Rob 'n' Banks development log

[SIO2]

The 5200 version is excellent. I enjoy playing that one.

 

Looking forward to the 7800 version.

[+Ryan Witmer]

On 10/15/2022 at 7:50 PM, David Alexander said:

Definitely interested but hope you continue to program for the 5200

 

Of course!  The 5200 is still my baby.

 

I'm still a little hesitant to make any major maze changes, especially since the lines have gameplay implications, but I've been thinking about the dots and I might have come up with some interesting alternatives.  I'll post more about it when the ideas become more solid.

 

I had an extra palette color, so I installed a floor.

 

[TIX]

 

 

↓

 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by TIX

[TIX]

7 hours ago, Ryan Witmer said:

.

I had an extra palette color, so I installed a floor.

.

 

Hey,

 

I'm afraid the floor will have undesired effects on the sprites, as they are using black/backgroung as a color !

Maybe the extra color can go on a highlight for the walls !?

 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by TIX

[+Defender_2600]

2 hours ago, TIX said:

I'm afraid the floor will have undesired effects on the sprites, as they are using black/backgroung as a color !

 

I agree, the black background color brings out the sprites and dots. Also, I think fans of the game would prefer to leave the arcade graphics intact, otherwise it would be like adding a floor in Pac-man. Just my opinion.

 

Regarding the third color available, the arcade version uses exactly three colors, two colors for the walls and the third color for the dots. I think it would be nice if the 7800 version can have the same colors as the arcade version. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by Defender_2600

[christo930]

Games like this is where the 7800 really shines.  The 7800 should be able to do decent conversions of the early to mid 80s arcade machines. The colecovision and 5200 are stuck with mono sprites. The unaided 2600, well, you have to keep your expectations in line. PacmanPlus has been doing a great job of bringing early 80s conversions, but there are still many, many more left for a 7800 conversion.  There are a lot of games from that era with few to no home ports as well, at least not on the consoles.

[+MrFish]

14 hours ago, christo930 said:

...and 5200 are stuck with mono sprites.

Not exactly. There is a multi-color mode/setting that allows combining sprite pairs (0 & 1 and 2 & 3), giving a 3rd color where the two sprites overlap. This is quite frequently used in Atari 8-bit Computer / 5200 games where needed.

 

[Edit]

Going a step further... there is even a special setting that allows all sprites to take on colors related to playfield objects overlapped by them. This can allow each sprite to take on 3 unique colors of their own.

 

And... an additional effect of hi-res mode provides 1.5 colors (1 color, 2 luminances) where sprites overlap playfield + background areas.

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by MrFish

[+Cafeman]

2 hours ago, MrFish said:

Going a step further... there is even a special setting that allows all sprites to take on colors related to playfield objects overlapped by them. This can allow each sprite to take on 3 unique colors of their own.

 Care to refresh our memories on this setting? 

[+MrFish]

3 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

 Care to refresh our memories on this setting? 

This is the GPRIOR=0 setting.

 

Example: Thetris (available for the 5200 as well)

 

 

[+MrFish]

3 hours ago, MrFish said:

[Edit]

Going a step further... there is even a special setting that allows all sprites to take on colors related to playfield objects overlapped by them. This can allow each sprite to take on 3 unique colors of their own.

A slight detail amendment here, as follows:

 

Playfield 0,1 and players 0,1 combine their colors by “or'ing” the
colors together.  Playfield 2,3 and players 2,3 are also “or'd.”.

 

So, not quite as many colors as I had stated, but still plenty (2 unique possible per player/missile).

 

[Note: missiles are also included here...]

 

[Edit]

Here's an image demonstrating things a little more clearly.

 

The vertical bars are the players 0/1 , 2/3, and the missiles 0/1, 2/3.

The horizontal bars are the colors in registers 708, 709, 710 and 711.

 

The graphic mode is Antic 4 using the fifth color (the green line).. no DLI's.

 

[Note: Multi-color player mode is used here too, to achieve the third color in each player (and missile) pair stripe -- and subsequently third color in each player/playfield overlap area.]

 

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by MrFish

[christo930]

On 11/2/2022 at 12:42 PM, MrFish said:

Not exactly. There is a multi-color mode/setting that allows combining sprite pairs (0 & 1 and 2 & 3), giving a 3rd color where the two sprites overlap. This is quite frequently used in Atari 8-bit Computer / 5200 games where needed.

 

[Edit]

Going a step further... there is even a special setting that allows all sprites to take on colors related to playfield objects overlapped by them. This can allow each sprite to take on 3 unique colors of their own.

 

And... an additional effect of hi-res mode provides 1.5 colors (1 color, 2 luminances) where sprites overlap playfield + background areas.

 

 

The problem here is if you want 4 color sprites (3 plus none), you end up stacking 3 sprites per sprite.  So if you have 4 baddies each made up of 3 sprites on the same scan line, you really have 12 sprites on the same line. In the case of lock-n-chase, another 3 sprites for the player sprite.

 

There are plenty of hardware tricks in all the consoles and computers that really don't translate very well into games. 

 

I see there is a tetris type example and another example right underneath it with some abstract bars on the screen.  I see these cool demos showing off some uncommon trick needing extraordinary timing of a lot of cycles that just don't ever get implemented in a game.

[Ecernosoft]

On 10/2/2022 at 4:41 PM, Ryan Witmer said:

So, for some crazy reason I got the itch to try my hand at a 7800 game and Rob 'n' Banks, my recently completed port of Data East's Lock 'n' Chase to the 5200, seemed like a good candidate.  So here I am following in the footsteps of Beef Drop and bringing another Data East arcade title to the 7800.

 

I just started working on this and learning the details of the 7800, since this is the first time I've ever done anything for the console.  I've got the basics figured out and today I put together an early version of the maze.

 

 

(That crap on the left is the awesome a7800 performance monitor, and the square is the sprite that will eventually become the player)

 

This is a pretty big step, since I now have both direct and indirect mode working, along with holey DMA.  I'm still fighting with different ways of organizing this stuff, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.

 

The is a very low-priority project.  My (shamless plug) PC game projects and 5200 work have precedence, but I'll try to poke at this whenever I'm able and I'll post relevant news here.

 I really enjoyed this game! Also, could you add a 2 player mode?

[christo930]

On 10/7/2022 at 10:48 AM, Ryan Witmer said:

These are all issues I fought with while doing the 5200 version, and I settled for the fat dots there because the off center lines just look so visually displeasing to me.  I thought about the idea of going to 7 pixel corridors to allow the best of both worlds, but that creates new issues with the way that the screen tiles work (on both consoles).  It would result in a really awkward tileset.

 

I think of all the options, the 7 pixel corridors are the most attractive to me, and I might do some graph paper experiments to see how insane the tileset requirements would end up being.  I can see already that the ROM usage is going to go up significantly because a lot of the tiles that are reusable now would no longer be.

 

Another interesting idea is to do something similar to what I did with Intellidiscs.  In that game, I started with the original recognizer design from the Intellivision before changing it to a new one.  Some people preferred the old one, so I just put them both in and let you choose one from the menu.  It might be possible to do both the centered lines/fat dots and skewed lines/small dots versions and let the player choose between them.

 

Another route is to split the difference in a way that Ms. Pac Man appears to do and make the dots small rectangles.

 

As always, everything is based on trade offs, and I'll have to play around with things and think.  My gut feeling is to go with what I did the 5200, since my main goal here is to learn the 7800 and not stray into anything too fancy.

I really hope you go with the thin lines and small dots at least.  The 5200 version and the mock-up 7800 versions suffer in that they don't look like the arcade.  In my mind, matching the arcade as closely as possible is the definition of a good arcade port.

 

Also, adding a new twist or something as a game play option helps keep the game fresh, like having an "enhanced" mode with game-play elements that didn't exist in the arcade (along with the arcade mode).

[+Ryan Witmer]

I'm actually looking to go in a different direction with this game visually.  I'm not trying to match the arcade game, in fact I actually want to do something that looks rather different while still maintaining the same game play.

 

I may be in the minority, but I really like the early 7800 arcade ports that deviated from the arcade look, like Asteroids and Centipede.  I have some interesting ideas for how I want to approach this stuff the second time around, but I just haven't had time to work on this lately.

[Ecernosoft]

3 hours ago, Ryan Witmer said:

I'm actually looking to go in a different direction with this game visually.  I'm not trying to match the arcade game, in fact I actually want to do something that looks rather different while still maintaining the same game play.

 

I may be in the minority, but I really like the early 7800 arcade ports that deviated from the arcade look, like Asteroids and Centipede.  I have some interesting ideas for how I want to approach this stuff the second time around, but I just haven't had time to work on this lately.

I agree. The 7800's ability to do 25 colors at 160*192 from a palette of 256 colors really helps, along with it's ability to do 2bpp and "4bpp" sprites in 160 modes. While the latter wasn't used in asteroids it still looks really good! Centipede does something similar dedicating entire palettes to just one hue but different shades too if I'm not wrong.

 

I say "4bpp" because really due to the hardware quirks of the 7800 it's only 12 colors. This is because A. The 7800 only has 25 color registers and B. Hardware implementation says that if the lower 2 bits of the color of choice = 0 then don't draw that color.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Ecernosoft

[Ecernosoft]

On 11/24/2022 at 10:04 AM, christo930 said:

I really hope you go with the thin lines and small dots at least.  The 5200 version and the mock-up 7800 versions suffer in that they don't look like the arcade.  In my mind, matching the arcade as closely as possible is the definition of a good arcade port.

 

Also, adding a new twist or something as a game play option helps keep the game fresh, like having an "enhanced" mode with game-play elements that didn't exist in the arcade (along with the arcade mode).

Yes. Definitely. Maybe add a "shootout" mode where the 'cops' try to shoot at you! 

 

sorry for double-posting.

[+x=usr(1536)]

49 minutes ago, Ryan Witmer said:

I'm actually looking to go in a different direction with this game visually.  I'm not trying to match the arcade game, in fact I actually want to do something that looks rather different while still maintaining the same game play.

 

I may be in the minority, but I really like the early 7800 arcade ports that deviated from the arcade look, like Asteroids and Centipede.  I have some interesting ideas for how I want to approach this stuff the second time around, but I just haven't had time to work on this lately.

This is something I've always liked about ports: they can play to the strengths of the system while retaining the gameplay that made the original game fun.  Definitely looking forward to seeing what you come up with

[christo930]

14 hours ago, Ryan Witmer said:

I'm actually looking to go in a different direction with this game visually.  I'm not trying to match the arcade game, in fact I actually want to do something that looks rather different while still maintaining the same game play.

 

I may be in the minority, but I really like the early 7800 arcade ports that deviated from the arcade look, like Asteroids and Centipede.  I have some interesting ideas for how I want to approach this stuff the second time around, but I just haven't had time to work on this lately.

Well, whatever you do, it's your game and you gotta like it.  I'll be looking forward to it.

[christo930]

13 hours ago, Ecernosoft said:

Yes. Definitely. Maybe add a "shootout" mode where the 'cops' try to shoot at you! 

 

sorry for double-posting.

 

The D2K Intellivision game is a good example of an updated arcade game, though it is its own unique cartridge.  I know it's based on an unofficial arcade release.  But it's an example of this done well.

[Synthpopalooza]

On 11/2/2022 at 3:36 PM, MrFish said:

A slight detail amendment here, as follows:

 

Playfield 0,1 and players 0,1 combine their colors by “or'ing” the
colors together.  Playfield 2,3 and players 2,3 are also “or'd.”.

 

So, not quite as many colors as I had stated, but still plenty (2 unique possible per player/missile).

 

[Note: missiles are also included here...]

 

[Edit]

Here's an image demonstrating things a little more clearly.

 

The vertical bars are the players 0/1 , 2/3, and the missiles 0/1, 2/3.

The horizontal bars are the colors in registers 708, 709, 710 and 711.

 

The graphic mode is Antic 4 using the fifth color (the green line).. no DLI's.

 

[Note: Multi-color player mode is used here too, to achieve the third color in each player (and missile) pair stripe -- and subsequently third color in each player/playfield overlap area.]

 

 

What happens if you combine the missiles using PF3 color?

[+MrFish]

3 hours ago, Synthpopalooza said:

What happens if you combine the missiles using PF3 color?

Same as for each of their corresponding players -- as shown in the image.

 

[+MrFish]

On 11/18/2022 at 9:48 PM, christo930 said:

The problem here is if you want 4 color sprites (3 plus none), you end up stacking 3 sprites per sprite.  So if you have 4 baddies each made up of 3 sprites on the same scan line, you really have 12 sprites on the same line. In the case of lock-n-chase, another 3 sprites for the player sprite.

Well, you've got part of it wrong here. If you use multicolor-player mode, it takes 2 players (2 hardware sprites) to give you a single 3-color sprite (4-color if you're counting the background).

 

In terms of getting the technique usable for something like Lock 'n' Chase, it would take a sprite multiplexer. It's been done and works. Some recent examples are: Gacek (Bomb Jack), The Last Squadron (vertical shooter), and AtariBlast (shooter). 

 

On 11/18/2022 at 9:48 PM, christo930 said:

There are plenty of hardware tricks in all the consoles and computers that really don't translate very well into games. 

 

I see there is a tetris type example and another example right underneath it with some abstract bars on the screen.  I see these cool demos showing off some uncommon trick needing extraordinary timing of a lot of cycles that just don't ever get implemented in a game.

I'm not showing you tricks that aren't implemented in games. I'm giving you examples of working games. The bars are just breaking down the method used in Thetris. Thetris is a working game using the technique demonstrated by the example with the bars. Also, there is nothing about it that takes any special timing, cycle-counting, etc.: you simply set the GPRIOR register to zero and the capability is available to use as detailed above. The only reason I even call it "special" is because it's just not something that's been commonly known/used until recent years.

 

The technique is also used in a game I worked on with @NRV a few years back called Raymaze 2000. Some of the earlier levels are only using 4 total multicolor car sprites (there are other non-vehicle sprites, of course, too), but other levels use more cars (I think up to 6, at least -- but more are possible). The choice for number of total sprites was done on purpose for balancing gameplay on various levels -- not because more couldn't be added. The game also isn't finished, and we've reserved various player missile graphics for special enemies and other items in the game (time bombs, etc.). So, what you see in this version (v0.5) is only a partial demonstration of using the technique for a game like this.

 

----------------

 

Another possible way to have multicolor sprites in something like Lock 'n' Chase for the 8-bits/5200 is the method used in Super Pac-Man for the 8-bits/5200. Four of the sprites are multicolor, and Pac-Man could be (it's just not needed for this game). Lock 'n' Chase could be done using the method employed here and have multicolored sprites for all enemies and the player/protagonist.