phillip_roberts

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it." - Ishmael (Moby Dick)

1.) I only stated that IF I were to, NOT that I was going to. 2.) If anything comes out of this, anything at all relative to the contrary I myself will be pleasantly surprised. But, again - it's all in fun. 😉 Star Raiders wasn't a bad game at all.

HardWork promised an impossible feat based on his lack of knowledge of the 2600 & his non existent programming abilities. IF I end up doing this, I won't promise everything that the nutcase exclaimed he'd put into the "game". Pac-Man?! nope. The HardWork design docs are all over the place & nearly gave me a headache trying to decipher what in the hell he was actually wanting to do. Kinkos should & would have absolutely nothing to do with this, at all. PERIOD.

IF I do decide to tackle this project.

I am considering taking on this project. I do have experience coding in 6502 assembly & have taken the time to learn to program for the 2600. I did develop a moving background(within a six month period) back in 2021, I intended on programming a "driving" game but did not go any further & just used what I had created as a "learning tool". However, IF I were to tackle this project: I would program it in batari basic, all the fancy bells & whistles that "HardWork" spouted all those years ago would not be included, as far as licensing goes - applicable agreements could be reached & I would have no projected release date(nor would I make one up for arguments sake).

I fail to understand how this upgrade will even combat today's standard machines as in terms of graphics, sound, quality operation, etc. We have no working prototype being demonstrated for the general public, plus - Commodore International & USA both cease to exist, but the remaining IP holders would get their cut of profit if any is made at all from this 'project'. If this does take off & it succeeds, then more power to the people putting this together.

After looking at the various screenshots & sprite demos.. there is nothing that proper time, planning, & dedication can do to a project on the VCS. The system itself is not limited, only the developer. PERIOD. The cartridge could hold a 6 bit project & would operate fine. Your television is a large portion of it & considering today's television sets - the power behind them with the VCS system outbeats today's 'interactive film players' that we call, Consoles. Again, NOTHING is entirely impossible.. only if you limit yourself in what you set to showcase, especially on the VCS.

It depends on the mood I am in & where I am at in production.

If you don't have any faith in a product such as the VCS 2600 that is still going strong in the gaming world, then WHY do you contribute your opinions to this board? People still buy games for the system. I get that many homebrew developers are just in it for fun & that's cool but if you are 'selling' these things as well, then look to market your product & at least make the most out of what you can get for your labor.

Such rage in this post. If the Commodore 64 can make it's comeback like it is, I am certain that even through the years that homebrew development has been going on which has been since 1976, mind you.. I can see people making a swift profit off of their VCS 2600 creations. Again, if they own the rights to what they make AND they have a stellar backing & support.. should be fine. It may be a hobby for some & for some it could be more than that, again.. everyone has a career aside from this stuff & I am sure of that but the possibility of extra income or something more than that is always good to shoot for.

If I can add into this discussion: All points made were on spot, but I want to add that IF you decide to venture down the road of making a game based on a TV program or Movie.. you should get the written consent of the copyright owners themselves & have some kind of an outline to give to them to showcase your game's outline & so forth. Once production is completed & the game has been tested.. from a legal standpoint you'd have to split profit between you & the copyright holder(s). I would say take 30% profit & give the remaining 70% to the copyright holder(s). Other than that, you should be good to go from that aspect.

I honestly believe that the VCS 2600 should be the only game system in existence to this day & I the reason say that is because today's games are all about high quality graphics & lack any decent if not sensible game play. If you can at least draw decently & program it to do what you want it to & it works, then it should sell. With that aside, I don't plan to make it rich IF I were to ever decide to develop a game for the VCS 2600 as I would leave all that up the consumer. The consumer sees the VCS 2600 as a box that allows two dots & a line, based on today's generation of consoles however what I have seen come out of the homebrew in recent years shows me that the developers of that timeframe basically rushed to put out their product rather than carefully designing it, knowing that yes they believed they had very little 'memory' to work with which would come to light that they were wrong, again from what I have seen in the past few years with homebrew projects. I know all that & no I would not do any de-makes of any of today's 'games' or should I say 'interactive films'.

How does one sell their creation for the VCS, without legal repercussion?