Wal-Rush! for the Atari 2600! [Atari 2600]

u/JWinslow23 February 06, 2016, 09:07:12 PM

Noted.

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 16, 2016, 12:36:00 AM

On a side note @JWinslow23 you were featured on TechZonk (on Youtube, their Facebook, Twitter and Google+ page.

u/JWinslow23 March 16, 2016, 03:23:48 AM

Well, not bad! I am thanking them right now for taking a look at it.

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 16, 2016, 03:25:21 AM

The only downside is that they used the version that still lacked the title screen music.

u/JWinslow23 March 16, 2016, 03:35:39 AM

That was probably the first thing I noticed. The second is the SLIGHTLY different point increment system (in the new version, iirc every time an obstacle despawned, you'd get a point. his was different, slightly). That's when I knew myself

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 17, 2016, 08:28:25 AM

That reminds me, have you considered making obstacles move slightly faster over time and/or make more than one appear on the screen sometimes? (the 2nd one would rarely appear, then later would always appear). I bet that having more than 2 sprites would cause flicker, though.

u/JWinslow23 March 17, 2016, 08:57:03 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 17, 2016, 08:28:25 AM
That reminds me, have you considered making obstacles move slightly faster over time and/or make more than one appear on the screen sometimes? (the 2nd one would rarely appear, then later would always appear). I bet that having more than 2 sprites would cause flicker, though.

In my time of searching, I was unable to find a way to even HAVE more than one sprite on screen at once (unless all but one was the exact same graphic

). This is part of why Pac Man sucks, because two sprites meant the ghosts had to flicker such that each ghost showed up every 4th frame, because of the sprite flicker caused by needing to display 4 sprites with one.

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 17, 2016, 10:14:37 PM

I think alittle bit of flickering is tolerable. It's not as bad on CRT TVs anyway. Just as long as it's not as severe as in Pac Man.

u/JWinslow23 March 18, 2016, 12:04:03 AM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 17, 2016, 10:14:37 PM
I think alittle bit of flickering is tolerable. It's not as bad on CRT TVs anyway. Just as long as it's not as severe as in Pac Man.

Still, I'd have to be pretty resourceful even to milk two sprites out of one.

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 18, 2016, 04:57:05 AM

Is it that hard even in bAtari Basic to display more than one copy of the same sprite? I remember hearing about techniques such as cloning but I don't know what they meant and if that was ASM-only or not. In any case, 128 bytes of RAM is not a lot to work with >.<.

u/JWinslow23 March 18, 2016, 06:41:17 AM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 18, 2016, 04:57:05 AM
Is it that hard even in bAtari Basic to display more than one copy of the same sprite? I remember hearing about techniques such as cloning but I don't know what they meant and if that was ASM-only or not. In any case, 128 bytes of RAM is not a lot to work with >.<.

I've heard of some kernels that allow you to do that, but they're hell to deal with (I might, though, sometime). The only other option is to copy it horizontally, which I could do with one more command (but this isn't Space Invaders, so I won't do that).

u/Dream of Omnimaga March 19, 2016, 07:55:17 AM

I see. That's a shame then. Still a nice game, though. I guess the alternative would be to increase the movement speed over time as the score goes up.

I should also check if similar tools or a community exists for the Colecovision. That console sold much less than the 2600 but it was still a nice console back then.