espire8

I'll be watching as much of the 8 hours. I like animation especially by student projects. Thanks for the link!

Hey Darrell, amazing progress! This slick kernel you put together with the list of what it can do just got me into thinking as well. I know the use of two sprites pieced together for that fancy explosion was not practical to use in the new reboot of Frantic, and I must admit to myself that I do miss the novelty of that explosion affect. But concerning the player now being able to shift right/left on any scanline in this new kernal may present a possibility to bring back the fancy explosion. I suppose as was done to the rocks in Space rocks, I can use that same trick to mimick the fancy explosion into a single sprite and use the shifting method to preserve the same "wide" look to it and retain most of the visal likeness and color. I'm not sure how much processing time this would use up as I do understand this may get in the way of how you're trying to free up as much time and space for the in-game speech which takes priority over all else, but what do you think of the revamped explosion idea?

I've experienced the same. It's quite comical to say the least! I'd leave it in.

hehe...Just read your reply here right after I PMed you. Yeah, that's a better option, OPTION looks like a winner!

You can fit the word SPECIAL by cutting out a letter in the word SHIELDS to SHIELD in the singular. Seems I can't post attachments in the blog, so I'll PM you the altered screen shot sample.

First download! Man, the mines are a real challenge now! Much, much better! It's the best of both Asteriods and Deluxe in one game! So well done!

Thanks for this update! All the additions are great! The rematerializing ship is awesome! even with your place holder it does make a world of difference for the game play! Can't wait for when Nathan's updated graphics are in place!

Been playing this a lot without friction option and tried using the classic cheat of leaving one asteriod on screen and just constantly thrust while picking off ufos. It works for the most part and I love the continued momentum. Just to note that the player ship's top speed is not as fast as arcade asteriods. I think the arcade's top speed is about double what space rocks is currently. I also think using invulnerability for 1 sec after hypersace will make it too easy for the cheating technique and if a player were to constantly hyperspace. I also like how the player's next ship can respawn in different areas instead of only dead center. In FIGHT mode, that will keep the rival player (and respawning player) guessing where it may appear without the other player tying to snipe a shot by firing towards the center during a respawn. The best way I feel hyperspace respawn were handled was in Vectrec's built-in Mine Storm game. The reverse explosion affect was very good eye candy as well as helping the player see for 1 sec where the ship will reappear while being immune and not able to control the ship until it fully rematerialized. Too bad no continued momentum were present, but Space rocks may have an opprotunity to build on that idea. Worth a thought maybe.

I did liked the continued momentum at first because it was radicaly different. Sort of adds to the risk of using hyperspace too often as a cheating technique as is often done in the arcade version, but that feature may not be for everybody. But the idea of tying it in as an option along with the FRICTION selection sounds awesome! One other solution came to my mind that may help reduce the chance of a wipe out while keeping the momentum in there is having the ship re-materialize when coming out of hyperspace. Like the way it's done for the ship in Defender, using a reversed animated explosion converging to where the ship will reappear for about 1 second before it comes out of hypersdpace with continued momentum. That may help players spot their ship in time to take evasive action to avoid collision with an asteriod. Sort of adds to the intensity of that "narrow escape" adrenilin which I think would be way cool!

This keeps getting better.. love the new ufo design! I also like how when I get hit by enemy fire from UFOs, my next ship respawns while the UFO is still on screen, giving me another chance to take revenge on the bandit! Unlike the atari version that forced you to wait until the UFO left the screen and made it's escape. One thing that does bother me in this build however is discovering when I enter into hyperspace after thrusting, my ship continues it's momentrum when I come out of hyperspace. At first I thouhght "Cool!" But then I often get killed because I don't catch where my ship is at in time before colliding with a rock. Might have been cool if I can activate my shield to avoid that kind of wipe out, but that's not available together with hyperspace. I think it's best to have the ship come out of hyperspace in standing position instead.

Played the updated build. The new 2x large rocks look better now. I see you implemented the temporary immunity from the 7800 version along with the competitive mode. Good idea! That would help during competitive mode so players won't get snuffed out immediately when their next ship comes into play.

Very well done for a test I'd say. I'm not sure if Random's comment is refering to both shifted and non-shifted rocks but I do see a vast improvement between the two on many of the still frames (I'd post some example snap shots - but there seems to be no way to post them here ). Although the shifted rocks have 24 positions compared to 32 for the non, there's barely any noticable difference in the number of positions while both rocks are rotating at the same frame rate as I see it. I would suggest that the rotation frame rate for some of the rocks be speeded up because it does help eliminate any noticable difference in the number of positions, and those rocks will look and animate so much smoother too.

Will co-op have a competitive mode too? As in the 7800 version where both players are able to blast one another?

I had a short comicbook story idea I started to draft out some 5 years ago for a vcs homebrew game by Spiceware called "Medieval Mayhem". It never got off the ground tho because a boxed game wasn't possible to make a pack-in with. And I was already busy with animating the dragon graphics and designing the label and manual, so there wasn't any time either before it's release. I just saw your art specs and I do like your style. It looks close to what I did on the label. I'd keep you in mind to contribute for an 8-page story as I was thinking of revisiting the comic book pack-in idea for a homebrew sequel to MM - if that should ever happen.

Hmm.. that sounds like a good approach. The humanoid is presently a couple lines taller than the robots. Darrell, if you like, I can look into updating the humanoid sheet if you want to do a test build to use that idea. I'll also see about updating some sheets to use fewer frames if the need arise to have the voice back, - which was the original goal anyway. A couple of lines do account for the bounce. I'll see about reducing that affect along with Darrell's idea.

I've just included a binary of the gfx hack in the first post that you may enjoy the game. Thanks!

Quite frankly, even I don't know how many XM games GroovyBee got going at once. But I can say that you've got nothing to worry about if at least one were remotely fun. There's at least two XM games I know will be a blast to play. I can assure you because two of the games, apart from providing the graphics, I've been able to play test for Mark and you definitely won't be disappointed! The secrecy is to make for a surprise similar to how holiday game carts were released in the past.

Thanks KevinMos3. That's a neat thread you put together. I didn't know you were involved with the hack, I like how you kept the eyes on the aliens as two pixels instead of a straight line as I've done. Feel free to use the player ship design in your version too. Nukey has been a tremendous help with how the game has come to be at present compared to when first initiated. I also like what you did with Adventure Enchanced! Great job! Heh.. I remember that black bat I did a long while ago for 2600 Adventure 2 - or was it 3?, but never got around to even start it because there were things impossible to do back then that I alone would never have hope for. I think it's awesome other people has taken the game to new heights and I'm happy to see my bat found a place in your hack. I'll have to keep a watch in that thread.

Thanks!

I wanted to try my hand at sprucing up the graphics for this 2600 galaxian hack. It's my attempt to work around the flagship issue Nukey Shay described in his Galaxian-Expanded thread (which I bumped up after missing it for almost a year!). I've redrawn all the aliens including all the in-flight attacking positions and altered the player's ship to better match the arcade. The left pic is how the graphics looked before worked on. The middle show my alterations. The right is the arcade version to compare. This is as close as to arcade perfect the alien graphics can be as far as this goes. I've yet to see how the colors look on real hardware connected to a standard TV, so the bottom row of aliens may be too dark, in which case I'll brighten it up if need be. I want to make sure the colors are bright enough to show up clearly even thru an RF signal. I don't have the binary ready to post yet. I'm presently waiting on a hack request to this game from Nukey so I can include it in the binary with the new graphics before I post it here later. Update: Here's a binary with just the flagship fix and alternative alien graphic changes. Galaxian-Expanded_gfx-hack_espire8(NTSC).bin The double-size ship for "A" difficulty is not in this tho. Nukey may post an update if this feature is ever added later.

Hi Nukey. I just stummbled onto this old thread. Get hack! I love it! I was also looking into the issue you mentioned of the flagship and thought I would try to see if I could try some pixel alterations that might help. Meanwhile, as a hack request, can you have the ship double-sized along with the missile width too? I prefer the narrow shots with the normal ship on "B" difficulty and wide shots and wide ship on "A". Makes a neat trade-off for using wide shots on the enemies while becoming a bigger target as well, like it is done in atari space invaders.

Not at all. I used the exact same number of lines and width for the new explosions. However, as KevinMos3 mentioned, I also noticed how difficult it were while play testing. As it can't be the size, maybe it's the explosion's duration. There's 13 frames for the new as compared to the placeholder's 4 frames. The idea of the last 2 frames not harming the player sound good, but those last 2 frames are such a small portion of the rest of the 11 frames that there may not be much of a difference. I'd propose speeding up the frame rate of the first 4 or 5 frames (2x) and leave the remaining frames at it's current rate (3x) so the explosion won't stay on the screen for a long enough duration that a player won't run into it so often as when shooting at close range. Point blank range, by the way, always were and will be fatal -.

Hard to believe that was 6 years ago. And this is only my second time working with Spiceware homebrew. Time sure has flown by. Time to set the clock back an hour!

Thanks.. those screen shots were from the first draft of graphics I prepared earlier. The latest binary has a newer revision of the special objects graphics with twice the resolution and more detail which looks far better than the first.

That could be. I'm not sure about others, but I so much like the new changes thou. But I'll be play testing it more. The only bug I found with the latest build is the title screen when restarting a game. There's 'garbage' where the text should be after I press the button, but the selection still functions as it should - continuing on the same level. The splits also are working well.