Easter - a small springtime game, was "Tools for making a nice title page?"

[+karri]

I am trying to make a small silly game for the Easter holidays. It is already working. The music is written as well. But I would like to create a small title page. The problem is that I prefer to use the 160A mode and I have place for 42 tiles at the size 24 x 16 pixels.

 

So basically I have 7 * 6 tiles to work with.

 

Right now doing the work to choose the palettes and map some graphics to the tiles feels a bit too much.

 

Is there some hints of what tools to use?

 

The idea is to duplicate the lines to produce a 224 line image. But is this even doable?

 

The image I am trying to use is this one. It has just 16 colours.:

 

So at least I have to get rid of 7 tiles to fit the image in th 42 tiles I have.

 

Edit: I could cut away the last line. That takes care of the number of different tiles. Then the remaining task is to find the palette to use for each tile. There is just 7 palettes, I assume. And to reduce the number of colours to 3 per tile plus the background colour. Which is probably yellow.

 

Edit2: Or perhaps I get better result by just choosing 4 colours and drawing the chicken by hand...

[+Bruce-Robert Pocock]

I have an utility to produce the drawing lists and such, although the drawing routines I have are a bit embedded in Phantasia.

 

The way it works:

 

I produce the source art with a 4×16px grid in Gimp, and manually ensure that each of the cells have colors from only one palette. The palettes are encoded in the last row of pixels.

The source file is then 160px wide and a multiple of 16px high (plus one for the palette row)

 

This, I export as a flattened PNG (still at 24bpp RGB or RGBA mode)

 

from this, Skyline-Tool writes out a source file that contains:

 

— the closest-match colors in the NTSC and PAL palettes

— the zone definitions for each zone, as pointers to the span table with palette, x position, and run-lengths

— the labels into the actual span data

— and the binary span data, in Maria inverted page-per-line format

The playback routines basically just have to populate the DLL with the zone pointers and set the palette.

 

If you're interested I can get you set up, it's not exactly packaged yet (these Phantasia tools are all in flux) — and at some point in future I'll have these things massaged into being more generally-useful.

[+karri]

Thank you. My playing area splits the data in larger tiles and I thought of re-using that structure for the title page.

 

I guess that the big job is going through the graphics, choose the palettes, edit away colours that cannot be shown. I also tried posterizing the image to reduce the colours. Something along this line may be doable in the few days I have left before Easter.

 

I just realized that the easiest way that still has acceptable result is to change the image to greyscale, colorize it and then I will add highlights in white manually.

 

But thanks for the suggestions.

 

... and keep your eyes open for the Easter release  

[+splendidnut]

I would suggest using a Photoshop-esque program (Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.NET) to break the image into layers (3 would probably be enough): background, birds, table/foreground.  Then each layer could utilize it's own 4-color palette.  The greatest strength of the 7800 is the ability to overlay a bunch of objects and it would be nice to see that used here.

[+karri]

Thanks for the idea. I was hoping to keep the game withing 32k and TIA. But I have to experiment with the overlay idea.

Anyway the game is now playable. And the TIA music in enjoyable (imho). The tune is written in Furnace Tracker! So here is a real Furnace Tracker TIA player in action.

 

But there is still basic stuff missing like:

Left difficulty switch to control 1 card (Beginner) or 3 cards (Advanced) at a time.

Re-start the game by shuffling the deck. (Reset)

Choose colours scheme. (Select)

 

Plus I would like to support paddles also. The joystick may not be the best option for control. The cards are actually in lists and rotating the paddle is a way to scroll through the list. The first 6 cards on top would start the list. Followed by the 7 piles.

 

[Trebor]

4 hours ago, karri said:

But there is still basic stuff missing like:

...

Left difficulty switch to control 1 card (Beginner) or 3 cards (Advanced) at a time.

...

The Solitaire card game looks real good.  My humble two cents is to avoid incorporating Difficult Switch utilization.  They were a necessity back in the day when 2K and 4K size carts were standard for the 2600, and every byte needed to be conserved.

 

Under the 7800, especially with 48K available before any bankswitching, there is often enough space to incorporate an onscreen menu option instead.  Difficulty Switches are often forgotten about or overlooked by players, providing a source of confusion or/and frustration.

[+karri]

22 minutes ago, Trebor said:

Under the 7800, especially with 48K available before any bankswitching, there is often enough space to incorporate an onscreen menu option instead.  Difficulty Switches are often forgotten about or overlooked by players, providing a source of confusion or/and frustration.

Good point.

 

I wonder if the Pause, Select, Reset buttons should be avoided as well?

 

The game would work perfectly well with a choice easy/hard at startup.

 

But to abandone a game and start again I believe the Reset button could be nice to implement.

[Trebor]

9 minutes ago, karri said:

I wonder if the Pause, Select, Reset buttons should be avoided as well?

Pause, Select, Reset are all fine as they are right on the top of the console, clearly labeled, and cannot be missed.

 

Of course the more that can be done via menus and controller only - "coach compliant" - the better more convenient. 

 

Between their location and association with 2600 titles, for 7800 games, some don't even realize the Difficulty Switches exist or could have an impact.

[+saxmeister]

Not to hijack your thread or your work, @karri, I just wanted to see if 7800basic could easily handle an image that large using incbanner. I'm happy to say that it worked perfectly - even when I set the screen height to 224 to match the artwork.

 

This is great! I'm always waiting to see what you come up with next. So glad to have you as part of the community.

 

  set doublewide off
  displaymode 160A
  set zoneheight 16
  set romsize 48k
  set screenheight 224
  incbanner gfx/chickens_cleaned.png 160A 0 1 2 3
  BACKGRND=$00
  P0C1=$27:P0C2=$1B:P0C3=$0F

__Main

  clearscreen
  plotbanner chickens_cleaned 0 0 0
  drawscreen

  goto __Main

 

 

[+karri]

Spring is here!

 

The reason for most people to use Windows is to play Klondike. But now you can ditch the mouse and enjoy the game on your lovely Atari 7800!

 

Easter.a78 (fixed version)

 

The game works with the joystick. I hope most of the bugs are killed already. There may be bug fixes if not...

 

Thanks goes to:

@saxmeister for the updated title image.

@Dave C for the Furnace Tracker work for the 2600

Me, @karri for taking the time to write this game

@Trebor for shooting down my bad ideas

numerous other AtariAge users helping me to understand how this weird system works.

And finally AI for helping me to draw the chicks playing cards. Although it took a while to make the title image family friendly. Hint: spell out chickens instead of chicks when using AI.

 

[Trebor]

In case if needed for anyone:

https://cardgameheaven.com/single-player/klondike-solitaire.html

[+karri]

I just checked the video. It says that 5 rounds end the game. Then you count the number of cards you got to your foundation. That is the score. It sounds simple enough. Perhaps I should implement that? Right now you can play forever.

[+karri]

Ouch! I just realized a major bug. I have mixed the drawings of Jack, Queen and King in the Diamonds and Hearts. So there will be a bug fix after all. With the scoring system.

 

[+karri]

There seems to be so many variants of how to play and score this game. So I will create my own  

 

At the start of the game you can choose between "draw 1" and "draw 3" for the easy/difficult mode.

 

You can play through the pack any number of times.

 

When you win you will get the score "52" meaning that all cards were saved.

 

When you are stuck just press "Reset" and it will end the game and show you your score!

 

It is also possible to just look at your Foundation piles and create a sum of your top cards. Four kings at top scores 4 * 13 = 52 points.

 

PS. You can play with a single button joystick. But if you are lucky to have a 2-button joystick the 2nd button will draw a new card from the deck. Or if you are browsing the pile the 2nd button will show a card somewhere in the middle of the spead.

[+karri]

Ladies and gentlemen... (drum roll...)

 

Springtime greetings! Here is the fixed version of Easter Klondike:

Easter.a78

 

 

Reset: starts a new game

Reset: exits a game and shows the score

 

Select: allows you to choose the game while in the title page

- 1 (easy, draws 1 card at a time)

- 3 (difficult, draws 3 cards at a time)

 

Fire: choose cards, drop cards

Fire2: draw a new card from the deck, show the face of a card in a spread

 

You can also draw a new card from the deck by clicking on the deck.

When the deck is empty you can click on the empty deck to turn over the waste deck to a new deck.

 

Scoring: number of cards in the 4 foundation decks at top right.

 

Unless someting catastrophic pops up I declare the game complete for now.

[+saxmeister]

@karri what a great, fun game. I wasn't expecting you to use that graphic - I was just testing some pixel art techniques I hadn't used in a while.

 

I was just messing around with an 8-colour version of the artwork but was really not happy with it, so I didn't finish the cleanup work. The image was smaller and the dithering of colors didn't work that well. The 7800's reds just don't pop the way they should.

 

JS7800 Link: https://raz0red.github.io/js7800/?cart=https://forums.atariage.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=1104502&key=a7884d4b06aa979b6772089e024f724f

 

chickens160b.bas.78b.bin

[ZippyOasys]

On 3/18/2024 at 11:08 AM, karri said:

Thanks for the idea. I was hoping to keep the game withing 32k and TIA. But I have to experiment with the overlay idea.

Anyway the game is now playable. And the TIA music in enjoyable (imho). The tune is written in Furnace Tracker! So here is a real Furnace Tracker TIA player in action.

 

But there is still basic stuff missing like:

Left difficulty switch to control 1 card (Beginner) or 3 cards (Advanced) at a time.

Re-start the game by shuffling the deck. (Reset)

Choose colours scheme. (Select)

 

Plus I would like to support paddles also. The joystick may not be the best option for control. The cards are actually in lists and rotating the paddle is a way to scroll through the list. The first 6 cards on top would start the list. Followed by the 7 piles.

 

How'd you get furnace to work with 7800basic?

[+karri]

8 hours ago, ZippyOasys said:

How'd you get furnace to work with 7800basic?

The Furnace Tracker ROM export was created by @Dave C but he cancelled the pull request. So the driver does not exist - yet. Daves code is in his github in a branch. tia rom builder by DChristianson · Pull Request #1555 · tildearrow/furnace (github.com)

 

I hope it will be added to Furnace Tracker at some point. The nice thing is that the rom export creates just one file Track_data.asm that contains the structure of the song and everything needed for the driver. For the 7800 I added some interruptor code to integrate Dave's work with cc65. Once this feature exists it should be fairly trivial to add it to 7800basic.

 

Currently I am also working on a ROM export for the Lynx as I would like to share my tunes between these platforms.

[+karri]

10 hours ago, saxmeister said:

@karri what a great, fun game. I wasn't expecting you to use that graphic - I was just testing some pixel art techniques I hadn't used in a while.

 

I was just messing around with an 8-colour version of the artwork but was really not happy with it, so I didn't finish the cleanup work. The image was smaller and the dithering of colors didn't work that well. The 7800's reds just don't pop the way they should.

 

JS7800 Link: https://raz0red.github.io/js7800/?cart=https://forums.atariage.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=1104502&key=a7884d4b06aa979b6772089e024f724f

 

chickens160b.bas.78b.bin 48 kB · 10 downloads

Wow! You managed to create a version using my original art!

 

Anyway. I have mentally closed the Easter project. So it is now finished. The Easter.a78 is perfect on the Analogue Pocket. It has also the Select and Reset buttons at the bottom of the console. I just love it for playing 7800 titles on it.

 

[+karri]

UPDATE!!!!

 

@pseudografx with his friends taught some interesting ways to enhance the TIA sound by combining instruments in very creative ways. The new background is just GOLD!

 

Easter.a78

 

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

Been having a ton of fun with this on the 7800.  Thank you!

[+karri]

1 minute ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Been having a ton of fun with this on the 7800.  Thank you!

Download the new version with the music update. It is soo much better now. The new instruments combine percussion and melody in the same note. Just MAGIC!

[+x=usr(1536)]

Absolutely the finest rendition of 'Spanish Flea' to ever come out of the TIA.  It's really excellent  

 

Just won the draw-one-card game.  Screenshot:

 

 

Shouldn't be too hard for someone else to beat my score 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

ZeroPage Homebrew is playing Easter on tomorrow's ZPH stream LIVE on Twitch! Hope you can join us!

 

Fri Mar 29, 2024 | LIVE @ 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 7PM GMT

WATCH LIVE: https://twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:

• Secret Homebrew from ZPH (2024 Exclusive World Premiere WIP | 2600) by James Earl O'Brien @ZeroPage Homebrew
• Coarse Blade (2024 Exclusive World Premiere Final | 2600) by Ketil Ronne @Magovinna
• Easter (2024 Final | 7800) by Karri Kaksonen @karri

[+karri]

Thanks for playing Eastern.

 

The problems I noted:

- Selecting 1 or 3 card game using SELECT was not intuitive

- Reset for abandoning the game and showing the score puzzled gamers for some reason

- Exit the score by pressing a button was not intuitive

- joystick should have auto-repeat on directions. Currently the timer is too long for smooth movements.

- get rid of foundation pile drawing when a long bottom pile needs the foundation pile area. Drawing causes flicker.

- when the cursor card stops in the middle of a spread pile you cannot use the 2nd button to draw a new card from te deck because the 2nd button displays the card you are at. Is this a bad feature? Do you have any reason to see the suite of a card in the middle of the spread? Perhaps this feature just confuses the player. Should I remove it?

- current position colour and moving cards colours should be different. Perhaps use violet for moving cards?

- the Spanish Flea is written by Herb Albert 1965 is copyrighted. It is fairly easy to apply for a license. But the TIA is so out of tune that the music disturbs me. I really need to write something new and fresh for the TIA that hides the out-of-tune stuff better. So a new tune is on its way. I hope.

- shape the royals. They are supposed to be chickens - not eggs. Now I get suggestions to make them white.