Subject: Re: [stella] Some thoughts that hit me while the power was out From: emooney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Erik Mooney) Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 23:18:58 GMT |
>No kidding. This gets more and more interesting. The Stella manual >says the control ports can be used for input as well? Is this part of ITYM 'output'... inputting from them is done all the time (reading a joystick) :) Yes they can be used for output; a single bit in one control register switches it between input and output. >the mechanism for reading the keyboard controllers (I seem to recall it >saying it sent out signals to scan which button was pressed, like how >different tones tell the computer which button on a touch-tone phone >was pushed), or is there something else I'm missing? I believe the keyboard controllers and Video Touch Pad work like this: the Atari sends a signal out to the port telling the controller which column of buttons it wants to scan; the controller sends the status of those four buttons on the joystick inputs (u/d/l/r). The delay between output and input needs to be quite long; on the order of 0.4 sec if I remember correctly. >> Now all's that's left is for someone to write the >> game and make a Catbox >> for the 2600! LAN party Friday... bring Video >> Olympics, Combat, and, of >> course, Warlords! ;^) > >At the risk of looking dopey, what is a "Catbox"? I never heard of >that? Maybe I'm a little thick right now. The notion of two-player >cooperative Missile Command and Kaboom! are dancing in my head.... Cooperative? Huh? _Competitive_ Missile Command would rule! Picture it done in the style of multiplayer Tetris or Bust-a-Move or Puzzle Fighter. Blow up two invading missiles with one shot and it sends an extra missile at your opponent. Chain three or four explosions together to launch a huge volley of missiles. Man, if only the 2600 had enough graphical ability to do side-by-side screens that way... perhaps if you drew each player's missile field as a 48-pixel wide sprite, on alternating frames? (would need Supercharger RAM of course, or one of the custom designs with RAM being bandied about every so often here) -- Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/ Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/
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