Removing flickering sprites?

[Serguei2]

I'm wondering if it could be removed any flickering sprites in some most games like Ms Pacman, Centipede, Kangaroo ...

[Big Player]

Sure, you could remove the flickering sprites. But then you would have a lot less sprites in the game. For example, one ghost in Pac-Man.

 

Do you really want them out of the games that badly?

[Nukey Shay]

lol @ BP

 

The reason that the sprites flicker is because the 2600 only has 5 of them. 2 "player" sprites that are 8 pixels wide, 2 "missile" sprites that are 2 pixels wide, and a single-pixel "ball". The display is 1-dimensional (so it's up to the game's display kernal - the core engine of the game - to determine which sprites appear on any given scanline at one time), and the 6507 processor is only allowed a mere 76 machine cycles to update on any scanline. While some limited additional capabilities exist (like sprite doubling or tripling and 3 pixel sizes), the display kernal of some games like Pac-Man limit the sprites to only 1 of each on any given television frame. In order to change it, the game would almost certianly need to be totally rewritten.

 

Gotta remember, this thing was designed with Pong-type games in mind

[Serguei2]

I know that 2600 is limited by following Andrew's lessons but since I played Lock 'n Chase (Pac-Man like) without any flickers I was sure it could be fixed some flicker games.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I know that 2600 is limited by following Andrew's lessons but since I played Lock 'n Chase (Pac-Man like) without any flickers I was sure it could be fixed some flicker games.

Lock 'n Chase is a good example about programming tricks.

 

Two cops are drawn by using one player object, the other two by using a missile object (different widths and shifted!).

 

To avoid any flicker those two cops, drawn by the same object never overlap, they even sometimes reverse direction. Watch them closely and you will notice this.

 

Very clever programming there.

[Lord Helmet]

Gotta remember, this thing was designed with Pong-type games in mind

 

A good point. With that in mind, the fact that the 2600 has such a wide variety of games is a testament to the programers and designers of the time.

[Shannon]

Yeah m*network did the same thing with discs of tron.