Re: [stella] Stella Programmer's Guide Overhaul Project

Subject: Re: [stella] Stella Programmer's Guide Overhaul Project
From: Erik Mooney <emooney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 19:09:05 -0400
>> >> Missile Command's missiles are one of the players,
>> >> cloned if necessary.  Two sets of missiles are drawn
>> >> by flickering them on alternate frames.
>> >
>> >Do you mean the missiles you launch to intercept, or
>> >the ones descending towards the cities, or both?
>>
>> Those are the incoming missiles.  The missiles you launch and their
>> explosions are all drawn by the other player, flickering horribly - it
>> alternates between _three_ different sprites with one hardware object.
>
>Are you basing these statement on observation, or the source code?  It's
>always looked to me like Missile Command used the players for the
>explosions, and the missiles for the, uhh... missiles.  ;-)   It would
>certainly make more sense that way.

Observation, but logically sound observation.  First, the incoming
missiles cannot be the same player/missile pair as anything else,
because the incoming missiles are cloned and nothing else is.  They
could either be that player or its missile, it doesn't really matter and
you can't tell anyway.  The player's missiles/explosions are not the
same color as the incoming missiles, so they can't be part of that
player/missile pair.  The explosions reach as high as 16 pixels wide,
which missiles and balls can't do, so they must be the other player.
Finally, the cursor is a different color from everything else and so
must be the ball.

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