[stella] [Stella] Length of HMOVE blanks

Subject: [stella] [Stella] Length of HMOVE blanks
From: <kurt.woloch@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 10:43:08 +0200
On Wed Apr  8 19:54:43 1998, Bradford W. Mott (bwmott@xxxxxxx),
obviously the author of the STELLA emulator, wrote:

> BTW, how wide are the HMOVE blanks (8 pixels)?

I think they are 8 pixels, yes. What I don't know is what happens if you
apply the horizontal motion at any other time than immediately after a
VSYNC. Does the display turn black then, too, maybe for a longer time
interval? Has anyone out there tried that out already?

BTW, I've got PCAE 2.0 by now, thanks to you giving me some more URL's
to download it. I had a little problem with the long filenames used in
the package for the documentation files, 'cause I'm not using Win 95.
Attention, Win 3 or DOS users! You could get that problem too! Better
use WINZIP for unpacking rather than PKUNZIP! Still, it runs only on
486's and up. Since I've got a 386 at home, I would appreciate a Stella
version without the bug (as long as it still runs on a 386, regardless
of how fast - it's only for testing if my program does what I want.)

While you were talking about the implementation of MK, I was thinking
about some other (older) games who to my knowledge haven't been ported
to the VCS by now and could be easier to do:

-PARSEC (a game by Texas Instruments for the TI-99 computer)
-PEN-KUN WARS aka Penguin Wars (I've got a Gameboy cart of that)
-Antarctic Adventure (currently existing for MSX and Coleco)
-Elevator Action (well, maybe with some slight changes)
-Traverse USA (another arcade game)
-Manhattan (maybe some of you know this arcade game: You have to jump up
between two skyscrapers. On the way down you land on several
platforms...)
-Shao-Lin's road
-Marble Madness (this would have to suffer...)
-Paperboy (could be quite doable, with some simplifying in the
graphics...)
-Donkey Kong 3 (would be logical after Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr.
have been adapted; I think it would even be easier to do on the VCS than
the former two, since all the playfield is symmetric.)

Also, you could try another 3D racing game. I know that there are Pole
Position and Enduro out, also TURBO by Coleco (haven't come across a BIN
of that yet, only heard that it has been done...). Still, I think that
there could be some more approaches on that genre. Pole Position and
Turbo, as well as Night Driver, don't display the road in another color
than the meadow, which I think isn't impossible to do.

Given the time I need, maybe I'll try one of these myself, but I've got
some imaginations on these games, how they could be implemented, what to
do on which scanlines, etc. If anybody has interest, I can give you more
details.

BTW, can you tell me how to correctly mail to this list, so that the
[stella] tag will only appear once? I tried sending this mail using
"[stella] Length of HMOVE blanks" on Friday, but it didn't appear on the
list.

Bye for now,
Kurt Woloch

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