Video Pencil

[+atari2600land]

This could be a nifty Easter egg, or good on its own IMO. There's just one problem: The only diagonal line you can make is up and right. I want to know why this is and fix it so you can make all 4 diagonal lines. You might have seen this in my blog under the Videomation name, but I decided to drop the title screen and song and make this a 2k game.

default2.bas.bin

default2.bas

[+Random Terrain]

I don't see a line. Is there something special you have to do? Is it a drawing program kind of like these 2 versions of Double-click Draw:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/122998-double-click-draw/page__p__1487708#entry1487708

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/122998-double-click-draw/page__p__1487807#entry1487807

[+atari2600land]

To draw a line, the left difficulty switch should be in A. To move the pencil, use the joystick, and to draw, press fire.

[+Random Terrain]

To draw a line, the left difficulty switch should be in A.

Since Stella seems to have B as the default, why not use B instead of A?

 

 

 

To move the pencil, use the joystick, and to draw, press fire.

Oh, OK. It is kind of like those two versions of Double-click Draw.

 

Normal version:

 

double_click_draw_2008y_03m_22d_1100.bin

 

(Draw or erase by holding down the fire button and change the color of the playfield pixels by double clicking.)

 

 

 

Special multicolored version:

 

double_click_draw_special_2008y_03m_22d_1402.bin

 

(Draw or erase by holding down the fire button and change the color of a row of playfield pixels by double clicking.)

[+atari2600land]

Somehow I must have missed that program. Here, I changed it to B. But the question remains: Why is the only diagonal line I can make is up+right? It just doesn't make any sense to me.

default2.bas.bin

default2.bas

[MausGames]

I have this problem in my programs too, not sure what it is; either something to do with the keyboard, stella, or the way we are checking the joystick.

 

For example if I have a game with a free-moving spaceship, I can only move it up and right while firing at the same time, trying to fire and move diagonally in other directions won't work unless I have a joystick hooked up to my laptop.

Edited March 5, 2010 by MausGames

[+atari2600land]

Just tried this in Z26 and it works fine, so it must be a problem in Stella. Started a topic about this in the Emulation forum.

[RevEng]

Your pencil program works fine for me with all diagonals, in Stella under Ubuntu.

 

I suspect its a keyboard and/or Windows thing.

[+atari2600land]

Here's a new version. You can change the color of the drawing by pressing and holding the select button. Also, you can start over by pressing the reset switch. I also removed the score, which made the number of bytes available from 127 to 328! So, any suggestions on what features I should add next?

videopencil.bas.bin

videopencil.bas

[+stephena]

It's working for me in Stella with Linux, OSX and Windows. Stella processes events differently from z26, and has to do it that way because of its event remapping capabilities. I suspect you're trying to move in an opposite direction while still having the other direction pressed (ie, you're trying to go right and still have left pressed). Also, some keyboards don't respond to multiple keys at the same time in the same way.

 

There's also the '-joyallow4' commandline argument that allows all 4 directions to be recognized at once, but I still think the main problem is that you have to physically let go of one direction before selecting another. The fact that it works fine with a joystick (which by design cannot select both directions at the same time) seems to confirm this.

 

Also forgot to add that Keyboards Are Evil.

[+atari2600land]

OK, I read the Keyboards are evil thing, so I changed fire from space to right shift and it works OK.

[+Philsan]

Very nice!

[+atari2600land]

I got bored, so I tinkered with this some more. Now, to change to color of the drawing, you press the select switch with right difficulty switch on B. To change the color of the background, press the select switch with right difficulty switch on A. Anything else I should add?

videopencil.bas.bin

videopencil.bas

Edited March 6, 2010 by atari2600land

[+atari2600land]

I've been working on this basically non-stop all night, trying to fit some more features in. Then it occured to me: Why not get rid of the scrolling part in the default.inc file? So I did and now I have 58 bytes left. I've added a bunch of stuff like a title screen with title screen music, and adding in a black and white option with the color/bw switch. The eraser is a square instead of an upside down pencil.

videopencil2.bas.bin

videopencil2.bas

[Ethaniel]

good work i really like it

so is there a full features list or a to-do list? dunno what to try

isn't it possible to display more than one colors at the same time or make the dot smaller?

maybe before you start painting you could choose the background color...

Edited March 7, 2010 by Ethaniel

[+Philsan]

It would be nice to have an intuitive menu to select options but I think it's too complicated.

Perhaps a menu with simple coloured boxes would be better than using switches.

Edited March 7, 2010 by Philsan

[+atari2600land]

I tinkered with this even more and fit in bass notes and a "cymbal" noise during the title screen music. 6 bytes left!

 

videopencil3.bas

videopencil3.bas.bin

[Lendorien]

I tinkered with this even more and fit in bass notes and a "cymbal" noise during the title screen music. 6 bytes left!

 

Heya,

 

I tried this out. It's a bit simplistic in form, seeing as you can't have multiple colors on the screen at once and have to use switches to change the colors.

 

That said, I love the tones when drawing and I think the pencil is pretty cool.

 

Overall a fun program. It's be neat to see if one could make a program like this with a few more features, such as multiple colors and a selectable menu. But for 2K, it's pretty cool.

 

Hm. Go 4K and make.... Atari Paint.

Edited September 5, 2010 by Lendorien

[TooSlowGamer]

Hehe, I drew a penis!

[Ethaniel]

Hehe, I drew a penis!

picture or it never happened :D :D

[+Philsan]

Overall a fun program. It's be neat to see if one could make a program like this with a few more features, such as multiple colors and a selectable menu. But for 2K, it's pretty cool.

Hm. Go 4K and make.... Atari Paint.

+1

[yuppicide]

Neat program. I like the pencil sprite.

Edited September 9, 2010 by yuppicide

[+atari2600land]

Hey gang, I decided to go improve this program. I cleaned up the code, and got the pencil to go upside down instead of having a crappy eraser sprite. In case you don't know how to operate it:

 

color/b&w switch: toggle between color and black & white.

fire at the title screen goes to the drawing screen.

Fire + joystick: draw/erase

left difficulty swtich A - erase

left difficulty switch B - draw

Reset switch - clears everything.

 

right difficulty switch A + select switch - select through different graphite colors

right difficulty switch B + select switch - select through different paper colors.

 

it's 2k right now and i have 2 bytes left! If you want to compile this for yourself, you'd need to go into your default.inc file and unselect "pf_scrolling.asm" by putting in a semicolon before it (thus making it into a rem statement and not deleting it completely from the include file.)

videopencil4.bas.bin

videopencil4.bas

[+Random Terrain]

It's 2k right now . . .

Sorry, I only play 1k games.

[+atari2600land]

Vigorously combed through the code, deleting unneccessary stuff left and right. Now I have 107 bytes left! What should I do with them? I'm only attaching the .bas file because the binary file is about the same, except for I narrowed the drawing area just a little bit to make some division math work properly.

videopencil6.bas