Repton for atari 2600

[+grafixbmp]

Back when I was a kid, I had a vast collection of commodore 64 computers and an equaly vast colection of games and other software. One game that always entertained me was repton. this is a side scrolling space style shooter. Your vessel looked like an upside-down key which you flew around defending your base. Actualy, this was very similar to defender but with an extended story. sections of the city were being stollen by your enemy to build a base. this base always shot missles at your when you flew across. THe entire game was able to do so much with the commodore because it only used multicolor bitmap and changed it all on the fly.

 

I think that a bankswitched version could be done for the 2600. There was definately alot going on on the screen but I think most of the gameplay could be transfered over to the atari. I plan on doing some mock screens and I already have a few ideas. THis game also had some good AI too. this may be harder to create. I can post some of the original screens for thoes who do not know of the game.

 

I would like some kernal layouts for sidescrolling a looping terain of blocks. I am hoping to brainstorm on the game design with others who are intrested in this game THis could in some ways blow away either of the original defender games.

GO!

 

Here is a tribute site detailing all the ins and outs of this game

http://www.jeffbots.com/c64/repton.html

 

I finaly did a demo mock-up of a basic layout. As far as I can tell, the mid and upper parts of the screen can be devoted to all sprite type graphics. and in order to acheive more characters on scree, The 2 missles can be used as some rather detailed graphics if you reposition their horizontal position with the fin tuning and compensating for lag in display then widen the missles and change the color. I opted out for a double width on the player sprites and a 2 line repeat of the sprites. this should give more room to do graphic calculations and adjustments. the only thing the background is used for is your gun and the dyne discharge (1 or 2 scanlines of the backgroiund)

 

Here is the sorta mockup. I didn't try for stars or much business on screen. just to churn some attention.

repton_atari_2600.bmp

Edited December 16, 2007 by grafixbmp

[Joe Stella]

that would be very cool.

 

i remember this game very well from my atari 8-bit days.

[Rybags]

Repton on the C-64 was a bit of a let-down.

 

Just too slow - about as slow as the 800 version when it experienced slowdown due to lots of on-screen objects.

[cd-w]

I think that a bankswitched version could be done for the 2600. There was definitely a lot going on on the screen but I think most of the gameplay could be transfered over to the atari. I plan on doing some mock screens and I already have a few ideas. THis game also had some good AI too. this may be harder to create. I can post some of the original screens for those who do not know of the game.

 

It is a good idea, but quite hard to achieve on the 2600. There are two similar projects on the 2600 that are worth looking at:

• NotBD (Boulderdash clone) - complete, but unreleased.
  
• Ruby Runner - currently incomplete.
  

IIRC - NotBD uses only the Playfield (PF), while Ruby Runner uses multi-sprite tricks. Both require additional hardware, which provides extra RAM over the standard 128bytes.

 

Chris

Edited December 12, 2007 by cd-w

[Cybergoth]

Could you possibly be confusing Repton with Rockford? Repton is AFAIK a Defender-Style Shmup

[cd-w]

Could you possibly be confusing Repton with Rockford? Repton is AFAIK a Defender-Style Shmup

 

My mistake - I didn't actually follow the links above. I was thinking of this other Repton game.

 

Chris

Edited December 13, 2007 by cd-w

[+grafixbmp]

Could you possibly be confusing Repton with Rockford? Repton is AFAIK a Defender-Style Shmup

What he was thinking of I believe was this Repton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repton_(computer_game)

[+grafixbmp]

I went ahead and layed out the labeling of the sprites and which ones work for the difrent items (atleast what is on the screen) I don't care about the stars. They woulds just take up unecessary screen data anyway. Here is the same pic as above but with added bullets and labels. Maybe this can give a proper idea what I had in mind.

repton_atari_2600sprite_breakdown.bmp