Hmove bars true or false questionaire

[Aloan]

Please guide me to make faithful hmove lines in my Atari 2600 like game by answering true or false.

All I really know about them for sure is that they show always on the left and are 2 playfield "pixels" wide (8 color clocks)

Thanksies!

1-They always appear at the sprite's bottom scanline

2- At the top scanline.

3- They will only show where there will be a horizontal moving player0 or 1.

4- They don't appear for neither missiles or the ball.

5- They never disappear even though your sprites die or are turned invisible in game over

6- they will move vertically if your sprite moves up or down as well.

Edited October 27, 2023 by Aloan

[+splendidnut]

The appearance of HMove bars is wholly dependent on how the programmer coded sprite multiplexing.

 

So, 1 or 2 could be true, or they could both be false.  If I'm forced to pick, True for 1, False for 2... as can be seen in something like the game Berzerk.

3 is False as it's repositioning of the sprites that matter, not whether they are moving or not.

4 is False, positioning of the players, the missiles, and the ball all typically use HMove.

5... depends on how the sprite multiplexing is coded.

6... would probably be True, but depends on the answers for 1 and 2.

[+Dave C]

 

If we want to talk literal - all false. You are free to call HMOVE whenever and wherever you want and therefore you could see bars anywhere (I call it every other line in one of my kernel experiments - to reposition missiles in order to draw diagonal lines)

 

But in common usage - most often you see the bars at the tops of sprites right before the sprite is drawn. 

 

 

 

[Aloan]

Thanks for the answers! I read them this morning! I will transfer the notes to my dev text file!