Popeye...Missing Sea Hag Question

[StephenJ]

I have a question for the 2600 programmers in regards to Popeye.

Although I think the programmers did an excellent job in capturing the feel of the arcade, I was curious about the missing Sea Hag.

Is the system so tapped out by the program that even just a portion of a static Sea Hag image could not be displayed when the bottles fly?

I did a search of the various Popeye hacks...but none of them addressed this issue.

No complaints...I like the game...just curious.

 

Thanks,

Stephen

Edited March 13, 2018 by StephenJ

[+SpiceWare]

player0 = Popeye and Olive Oyl, not flickered as they're vertically separated.

 

player1 = Brutus and all the falling objects (hearts, notes, etc). These flicker all the time.

 

Most likely they didn't draw Sea Hag with player1 due to how much flicker was already occurring.

 

As for why not flicker player 0, probably lack of resources (RAM & ROM) that would have been needed to add flicker logic for player0.

[StephenJ]

Hi SpiceWare,

Thanks for the explanation...I think I've got the idea (kind of).

Forgive the uneducated question, but could a static image be incorporated in the background somehow?

 

All the best,

Stephen

[+SpiceWare]

Looks like there might be enough time to draw something with the playfield, but it'd look really crappy.

[StephenJ]

"...there might be enough time to draw something with the playfield, but it'd look really crappy..."

Understood.

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply,

Stephen

[StanJr]

This is likely why we no get the vulture on the ship level also.