On Wed, 3 Sep 1997 crackers@xxxxxxxx wrote:
> I've been wondering about things like building a selection of generic
> routines and sub-routines that can be incorporated with different
> variables to make 2600 games (kind of like Activision's "Game Maker"
> for the C-64).
Generic routines are out there, but they are relatively few and far
between.
For instance, most score routines can be ripped out and reused from game
to game, and placed anywhere you want it.
I suppose the Dragster and Dragonfire "movable huge sprite" routine is
portable.
These are portable because usually there is nothing going on but this
stuff at the offending scanlines.
When you have funky stuff going on with sprites and playfield dynamically
changing, you pretty much have to roll your own routines.
Another thing that might be portable is the sprite sharing algorithm of,
let's say, Stargate, if you wanted to do any game that had a lot of
independently moving multicolored single-line-res sprites over a simple or
nonexistent background.
Once you add a non-reflected background the kernel is going to have to be
changed a lot.
> Or even creating a new and simple programming language that will compile
> efficiently into 2600 6507 code.
Reusable code could easily be turned into macros. But the fact that you
have to cycle count to keep the screen properly updated works against
writing a basicish or cish language for the 2600.
The language would have to actually keep track of your cycle counts and
maybe give you a WYSIWIG computer display that traces through what the
code generates on a 2600 very faithfully. I think some emulators support
this sort of thing.
It would be nice if the language could actually oversee the kernel and
tell you you have used X too many cycles for the scanline or the screen or
have automatic functions for throwing "NOP"s in to fix this.
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