Freeway 5200

[carlb328]

Question: is there anything improved or different about the game, or this is just for people that prefer the 5200?

[glurk]

On 3/18/2022 at 2:26 PM, carlb328 said:

Question: is there anything improved or different about the game, or this is just for people that prefer the 5200?

It's David Crane's original 2600 game, ported to the 8bit machines, and then from there to the 5200.  I improved the graphics a bit from the 2600 version, more colors, etc.  The game is the exact same as the 2600.  It's a direct port of the code, not a conversion.  I made no game-play changes.

 

I guess it's for people who like the game, and want a new 2 player game for their 5200's. ...

[Dantaipan]

Thanks for this. Difficult to identify good titles that haven’t already been ported or had an 8-bit version. Selfishly, I think Imagic’s Fire Fighter would be cool as I have a real nostalgia for that (probably bad by some peoples standards) game.

[jefffulton]

Again, another awesome port. Where there any changes that you needed to make to the 5200/8bit rendering to make this work? It looks lie it needed a sophisticated display list (for example).

[+discotronic]

Freeway on the 5200. Why? Because I can!

 

Thank you for this:)

[glurk]

6 hours ago, jefffulton said:

Again, another awesome port. Where there any changes that you needed to make to the 5200/8bit rendering to make this work? It looks lie it needed a sophisticated display list (for example).

Yes.  I wanted to use char. mode for the cars - ANTIC mode 4.  But the car/truck graphics are 10 pixels tall, and character mode is 8 tall.  So my idea - and I always go for the easiest method programming-wise - was ANTIC 4 for for the car bodies, with ANTIC graphics mode E for the tires above and below.  The highway lines are ANTIC graphics C.

 

This was the lowest memory/DMA cost I could come up with.  And on top of all that there is a (small) kernel running, which changes the car/window colors and the highway line colors, and also sets the HSCROL register for each car lane.   I could have used PM graphics for the cars, but I wanted them multicolored.

 

And all the cars, trucks, left/right are ALL stored in ROM.  The scrolling is done by changing the LMS instructions in the display list along with HSCROL.  So that way, no memory is moved, and very little RAM is used.  It's just changing the load pointers in the RAM display list.

 

The whole thing will run on a 4K RAM machine (like an Atari 400), if anyone even has one with less than 8K.  I always do that, use as little memory as possible, like I'm back in the 1980's when RAM was expensive.  Plus it allows my ports to run on pretty much any 8-bit Atari machine.

 

[Charlie_]

On 3/9/2022 at 2:28 PM, glurk said:

That would just be redundant, wouldn't it...

No! Yar's Revenge is so much better.

[CommodoreDecker]

On 3/9/2022 at 12:53 PM, Atari Nut said:

How about Superman?

 

That's a fun one. Like Golf, trying to get the lowest score is surprisingly fun. Even with the flicker.

 

TURMOIL was a fun one on the 2600...

 

 

SOLARIS would be epic, but looks like it'd be an epic pain to convert too...