Full height PM graphic(s)

[rdefabri]

When I was young, and I first started to learn programming, I dabbled lightly in PM graphics.  Nothing advanced, I would qualify myself then (and now) a beginner.

 

I guess I never realized that a PM graphic, while limited in width, can be (or is?) the full height of the screen.  Sounds sort of primitive - and I guess it is - but my brain sees something that could be taken advantage of.

 

So my question is - which games (if any) have used full height PM graphics in game play?  Seems like a cool way to solve some potential problems - and I'm guessing many programmers have done this, but in my quest to re-learn the Atari, I'm curious to see examples.

 

 

 

 

[Irgendwer]

Pitfall II (nearly full screen):

 

 

 

Edit:

There are many not so obvious examples, like covering borders or enriching background graphics ("Stunt Car Racer" f.e,)...

Edited August 2, 2022 by Irgendwer

[rdefabri]

23 minutes ago, Irgendwer said:

Pitfall II (nearly full screen):

 

 

 

Edit:

There are many not so obvious examples, like covering borders or enriching background graphics ("Stunt Car Racer" f.e,)...

Yes, the "not so obvious" examples are where my head is at...how can you creatively take advantage of that characteristic to create something different / cool.  I know it's not earth shattering, but the combining of PMs to create multi color sprites, combining missiles to create a "5th" player, and soft sprites are all cool techniques I never thought of using.  This one seems like it could create a ton of opportunities...

[TGB1718]

Not a game, but I wrote this some time ago and used PM's to hide the overscan

 

[vitoco]

I used them in some of my tenliner games...

 

In Where's my cheese?, they were used to mask the required side walls in order to create the effect of a shaded path to the left or to the right, i.e. full height black columns with some transparent lines were moved in and out of the visible area as required:

 

 

In Space Ranger, the attack of an enemy was created by pregressively adding lines in the same player to complete the whole visible height:

 

 

In neither of them were used DLI or such to change the horizontal position of the player to split the column and create multiple "sprites", like in Noxious:

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by vitoco

[rdefabri]

What about something like Space Invaders?  Are each column of "invaders" a single player or something similar?  

[+MrFish]

Not full height of the screen here, but more than half the height of the screen: I've use all players and missiles for certain portions of my slot machine graphics.

 

Each column of line markers is made up of a player + its corresponding missile; and then DLI's are used to alter the colors. The white background is made up of the remaining players and missiles at quad-width; they also use a priority setting that allows them to appear behind the playfield graphics (and line markers) -- whereas the line markers appear in front of the playfield graphics.

 

 

[Rybags]

I think Shamus uses PMs for the vertical bars with moving hole where you shoot at keys to access them.  Not full height but most of the generated display.

 

Normally PMs can't be higher than 240 pixels total but using the scanline 240 bug allows showing PMs in the vertical border area but you have to load the GRAF registers manually.

No games that I know of uses that and most non-PAL screens don't show the full 240 scanlines let alone the areas outside it.

 

[FifthPlayer]

I think Yar's Strike (the A8 remake of Yar's Revenge) uses a full height player sprite for the "neutral zone" field.

[Rybags]

Probably - that would be one of the rare occurrences.

 

MULE uses PMGs in the overall map screen to add extra detail and colour - the river is Player 3 with it's position changing along the way.

[manterola]

Another example: Bosconian for the right panel (with the radar).

 

 

Edited August 4, 2022 by manterola

[rdefabri]

11 minutes ago, manterola said:

Another example: Bosconian for the right panel (with the radar).

 

 

Oh wow - I didn't know that...is it just the purple area?  That's a pretty cool application if it is...

[pps]

My game go lucky makes use of pm graphics to indicate who bought a plot and to mark the possible directions to move to and to mark actual player. All 5 players are used all over the screen, multiple times.

 

Don't know if this qualifies as "full height pm graphics".

[+slx]

On 8/2/2022 at 9:37 PM, rdefabri said:

What about something like Space Invaders?  Are each column of "invaders" a single player or something similar?  

I recall reading that the invaders are characters with a clever scrolling scheme but the rocket looks like a player.

[rdefabri]

On 8/2/2022 at 7:36 PM, MrFish said:

Not full height of the screen here, but more than half the height of the screen: I've use all players and missiles for certain portions of my slot machine graphics.

 

Each column of line markers is made up of a player + its corresponding missile; and then DLI's are used to alter the colors. The white background is made up of the remaining players and missiles at quad-width; they also use a priority setting that allows them to appear behind the playfield graphics (and line markers) -- whereas the line markers appear in front of the playfield graphics.

 

 

This is really cool - I'm starting to re-learn DLI and priority settings.  Dumb question - the line markers are 2 players + 2 missiles, and then the white background is the remaining 2 players + 2 missiles at quad width...but there are 3 white background images.  Is it all combined to make (effectively) one large image that appears as 3 different areas?

[+MrFish]

On 8/2/2022 at 7:36 PM, MrFish said:

The white background is made up of the remaining players and missiles at quad-width; they also use a priority setting that allows them to appear behind the playfield graphics (and line markers)...

 

4 minutes ago, rdefabri said:

Dumb question - the line markers are 2 players + 2 missiles, and then the white background is the remaining 2 players + 2 missiles at quad width...but there are 3 white background images.  Is it all combined to make (effectively) one large image that appears as 3 different areas?

 

As I stated above, the priority settings put those players and missiles behind any playfield graphics (Antic 4 in this case). So, the white players and missiles are all just lined up, creating a big square; and then the playfield graphics (and line marker p/m's) are drawn over top of them. The result is that the white areas end up getting framed by the playfield graphics, creating the three areas that you see.

 

[rdefabri]

2 minutes ago, MrFish said:

 

 

As I stated above, the priority settings put those players and missiles behind any playfield graphics (Antic 4 in this case). So, the white players and missiles are all just lined up, creating a big square; and then the playfield graphics (and line marker p/m's) are drawn over top of them. The result is that the white areas end up getting framed by the playfield graphics, creating the three areas that you see.

 

Oh yes, I get it now...that's really well done, very cool!

[+MrFish]

I'm using a related technique in the BlackJack game I'm working on too. In this case, all the PM's are positioned to cover the full screen (160 x 192) using quad-width. They're also set to a lower priority than the playfield graphics, so they can show through the cards to add an extra color. I used them for the yellow, shown only on the face cards.

 

Currently, in this demo, I'm just drawing 3 rows of cards -- all at equal horizontal spacing; but the code is written so that a card can appear anywhere on screen, and the yellow underlay will be drawn properly for that location. This way, cards can do things like overlap, which is needed for BlackJack in some cases. I also plan to use these cards for games other than BlackJack.

 

 

[manterola]

2 hours ago, rdefabri said:

Oh wow - I didn't know that...is it just the purple area?  That's a pretty cool application if it is...

I don't think so. It looks like the whole right panel: score, cars (lives) left, etc.

@shanti77 can confirm and maybe explain his design choices. That would be great.

[shanti77]

@rdefabri @manterola In Bosconian, the entire right panel is made of sprites, and our ship is also drawn in sprites. The game screen is drawn here in character mode (antic4, Gr12), in order to keep a smooth scrolloller, the stationary elements could not be drawn on the characters, and there would be no such characters.
The third sprite is all black and covers the background, using IRQ (64Khz) interrupts to draw all information on the panel and our ship. Atari's PM Graphic are great for this, because they are actually not ghosts, but such narrow bitplans.

[rdefabri]

I'm thinking about something like the reactor / vortex in Gottlieb's Reactor videogame.  Given the need to increase in size, a large PM would be ideal.  Bigger issue is the need for at least 2 colors, so you need a 2nd PMG.  That makes a game like this hard because you then need 4-5 PMGs for the main player and the chasing "atoms".

 

 

[Avram]

I began coding my game Schmutznik on the Atari 8-bit because of this feature but, after struggling with assembly language, ended up writing it instead for PC (there are some code snippets in the programming forums at Atariage but nothing very advanced, unfortunately). 

[Heaven/TQA]

On 8/3/2022 at 8:53 AM, Rybags said:

Probably - that would be one of the rare occurrences.

 

MULE uses PMGs in the overall map screen to add extra detail and colour - the river is Player 3 with it's position changing along the way.

Timer bars in auction of course 

[Heaven/TQA]

Koronis Rift for borders. 
 

Arsantica left and right panels while rest is bitmap and charmode? Can not remember ?

 

end of course the end scroller 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Heaven/TQA

[Wrathchild]

Even in simple things like colouring of the selections in Hardball:

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Wrathchild