307 replies to this topic

[StephenJ]

Spicewar,
It's really great to see new life being breathed into the 2600.

Don't mean to hi-jack this thread...
But, when you are thinking about your next 2600/Harmony Cart project, please consider doing a facelift to one of these:

- Burgetime (One of my favorites, but the 2600 version...well)

- Donkey Kong (Why should the Intellivision ONLY get an upgrade?)

- Klaxx (plays good but...)

I think the 2600 library has pretty good arcade representations...but these three could sure use your magic wand.


All the best (and good health) to you,
StephenJ

Edited by StephenJ, Fri Apr 13, 2012 7:00 PM.

[SpiceWare]

Thanks!

After Frantic I plan to return to my ColecoVision Diversion and write an original game, Dragon Defense Squad.

Sorry, but I'm not a fan of Burgertime so I wouldn't do that - but I'm sure somebody could come up with something once we get all the kinks worked out of Harmony/Melody based games. They could probably use a variation of my sprite driver from Frantic to do it so that all objects get real sprite graphics.

For my next 2600 game I'm thinking about a reboot of Asteroids, or possibly Space Duel - I've always liked that game. I might even do Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe and Space Duel in a single game, like how Frantic has both Berzerk and Frenzy.

[accousticguitar]

Will the Asteroids spaceship be able to fire more than two shots at a time?

[SpiceWare]

My kernel supports 6 concurrent shots. Just did a quick test in iMAME (I'm on my iPad right now) and the saucer appears to have only 2 shots in the air at the same time so the player would get the other 4.

[accousticguitar]

SpiceWare, on Fri Apr 13, 2012 10:42 PM, said:

My kernel supports 6 concurrent shots. Just did a quick test in iMAME (I'm on my iPad right now) and the saucer appears to have only 2 shots in the air at the same time so the player would get the other 4.

Nice!

[SpiceWare]

Once I got the idea in my head, I couldn't get rid of it w/out doing something. Check my blog for a 50 sprite demo

[Legend]

Last version is very cool. I miss the really nice animations from earlier versions though.

[SpiceWare]

Animations will come back, a reboot takes time and I think 6 concurrent shots is worth the effort.

Besides the 50 sprite test, I've been plugging along on another side-project called Frantic Speech. I'm using that project to figure out how to get digitized samples back in. Initially I've been working on reducing the CPU usage per frame - the original routines expanding a sample all at once, the new ones will expand just a small part with each screen update. That'll leave more CPU time on each frame for game logic.

Once I get that finished (probably another week or two) I want to figure out ADPCM. It'll reduce the ROM required to hold the samples, giving more space for additional words and/or graphics.

After digitized audio is figured out, then I'll know how much space I have for animation.

You can always play the old build with 4 shots