games. To me this route is anything but arbitrary.

[RevEng]

14 minutes ago, batari said:

To some extent, there are positively some decisions that are not at all arbitrary.

 

If, for instance, the dev wants to design a game that can be released in a hobby-friendly way (such as on through-hole ICs that are widely available, cheap and easy to solder, on boards where the gerber files can be downloaded and used), then the limitations are obvious: stick to 4k, or 8k-32k F8/F6/F4 games. To me this route is anything but arbitrary.

Fair observation. Arbitrary is perhaps too strong a word, but choosing "hobby friendly" physical release in the age of rom downloads and flash carts isn't anywhere near the requirement end of the scale either. It's a constraint that doesn't need to exist and isn't universal, but rather selected out of a myriad of choices.