On Wed May 13 14:12:01 1998, A. wrote:
>>As I'm sure you know by now this is possible and used by many games.
>Yes, once you know something can be done, its quite easy to do it. Thanks
>for the timings, and to others who helped out.
>
>I am curious, though, if anyone can cite 4 colour playfields in other games.
>Truth be known, the ONLY Atari 2600 game I ever saw in the flesh was Pacman.
>To date I've not seen a 4 colour playfield in use, though I am sure that,
>given this machine is 20 years old now, others have trodden this path long
>before me. It has been fun viewing other games on the emulators - but this
>brings me to the next comment...
Well, I'm not sure if it's a 4 colour PLAYFIELD, but Q*bert certainly
pushes the 2600 to the edge. It displays five colours on nearly every
line, as follows:
On scanlines where the cube body, flying discs and enemies are
displayed:
1. Q*bert (red)
2. Q*bert's enemy (purple or green, flickering if there are multiple
ones on one level)
3. Cube body color
4. Flying discs (white)
5. Background (black)
On scanlines with the cubetops:
1. Legs of Q*bert (red)
2.-4. the three possible colors for the cubetops
5. Background (black)
All this without flicker!
I don't know if this is comparable with your efforts, but it's surely
remarkable. Wonder how they did that...?
And, in fact, Amidar uses three-color playfield, but it alternates
colors by scanline, not by frame.
With love (and many cubes to color)
Kurt Woloch
P.S.: OK, OK, I admit... I'm a Q*bert fan! :-)
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