>Reply to your message of 9/9/97 3:22 PM
>Great work Bob, now please promise us that your new game will be
>arcade/action, not puzzle-strategy! ;-)
Absolutely! My problem is that I shoot for Mars, but end up on the Moon. I
keep trying to squeeze more into these kernels, and get discouraged when I can't, but I have to realize that something can be made out of either of these relatively easily.
>>The other program, multi, you may have seen before, since I
>>uploaded a previous version of it to this list. It is showing 8 copies of
>>player0 on the screen using a smart algoritm to reduce flicker.
>
>A welcomed come-back, I was very surprised that the "Sprites" demo you sent
>some time ago didn't evolve in a true game.
>Do you think you could add a non-flickering sprite for the player (even
>monochrome)?
>And a couple of missiles?
>I consider this program very important because it's probably very similiar
>to the routines developed by Atari for many of their best games (Kangaroo,
>Dig Dug, Ms. Pacman...). From what I remember of the source you posted, the
>sprite scheduling algorithm looked more complex than the kernel itself...
Yes, there will be no problem adding the other player and at least one missle.
I'll be happy with one missle, because with the number of sprites available,
I could easily use a sprite for a shot (wee! imagine shooting shots that really look like missles instead of just dots!)
I have considered going one step further with this algorithm to further
reduce flicker by using both players, that is, if 2 sprites fall on the
same line, assign the first one player 0 and the second one player 1. The
ultimate in my opinion would also allow me to set a sprite # as being "no flicker" meaning that even if others fall on the same line, it will never flicker (for the player controlled sprite of course).
I'm thinking of making a 2600 version of Sabotage using this engine. I think I could really do this game justice, and it is one of my all time favorites.
>Speaking of flicker... has Activision ever made a game with flicker (even
>"intelligent" flicker, like in Bob's program)?? I think not.
>Personally, I'm not totally against flicker... better some flicker and good
>gameplay than no flicker with bad gameplay :-)
Not that I know of.
Later,
Bob
Wanna write a game for the Atari 2600?
Check out http://www.novia.net/~rcolbert
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