Tron Game for the Atari 2600

[neotokeo2001]

The guy should wear a jock. I wonder if he glows in the dark??

 

[+Nathan Strum]

I keep trying to figure out if I halucinated some dos utility that let you input a series of notes, and then it would suggest the best fit pitches for you, changing key to whatever would provide the closest matches over all...

 

I had the same hallucination, but mine ran on the Mac, too.

 

My idea was something that used a full set of samples from the 2600... or perhaps this could be designed as a front-end for an emulator... and displayed a couple of keyboards on screen (one for each sound channel). It would be user-switchable to work one of two ways:

 

One would be that all available 2600 notes, regardless of sound type, would be highlighted on the keys and playable. The program would simply play whatever sound type was required to get a particular note, if available. This is akin to what you described, I think. This would make the most notes available, although the sound type could change from note to note.

 

The other way, would be that you selected only one sound type per channel at a time, so only the notes that were available for that type would be highlighted and playable. This gives you less notes to work with at a time, but uniform sound types.

 

In either case, you could play a melody on the keyboard(s) using a mouse or the computer keyboard, and have the computer record the patterns, which would show up on musical staffs. You could play back your recorded patterns, and then alter them as needed either live, or by changing the values of the notes on the staff, and the notes would "snap" to the 2600 values. So if it needed to change to another voice to get a note, it would do so. You could also go through and adjust volume, when you had all of the notes figured out.

 

When finished, it would output a file that could be assembled into a .bin using Paul's sequencer.

 

I wonder if this could be done using Apple's GarageBand...

[raindog]

I've talked about writing such a utility, but (a) it would have been for Linux and (b) it probably would have been on stella-list.

 

Seriously, you have the right idea, but the way I think it would work best is to take that full set of 2600 samples - you only need 1 frame duration of each, 17ms or whatever, each recorded at half volume - and FFT them, then take the resulting set of frequencies and crunch them down to a fingerprint (I wrote a utility to find similar images a few years ago along similar lines.)

 

Then, you take the sound you want to reproduce, the program chops it up into 17ms chunks, FFT's it, makes a fingerprint, and compares it to the database of fingerprints from 2600 sounds. It chooses the least different fingerprint, and then re-FFT's the associated 2600 sample at all the volume levels and does a second compare, picking the best match. If you wanted to use both oscillators, it could re-FFT the entire set of sounds, each added to the best match sound, and do a second pass of comparisons. When it was done, it would output a bunch of data to include in your assembler code corresponding to the appropriate register values.

 

I have no idea how good this would sound, but I'd think you could at least do stuff like the Berzerk voice without having to blank the screen and without using quite as much data, and it should be a lot easier to convert music this way. The stumbling block for me so far has been that I just have no idea how to get that initial set of 128 pitch/timbre samples without sitting there with SoundX for an entire day. I think I could deal with the FFT stuff without too much trouble in perl.

[neotokeo2001]

I worked a little with Squeeze Box and it is definitely something that can be done. I'm no artist, so if someone can make a decent Tron Guy image to use it would be a big help.

 

Single color per scan line. I can make the image fit so size does'nt matter.

[+Nathan Strum]

I'll give it a shot.

 

I overlayed a grid on the original pixels before drawing this, so it should be the right size. Also, I thought a frisbee would be more appropriate than a gun. I used this photo for reference, and tried to capture the overall stance.

 

Tronman:

 

Tronman sprite at 200%:

[kisrael]

That's very good, a lot better than my color hack

[Atari Charles]

Nathun's Tron Man sprite looks quite good.

 

I looked at a color hack a while back when this idea was just starting to get off of the ground. I think it was Kisreal's and it was pretty good, but I think there was some problem getting the color just right.

 

I think we should go for what works the best for this game. Everyone who has contributed to this game even via some ideas will get mention when the game is totally done.

 

The real Tron Man(Tron Guy) is quite excited about both projects. I belive his a has a good sense of humor as both games are making llight of his costume and his wieght. Also when he appeared on that evening talkshow, he had a good sense of humor throughout.

 

Atari Charles

[+Nathan Strum]

I'm going to be taking some time off, so I won't be around much. So I decided to go ahead and design some more sprites, just in case you decide you'd like to use them.

 

I revised Tronman a little, and added animation to him, and replaced the demon at the end of the game.

 

Tronman - in action:

 

End of the game - the MCP mocks your efforts:

 

Close-up of revised sprite:

 

Alternate coloring (darker, more glowing):

 

Alternate coloring (lighter, looks like the photos of his costume):

 

And just so I don't completely chew up bandwidth in this thread, here are links to close-ups of all of the sprite frames, with grid overlays:

Tronman frame 1 (standing still)

Tronman frame 2 (walking)

Tronman frame 3 (walking)

Tronman frame 4 (walking)

Tronman frame 5 (walking)

MCP frame 1 (laughing)

MCP frame 2 (laughing)

MCP frame 3 (laughing)

MCP frame 4 (laughing)

 

And don't feel obligated to use any of this, if it doesn't work for you. But you're free to use anything you like.

[kisrael]

Dude, that is great stuff. I was trying to figure out what could be done w/ the ending routine, and you NAILED the mutha.

 

So is this at the ROM hacked stage, or just the "I think this would work" stage? I wonder if the colors will be easy or difficult to do...

[+Nathan Strum]

What I posted is just at the "Photoshopped mockup" stage.

 

But I tried to match the original sprites as close as possible, size-wise. I captured the game in real-time, and broke it up into frames, then modified them. (If I knew how to hack the graphics, I would have taken a shot at it, but I'm a bit short on the programming skills).

 

The color for the MCP should work - the demon at the end was the same red. I don't know about Tronman though... that's why I put up a few different color schemes. The flesh tone is the same as the original sprite, however.

[Atari Charles]

I just want everyone to know that Tron Man: Buffer Overrun is still in the works of being completed. Although I came up with the idea and got the go ahead by Jay Maynard(Tron Guy), this game is a project that we are all working on together.

 

The Main programmer "Neotokeo2001" is a very talented guy and should come up with something quite good out of hacking Squeeze Box.

 

There are other people involved with this project mentioned in earlier posts. Some things have changed, some things haven't.

 

On behalf of everyone who contributed, everyone who is still contributing to this project, Jay Maynard(Tron Guy; Tron Man), this project will continue to be worked on and continue to become a physical cartridge. These things take time.

 

Atari Charles