[Random Terrain]

roland p, on Sat Jul 25, 2009 10:21 AM, said:

What do you think of it? Speak freely

My name isn't Freely, but I'll speak.

This looks more like your earlier versions before you added all of the irritating lines. I hated the lines. Much better now. If you can really add anti-aliasing later on, it will be even better.

[jrok]

This is just tremendous work. Awe-inspiring.

[mos6507]

The problem with interlace is it creates a comb-like effect with horizontal scrolling. It may not be worth the tradeoff. I mean, the fixed interleave w/antialias is fine as it is. Look at games like Thrust (or my incomplete Death Derby). The fixed interlace is not that uncommon for 2600 playfields. It's not criminal.

[ZylonBane]

roland p, on Sat Jul 25, 2009 9:21 AM, said:

What do you think of it? Speak freely

Thumbs-down. Multiple problems with this--

1. Flicker is fine for tiny little sprites on a black background, but here you're flickering pretty much the entire screen. That's a recipe for guaranteed eyestrain (and possibly epileptic fits).

2. At high movement speeds, the illusion breaks down and you see the alternating scan lines anyway.

3. The alternating blank scanlines in the old playfield kernal create a perceptual illusion that the horizontal resolution is higher than it actually is (since your mind subconsciously interpolates the missing detail).

4. Flicker-free kernels of this degree of visual complexity are astoundingly rare on the 2600. It would be a shame to lose this one.

[grafixbmp]

Its too bad you couldnt make the display routine compensate by offseting the terrain displaying based upon the actual interlacing process.

[roland p]

grafixbmp, on Mon Jul 27, 2009 7:36 AM, said:

Its too bad you couldnt make the display routine compensate by offseting the terrain displaying based upon the actual interlacing process.

I know now there is a bug that causes the lines in the distance to be rendered incorrectly. The last green line of the checkerboard kernel is rendered always which should only be rendered every other frame. Other then that, it seems to work all right. Could you explain more detailed what you think goes wrong?

I only can't get Stella's VSync option to work which causes some artifacts.

[grafixbmp]

Like intentionaly display the board with a comb like effect that would be out of sync with the interlacing effect. Just shift in the direction the screen is scrolling. Basicaly, if the screen naturaly produces a combing effect when scrolling left or right, cancel it out by displying the squares with your own combing included that would be the polar opposite of what it looks like now. This might could even be done for a kind of horizontal antialiasing (producing a darker shade because of flicker) as well as the vertical antialiasing you have created now. Awesome BTW. I could be thinking stupid though. I doubt there is anything there.

It would look rather cool if you could buffer up yout screen data or just do it in the math. like

One step forward
One step back
One step forward
One step forward
One step back

repeat

This might look funny but is nothing more than a fleeting thought.

Kinda for a sub shade of green that looks somewhere in the middle of light and dark green by using flicker.

This post has been edited by grafixbmp: Mon Jul 27, 2009 3:42 AM

[roland p]

grafixbmp, on Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:24 AM, said:

Like intentionaly display the board with a comb like effect that would be out of sync with the interlacing effect. Just shift in the direction the screen is scrolling. Basicaly, if the screen naturaly produces a combing effect when scrolling left or right, cancel it out by displying the squares with your own combing included that would be the polar opposite of what it looks like now.

The cancelling of the comb effect might be possible.
I've now changed the kernel a bit, so it takes advantage of the interlacing. I did not expect that this was possible. Due to the nature of the current kernel, the cancelling seems only possible for one part of the checkerboard

Attached File(s)

•  ballblazer_left_part_high_res.bin (32K)
  Number of downloads: 72

[mos6507]

grafixbmp, on Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:24 AM, said:

Like intentionaly display the board with a comb like effect that would be out of sync with the interlacing effect.

The easiest way to cancel out the comb effect is to only update the playfield 30 times a second rather than 60. But what will have been gained here? Adding flicker and dropping the framerate is not worth it just to give the illusion that the checkerboard is solid. The mind is perfectly capable of seeing the board as "shaded" by the fixed lines. That's how dithering works.

[mos6507]

I think for a game like Suicide Mission or Stellar Track that couldn't have been pulled off any other way, the flicker is acceptable. But for this game I think you're introducing a distracting effect where you could otherwise avoid it with the fixed interleaving. Flicker is much better employed on sprites rather than the playfield. Not only do you get a comb effect with horizontal movement but certain speeds of forward and reverse animate themselves in sync with the interlace, hence the gaps become visible across multiple fields. This is just the nature of interlace, and it's the reason why interlaced displays were not really used on videogames until systems like the Dreamcast where the displays were more organic with very few right angles.

[grafixbmp]

roland p, on Mon Jul 27, 2009 4:10 AM, said:

grafixbmp, on Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:24 AM, said:

Like intentionaly display the board with a comb like effect that would be out of sync with the interlacing effect. Just shift in the direction the screen is scrolling. Basicaly, if the screen naturaly produces a combing effect when scrolling left or right, cancel it out by displying the squares with your own combing included that would be the polar opposite of what it looks like now.

The cancelling of the comb effect might be possible.
I've now changed the kernel a bit, so it takes advantage of the interlacing. I did not expect that this was possible. Due to the nature of the current kernel, the cancelling seems only possible for one part of the checkerboard

Even still, it seems less noticble with this current test demo than before. softer sorta. works best during movement though. not so much standing still but still worth the experement.

[roland p]

I'll stick to non-interlaced. It looks so solid and fast, which is exactly what the game should be.

[grafixbmp]

roland p, on Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:02 PM, said:

I'll stick to non-interlaced. It looks so solid and fast, which is exactly what the game should be.

So true. But ya never know what's possible until the option is attempted. I would image interlacing would be best suited for static frames rather than animated ones. Good luck squeezing all things in.

[MikeMika]

I also wanted to add to the list of compliments. This game is looking amazing. I hope you get enough time to make some progress. I'm working with some of the founding alumni of Lucasfilm Games right now, and I plan to show them the progress you've made if you haven't already shared it with them. This is the sort of thing that will blow them away. It represents everything they themselves set out to do when they formed Lucasfilm Games - Blow past the limitations of the machine and create groundbreaking experiences. Well done.

[GroovyBee]

MikeMika, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 5:30 PM, said:

I'm working with some of the founding alumni of Lucasfilm Games right now, and I plan to show them the progress you've made if you haven't already shared it with them. This is the sort of thing that will blow them away. It represents everything they themselves set out to do when they formed Lucasfilm Games - Blow past the limitations of the machine and create groundbreaking experiences.

... and say goodbye to the project when people start receiving cease and desist letters. Not that I'm a pessimist of course.

[MikeMika]

[/quote]
... and say goodbye to the project when people start receiving cease and desist letters. Not that I'm a pessimist of course.
[/quote]

Hehe.. Trust me, I am familiar with the cease and decist in my career. These guys no longer work for Lucas. I do understand the sensitivity here, but these guys endorse the Zak sequel being done in Germany, etc. The only thing that would happen here is that they would likely join up on Atari Age and encourage it.

Now, if Lucas LEGAL even had a hint, yeah.. They are ruthless.

They've lightened up in the last couple years, allowing fan-made things, but don't try selling anything. They have started a Heritage group within the organization, which did the Monkey Island re-make. The people in that division are fantastic. They're very supportive of homebrew efforts, and see it as a great fan service.

But you never know. It's always healthy to be pessimistic. Even though this is a public forum, I'll respect this group and keep a lid on it.

This post has been edited by MikeMika: Sun Aug 30, 2009 11:57 AM

[Thomas Jentzsch]

MikeMika, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 7:56 PM, said:

Now, if Lucas LEGAL even had a hint, yeah.. They are ruthless.

But they do know how to use Google, don't they?

Maybe Al should better hide this thread from the bots then?

[roland p]

Some progress info...
I've now speedup the tile-setup code with anti-alias, so it's fast enough to use in the game. In short, there are 16 subroutines to jump to, depending on the position. I now want to update the sprite engine so it matches the way the tiles are drawn.

Currently, I've some side projects that divert me from the ballblazer project...

MikeMika, on Sun Aug 30, 2009 6:30 PM, said:

I also wanted to add to the list of compliments. This game is looking amazing. I hope you get enough time to make some progress. I'm working with some of the founding alumni of Lucasfilm Games right now, and I plan to show them the progress you've made if you haven't already shared it with them. This is the sort of thing that will blow them away. It represents everything they themselves set out to do when they formed Lucasfilm Games - Blow past the limitations of the machine and create groundbreaking experiences. Well done.

That's so cool... My respect for the creators of the original ballblazer has really grown while trying to port it.

[raindog]

When I was working on my abandoned version, my plan was to rename it "blaze", lower case and italicized (mostly so that I could draw the logo with the playfield and have it be legible) and maybe make the playfield a different color. I was thinking red, to match my Boing demo, but that might have been a bit much on the eyes. After another minor member of the VCS homebrew community threatened me with legal action over my Ms. Pac-Man hack, I realized that it doesn't take a J.D., a corner office or a boss named George Lucas to turn someone into a dick, and that's probably the biggest single reason why I stopped doing 2600 development.

Hope you have better luck; if nothing else, the Ballblazer trademark seems to have lapsed so I don't think you have much to worry about unless some twerp comes around claiming to have bought the rights to all home console versions of it.

[atari2600land]

Any news on this game? It looks so promising, it'd be a shame not to finish it.

[roland p]

Still working on the sprite engine, making little steps. I have now the vertically placement of the sprite in sync with the checkerboard. Now I have to get the horizontal positioning right.
Maybe you think it worked all right, why change it?. But the changes I made brought antialias and more precise positioning of the sprites.

I want to try something that will increase the perceived resolution of the quad-sized sprites too. If I let them look like down-scaled high res sprites, the perceived resolution will increase while they move. The sprite will move with 4 pixels a time and the in between position will be slighly different versions of the rotofoil. Just like the animation in my avatar. I hope this will look nice and more natural.

[KevinMos3]

I know it's been a while since the last post and I have no idea how far you've come since then, but I've tried the last 4 binary posts. I definitely prefer the ballblazer.bin from post #568 far more than the ones after that. It looked clean and clear compared to the last two.

Anyway, what you've got so far looks and handles great. It's VERY promising. I'm looking forward to more.

[Random Terrain]

How are things going with this?

[roland p]

Just bought a new laptop (I've used a small 9" eee pc for the last year since the laptop before that one got desintegrated) so I've no excuse not to develop it further...

[Godzilla]

can't wait to see what else happens, I think this is one of the most impressive homebrews I've seen for the 2600.