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

["Erik J. Eid" <eeid@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 05:17 PM 8/20/01 -0500, Paul Slocum wrote:
> I wonder if the 2 player graphics could be used to display the gold and 
> silver bricks.  The balls and paddle can be displayed using the missiles 
> and ball, so the player graphics would be free.

The player graphics would probably be taken up by the floating obstacles 
and the capsules.  For instance, if you hit a brick in the top row that has 
a capsule, the capsule will have to pass all the other rows of bricks.

> > I think the biggest challenge wouldn't be so much in the display, but in 
> > the memory.
> Capsules could be made random, and silver hits could be stored in a 
> separate array, making it 2 bits per block.  And there could maybe be two 
> different layout configurations -- a wide short brick layout, and a tall 
> thin brick layout.

One possible solution I thought of was to represent all of the bricks as 
single bits, but to read the bits in combination with data from the 
original level table.  This would prevent having to represent the entire 
level at one time.

For instance, say you have 16 bricks across in one row.  At the beginning 
of the level, you have 14 bricks, except for openings on each side.  This 
gives you a bit pattern of 0111111111111110.  The same row in the level 
table would represent the colors of the bricks.  Assuming a byte per brick 
(for simplicity), you could have something like $00, $01, $02, $03, $04, 
$03, $04, $03, $03, $04, $03, $04, $03, $02, $01, $00.  When it comes time 
to calculate the bricks to appear, you could determine which bricks appear 
based on the frame (one through four, if there are four frames) and which 
bits are active.

Timing constraints might creep in here, though.  You might end up with a 
couple of blank lines between rows of bricks just to be able to do these 
calculations.


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