Planet Bob

I'd love to see Scramble for the 2600. For some reason, I always liked it better than Super Cobra.

 

My biggest complaint about 2600 Super Cobra, is that some of the passageways are just too narrow. They would probably be okay if the scrolling were smooth, but since that's not possible, they should have been a little more forgiving on the level design.

 

The only place this would really be an issue in Scramble is in the fifth stage, where you have to fly through narrow tunnels. In the arcade game, you have to time it perfectly to get through the vertical passages. On the 2600, with the way it scrolls, I don't know if that would be possible without changing the layout some.

 

It would be nice if there were a way to "fake" smoother scrolling on the 2600. Maybe by edging the playfield graphics with sprites or balls. Although that probably wouldn't leave anything for the rest of the game. (Seems to me this was done on Radar Lock for the horizon line though.)

Hi there!

 

It would be nice if there were a way to "fake" smoother scrolling on the 2600. Maybe by edging the playfield graphics with sprites or balls. Although that probably wouldn't leave anything for the rest of the game. (Seems to me this was done on Radar Lock for the horizon line though.)

 

I've researched the scrolling a few hours yesterday, but really didn't find any better way than Super Cobra already does. There's several softscroll demos available from Christopher Tumber, but just to smoothen the scrolling, he already needs all available objects

 

Greetings,

Manuel

It would be nice if there were a way to "fake" smoother scrolling on the 2600. Maybe by edging the playfield graphics with sprites or balls. Although that probably wouldn't leave anything for the rest of the game. (Seems to me this was done on Radar Lock for the horizon line though.)

 

The Radar Lock horizon only has one 'edge' that needs smoothing, so it just uses the Ball. Stargate/Defender II has two edges that need smoothing, so it uses the Ball and one missile (this is why the player's ship and shots are the same color as the ground). Super Cobra's landscape scrolls up and down in somewhat chaotic fashion and would thus require multiple objects to smooth it out. The only way I can see to do this without flickering everything would be to use missiles and the Ball to smooth the landscape, and use Venetian blinds as well to allow the NUSIZx and COLUPx for the missiles to be different from those of the other objects.