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A present for Coleco enthusiasts


AnalogKid

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Here's another one to add to your collections.  It started out as a testbed for my player/enemies engine and morphed into a Berzerkish/Robotronish type of game.  It's still a work in progress but there's enough there to have fun with and I wanted folks to have something new for Chistmas.  The enemy logic was designed for open playfields so they get a little hung up on the walls still and I want to add the "hulk" robot from Robotron.  The robots patrol the halls until you enter their scanner range and then they switch to pursue mode.  They evade your shots which means you can also force them back with cover fire.  It needs more sounds and the sprites could use some work and it could always use more screens, but by early 1980's standards it's not too bad :)
 

CyborWar ROM

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Excellent! Robotron is my 2nd favorite game of all time. (My favorite is -- wait for it -- DINO EGGS!). I'm pretty sure an exact clone of Robotron would be impossible for the CV, but this is a damn good imitation. How about adding some Progs? And some humans that you're trying to rescue, etc.

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I gave some thought to a full Robotron port but since it's a two-stick game, I'd have to use the keypad for firing which seems like it would be a little awkward.  Also it would be pretty disappointing because of the 4 sprites per scanline limit.  I'd have to add logic to keep enemies vertically separated which kind of limits their mobility, or I'd have to switch to using characters, which would be tedious as hell, animating 8 angles of motion across characters.   If I thought I could do a good job of it, I would give it a try, because that's one of those iconic games that I love as well.  I'd have a better shot with Black Widow because as with my port of Asteroids, you can get away with more than 4 sprites on a scanline with vector graphics since the interference is much less noticeable.

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As I thought, especially because of the 4 sprites-per-scanline limit, I don't think a full clone of Robotron is even possible for CV. As for Black Widow, vector games also aren't possible with CV, or am I mistaken? If so, we'd have TEMPEST by now, surely.

 

Thanks again for your gifts, and your talent in programming is radiently apparent.

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2 hours ago, zyzzle said:

As I thought, especially because of the 4 sprites-per-scanline limit, I don't think a full clone of Robotron is even possible for CV. As for Black Widow, vector games also aren't possible with CV, or am I mistaken? If so, we'd have TEMPEST by now, surely.

 

Thanks again for your gifts, and your talent in programming is radiently apparent.

My Asteroids port is one example of a CV vector port, Star Castle, which is very impressive btw, is another.  The Star Wars port, to be honest, could be better.  They kind of skimped on the TIE fighter images and the animation on the second screen is really jerky.  The main challenge to porting Tempest is the sheer number of images you'd need to produce to get the perspective.  It's the same thing that's keeping me from porting Battlezone, which is something I'd love to port.  Probably the main challenge of Black Widow, apart from the large number of images, is the unusually high number of unique character behaviors you'd have to duplicate.  

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On 12/29/2020 at 12:37 PM, youki said:

would love to see a Starwar clone by You!  

 

I'm really fan of your games!

I've given it some thought, it's on my long-term to-do list.  I've also been mulling Rampage as a good port prospect though it's further down on my list of favorite games.  At the moment I'm in the middle of something pretty ambitious so I'm going to be busy for probably another month on it.  

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On 12/28/2020 at 8:02 PM, zyzzle said:

As I thought, especially because of the 4 sprites-per-scanline limit, I don't think a full clone of Robotron is even possible for CV. As for Black Widow, vector games also aren't possible with CV, or am I mistaken? If so, we'd have TEMPEST by now, surely.

 

Thanks again for your gifts, and your talent in programming is radiently apparent.

       Atarisoft made Robotron for the TI-99/4a and it looks pretty good. If they can make it on the TI-99, why couldn't they do it on the CV? Same video chip, different CPU. 

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7 hours ago, Vectorman said:

       Atarisoft made Robotron for the TI-99/4a and it looks pretty good. If they can make it on the TI-99, why couldn't they do it on the CV? Same video chip, different CPU. 

They used characters for all of the robots to avoid the sprite flickering but it looks like the characters jump 4 pixels at a time.  I've thought about that solution but I was picturing creating all the one pixel shift tiles for 8 directions of motion for something like 9 sprites and said "maybe later"

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