>That's what I thought. He's already using about as many multiple
>copies of the back and forth balls as he can, right? It's interesting
>that simply because of the way a TV (and the 2600) works, this game
>could not be written with vertically traveling balls without major
>flicker.
The multiple-copies feature generates two or three copies of one object on
the same scanline. It doesn't do anything for vertical copies.. to do
another object in a different vertical position, wait till the electron
beam has scanned down to where you want the second object to begin, set its
horizontal position, and write to its graphics (GRP0, GRP1) or enable
register (ENABL, ENAMx)
>I think you may have misunderstood. The difficulty switch would
>control how fast the ship speeds up, not its maximum speed. The
>faster you go, the harder it will be two dodge the balls so the faster
>you speed up (i.e. the less you can move slowly), ther harder it will
>be. Maybe. On the other hand, if you can reverse quickly, that might
>come in handy, too. I guess it all depends on what speeds get
>implemented.
Well, see Missile Command game 1 vs game 2.. game 2 moves the cursor twice
as fast and (to me) the game's a lot easier. I think the best way to
increase the game's difficulty is change the speed of the balls and let the
player's ship function the same way.
>Is this done only at power-up or is it done during game play as well?
>I guess one instruction per frame won't hurt anything except in the
>most complex games.
It's done whenever the game wants to check it.. typically, once per frame.
The console switches (Color, Select, Reset, difficulties) are read just
like the joystick directional inputs.
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