Re: [stella] Game concept and brainstorming

Subject: Re: [stella] Game concept and brainstorming
From: Glenn Saunders <cybpunks2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 02:10:52 -0800
At 09:40 AM 1/22/2002 +0100, you wrote:
Or you could use missiles for the zombies, like Glenn is trying.

I don't suggest this since the ultimate kernel I come up with is probably going to require a sacrifice in vertical movement on the missile-men by interleaving them as Super Challenge Football does. I'm not sure how bad this is going to look, but I'm willing to deal with it just to be proud that I didn't have to use anything but the 4 stock sprites without reuse either through flicker or vertical separation.


For a more Robotron-style game with more men on the screen at once I think you have to use both flicker and vertical separation.

And unlike Berzerk, if you have tombstones then you are going to have a pretty cramped kernel having to update both the playfield and the sprites. If the tombstones only persisted for a short period of time you could do them in sprites (like the two missiles and the ball, reused wherever possible).

There aren't a lot of 2600 games that feature both playfield bitmaps and lots of sprites. Centipede/Millipede are exceptions and you'll notice that the animation is very jerky as a result because certain scanlines are being reserved for updating the mushrooms. For Death Derby I'm willing to tolerate a 2 scanline jump for the movement of the men, but definitely not on the cars. Smooth sprite animation has always been one of the 2600's greatest strengths over its peers (Astrocade and Intellivision had half the vertical motion res of the VCS) and you don't want to waste it.


Glenn Saunders - Producer - Cyberpunks Entertainment Personal homepage: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/1698 Cyberpunks Entertainment: http://cyberpunks.uni.cc

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