Re: [stella] Jumpman: Follow the leader - No good!

Subject: Re: [stella] Jumpman: Follow the leader - No good!
From: "B. Watson" <atari@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 15:48:57 -0400 (EDT)


On Mon, 11 Oct 2004, Manuel Rotschkar wrote:

So there I spent almost 3 hours to convert "Follow the Leader" yesterday (...by far the most complicated level to transfer so far - you've seen one of the 9(!) macro calls...) and today I've been waking up realising that the level won't work on the 2600 anyway...

Problem is, in this level your Joystick input is "recorded" and after a while there's several evil Jumpman "shadows" followong your path, precisely as it was recorded (Like in... anybone remembering "Flood" from Bullfrog?)

That effect will use way too much RAM for a proper conversion...

Lurk mode OFF... Hola Manuel.


Hm, it's been a while since I played any Jumpman, but if I recall
correctly, the followers don't actually play back your joystick input
exactly... They always keep moving, even when they get to a point where
you originally stood still for a while. (At least, this is the way I
remember it, but it's been a long time...)

Perhaps you could just record a series of vectors such as `move 30
pixels to the left, move up 20 pixels, move 40 pixels to the right'.
This would still eat a lot of RAM, but nowhere near as much as recording
joystick input frame-by-frame would. Depending on the coordinate system
you're using, you might be able to cram the direction and distance into
one byte.  Store the bytes in a circular queue (overwrite old ones when
you don't need them any more).

Also, you could reduce the number of followers, or the distance between
them, or both... I think the original level had 3 followers? I guess it
would be too easy with only one.

--
B.

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