Re: Aw: Re: [stella] Maze Craze and 650x

Subject: Re: Aw: Re: [stella] Maze Craze and 650x
From: "TwoHeaded Software" <adavie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 09:51:37 +1000
----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Mooney" <erik@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <stella@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2001 8:34 AM
Subject: Re: Aw: Re: [stella] Maze Craze and 650x


> On Mon, 20 Aug 2001 17:41:57 -0400, you wrote:
>
> >At 10:30 AM 8/20/01 -0400, Erik Mooney wrote:
> >>Arkanoid's harder than it seems.  You can't really do the colorful tiled
> >>brick boards; the best you can do is the Super Breakout lines, and good
luck
> >>trying to highlight blocks as grey and gold.
> >
> >I think this might be possible if you're willing to tolerate some
> >flicker.  Display each brick of one color in one frame, each brick of the
> >second color in the second frame, and so on.  Three or four colors would
> >probably be the limit before it starts looking bad.
>
> Hm, I always do forget to consider flickering when considering the 2600's
> graphical capabilities.  But it really doesn't seem feasible here; an area
> as large as an Arkanoid wall is going to be hard on the eyes even at 30 Hz
> flicker, and positively headache-inducing beyond that.
>
> There may, however, be possibility in drawing the playfield in rows of
> color like Super Breakout, and using a player or missile object to draw
> overlaid on that one gold or silver brick per frame or even per row.
>
> >I think the biggest challenge wouldn't be so much in the display, but in
> >the memory.  The simplest brick-breaking game could allocate one bit per
> >brick.  However, with Arkanoid, you'd need more bits per brick in order
to
> >store its color, how many hits it has taken (for silvers), and whether or
> >not it hides a capsule.  Assuming four bits per brick, that's only two
per
> >byte, so an 8x16 field (for example) would cost 64 bytes.  I'm pretty
sure
> >Arkanoid fields could have more than eight rows, so the cost could be
higher.
>
> Sure, 64 bytes... that's half the 2600's RAM usage, and already covers the
> majority of Arkanoid's RAM needs.  This can be handled, maybe through
> constraints, something like making the levels not have more than two
> silver bricks per row.
>
> >You'd also need quite a bit of ROM to store the 30 (?) levels in the
game.
>
> 64 bytes per level can fit 64 levels in one 4k bank :)
>
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