roland p Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 An awesome project to be sure, but to be straight and to the point - I like some of the older playfields better. They had a nicer feel to them. I'm personally not too concerned with staying "authentic" and period-memory-size-correct and all that. It will look better when the gamelogic is included. It is not only about authentihc, but more about keeping things simple and creating only what you really need. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaGtGruff Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 If you want to stick to the original limits, you can't go above 2k. I don't know about that. Although the first games were only 2K, the machine was designed for 4K cartridges. You could even say that 2K cartridges were abnormal to the design, since one of the address lines on the cartridge had to be specially hardwired so the machine would take a 2K cartridge without choking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 Let me phrase it another way, back in the day there were a few things from Activision, CBS, Starpath, and others; that added some kind of hardware to do a few special tricks and instructions or add some memory. There is no reason why an arm processor or dedicated FPGA or some modern day chip can't be made to act like it was designed in the 1980's; with the express purpose of adding a few instructions or memory or something. To me, the cartridge slot was all about expansion, whether it be software Game Programs, or more advanced hardware. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 You did the hard part: The best horizontal scrolling —three color clock accuracy — vertical scrolling playfield using only the Background color! The game is the easy part: Two player soccer, although in "2D-3D" Kills me to know that this fun game with so much "wow factor" was programmed as a quick demo game test! My favorite parts were the buzzing and pushing the ball from your opponent, shooting without seeing the goal posts and scoring, the fact that when you get the ball you automatically face the other's goal posts, the music, and because I bought the A800 floppy disk, the animation playing while the game loaded from disk. Also I like how it doesn't have a number score, just a countdown timer and arrows for goals (difficulty based). The parts I didn't like about BallBlazer was if you were playing another person, you couldn't handicap your game play to keep it fair. I would easily beat friends who hadn't played it much. Keep the game simple, and the options complex. Ideas: Allow bumping ball from opponent? Y/N Allow diagonal shots to goal? Y/N Craft Speed? Slow / Medium / Fast or numerical Shot Strength? Weak / Strong or numerical Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PFL Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 ^ I agree with every word. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 You did the hard part: The best horizontal scrolling —three color clock accuracy — vertical scrolling playfield using only the Background color! The game is the easy part: Two player soccer, although in "2D-3D" No never programmed for the 2600, did you? The kernel is the most interesting part. Usually creating a challenging kernel is a lot of fun. But finalizing a game around this, that's the Hard WorkTM. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enthusi Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 I second that. The engine might be the technical marvel, but the game-design is what takes the extra hours. 80% of a game is done in 20% of the time (or even 90:10). I have half a dozen (come to think of it, its closer to a full dozen) engines written without finding the time/energy/motivation/interest to finish them into a polished, tested and tuned game. That's also why there are SO many ports these days. At least the major issue of proper game-play design is skipped then. So for this endeavor I wish you all the momentum it needs 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindog Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 I second that. The engine might be the technical marvel, but the game-design is what takes the extra hours. This is a game that's already been designed, though, 30 years ago. It's not game design, per se, it's cramming an existing design into 128 bytes of RAM, 76 cycles per line, etc. Ballblazer on the 2600 is both a port and a demake. I agree that the most gratifying part of writing a 2600 game is getting the kernel going, which is why my own lame attempt at a Ballblazer clone never really went anywhere after that (I never even got as far as things like ball or rotofoil scaling). But there was no game design to do, and frankly, Ballblazer's actual gameplay is so basic that it was tedious to implement. Not hard, just tedious. Gameplay-wise, it's a tarted-up Pong variant where your paddle can move across the whole field and the goals move. It was way more fun as a tech demo than as a work-in-progress game. For me, the remaining big, interesting challenge in Ballblazer, after prematurely giving up on making it look like what Roland eventually did -- I was using cheats like pre-rendering 8 frames of playfield in POVray and resizing down to 40x50, minus the horizontal lines which I implemented with hand-computed lists of color swapping intervals, but it never got smooth enough for my liking and then a douchebag from this forum made an empty legal threat over Pac-Man which cemented my burnout -- was implementing the procedurally generated music with only 2 voices. I did like the solid, larger, partially anti-aliased playfield of the 32K version much better than the 4K version, but props to Roland for overcoming burnout and starting fresh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enthusi Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 Oh damn! I kinda missed that it turned into 4k. I am all into that! If its for the A2600, then it better be 4K (imho). Limit yourself to that and you have less issues with huge amounts of gfx to be designed Oh and yes, much more time spent on coding I think but well, that's why we're doing this after all I guess... All the best for this new approach! And yes, as I mentioned, many things can be skipped when doing a port of some sort. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 (edited) I now have put the physics engine back in (acceleration, friction and rotofoil>border collision). This is the optimised version which is a little bit less precise but still very good. I also gave the border some nice colors because the kernel is able to draw different colored tiles And I changed the first line of the checkerboard kernel a bit so more tiles are shown. I also optimised the code a bit so it occupies less rom. Still 2517 bytes free so far. It's now time to show the rotofoil again. ballblazer 20130829.bin ballblazer lite 20130829.zip Edited August 29, 2013 by roland p 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 Looking much better! Questions: 1- is the friction the same in all directions? Because I sense that the rotofoil comes to a quicker stop when it is/was moving in the backwards or left directions. When moving forward or right, it seems to coast a little longer. 2- What do you think marketing plans are for this? I mean cartridge? or rom? Both? 3- in layman's terms, what are those diagonal black lines? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted August 30, 2013 Share Posted August 30, 2013 1. You're right! I didn't notice, but initializing speeds in opposite directions for the different playfields seems to give different results. 2. I've not planned anything. 3. Placeholders for the sprites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted August 30, 2013 Share Posted August 30, 2013 If you don't finish the game you can always turn it into an impressive demo. Just add a scroller at the top plus some techno music and move around in sync to that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 Even though I've been "out" of the hobby for the most part, there are a few long projects I've wanted to follow along, and this is one of them. The updates trailed off last year. Is this still going to be finished? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 Even though I've been "out" of the hobby for the most part, there are a few long projects I've wanted to follow along, and this is one of them. The updates trailed off last year. Is this still going to be finished?Wow, time really flies... Another year has passed. I remember I was very busy a year ago working (every holiday I had to take my laptop with me) and I still am. When I have some spare time I'm not very motivated to work on ballblazer... But it is also a shame to say the project goodbye. In august my oldest son turns 6 and that's how I remember the length of this project IF I continue, it will be the lightest kernel I will continue with. See previous 'lite' binary. KISS is what I've learned from these ballblazer kernels. Everything that looks better that the simplest will consume more RAM, Cycles etc. Also, the simplest kernel fits best 'in my head'. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 This is the ultimate "should not be possible" game for Atari 2600! Since you have shown the impossible, I hope you find the motivation to continue. I know us consumers and gamers are interested!!! I wish other assembly programmers were just as interested, and that a "team" could work on it together like Stay Frosty 2 and Star Castle Arcade. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 (edited) My wife briefly expressed interest while I was fine tuning "Atari 800 Emulator 3.0.0" to a new TV/monitor we got. I happened to have Ballblazer going and I was getting the color palette just right and she asked if they ever finished the VCS version. And here I am checking up on it. And I don't doubt her technical prowess to take up the lead if I could get her interested in it. But before I try setting those wheels in motion I wanted to get the pulse of others, especially roland. Edited July 23, 2014 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bugbiter Posted September 22, 2014 Share Posted September 22, 2014 Oh, please, just please pleeeaaase continue! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted November 8, 2014 Share Posted November 8, 2014 (edited) IF I continue, it will be the lightest kernel I will continue with. See previous 'lite' binary. KISS is what I've learned from these ballblazer kernels. Everything that looks better that the simplest will consume more RAM, Cycles etc. Also, the simplest kernel fits best 'in my head'.Ok, I've worked a little bit on it and did the following: - Used the simplest checkerboard kernel (as in the above 'lite' kernel) - Adapted the version of the old sprite routine so it works better now. It uses my old 8x8 bit multiply routine, which returns the high 8 bit as a result. This in itself was not sufficient, but now I change the multiplier and multiplicand, depending on the Z3d distance (far objects can be further in the X3d direction, close objects are closer in the X3d direction). I'm surprised about the precision and the positioning is as good as the bloated version in the 32K variant, which used 2K of lookup tables. Calculating of a 2d coordinate takes now about 300 cycles. - At the moment, the opposing 'rotofoil' is now a square for simplicity. - It uses now a little under 2K rom.bin Edited November 8, 2014 by roland p 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yart Posted November 8, 2014 Share Posted November 8, 2014 YEESSSS!!!! Being subscribed to this thread and lurking it for 5+ years, I always get excited when I see new posts in my inbox. Glad to see more progress finally!! It's looking VERY good!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted November 8, 2014 Share Posted November 8, 2014 (edited) Is there a reason why the green squares have brown lines in them and the brown squares have green lines in them? Anyway, nice job that you could keep something like this under 4k! Edited November 8, 2014 by atari2600land Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdie3 Posted November 8, 2014 Share Posted November 8, 2014 Cool!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted November 8, 2014 Share Posted November 8, 2014 Its been a while since I checked out a binary for this. Its looking damn good. Keep it up! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djmips Posted November 8, 2014 Share Posted November 8, 2014 This version is pretty cool especially for less than 2K. Does it only have the one Rotofoil? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted November 8, 2014 Share Posted November 8, 2014 I kinda likes the earlier stuff with the more vibrant and solid greens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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