Re: [stella] Euchre: up against the wall again

Subject: Re: [stella] Euchre: up against the wall again
From: "Erik J. Eid" <eeid@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 09:09:59 -0500
At 09:35 PM 11/22/01 -0600, Paul Slocum wrote:
Are you really using all 26 alphabet characters? Maybe you can reword some messages to avoid using less common letters like V or X, then drop the data for those characters. And null terminating messages sometimes saves space.

The suggestion of dropping rarely used letters is pretty frequent. It's probably a good idea; I just wanted to wait until I was certain of the text of each message.


I could also probably move the card rank images into the letter image section, preventing the need to have J, Q, K, and A stored twice. It's not necessary that the images be in "alphabetical" order. It just helped when creating the message data.

Also, you can combine a few letter graphics like "U" and "H", or "I" and "T". I got this from Dark Mage/Stellar Track.

I'm not sure I can use this since the offsets into the letter image table are calculated as multiples of six. I wouldn't be able to do this without creating a table of offsets. (I used to have one but took it out earlier to free up space. :) )


You sound like you want to stick with 4k, but why not go up to an 8k cartridge? That would give you a lot of freedom.

For one, this is my first 2600 program, as well as my first 8-bit assembly program in general. I figured I should avoid the complications of dealing with bankswitching at this early stage. Also, it more complex games like Chess can be crammed into 4K, there's no reason that Euchre needs 8K, except to have a fancy user interface. I also don't own a Cuttle Cart so I could never test it on my 2600. :)



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