are Programming tricks possible on the oyssey 2/videopac7000???

[johannesmutlu]

I search high & low on both google and youtube to see if somebody tried hard to find ways to get around the limitations of that  system in a form of demos,hardware pushing homebrew games or have to make games for it etc,,, but i didn’t found 1,so I wonder if  there are programming tricks possible on the odyssey 2/videopac 7000 to get around some of it’s limitatoons??

 

that’s because am personally surprised that despite the odyssey 2 was released 1 year later then the atari 2600,that it just became much more infirior hardwarewise,for instance it only does have 64 bytes of ram and 1KB of rom and 1 sound channel but even worse it only had a predefined 64 character sets of tiles in wich you could choose from to create your own graphics (why did philips & magnovox decided to do that??? Wasting more space for less,thus adding more for less),and because of that most games just look boring with the same tile sets used all over again to resamble other objests or items etc,,,,

HOWEVER since it also does contain a dot tile in it’s tile set, am curious to see if it possible to copy paste that dot to tile, by placing them next to each to create all kind of shapes wich each it’s individual color??? because that would be great as a way to around it’s tile set restriction right?

Remember both the trs80 and commodore pet has no graphics only text characters BUT since it also does contain a dot in it’s text character set,it is possible to create graphics with it by placing those dots next to each other so who not also do the same thing on the odyssey???

another thing am curious about is it’s sound capabilities,i know it does have some predefined sound effects in it and it can also produce bleeps and bloops at whether pitch and it can even produce noise,BUT am curious if it also can mimic 1bit pcm sound,by changing it’s timers and/or quickly alternate it’s volume to generate a wave form,

remember the apple || could generate 1bit pcm with it’s primitive speaker by changing it’s timings,so why not do the same thing on the odyssey 2???

yes i know both systems are different animals from each other but still,,,

i do see in theory a huge potential in the odyssey 2 if these tricks are possible on the odyssey 2,but some homebrewer got to prove theory for whether it is possible or not,

and i haven’t mentioned the expanded ram and added cpu chip from that chess game,i wonder what possibilities it could open up on the odyssey 2???

also i wonder if it is possible to do bankswitching externally trough a mapper to get beyond the max of 8KB bankswitching internally??

with all these things in mind,i am curious if a homebrew version of both pacman,mariobros,donkeykong and enhanced popeye etc,, being close to it’s arcade version of it are possible on the odyssey 2 with all those expansions and programming tricks in mind???

May somebody with more knowledge then me could explain if this is all possible on the odyssey 2 or not,

But as of now the homebrew scene on the odyssey is meager and as far as i do concern,nobody has ever tried hard to push the envelope of that system as much as possible,not yet,

not i trough that kc munch man and craze chase did some special graphical stuff on the odyssey 2 but am not really sure about that

[+pboland]

I wish I could help, but I'm not a programmer. I can tell you that if you are looking for games that look a little more graphically impressive for the O2, you might want to look at Atlantis, Demon Attack, Frogger, and Super Cobra.  Yes these games are done better on the Atari 2600, but on the O2 they look better then most of the first party games.

 

Something else to keep in mind (at least it's my understanding from what I've read over the years on the net) the O2 was designed to be easier to program which is why it has the built in character set and grid system. Also, most of the tricks on the 2600 were more or less undocumented features (meaning accidents) and not a purposeful design that were found after the system went in to production.

[jimj]

Considering its small user base, the homebrew scene for the Odyssey 2/Videopac is surprisingly active.  For low level programming info you really need to visit https://videopac.nl/forum/index.php

 

Off the top of my head, Puzzle Piece Panic has polyphonic music and I know there are games larger than 8KB.

[johannesmutlu]

On 1/19/2024 at 6:04 AM, jimj said:

Considering its small user base, the homebrew scene for the Odyssey 2/Videopac is surprisingly active.  For low level programming info you really need to visit https://videopac.nl/forum/index.php

 

Off the top of my head, Puzzle Piece Panic has polyphonic music and I know there are games larger than 8KB.

WoooW now that’s what am talking about,i watched the video of puzzle piece panic homebrew game and it’s incredible ,great music,cool sounda and amezing to see it in action,the title screen alone does hace nice rainbow changing colors,not sure if theres a two player option because that would be really cool,would be sooo ideal,especially since the main playfield is put far to the left side of the screen,now just inagine if that game came out back in 1989,it definitely would,ve sold a couple more odyssey 2 systems,(i never knew about this amezing homebrew port) next i hope that i will discover or that there will be a pac man and donkeykong clone for the odyssey 2 under whether name because it deserves it,anyway thanks alot for mentioning this game🙏😁👍

[johannesmutlu]

Now while i have gathered a little bit more info about the odyssey 2,as well as looking at many games for it,i have discovered that some games do use neat tricks,for instance some games do seem to use the scanline trick while some other games do use unique sprites,and while i first did trough that those games with unique sprites do use a combination of many multiplied dot pattern tile 27 since sprites are overlappible over each other,but now i conclude that that’s not the case because for 1 thing the O2 can only handle 4 8x8 sprites and secondly,even if you try to multiply and overlap dot tile 27 over each other,weird things start to happen as the black area of that tile will unintentially cover up other parts of it,and as far as i do know theres no way to turn that black area of it into transparancy,

and backgrounds are sadly not costumizible because they have to rely on it’s builtin 64 tile set,and even worse BG tile are unlike sprite tiles NOT overlappible either,

 

And while you can also rely on those 64 tile set shapes for sprites,however 

likely it is possible to costumize your own sprites without having to rely on it’s 64 character set,,crazy chaze,munch kin,frogger among other games do this,

and with that in mind i was thinking of faking a definible background by deviding the background into sections of 4 8x8 sprites and then alternate between each per frame to VIRTUALLY view 240 sprites on screen to fake a costumizible background and/or VIRTUALLY displaying more monsters/objects on screen,however such approach may cause lot’s of flicker,

it might also be possible to use block tile 2F to fill in the whole screen with it for the background and then use the scanline trick to turn off or keep on certain pixels per tile block to make a background costumizible that way but it probable will result in a monochrome backround screen,you might could compensate for this by changing the color per block tile but it will be still limited and you probably don’t want that mosaic/clashing effect,

But we still should,ve more freedom on the O2 with those tricks in mind,

 

and if we want to have simulated 1bit pcm on the O2,we might have to change the timers of that sound chip to allow such thing for more freedom in sound we want to create,

and if we want to make games larger then 1 or 8KB,then we may could use external bankswitching along with extra ram and rom along with an extra cpu chip on the cartride to handle all these stuff including all graphical and sound tricks mentioned here,

 

and with all these tricks and expansions in mind,i can imagine a donkeykong port with all the levels looking and sounding close to the arcade,

same thing for pacman and an enhanced version of popeye😁

(because the official version of popeye for the O2 is just lazely bad.

Edited March 8 by johannesmutlu