Bally War - First Look

[riffraff]

Bally War - First Look

 

I'm putting the finishing touches on my first homebrew game, War for the Bally Astrocade. I've included a movie to get a good idea of how it plays, although the movie's frame-rate is a bit slower than the actual game.

 

I am hoping to have this finished by the end of November. I need to make some labels and possibly a manual.

 

Homebrew comes to the Bally Astrocade!

[Albert]

Wow, that looks fantastic! Congratulations!

 

Is there any sound? The movie doesn't appear to have any?

 

..Al

[riffraff]

Wow, that looks fantastic! Congratulations!

 

Is there any sound? The movie doesn't appear to have any?

 

..Al

 

Thanks!

 

There are basic sounds, noises for shield collision, wall collision, and player-death-explosion.

 

Sound is really my weakest area but I plan for some really cool music and sound for the next project.

 

edit: Also, I'm new at doing this movie stuff, so I don't know why sounds weren't included. I'm using camstudio thanks to Random Terrain giving me the link to this freeware product.

Edited November 3, 2007 by riffraff

[+SpiceWare]

Impressive! I think your avatar should be updated to look similar to mine

Edited November 3, 2007 by SpiceWare

[riffraff]

Thx Spice! I decided with warlords as the first game mostly because it was something I understood, seemed to work well with the Bally's bitmap-graphic display, and could be played 4-player. With only an 8k cart, I could not fit the bells & whistles that MM has in terms of different game modes (team play etc) or the spiffy end-round animations. Used only 2 frames of a 4-color dragon, and no special menus etc. I think a lot of the original bally games were light on a lot of this kind of stuff so it doesn't stand out too much that these features aren't there. In the beginning of the project I was thinking "wow I could probably fit a couple of these kind of games into 8k the way it's going". At the end of the game it was "Crap, get rid of the difficulty setting idea for cpu because we need a couple hundred more bytes to fit in a critical feature".

[Jess Ragan]

Holy hernias, that looks GREAT!!!!!! I never thought the Astrocade could push that much color! Great choice for a translation, by the way. It makes a lot of sense since the system's got four joystick ports and paddles are built into the Astrocade stock controller.

 

So hey, if I asked nicely, would there be any chance you would consider making a conversion of Gorf? Its absence on a Bally game system is greatly felt.

[+SpiceWare]

Thx Spice! I decided with warlords as the first game mostly because it was something I understood, seemed to work well with the Bally's bitmap-graphic display, and could be played 4-player. With only an 8k cart, I could not fit the bells & whistles that MM has in terms of different game modes (team play etc) or the spiffy end-round animations. Used only 2 frames of a 4-color dragon, and no special menus etc. I think a lot of the original bally games were light on a lot of this kind of stuff so it doesn't stand out too much that these features aren't there. In the beginning of the project I was thinking "wow I could probably fit a couple of these kind of games into 8k the way it's going". At the end of the game it was "Crap, get rid of the difficulty setting idea for cpu because we need a couple hundred more bytes to fit in a critical feature".

 

It works extremely well - I did a search on ebay, didn't see any Ballys available. Know anyplace that sells them?

 

I was originally thinking 8K for MM, but once I found out the fireball movement tables were going to take 2K I planned to use 16K. Even that wasn't enough and I ended up at 32K.

 

For the AI I don't have different AI routines, just different speeds they can react. In the Kids version they move slowest, Medieval version they move fastest. Also each additional fireball increases their speed, so there's 6 speeds the AI players can move at.

[riffraff]

So hey, if I asked nicely, would there be any chance you would consider making a conversion of Gorf? Its absence on a Bally game system is greatly felt.

 

Gorf seems like an obvious choice for the Bally. I beleive Galaxian on the Bally is one of the best ports of the game ever, and is a 4k cart, so if most of that game's code could just be included, that would leave 4k for the other games. Sound could be arcade-perfect, except for the voice - Space Cadet, etc. It could be done, and is one of the games I'd want to make in the future.

[Lord Helmet]

That looks awesome!

 

Now I need to find a working Astrocade. It's one of the few classic consoles that I have never played.

[+remowilliams]

Wow! That looks great! I definitely would want this on cart.

[Jess Ragan]

So hey, if I asked nicely, would there be any chance you would consider making a conversion of Gorf? Its absence on a Bally game system is greatly felt.

 

Gorf seems like an obvious choice for the Bally. I beleive Galaxian on the Bally is one of the best ports of the game ever, and is a 4k cart, so if most of that game's code could just be included, that would leave 4k for the other games. Sound could be arcade-perfect, except for the voice - Space Cadet, etc. It could be done, and is one of the games I'd want to make in the future.

 

Cool! I can't believe begging actually WORKED!

 

So the limit for Astrocade games is 8K, huh? Well, that didn't stop the VIC-20 port of Gorf from being great. Still, I can't help but think that there would be some way to squeeze extra ROM from an Astrocade cartridge with bankswitching. Maybe you could even make ports of Tron and Journey if you had a little extra memory at your disposal!

 

(I'm pressing my luck, aren't I?)

[holygrailvideogames.com]

PM sent. This game looks great.

 

I wish that there was more interest in the Bally/Astrocade. If anyone is looking for an Astrocade be sure that it works before you buy it. These systems have a very high failure rate compared to other classic systems. If you can get a working one you won't regret it.

[Jess Ragan]

Just for fun, I created a mock-up of Gorf for the Astrocade, just to see how it might look on the system. I also threw in a picture of another Bally/Midway arcade title, Blue Print. After spending hours with these two mock-ups, I've come to the conclusion that the Astrocade was an art designer's nightmare. It's got only four colors available at any one time and an extremely coarse resolution, forcing artists to get really, really creative while working within the system's limitations. My concept art of Gorf is pretty faithful to the arcade game, but Blue Print... yikes! I had to turn J.J. and his girlfriend into Smurfs to make them work within the palette I chose.

[+SpiceWare]

It's got only four colors available at any one time

From wiki

The Astrocade used color registers, or color indirection as it was often referred to then, so the four colors could be picked from a palette of 256 colors. Color animation was possible by changing the values of the registers, and using a horizontal blank interrupt you could change them from line to line. An additional set of four color registers could be "swapped in" at any point along the line, allowing you to create two "halves" of the screen, split vertically. Originally intended to allow you to easily create a "score area" on the side of the screen, clever programmers used this feature to emulate 8 color modes.

So each line could have 8 colors, 4 on the left and 4 on the right, plus each line could have a different set of 8 colors.

[Jess Ragan]

Yes, but I don't see what use this would be in most games, because the your character would change colors the moment he crosses the border between the left and right hand sides of the screen. That wouldn't ruin a game, but it would certainly make it seem less professional. However, I guess it would come in handy if you had a horizontally scrolling shooter with the player confined to one side of the screen and the enemies trapped on the other.

 

There would be similar problems with assigning different color values to each horizontal line, but in most shooters of the time, that wouldn't be a problem at all because your ship is generally anchored to the bottom of the screen.

Edited November 4, 2007 by Jess Ragan

[Kurt_Woloch]

Yes, but I don't see what use this would be in most games, because the your character would change colors the moment he crosses the border between the left and right hand sides of the screen. That wouldn't ruin a game, but it would certainly make it seem less professional.

 

But I'm pretty sure this feature has been used in War, where the castles and shields never move to the other side of the screen.

 

Concerning Gorf: I'm not sure if all of you are aware of it, but the arcade hardware of Gorf (and Wizard of Wor, maybe others too) is nearly identical to the Bally Astrocade. The differences are that there's more video RAM (16K vs. 4K) for double resolution, and the "Magic RAM" chip is a bit more powerful since it's also able to rotate things while writing to the RAM (which it can't do on the Astrocade). Oh, and the memory mapping probably is different too, allowing for more ROM space - as far as I know, Gorf is 32K of ROM. So instead of writing an all-new version, it could be attempted to somehow "port" the code from the arcade (probably leaving out things here and there).

 

But I'm with you on the different 8-color set on each scanline (actually, the vertical resolution is 2 scanlines, so it doesn't make sense to rewrite them in every scanline). Already with 4 colors per scanline, you could do something like this:

 

[jboypacman]

Wow RiffRaff that looks fantastic! Great work on your part.

 

Will this be for sale in the AA store in the future?Keep us up to date.

[Jess Ragan]

Whoo, Kurt, that's pretty sweet! That would be great for title screens, but less practical when you've got characters running around a playfield.

 

Speaking of practicality, would it be feasible to take an Astrocade, reconnect the pins that make high-resolution graphics possible, then plug a RAM cartridge into the system to make it compatible with, or at least more compatible with, early Midway coin-ops like Gorf and Wizard of Wor? I'm generally not fond of expansion packs for video game systems- hey, I remember what happened to the 32X!- but I imagine more RAM and a higher resolution would go a long way toward addressing the Astrocade's shortcomings.

Edited November 4, 2007 by Jess Ragan

[mos6507]

The concensus is that the Astrocade chipset as it's layed out can never run in high resolution even though the custom chips have that latent ability. Even if it could, the OS routines all expect low resolution so you'd be on your own with the graphics calls. This was a big drag to me when I found out.

 

I think a better approach as far as memory goes is to create cartridges which simply plug in through the expansion port rather than the cart port. Then you wouldn't have an 8K limitation. Either that or have a RAM expansion in the back and just load games from flash. The Bally has lots of RAM comparitiviely speaking but it's all dedicated to the screen so you wind up having to letterbox your games in order to use RAM.

[A Sprite]

Just for fun, I created a mock-up of Gorf for the Astrocade, just to see how it might look on the system. I also threw in a picture of another Bally/Midway arcade title, Blue Print. After spending hours with these two mock-ups, I've come to the conclusion that the Astrocade was an art designer's nightmare. It's got only four colors available at any one time and an extremely coarse resolution, forcing artists to get really, really creative while working within the system's limitations. My concept art of Gorf is pretty faithful to the arcade game, but Blue Print... yikes! I had to turn J.J. and his girlfriend into Smurfs to make them work within the palette I chose.

 

Mind if I try? Apologies, if I've missed the theme entirely.

 

Edited November 15, 2007 by A Sprite

[Jess Ragan]

Aw, why you gotta show me up like that?

 

Sour grapes aside, the system can display four colors per horizontal line, and that number is doubled if you're willing to split the screen in half. Technically, that screen should be feasible on the actual system. However, just keep in mind that once a character moves into another's territory, there's going to be color interference. That's not a problem on the Astro Battle stage- most players will have wiped out the enemies long before they reach the bottom of the screen- but it could be an issue in the Galaxians stage, where enemies fly down toward you right away, or the Space Warp stage, where red lines streak out from the center of the playfield.

[A Sprite]

Aw, why you gotta show me up like that?

 

Sour grapes aside, the system can display four colors per horizontal line, and that number is doubled if you're willing to split the screen in half. Technically, that screen should be feasible on the actual system. However, just keep in mind that once a character moves into another's territory, there's going to be color interference. That's not a problem on the Astro Battle stage- most players will have wiped out the enemies long before they reach the bottom of the screen- but it could be an issue in the Galaxians stage, where enemies fly down toward you right away, or the Space Warp stage, where red lines streak out from the center of the playfield.

 

 

Thanks for the feedback. Never played the game before. I only know of it thanks to Gorf in the Jag forums. I'll try to download the MAME file, and see if I can't find solutions.

 

As for showing you up, you did all the hard work - all I did was scribble on your picture. I've been playing with old gameboy games for the past few years, 4 color art theory is instinct by now.

Edited November 15, 2007 by A Sprite

[Jess Ragan]

Scribble or not, you did a nice job with this. The arcade version doesn't have that much polish!

[Gorf]

I started coding Gorf for the Astrocade. I have all five creens appearing but ot yet playable.

 

However...since I've had my share of IP issues...it has long been scrapped.

 

 

 

Oh yeah...forgot to mention...it was a vertical monitor version so I could use the split screen feature.

Um for those that do not know....the Astrocade HOme machine is the exact same layout memory map

and chip wise as the Arcade Gorf...just less ram and one less IO chip (for all the extra sound) and theVOX chip.

 

 

Astrovision at one time was considering an add on to addd these extras but other than that is it the same system.

Edited December 22, 2007 by Gorf

[Gorf]

Bally War - First Look

 

I'm putting the finishing touches on my first homebrew game, War for the Bally Astrocade. I've included a movie to get a good idea of how it plays, although the movie's frame-rate is a bit slower than the actual game.

 

I am hoping to have this finished by the end of November. I need to make some labels and possibly a manual.

 

Homebrew comes to the Bally Astrocade!

 

 

Great Job and its nice to know another coder out there still loves his astrocade.