Draconland - Escalator Action

RSS Bot · January 7, 2018

I never cared to play Elevator Action (proto) on 2600.
Too much unfinished (and ugly) to be minimally fun.
For years I had an idea how to implement this game on 2600, but I never had intention to port it by myself.
I actually did the concept proof kernel for another project and it worked, so finally now I decide to give a shoot at Elevator Action.

Well, the game is too much complex, and now I'm very surprised how far the prototype is. They managed to make a moving elevator with both players in "high res". Definitely a good programming work there.
My kernel looks better, but I'm cheating, not drawing the sprites saves a lot of processing time for the color changes. The doors are multi colored just to proof I can set blue and red doors at will. On proto there's a sprite making the red door, which flickers, my kernel shoud be flicker free.

Problem, even using 2 scanlines, I think I can't draw the sprites and missiles. I would need a 3 scanlines kernel for that (even more cheating).
I did 2 spites in high res on my previous attempt, but I was changing the background color, not the playfield color like here.
I need the playfield color change to be able to shoot at the lamp and makes it fall using ball, but then, I can't draw this object either.

Everything can be done with DPC+ but it is out of my scope.

As you can see, I didn't find a good solution for the escalator, I can paint it as grey or other color, but all the few cycles saved for the sprites will be gone.
And the doors can't be red at escalator floors.

Multiple elevators are possible, the problem is to code all this stuff.

I don't have plans to code the game, I don't know if I ever will add the sprites, anyway, here's the rom for you test.
Move the elevator pressing up or down.