Jess Ragan

I'm having trouble finding an Intellivision emulator that runs smoothly on a netbook. Bliss is okay, but the interface stinks...very limited! Nostalgia only seems to work once, then you have to close and restart it (and the netbook doesn't want to run it at all). MESS is slow and doesn't supply a voice for games like B-17 Bomber. What's left?

So yeah, I was thinking it'd be pretty keen to make a 2600 distillation of the animated series Futurama. I'm not saying I'm working on one, mind you, but I'm brainstorming ideas, thinking of ways to fit the story into the cramped confines of the 2600 hardware. It seems like it'd be possible to put recognizable versions of several of the characters onscreen at once, using the DPC+ build of batari BASIC... the only trick would be to keep them on separate vertical lines to keep flicker to a minimum. Maybe set Fry in the middle of the screen and have him dodge tractor beams from the Omicronians, falling brain slugs, that sort of thing.

Also, I whipped up a version of Zoidberg's scuttle that should be suitable for the 2600 hardware. It's tiny, but it should be recognizable as the good (?) doctor, and it could be squeezed into as little as three frames of animation with sprite flipping. Give it a look and let me know what you think.

http://www.1up.com/d...try?bId=9087553

I've been writing blogs for 1UP's Retronauts series, and my latest might be of special interest to Atari 5200 fans. Give it a look and let me know what'ya think.

Boy, I really HAVE been gone for a while. What is this DPC+, and what can it do?

Okay, so I've been futtering around with Batari BASIC after, what, a six year absence? (Man, hard to believe it's been around that long.) I wanted to take advantage of the new support for background color, but things aren't panning out. The colors don't look anything like ones shown in the TIA Color Chart. Could you tell me what I'm doing wrong? Here's the code...

 rem Setting Kernal options. We're trying to draw a colorful background, which Solar Plexus didn't have
 set kernel_options pfcolors pfheights background
 
 rem Some interesting things are happening here. One is that ugly and annoying "stair stepping."
 rem Second is that the playfield can be up to 118 pixels in height, max.  However, 88 pixels is recommended for optimal performance.
 rem Third is that a small portion of the screen is gobbled up by a black bar.  Nothing life-ending, but still slightly odd.

 pfheights:
 8
 8
 8
 8
 8
 8
 8
 8
 8
 8
 8
end

 rem We're experimenting with colors here, but what I'd like to do ultimately is create a sunrise or sunset with layers.
 rem You know those sand sculptures that used to be big in the 1970s?  I think they work on the same principle.
 rem (P.S. Shake them up and watch the guy who created them flip his wig!)

 pfcolors:
 $00
 $0C
 $1C
 $2C
 $3C
 $4C
 $5C
 $6C
 $7C
 $8C
 $9C
 $AC
end

rem Just some screwy business with character blocks.  I'm hoping to use these to shape the playfield.

 for i = 1 to 10
 j = i + 10
 pfpixel j i on
 next

 drawscreen

Lupe
 goto Lupe