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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