Daydreaming on my lunch break. (aka. Tempest mockups)

[Robert M]

What do you think? It might be doable with my idea for including FIFO RAMs in the cartridge. Imagine the blue and green lines are made with playfield graphics. The player is the ball repeated skewed over several lines. there are 4 columns of enemies active at the same time on the grid flickering at 30 Hz. Shots are not shown, expect they would be flickering heavily, but flicker on shots is not as noticeable IMO.

 

Yes I know the lines don't match playfield pixels. I stretched the original drawing to more closely resemble a TV screen in proportions.

 

Cheers!

[ATARIPITBULL]

That is a very nice looking Tempest screen, are you thinking of making it into a cartridge ?

 

[Robert M]

That is a very nice looking Tempest screen, are you thinking of making it into a cartridge ?

 

     

 

 

Maybe... Its really just an idea. I need to do a bunch of timing analysis to see if its possible. Strangely enough, the enemies are not nearly as tough to draw on a real VCS as the grid would be. Those damn spikes being a differenent color makes drawing such a construct very hard on a VCS. I am convinced extra RAM would be needed in the cart. Would it be enough? That remains to be seen.

 

I have attached a more pixel perfect mockup.

 

Cheers!

[Mindfield]

You'd definitely need more RAM to get higher resolution. The 2600 proto of Tempest surfaced about 3 years ago, and it was pretty crap. (Or as Jeff Minter said, "Tempest is pants!" -- referring to the fact that the initial web looked like a pair of undies) It's easy to see why it was never released.

 

It'd be interesting to see how doable a slightly more faithful rendition of Tempest would be in the right hands.

[Robert M]

Here's one more mockup with a "V" shaped web. All the webs are based off the same set of horizontal lines made from playfield graphics. The second attached image shows the base web from which all playable webs are derived by subtraction.

 

Enjoy!

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Those mockups look cool. Maybe even doable!

 

BTW: This thread should be moved to the homebrew forum.

[bjk7382]

I would love to see Tempest successfully ported to the 2600.

[atari_wizard]

not bad. keep it up.

[Video]

You could probably use missiles to draw the green spikes....

[Robert M]

You could probably use missiles to draw the green spikes....

 

 

True, but I really need them to draw the player and enemy shots which my mockups do not show. I also would be using 1 of the missles draw the far right vertical line of the web. So that leaves a single missle to draw all of the active shots in the game. a.k.a. flicker-city. I would probably face lawsuits for causing seizures if the spikes flickered that much.

 

Thanks for the feedback all. I am leaning toward this as my next big project.

 

Cheers!

Rob

[Dan Iacovelli]

it looks good,but would be possible to do that on a 2600?

the multi color might be doable come to think of it if you do the chrono-color effects that andrew did for it.

[Susuwatari]

I would love that if it can be done. I'll defiantly buy a cart when it comes to light