Castlevania for Intellivision - actual gameplay

[rjchamp3]

Looks great sign me up

[masschamber]

Since most of the game simon only have 4 hits, as long as you give any indicator of that and the game play will won't be hurt.

Is there anyway you could increase sub weapon sprite size or damage to allow the sub weapon multipliers to work in the game?

anyway if you make physical copies of this, sign me up immediately, it looks great

Edited October 21, 2018 by masschamber

[TrekMD]

Wow, this looks amazing!

[+grips03]

Game looks so good. I'm surprised to see how capable the Intellivision is.

[CharonPDX]

Its amazing how few Inty games have full-color backgrounds. This looks like it belongs in the NES era for sure!

 

At this point, I think the only thing good programmers CANT do to the Inty is add more resolution!

[masschamber]

Its amazing how few Inty games have full-color backgrounds. This looks like it belongs in the NES era for sure!

 

At this point, I think the only thing good programmers CANT do to the Inty is add more resolution!

yeah it does seem like the intellivisions hardware is actually better than the original designers realized

[mr_me]

Well, the original Intellivision programmers were limited to 4k rom cartridges. Now we're talking cartridges over 10x that size.

[+JasonlikesINTV]

Very impressive! Feel free to continue down the Konami line after this is completed I'd love to see Inty ports of Contra, Life Force, Metal Gear

[+the1hatman]

Very impressive! Feel free to continue down the Konami line after this is completed I'd love to see Inty ports of Contra, Life Force, Metal Gear

 

Contra would be a ton of fun and Metal Gear was in my top 3 for NES games, so if I got to play it on Intellivision that would be amazing.

[+JasonlikesINTV]

Oh, and fingers crossed for Metroid

[CharonPDX]

Well, the original Intellivision programmers were limited to 4k rom cartridges. Now we're talking cartridges over 10x that size.

 

And while the original console was very RAM-limited, even that can be added to cartridges.

 

And we have the "flicker effect" to add colors that aren't Intellivsion-native.

 

Really, CPU cycles and resolution are the only major limitations that can't be gotten around...

[mr_me]

The eight total sprites is a big limitation. I can't get use to multiplexing flicker.

[masschamber]

The eight total sprites is a big limitation. I can't get use to multiplexing flicker.

yeah, but 8 sprites is a really good count for 79, the intellivision 3 and 4 both sure are interesting because an intellivision with more ram, a faster cpu, double the resolution and more sprites would be amazing.

[skywaffle]

I am very impressed with what the Intellivision can do, especially for 1979. The hardware scrolling just sets it apart from everything else; Compared to other consoles of the time, like the Odyssey 2, and Bally Astrocade, the Intellivision feels like it has aged rather well. The smooth hardware scrolling really stood out in many games.

 

yeah, but 8 sprites is a really good count for 79, the intellivision 3 and 4 both sure are interesting because an intellivision with more ram, a faster cpu, double the resolution and more sprites would be amazing.

[skywaffle]

While playing around with ideas of what to make while initially trying to understand IntyBASIC, Gradius was something I really wanted to see. I am just not sure how doable it would be. I am sure you could restrict options/multiples and cut down things to make it work though. The biggest issue I see is working with 8x16 maximum resolution sprites. Horizontal shmups just won't look very good with a double wide 8 pixel ship. Although maybe one day; I had made some mockups while toying with the idea of a shmup, and would be curious to see some more effort put in.

 

 

Very impressive! Feel free to continue down the Konami line after this is completed I'd love to see Inty ports of Contra, Life Force, Metal Gear

[+JasonlikesINTV]

I guess that rules out LifeForce too.

[skywaffle]

I think having two player cooperative play in Life Force would make things very difficult to achieve with good results. I would think certain compromises could be made, but two ships, missiles, bullets, options would use most of the sprites. Multiplexing would help on things like bullets and missiles; even the NES game did that extensively. Bosses could be done in a similar fashion to the NES port as well (using the backtab for the boss graphics and scrolling to create movement). Power ups and even specific enemies could likely be done just using the backtab.

[masschamber]

I think having two player cooperative play in Life Force would make things very difficult to achieve with good results. I would think certain compromises could be made, but two ships, missiles, bullets, options would use most of the sprites. Multiplexing would help on things like bullets and missiles; even the NES game did that extensively. Bosses could be done in a similar fashion to the NES port as well (using the backtab for the boss graphics and scrolling to create movement). Power ups and even specific enemies could likely be done just using the backtab.

I wouldn't worry about it right now, your doing great work on castlevania. If you deliver it will be one of the most impressive games on the system

[mr_me]

I am very impressed with what the Intellivision can do, especially for 1979. The hardware scrolling just sets it apart from everything else; Compared to other consoles of the time, like the Odyssey 2, and Bally Astrocade, the Intellivision feels like it has aged rather well. The smooth hardware scrolling really stood out in many games.

 

I agree about the hardware scrolling. [it also distinguishes intellivision from colecovision.] Feel free to add vertical scrolling to this game. Edited October 29, 2018 by mr_me

[Zendocon]

On 10/21/2018 at 11:52 AM, skywaffle said:

When I think of classic Intellivision games, I always remember games like Mission X where the score would scroll past the screen, or Super Cobra. I was even thinking back to AD&D Cloudy Mountain, where the number of arrows are represented by audible clicks. They really thought of interesting compromises when dealing with the hardware. Somehow I overlooked Bump N Jump. Looking at that, it seems as if they are using at least 7 sprites for the cars, and road hazard indicator, but can't understand how they managed to position 3 digits in a stationary position with everything else going on.

 

The border color is something I had not thought of, but will definitely look into that too.

The 8 sprites in Bump 'N Jump are:

First 3, your car

Next 4, opposing cars

Last one, hazard indicator

This game uses the Executive ROM, so you can poke "3" to address $104 after the game starts to disable the opposing cars, at the expense of having no hazard indicator.  Makes for a different challenge.

 

As for the speedometer, it's drawing the digits in the top 2 rows each frame, offset by the vertical scroll value that frame.  Notice how the background beneath it doesn't appear right away as it scrolls.

[skywaffle]

So in Bump 'N Jump, they would have to use four grams that are being redefined for each shifted set of numbers on each display update?   Would that also mean that they would have also stored 14 bitmaps of each digit to reflect every scrolling offset (excluding position 0)?  I was not sure if there was some other way to offset bitmaps dynamically.

[Kiwi]

I think how Bump and Jump did it that each numbers are stored in ROM like,
 

scroll0a:
BITMAP "........"
BITMAP "........"
scroll0b:
BITMAP "........"
BITMAP "........"
scroll0c:
BITMAP "........"
BITMAP "........"
scroll0d:
BITMAP "........"
BITMAP "........"
scroll0e:
BITMAP "..00000."
BITMAP ".00...00"
scroll0f:
BITMAP ".000..00"
BITMAP ".00.0.00"
scroll0g:
BITMAP ".00..000"
BITMAP ".00...00"
scroll0h:
BITMAP "..00000."
BITMAP "........"

Since graphics are taken by pair, there's probably another copy with offset in ROM. So this is probably one way to make graphic element stationary when scrolling vertically.