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A heroic weekend experiment


cmadruga

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5 hours ago, Kiwi said:

Very cool!!! 

 

H.E.R.O. is one of my favorite Atari 2600 game.  I used to come downstairs overnight and play this game when I was a kid.  I thought the guy you were recusing was reading a book down there. 

 

One detail that you might miss that you're able to blast the wall away with your laser blast, it takes a lot of shots, but that's one way to get by if you run out of bomb. 

Thanks... I do remember that feature, but it’s not implemented yet...

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3 hours ago, TIX said:

Excellent job so far,

also a favorite of mine on all platforms !

 

I recently completed a sprite hack for the Atari 8-bit version of H.E.R.O, final version here -> HERO

discussion -> https://atariage.com/forums/topic/285756-hero-sprite-hack/page/3/#comments

 

If you are interested, I will be glad to help upgrade this graphically..

 

Roderick-new.gif.b128d1b808ed4fd3a938144395354ed6.gif

Thanks for letting me know about your work, TIX!

How do you run a .xex file? I’m not used to emulating Atari 8-bit systems. Or, if there is a video uploaded somewhere...

 

I will take any help I can on graphics - just like on anything else, really. You seem to be real talented, and I’m flattered by your offer.

 

However, since I’m just dabbling with this thing, I’d hate for you to invest a lot of your time producing something, and then not seeing it incorporated because the whole thing went nowhere.

 

I’m also trying to get a read on people’s preferences towards upgrades. Not surprisingly, there seems to be a range. 

Folks in one extreme expect to see a replica of the 2600 version, which I totally get since I grew up always having to borrow someone else’s 2600 to get my HERO fix...

On the other extreme, other folks seem to be very open to all sorts of upgrades: “let’s see how far we can take it” kind of thinking. Which I also totally get.

 

I guess that means...

- If you have any immediate suggestions on cave/wall tiles that wouldn’t take too much time on your side, I would be glad to test them. 

- I would leave any detailed animation/sprite work for later.

 

Let me know your thoughts.

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2 hours ago, cmadruga said:

I guess that means...

- If you have any immediate suggestions on cave/wall tiles that wouldn’t take too much time on your side, I would be glad to test them. 

- I would leave any detailed animation/sprite work for later.

 

Let me know your thoughts.

Unfortunately Atari's was just a sprite hack.. no tiles were harmed :P

 

On the other hand it shouldn't be much of a hustle to create a couple for testing purposes..

Intelivision's tiles are 8x8 or 16x16, in 2 or 3 colors ?

 

image.png.51b43dbefc6092dcef4150753a19ac4c.png   16x16  3 colors

image.png.f59bcd9afa03d8be0c293592b9939a1a.png   16x16  2 colors 

 image.png.3e00cb1207dc37190b39fed982d3437a.png     8x8  3 colors

 image.png.4e80151144a660204a52e97a760b432a.png     8x8  2 colors

 

 

 

Edited by TIX
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Hi TIX

nice to meet you here in the Intellivision forum! Intellivision tiles are 8x8 with 2 colors. Its palette in in attach. The screen resolution is 160x96 (actually 159x96), so you have 20x12 tiles on the screen. 

If cmadruga is using Foreground/Background Mode (not sure), you can use one among the first 8 colors as foreground and any of the 16 colors as background.

Sprites are monochrome and 8x8 or 8x16. They can be stacked to get multicolor sprites, but there can be only 8(!) sprites at time on the screen.

They can have different zoom factors on X and Y axis.

On Y, they can be :

hires (where a 8x8 sprite is 4 pixel tall when compared to background tiles)

- normal resolution (a 8x8 sprite is 8 pixel tall when compared to background tiles)

- lowres (a 8x8 sprite is 16 pixel tall when compared to background tiles)

On X, they can be only

- normal resolution (a 8x8 sprite is 8 pixel wide when compared to background tiles)

- lowres (a 8x8 sprite is 16 pixel wide when compared to background tiles)

I hope this can be useful to support your graphic production for intellivision ;-)

PS

Awesome animation for the Atari's HERO, greetings!

colors_reference.bmp

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1 hour ago, artrag said:

Hi TIX

nice to meet you here in the Intellivision forum! Intellivision tiles are 8x8 with 2 colors. Its palette in in attach. The screen resolution is 160x96 (actually 159x96), so you have 20x12 tiles on the screen. 

If cmadruga is using Foreground/Background Mode (not sure), you can use one among the first 8 colors as foreground and any of the 16 colors as background.

Sprites are monochrome and 8x8 or 8x16. They can be stacked to get multicolor sprites, but there can be only 8(!) sprites at time on the screen.

They can have different zoom factors on X and Y axis.

On Y, they can be :

hires (where a 8x8 sprite is 4 pixel tall when compared to background tiles)

- normal resolution (a 8x8 sprite is 8 pixel tall when compared to background tiles)

- lowres (a 8x8 sprite is 16 pixel tall when compared to background tiles)

On X, they can be only

- normal resolution (a 8x8 sprite is 8 pixel wide when compared to background tiles)

- lowres (a 8x8 sprite is 16 pixel wide when compared to background tiles)

I hope this can be useful to support your graphic production for intellivision ;-)

PS

Awesome animation for the Atari's HERO, greetings!

Hello my friend !

 

I'm new to the Intellivision, always wanted to mess with it, so I'm here to learn and have some fun !

Thanks for all the info ;)

 

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Thanks guys, as of now I'm using Color Stack mode. Mostly because it was the default mode, and I started this experiment by using exclusively the upper grom patterns to draw the cave.

I'd be open to changing if that would be advised...

 

Would also add that I'm using the upper portion of the screen:that's 20 x 6 tiles. Seemed to make the most sense given sprite proportions. Two rows of tiles used for each section of the screen (upper, middle, lower).

(Plus a single row of tiles for the animated waves... so that's actually 20x7)

 

As of now I'm using 52 out of 64 gram cards. Have 10 available to play with (would need to reserve at least 1 for the tentacle monster, and another for the raft), plus the following that could be reworked:

 

- 2 tiles for solid blocks

- 2 for lantern

- 1 for still water (not the waves)

- 2 for small / magma walls that can be exploded

 

 

Edited by cmadruga
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Remember that GRAM can be redefined as required, so if you need some graphics on the upper half of a level and some at the bottom, possibly you could find frames along the time of playing where you can reuse positions, though it would take a little more thinking when to redefine what.

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How do you use the GRAM? For animated enemies, I would use one tile each and define their shapes on fly. The same goes for the HERO. Its animation can be loaded in GRAM on fly, but probably would need 3 tiles (one for each color).

About  lanterns, if there is always one single lanter on the screen, it could be useful to define its shape on fly when it goes off. In this way you use one single tile only.  

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Errr.. yes, I will admit that up to this point I've been wasting a lot of gram with animation frames.

If sloppy gram utilization would become a bottleneck for fancy graphics (which it will if this were to head for a C64-like level of fanciness), I'd be open for using it differently.

Edited by cmadruga
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38 minutes ago, cmadruga said:

Errr.. yes, I will admit that up to this point I've been wasting a lot of gram with animation frames.

If sloppy gram utilization would become a bottleneck for fancy graphics (which it will if this were to head for a C64-like level of fanciness), I'd be open for using it differently.

I would redefine the hero's GRAM card.  If any other graphic needs to be update in the same frame can use DEFINE ALTERNATE

And using colorstack mode, you can flash/light the entire screen by changing the colorstack colors instead of doing mass tile update doing
(lighting fuse in dark room.)
MODE 0,8,0,0,0

(bang)
MODE 0,7,0,0,0

 

Also, you can use the laser sprites from the GROM to save 1 GRAM card.

 

Edited by Kiwi
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18 hours ago, Kiwi said:

I would redefine the hero's GRAM card.  If any other graphic needs to be update in the same frame can use DEFINE ALTERNATE

And using colorstack mode, you can flash/light the entire screen by changing the colorstack colors instead of doing mass tile update doing
(lighting fuse in dark room.)
MODE 0,8,0,0,0

(bang)
MODE 0,7,0,0,0

 

Also, you can use the laser sprites from the GROM to save 1 GRAM card.

 

 

The hero is made of 4 sprites (propeller, helmet, torso, legs), and the biggest bang for the buck from dynamic GRAM allocation would definitely come from the legs. 

 

The fuse effect using CS mode is something I’m not doing right now, but will add to the queue ?

 

I’m not using GROM for the laser animation right now... which patterns would you pick? One thing that is tricky is that the laser is supposed to be blocked by walls. That means the length of the laser beam needs to flex.

Edited by cmadruga
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3 hours ago, cmadruga said:

Good stuff, will see if I can turn something around between today and tomorrow that will showcase some of your work.

 

Thanks for putting it all together!

added a couple better solid ground and water tiles !

 

tiles.bmp

Edited by TIX
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Congrats TIX, you are now part of the Intellivision homebrew development scene. Your membership card is in the mail.

 

Now you could use that advanced aesthetic sense to give me some tips on which tiles actually go well together...

 

 

Edited by cmadruga
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most versions goes for the most garish combinations :P

since we don't have browns, you can play with hues of red and green primarily and throw a yellow here and there when something dangerous..

 

The pillars must be 2 tiles wide right ?

I think this little guy image.png.062f5ef410aa18936cbe2708b870365d.png makes a nice looking 3d pillar ?

and this image.png.253b46ba1d041f5c9529a2c0415a1775.png when it's ready to crumble..

 

pillars.JPG.08f8bb3573e8c1cda5facb9f725be94c.JPG

 

tiles.bmp

 

 

Edited by TIX
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The walls that can be exploded are actually 1 tile wide and 2 tall. That applies to magma walls too. 

The crumbling pattern looks good, I will make sure to use it. However, it will rarely be seen: only when someone would try to bring down a wall with the laser.

 

Going back to the question of 2600 vs non-2600 looks... So far I’ve been loosely following the rotation of colors used on the 2600 version across consecutive levels: brown, green, blue, gray, then back to brown.

 

Is that a meaningful visual “homage” element to preserve? Or not really? I guess I’m torn.

 

 

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