Intellidiscs homebrew game- My deepdive into the controllers

[ave1]

Check out my video presentation having to do with Intellidiscs which arrived at my house just last week.  I've got plans to use Atari 5200 joysticks in a coupler to play the game, and also a variety of other joysticks like the Wico Command Control 5200 stick, PC flightsticks with an adapter made by bohoki, the 2600 M-Network Tron joystick with a Masterplay Clone, and a very unique USB-based Tron custom arcade stick/trackball that I adapted to the 5200 with more than 8 adapters.    Welcome to the Grid:

 

 

Edited June 4, 2022 by ave1

[MrTrust]

Good luck.  You'd think that this would be a perfect coupler game, but the throwing is a little too touchy with it.  The keypad is the way to go on this one, though I'd be interested to see what people score with the two sticks.

[+Cafeman]

That was interesting!  The programming of this game deserves a mention, allowing so many controller options and even more nuanced analog diagonals.   I think I understand how it was programmed to check for different analog diagonals in each direction, but I wonder if it was a pain causing any side effects with the use of an 8 way digital stick. Or maybe it just worked fine and did not need specific digital stick detection. 
 

the  Tron  music is the icing on the cake. 

[Synthpopalooza]

Thanks for the kind words.  It was fun doing the music and SFX on this.  I tried to push the POKEY to do a few things it wasn't designed to do, with this.

[+Cafeman]

22 minutes ago, Synthpopalooza said:

Thanks for the kind words.  It was fun doing the music and SFX on this.  I tried to push the POKEY to do a few things it wasn't designed to do, with this.

Do tell! 

[+Ryan Witmer]

1 hour ago, Cafeman said:

Do tell! 

I remember having a really rough time at first, because the emulator I was using for development couldn't handle the stuff he was doing.  I spent quite a while trying to debug it before thinking I should try it on a real machine, and hey!  It works!

 

12 hours ago, MrTrust said:

Good luck.  You'd think that this would be a perfect coupler game, but the throwing is a little too touchy with it.  The keypad is the way to go on this one, though I'd be interested to see what people score with the two sticks.

The twin-stick mode didn't really turn out as well as I'd hoped it would, but it was a really cool thing to try.  I think the big problem is that games like Robotron and Space Dungeon have you firing continuously, so there's no problem with things being touchy because you can quickly adjust.  This game doesn't work that way.

 

22 hours ago, ave1 said:

Check out my video presentation having to do with Intellidiscs which arrived at my house just last week.  I've got plans to use Atari 5200 joysticks in a coupler to play the game, and also a variety of other joysticks like the Wico Command Control 5200 stick, PC flightsticks with an adapter made by bohoki, the 2600 M-Network Tron joystick with a Masterplay Clone, and a very unique USB-based Tron custom arcade stick/trackball that I adapted to the 5200 with more than 8 adapters.    Welcome to the Grid:

 

Thanks for taking the time to do this video!  Glad to see people are getting the game into their hands.

[ave1]

Thank you, Ryan- This game is gold!

[Synthpopalooza]

14 hours ago, Cafeman said:

Do tell! 

Well, much of the sound effects in the game rely on using two-tone mode ... it's a function originally developed for cassette I/O on the 800/XL/XE platform, but I found a way to repurpose it for music and sound fx.  In this case, the first two channels do the majority of the sound effects ... the de-rezz effects, all of the echoing effects, are all two-tone mode.  I am actually not sure if any game releases, 5200 or XL/XE, have used this function before ...

 

Basically, you store $8B into the SKCTL register, then play the sound fx on the first two channels, playing the first channel, while the second channel acts as a frequency carrier for the first.  With the various distortions, and certain frequency settings, you get some of those echoing fx.

[Synthpopalooza]

Also ... the title music uses another POKEY feature called hi-pass filter.  In this case, the first and third channels are used, set to a high frequency 1.79 clock, with the first channel set to the $Ax distortion.  The third channel is silent, and modulates the first channel at such a high frequency that it creates a triangle-like waveform ... this is what I used to make the lead sound on the music.  Most emulators, barring Altirra, can't handle it, it seems.