Plotmapfile fun with Mario and Shantae tiles

[+sgrddy]

Just a couple of static screens I made with the Tiled app, GIMP, and 7800 Basic.

I initially redrew the Mario tiles, but then used ones already ripped/compiled (by Beam, Luinsir, Yosho and Zeon).

I had to modify the Shantae tiles (credit Gussprint) because those tiles had too many colors, so they had to be simplified.

 

I had tried 6502 assembly a few years ago, and it took me like weeks/months of reading before I could put a dot on the screen. So, 7800 Basic is really pretty amazing to me.

 

I was also inspired by the 7800 Basic scrolling demos that others had made. I hope that I can figure out how to combine those techniques with using plotmapfile, so screens can be much more colorful.

 

Given daily demands of life, that could take me awhile.

 

Regards all.

 

 

Mario Screen.zip

shantaemap.zip

[Jinks]

Looks great!!

[+SmittyB]

What you could try next is build up a few 32 tile wide chunks of level, draw 2 of them on screen, then loop clearing the screen, draw them shifted along, then when one goes off the screen start drawing another part of the level on the other side.

 

It won't be very fast and you might need to use double buffering to give it time to draw everything but it's an easy way to get a scrolling effect.

[+sgrddy]

What you could try next is build up a few 32 tile wide chunks of level, draw 2 of them on screen, then loop clearing the screen, draw them shifted along, then when one goes off the screen start drawing another part of the level on the other side.

 

It won't be very fast and you might need to use double buffering to give it time to draw everything but it's an easy way to get a scrolling effect.

 

Thanks for the tips. I tried these scrolling demos that others had made (link: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/235990-7800basic-horizontal-scrolling/), and they scroll very smoothly. I haven't yet investigated how they accomplished that though.

[+SmittyB]

Having had a quick look at the source it looks like the quick vertical and horizontal scrolling is just using the plotmap offset parameters to shift which tiles are displayed by the static tile map.

 

The smoother horizontal scrolling is done by drawing the tilemap increasingly to the left or right until it moves far enough where it is recentered and the tile offset is incremented. It's very similar to how the Commodore 64 does smooth scrolling.

 

The downside to both methods being so simple is that because the screen is drawn as one large tilemap object all tiles have to share the same palette.

To get the different palletes in your first screenshot the screen is drawn as multiple objects, though I don't know the specifics of how 7800BASIC handles it, so it would take a lot more work then incrementing an X position in a map.

[+sgrddy]

I hope it's ok to post these here as well, just some 320B plotmapfile attempts for other newbs like myself.

 

Edit: The basic source and Tiled files as well as other files created during compilation and during the Tiled image import process are now included in the .zip files below.

 

pmgng320B.bas.a78

inxs320B.bas.a78

GnG320B.zip

INXS320B.zip

Edited August 22, 2017 by sgrddy

[DracIsBack]

It's absolutely ok! Though you need BINs

[+Trebor]

It's absolutely ok! Though you I need BINs

 

FTFY

 

inxs320B.bas.bin

pmgng320B.bas.bin

[DracIsBack]

FDLFUAE

 

(Thanks for the bins)

[+sgrddy]

This screen is an example with 320B using a zoneheight of 8 (instead of 16 like the above examples). I took the tiles from Ice Climber. I screwed up getting the rock tiles, so I didn't use those. This screen is just using the one palette also. It would seem to me, that given how many colors were possible given the Froggie demo , that some similar approach could be used with this game on the 7800.

 

I tried to get plotmapfile to work with 160B, but I haven't figured that out yet.

 

The .zip has all the files including the Tiled map, .bin, .bas, .A78, etc.

 

Regards all.

ice climber.zip

[+sgrddy]

Just an example of what Mario 2 could have looked like on the 7800. In this example you can move Mario around, but he isn't really animated. He can sort of jump alkwardly if you press one of the fire buttons. There isn't any scrolling or anything.

mario2.bas.a78

mario2.bas.bin

Edited October 4, 2017 by sgrddy

[+Atarius Maximus]

Love your samples, sgrddy. Nice work!

[Tidus79001]

WOW,those screenshots are amazing! The drawlines look cleaner on the 7800 than those from the real SMB2 game on the NES. I am blown away seeing the 7800 do this. It would be great to have a full SMB2 game on the 7800, but I know this was just a demo of the graphics on the 7800 and not an intent to recreate the game on the 7800.

[+sgrddy]

Love your samples, sgrddy. Nice work!

 

 

WOW,those screenshots are amazing! The drawlines look cleaner on the 7800 than those from the real SMB2 game on the NES. I am blown away seeing the 7800 do this. It would be great to have a full SMB2 game on the 7800, but I know this was just a demo of the graphics on the 7800 and not an intent to recreate the game on the 7800.

 

Thanks guys.

 

[Tidus79001]

I know that this is just a graphics demo but can't help but wish that you or someone else would recreate the full SMB2 game on the 7800. Just seeing this on the 7800 is blowing my mind. Never did I truly image that the 7800 was capable of a proper platformer such as SMB2. This just proves how much wasted potential that the 7800 had. If it weren't from the Tramiel's mismanagement of Atari maybe things would have turned out differently.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Tidus79001

[Jinks]

That smb2 does look amazing!! Did I say that already?

[Jinks]

I know that this is just a graphics demo but can't help but wish that you or someone else would recreate the full SMB2 game on the 7800. Just seeing this on the 7800 is blowing my mind. Never did I truly image that the 7800 was capable of a proper platformer such as SMB2. This just proves how much wasted potential that the 7800 had. If it weren't from the Tramiel's mismanagement of Atari maybe things would have turned out differently.

Play Bentley Bear?

[Mord]

Bentley Bear is technically a Wonder Boy type game rather than a SMB2 type game.

 

Personally if I were to attempt a platformer, I won't be touching anything Nintendo would just up and C&D once it's near completion.

[Tidus79001]

Bentley Bear is technically a Wonder Boy type game rather than a SMB2 type game.

 

Personally if I were to attempt a platformer, I won't be touching anything Nintendo would just up and C&D once it's near completion.

Yeah, I thought about that as well. As an alternative to SMB2 I think Psycho Fox would be a wonderful game for the Atari 7800 and no one is going to sue over that game. Psycho Fox was a underrated game on the Sega Master System that was a lot of fun to play and it would be such a delight to have it on the Atari 7800.

 

http://www.meanmachinesmag.co.uk/review/171/psycho-fox.php

 

Edited October 5, 2017 by Tidus79001

[Inky]

Sega is more lenient with fan games, for the most part.

[Mord]

Sega is more lenient with fan games, for the most part.

 

To be "fair", it's pretty hard to be less lenient than Nintendo.

[Inky]

 

To be "fair", it's pretty hard to be less lenient than Nintendo.

Tru dat

[+sgrddy]

This is what I though Millipede on the 7800 could possibly look like. I used the tiles from the NES version of Millipede (which I quite enjoy). The screen is 160A with a zone height of 8.

 

I included a screen of 7800 Centipede for side-by-side comparison.

The .zip file has the 7800 Basic source, Tiled files, etc.

 

Note: For the other 7800 Basic newbs (like me) I had to re-embed the score.png graphic in the Tiled program after I had edited it. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why it kept using the wrong Palette, until I had done that.

millipede.bas.a78

millipede.bas.bin

Millipede 7800.zip

[peteym5]

I see the Mario pictures, and the early stuff with 7800 Basic had some Zelda graphics. You guys know Nintendo is a current, active, and powerful company. Any parody you do looking similar to their stuff cannot be sold for profit. So make up another character and have him jump on some different creatures on the screen. Use rabbits instead of turtles or something. Use different music. That is how the 2600 Princess Rescue got into trouble.

[+sgrddy]

I see the Mario pictures, and the early stuff with 7800 Basic had some Zelda graphics. You guys know Nintendo is a current, active, and powerful company. Any parody you do looking similar to their stuff cannot be sold for profit. So make up another character and have him jump on some different creatures on the screen. Use rabbits instead of turtles or something. Use different music. That is how the 2600 Princess Rescue got into trouble.

 

I wasn't intending on selling any of it. I just wanted to see what certain NES games would potentially look like on a 7800. At least for me, the graphics from those games are a good frame of reference.

I am working on my own stuff though.