grafixbmp

perhaps this can help. I drew another alternate that was suppost to be half of the former one. However, I don't think it wored out too good. Could ya possibly do any shifting between the 2? Like the first one right before the second one would come in and then it goes untill the first one would come in. The reason I bring it up is cause some of the circles in the second one have been drawn to be half the distance of first ones. I'm just not sure. There was another thing I wanted to bring up. If there were 2 basic frames that alternated, I think everything would fit rather snugly. frame one: player 0 left border circles player 1 right boader circles (these could then possibly have diffrent colors for special boarders) atraction boarders, ramp boarders, etc then at the lower portion of the screen image only one set of circles would be visible (either the left ones or the right ones but not both) simply because the track is that wide at the bottom causing ony one row to be visible t the bottom of the screen. This allows for your race vehicle to be drawn this frame. frame two: this handles all opponenets and any specialty objects. in-track ramp (just after a ranp is hit, this graphic can then be used for your vehicle when jumping) speeder (speed boost varying sizes) shield recharge. It could even be quite possible to drop in your vehicle again this frame so it would never flicker except when jumping. Ya could even flicker a shadow below your vehicle for an effect.

What I didn't have shown was a second elongated image that is almost looks like the single perfectly tall one but appear to be a half circle shift down from the other one. These two images alternate at a varable frequency giving the appearance of movement. I maybe able to do a gif image that animates a bit. The black spacers will add to the animated movement when in action.

I took this post to heart and modified my approach with your demo in mind. I think the horizontal skewing along with a harmony (for resolution and heavy color changes, DPC+ bankswitching) could give the look and feel I'm looking for in a racing engine and still look like mode 7. Some flicker would be on screen but would be midigated by using te same luma per scanline. I'm wondering about multi-skewing down the screen (image) without rough jaggies.

If I recall, There was one really good flight sim for the atari Top Gun 2 i think. (edit: it was Tomcat F-14) makes me want to play it now.

I just did that off the top of my head. Wasn't sure of the exact color set. But I figured you could perfect it if ya wanted. I just wondered if I could mke it fit and still look decent.

I had a brief jolt of inspiration and did a quick doodle I wanted to share to you guys. I hope it brings other inspiration like it did me. I just wanted to see if it could fit in an 8 pixel wide player.

Thats very nice. If skewing is a bit easier to handle on the atari, could some kind of horizontal and vertical skewing add more to it. Like for a counter clockwise rotation effect you could skew left then skew down. (tested in paint) OK looks like both horizontal and vertical skewing can fully fake rotation with some minor tweaking . The question is weather the 2600 can handle vertical skewing. Even if they could alternate each frame so the code could fit alright. So first frame skew left second frame skew down. Now if that can be displayed from a first person perspective and only deal with a small portion of a larger track at screen at a time, mode 7 may be fakable. lol

I recall someone once made a demo of a lunar lander that used multiple copies of players to draw a big lander on screen that could rotate 360, explode and had the low gravity dynamic with it. the rotation of that appeared mathematical in nature and ran quite smoothly. Wish I knew who did that demo cause if the rotation of that image were to be applied to the playfield, it could appear to be very quick for driving.

And then there's roland p's work-in-progress Ballblazer, which works far more smoothly than I'd have ever imagined, and with no DPC+. But that's a fixed, orthogonal viewing angle, while what made F-Zero special was the mode 7 rotation of the ground tiles. I think you can do that with a two-color ground, given enough RAM and possibly not updating the screen every frame (or using DPC+), but the trick where the track markers alternate lines with the ground color won't work if the track is turning. If you want to make something like Pole Position with faster gameplay, looser controls and different graphics/music, though, you might be able to approximate the feel of F-Zero if nothing else. That is true. An approximation may be the only way to go.

If you will look closely, there are no mid row color changes. Dark grey BG and Purple PF where disks are Light grey BG and Blue PF where open field is besides, that's like saying pole position didn't need the red/white road boarders either. And on the subject of other racing games atari had, Most if not all racing tracks didn't even do sudo 3D either. They just wiggled several lines on the screen based on some mathematics and t5he curves were more implied than tangeble across the whole track. I brought up the "mode 7" style graphics because I would like curves like 90 and 180 curves like unto f-zero, mari kart, etc. This will give tight, heavy manuverable racing. real tangible, solid tracks. Stock 2600 can do distance scaling and color changes per scanline fine. Even pole position had a decent level of color changes. But mode 7 style rotation will probably need a harmony/melody to do it with a high frame rate. But this kind of engine need not be just for racing either. 3D flat terrain worlds for 3D-esque exploration could be done as well... to a degree.

double post.

Here are some additional images to show a bit about the odd angles.

As far as perspectives look, If the screen is scrolling fast enough, then all rotation should look fine. The road's boarder disks define the edges of the road acordingly but the in betweens mainly show the open field. This way multiple disks could be on the same line. I have some updated images to show what I mean.

Yes. However, my atari is disabled at the moment. (DIY video mod errors) I will get back to that later on when I find where I put my multi-meter. lol But I don't wish to program it as of now. I agree with RT that I would rather wait till DPC+ with bB has been optimized before I tinker with it. 3D-esque coding I'm less familiar with. I tried to design a Doom like engine once and took a wild aproach to it. Needless to say for me, 2D is easier to understand than 3D.

Many years ago before I treked out on the daunting task of castlevania for 2600, I was wondering about F-Zero gameplay and what it would take to get that type of gameplay working on atari and I designed a way to produce a convincing facsimile of the look of the tracks. But at the time, the possibility was marginal at best. But since then I've been following a few projects that could relate towards a general purpose mode 7 equivelent graphics system. The first project that intriged me was Roland's work on ballblazer. It has a similar perspective and is wonderful from the perspective of even working on a 2600 which is near a mirical in tis own right. Awesome work Roland. The other is the forementioned DPC+ which most of us know the benefits of and would prob be key to making this possible. The real tricks with such an engine will be with geting a high enough frame rate and allowing for full 360 degree rotation. Player sprites, ball and missiles aren't really involved with the sudo mode 7 graphics. Only the playfield need be used. I guess the best way to describe it would be interleaved mode 7. Here is a simple image of a direct top down view like unto when you would start a race in the original f zero with 2 levels of zoom. The track markers (disks) alternate with the dark blue (out of bounds). The light grey is simply the background color changed. Now if this were scaled into the distance giving a force perspective it would look damn near like a real f zero track. Now as far as rotation goes, that can be graphicaly doable with in this style matrix and still look good. Also when you would be actualy looking down the trck (force perspective) the color tones could reflect that going darker the closer to the horizon ya get. I also have an original image from long ago that I added to the new what ifs. The old one has incorrect color rendering but illistrates the force perspective and tone shading. Any thoughts on what ifs? Sure would be nice for lots of racing games.

Ever since the early stages in design and the briliant work of thegoldenband with enough music to start out with, I thought about which way to go about incorporating as much sound as possible. I plan on using a music engine based directly on the one created by Richi_S. It was always what I wanted in a sound system and far better than I could ever do. I especialy like the envelopes available. Channel 0 will be lead and channel 1 the bass line. I am however hoping to add an aditional part that doesn't run during vsync. This runs as a multiplexer of the 2 channels. The portion for channel 1 adds percussion multiplexed in with the base and the additions to channel 0 are unique. with chalnnel 0, I'm going to try doing a strait multiplex between the lead music and sound FX only because one is actiual notes and the other is just noise. It will allow for musical continuity even though it may not sound great at least it will be less broken and still allow for SFX. nd because they are so diffrent from each other, the SFX will have their own volume controls and will never share the same waveform as the lead in order to keep distiction between them.

With all this talk about the floor and switches in conjunction with the new animations makes me wonder if we may see an update to the demo of the first level again soon.

Thats a good question. Up till now I hadn't given it much thought. But I would want to wait a bit before posting up a video just yet. I want to have enough worth posting first. I want to get all 8 banks set first, with gravity and hoizontal movement added, new screens loading routine. terrain collision and stair recognition. Around the time music and the HUD are being added would be good for a video.

This was the first bit of images that I ever drew as mocks for 2600. I think it would be doable with a harmony and DPC+ possibly even with bB.

Well I had the drive to go ahead and fix the slight control issues with crouching and I think its more spot on to the original(still need to make it where he stays on the ground though). I also slightly spead up the animation. I think the next few updates are going to be nice. Castlevania 2600 kernel v2.6.2.bin

This demo reminds me more of gateway to apshai... Which I would love to see on the 2600!

Thanks man. That means alot to me. And yes I knew about the bug. It only happens when the stick goes directly from crouch to left or right but since it is only a visual bug and not anything that hinders future gameplay, it won't have top priority at this time. I know I mentioned that gavity and collision come next but I had an idea last night about something else that may need to come before those. A single RAM vaiable used as an idirect jump. I call it the "primary overide vector". It temprarily takes control over simon for many things. Jumping, gravity, whip, mace, enemy hit, secondary weapon, etc. I actually surprised myself cause I don't see how I got this far with out a "POV" in place. And trust me wne I say I am very aware of the complexity cause most of the code is stuck in my head with the majority of the complexity and I need to get it in digital format instead of braincell format. I've never been the fastest at coding. I'm too slow at it. I'm not as experienced at it either but the slow pace is all there is now being it's a one person project. If I get stuck anywhere along the way, would you care to lend a few braincells to the cause? And that goes for anyone else as well. We all know the mechanics of the original versions of the game so replicating thoes mechanics leaves little room for original game design which should make it easier...

Been a while since an update. Here is the current state of the project. Added crouch graphic for both crouching and jumping. Still need to offset the vertical position when only crouching. Next task is to add both a gravity routine and ground collision. Castlevania 2600 kernel v2.6.1 new input.bin

Something that struck me as rather cool was that this game somewhat reminds me of the game Repton (space ship game C=64) with the scrolling world and multi-layered events. That was one of my favorite games growing up and this brings back those memories. Good job!

You've forgotten to attach them. Oops, looks like I missed a step. For some reason after choosing a file you have to click a few more buttons? I think I fixed it? Looks like a great start. A suggestion. It would be nice to setup smooth vertical scrolling. I know I've seen other bB games do it. Not sure what it would take to make each side do it individualy though.