At 06:36 PM 5/19/2000 -0700, you wrote:
Just one other question, then. I remember some posts
here saying that the extra players in Super Challenge
Football from M Network were drawn with missile
graphics. I thought the missile was static, fixed
length.
It's fixed length on any one scanline. But since you can do different
multiplier settings for the width, and you have unique horizontal
positioning, you basically have the ability to paint like a stroke with a
variable width brush down the vertical axis of the screen. So PLUS signs,
slashes and backslashes, Hs on their side, that kind of thing can be
done. But you can't have anymore than one shape on that scanline. So you
can't anything where there is a pixel then a space and then another pixel,
horizontally, with just the missile.
If you wonder how they do starfields, the reason they can fill the screen
with dots is that they only draw one dot per scanline. But you don't
notice that so much because the stars have to be somewhat spaced out
anyway. A scrolling starfield pattern must be quite a mess to program on
the 2600...
Unfortunately the missile has to inherit the same color as the player. But
I wonder, what if you tried banging the color register for the player
in-between when the player graphic is drawn and when the missile graphic is
drawn? You might actually then be able to separate out the color register
and have multicolored players and multicolored (differently) missiles next
to eachother. I wonder if any games do that?
The other cool trick mentioned a while ago was how Commie Mutants manages
to get more than six digits in its scoring. It was explained that because
of how Supercharger RAM works they are able to save some cycles and geneate
another sprite clone that wraps around the scanline to the next one before
it is displayed. I'd really love to hear another explanation of that one.
Glenn Saunders - Producer - Cyberpunks Entertainment
Personal homepage: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/1698
Cyberpunks Entertainment: http://cyberpunks.uni.cc
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