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Fishing Derby (?)


glurk

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9 minutes ago, adam242 said:

I'd love to read a tutorial of how you (and phaeron, and anyone else creating these 2600 ports) approach the task.

I may do that at some point, I like talking programming.

 

For now, I want to hear about any bug reports or issues I missed / need to fix, so I can then do a PAL color version.  Keatah mentioned one minor issue, which I think happens only under emulation (when paused), it would be tricky to fix.  I don't think it's worth spending a lot of time on .  But before I do a XEX, or a PAL, or anything else, I'd like for people to shake it out first.

 

I have absolutely NO ONE to playtest my stuff here at home, so I rely on AA users to do that for me.  I hate bugs, but I'm bound to miss or overlook things sometimes, it happens...

 

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2 hours ago, glurk said:

For now, I want to hear about any bug reports or issues I missed / need to fix, so I can then do a PAL color version.  Keatah mentioned one minor issue, which I think happens only under emulation (when paused), it would be tricky to fix.  I don't think it's worth spending a lot of time on .

Been doing emu for 20+ years, so very used to picking up on minor differences. Making things the best they can be. Shouldn't have a problem with getting playtesters.

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I don't have a problem with playtesters, I want that.  But some issues are so minor, and would take major effort to fix, that it's just not worth it.  I mean, I could spend eternity fixing minor issues in one game that are unnoticable, or work on a creating something new...

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Yeah, I'm not angry about it or anything.  It's just triage, or "pick your battles" or whatever.   And I don't want to have to create new NTSC and PAL versions, and tell everyone to download them again, etc., unless it's to fix some major issue.

 

'Fishing Derby' looks like a simple game, but there is a lot going on under the hood, so to speak.  It was a tough one!

 

I'm just one guy doing his best...  And now I'm pondering on which game to do next... 

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Well, the graphics, by necessity, were done in a different way than on the 2600.  The fishing line was tricky, but it's David Crane's code, I just ported it to A8.  Technically speaking, it's an implementation of Bresenham's "fast line" algorithm done via cumulative fractional addition.  The slope (requiring multiplication) is done outside the kernel, and then simple additions (or subtractions) are done in the kernel to draw the lines.

 

Most of this game is player/missile graphics.  The fishing lines are missiles 0 and 1.  The fishing poles and all above them are character graphics, and so is the shark.  The rest is all PMG.  I had to unroll a bunch of loops to get speed / eliminate flicker, etc.

 

The "heavy fish" or "only one pull at a time" is a graphic resource limitation, same as on the 2600.  All the floating fish - side-to-side ones - are ALL player 2.  The fish being pulled is player 3.  Players 0 and 1 are used for the docks on each side.  So no other resources were left!

 

It's kind of cool, because the game looks like it's in a bitmap mode, but NONE of it is.  It's all PMG and character graphics.

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1 hour ago, Keatah said:

Yes! On cart..

Maybe you could look at converting something like Space Rocks or Draconian!!??!!

 

 

I think both those games use an external processor on the cartridge so they'd be much more difficult to port, and they are currently being sold by AtariAge so permission from the original authors might be necessary.  But more to the point the A8 already has excellent versions of Asteroids and especially Bosconian. 

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Back on topic...  I'm actually at a loss as far as thinking of another port.  I prefer 2K or 4K games, because no bank-switching, and they can be done in a reasonable amount of time.  But not every game is worth porting... 

 

Most of the ones that have reverse engineered source code available are games I just don't care to do, and most of the ones I would like to do would require reverse engineering.  And that's a big job...

 

Don't want to spend time porting any "meh" games that aren't that good, or have already been done better anyways...  And I don't want to spend a year working on a difficult one either...

 

So, I'm kind of out of ideas / undecided.  I'm going to try to go thru my Stella 2600 collection and find something obscure, I think.

 

 

 

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16 minutes ago, glurk said:

So, I'm kind of out of ideas / undecided.  I'm going to try to go thru my Stella 2600 collection and find something obscure, I think.

I really liked Superman and checking quickly on Atari Age it seems like someone attempted but never finished a port.

 

Haunted House is another popular adventure that might make a good port.

 

As far as Activision games go, Dolphin was an interesting game and I also really liked Grand Prix.  Grand Prix in particular seems like it might be a straightforward port.

 

And although I just went on about porting games for which good ports already exist on the A8, I think 2600 Space Invaders is worth bringing over, because although it's a port/adaptation, it's a really good game in it's own right.

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ZeroPage Homebrew is playing Fishing Derby on tomorrow's stream LIVE on Twitch, hope you can join us!


Games:

 (WATCH AT 1080P60 FOR BEST QUALITY)

 

 

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5 hours ago, glurk said:

Back on topic...  I'm actually at a loss as far as thinking of another port.  I prefer 2K or 4K games, because no bank-switching, and they can be done in a reasonable amount of time.  But not every game is worth porting... 

 

Most of the ones that have reverse engineered source code available are games I just don't care to do, and most of the ones I would like to do would require reverse engineering.  And that's a big job...

 

Don't want to spend time porting any "meh" games that aren't that good, or have already been done better anyways...  And I don't want to spend a year working on a difficult one either...

 

So, I'm kind of out of ideas / undecided.  I'm going to try to go thru my Stella 2600 collection and find something obscure, I think.

 

 

 

 

May I suggest Dark Cavern? Super fun 4K game.

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6 hours ago, adam242 said:

May I suggest Dark Cavern? Super fun 4K game.

I checked that out... It does kind of appeal to me.  It looks really good, no flicker, lots of stuff onscreen.  Very clever how they managed it.  And it would take some clever PMG use/re-use to get it all working, too, LOL.

 

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be ANY existing disassembly, or even a CFG file, or anything.  So it would be starting totally from scratch.  Could be a long project, so I'm not committing to it, but it's an interesting one to think about.

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19 hours ago, glurk said:

Back on topic...  I'm actually at a loss as far as thinking of another port.  I prefer 2K or 4K games, because no bank-switching, and they can be done in a reasonable amount of time.  But not every game is worth porting

My wish list is for Activision's Enduro which I believe is 4K.   Enduro is one of my favorite 2600 games. But what would also really be cool is to  expand on it a bit.  Game 2 could have motorcycles.  Game3 could have randomized weather and night cycles on each day.  Or could utilize the A8s larger ROM size and include Outrun style Pokey music. No need to bankswitch 8K or even 16K on A8.  

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8 hours ago, Cafeman said:

My wish list is for Activision's Enduro which I believe is 4K.   Enduro is one of my favorite 2600 games. But what would also really be cool is to  expand on it a bit.  Game 2 could have motorcycles.  Game3 could have randomized weather and night cycles on each day.  Or could utilize the A8s larger ROM size and include Outrun style Pokey music. No need to bankswitch 8K or even 16K on A8.  

 

It's been done.

 

 

 

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