Black lines on the left

[Aloan]

Ok, I know the lines are 8 "color clocks/pixels wide" and that they always appear on the left (don´t know if they are always black)

The screenshot is from an Atari-esque engine I have made to help audio visual artists with no coding experience create an Atari 2600 looking game

Question: So I can replicate the black lines correctly, can they be anywhere on that vertical 8x128 row? how many lines can I have?
For example, at every new sprite after I already had the default 2 (player0 + 1?)

Say I had a player3 and 4.... would that require 2 lines? can it be anywhere on the vertical row?

what about if I make the famous 3 cloned players? do I need one line for "them" or 3? what if I have a stretched player? (oh I guess a stretched player kills your right to have more than 2 player sprites huh?)

This may be the last look-alike thing I need for the engine to be complete as I have successfully implemented the famous flicker if more than 2 sprites are on the same scanline - find out more about my no programming engine here: https://aloan.neocities.org/atari_graphics_simplified.html
You can make a game in one day with this thing!!! I did!!! Pigeon pooper in One day see the page, download and play! 

Edited August 31, 2020 by Aloan

[Aloan]

going to sleep, after playing around with a fake mockup not possible on the 2600 because of the intersecting colors (let´s say it´s a super 2600 ;D) - portrayed here, is the 70´s Japanese super hero Spectreman with one of his enemy monsters... 
second screenshot resembles more how it would really be (except I know the monster is wider than 8, although maybe a ball or missile could fill in) + you should not give them multi color if they are going to fight, for when they swing their legs it will be weird as the colors would be out of place... sad the 2600 was so limited, cause I like its colors and LEGO like graphics!

Edited September 2, 2020 by Aloan

[Video]

The lines are a way the 2600 keeps track of sprite data on the screen you can have as many as you have objects on the screen, or even fill the entire edge of the screen with them (this is how some games appear to not have them) you'll lose 4 bg pixels, but some programmers appreciate the cleaner look.

 

As far as I'm aware, these lines are always black, but I know a very few games have a different colored border, so I'd assume if you can willingly change the border color, the lines color would match.

 

Like the mockups, yes a ball could complete the monsters tail, though how Atari works, while a sprite can only be 8 pixels wide, each line can be shifted a bit left of right to give a character that is over all more than 8 pixels wide, while not exceeding the 8 pixel (per scanline) limit.

Edited September 6, 2020 by Video

[+Andrew Davie]

They are called HMOVE bars. They appear on any line where the horizontal position of the sprites is changed through a write to the HMOVE at the start of a scanline. It is not possible to change their colour. On most machines, triggering a HMOVE on cycle 74 (I believe) and you don't get HMOVE bars, yet all sprites position correctly. There is no relationship between the HMOVE bars and any colour registers. They are always black, if present.
Now you know what they're called, it should be straightforward to search/review the forum for much discussion about them.
 

[James app-2008]

Here are some screen shots.