keilbaca Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 Here is an idea. I know they made castle crisis, but do something like that but for the 2600. Leave the graphics alone, Just better gameplay, more balls in play, smarter opponents, little faster gameplay overall, work on gameplay more than the graphics, and make the game bigger if you have to. I'm sure everyone can agree with me that Warlords is the best 4-player game for the atari hands down, so lets make it better. I myself can't program it... don't have the time or the patience to do it. That's why i'm bringing it up to AA. Whatya think? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
highinfidelity Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 Maybe this would fit better in the "homebrews" or "hacks" forums. However: warlords a slow game? Gee, when you start hitting red bricks you don't even know where the ball is! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenwood Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 Great idea for a hack/homebrew. ...and I'm sure there's a Borg twist somewhere soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocko Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 Great idea for a hack/homebrew. ...and I'm sure there's a Borg twist somewhere soon. Borglords! Defend the Borg ship from the phaser shot! All shields up! Soon, probably/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert M Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 Actually, I have this idea on my to do wish list. Hopefully I can get to it sometime in the next 5 years. :wink: I agree that the original can be too slow. Especially when it gets to the point where there are no red bricks left and the ball is at a slow speed forever. It really needs to speed up over time. If I do get to this project, I plan on calling it "Morlords". Just flip the "W" to an "M" Cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kisrael Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 One thing is, and I have no idea how hard it would be to fix, is that the lower-right player has this huge advantage. The easiest damaging shot to makes are w/ the ball travelling vertical, pressed against the wall (for example, lower left player whips the paddle to the left wall and lets go against the top left player). But for some reason when the top right player does this shot against the lower right player, it tends to bounce around harmlessly inside the castle and back out without hitting the king. It's some strange quirk of how the blocks and angles are arranged that only affects that player... That said, I dunno if Warlords needs THAT much improving. I'd rather see effort put into new 4-player paddle games. (I have a few ideas bouncing around...it's generally not easy unless you're willing to accept some flicker) (And JoustPong had its own Warlords tribute..."Poorlords" , where each player has a defensive wall. It's actually somewhere between breakout and Warlords, but someone on [stella] suggested the name, as well as a weird backstory needing some wall-repair features I didn't end up implementing.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keilbaca Posted July 14, 2004 Author Share Posted July 14, 2004 Anyone have any tutorials on how to program atari games? so i can possibly do it myself? I just want to get rid of the flashing, make things a little bit faster, try to add another ball in play (maybe be like in the original when you kill someone another one pops in), make it more arcade like, but the graphics are fine as-is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 Anyone have any tutorials on how to program atari games? http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=31 -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 One obvious addition is of course the multiple balls. But how about putting the dragon in. That was always a nice touch in the arcade that the home ports lacked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 One obvious addition is of course the multiple balls. But how about putting the dragon in. That was always a nice touch in the arcade that the home ports lacked. How many other home ports have there been? -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Major_Havoc Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 One obvious addition is of course the multiple balls. But how about putting the dragon in. That was always a nice touch in the arcade that the home ports lacked. How many other home ports have there been? -Bry There is a Warlords for the 2600 and of course the recent homebrew There are of course the emulated ports on the Atari Anniversary collections for the modern consoles, but those don't really count Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 Id love to see a beefed up 2600 warlords. maybe port 'the warriors' music to the game :-) (paraphrase,) 'shooting at the walls of the king bang bang we are the warlords' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keilbaca Posted July 14, 2004 Author Share Posted July 14, 2004 Anyone have any tutorials on how to program atari games? http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=31 -Bry Um, yea... I don't have the time to learn that... i'll leave that up to you guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kisrael Posted July 14, 2004 Share Posted July 14, 2004 Anyone have any tutorials on how to program atari games? http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=31 -Bry Um, yea... I don't have the time to learn that... i'll leave that up to you guys. Or start with http://alienbill.com/2600/101/ But no, it's not a casual thing to just do. Even as far as Hacks go, it's pretty difficult. And, uh, "Leaving it up to us guys" means it's ain't likely to get done... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keilbaca Posted July 15, 2004 Author Share Posted July 15, 2004 Heh... i guess i'm just gonna have to try it then. But i don't know how far it'll go... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 The problem with the 2600 is that there is a limited time to accomplish things on each scanline...and it's already displaying blocks, 2 "kings" 2 shields, and the ball on some of them. That wouldn't leave much time to do much of anything else. So 3 balls might be tricky to pull off without heavy flicker. However, in the center 3rd of the playfield the only thing that is being displayed is the ball sprite. I'd say that would be the first area to look at if a dragon sprite was desired. Warlords is a 4k game...so the first step would be to reverse-assemble and transfer everything that involves the display kernal to a seperate file and change it into an 8k game. The space left over would be plenty to add or alter graphics and routines. The biggest hurdle here is the fact that paddle game kernals seem to be so much more complex compared to joystick games. At least they look that way to me The second step would be to continue to reverse-assemble the game so that at least a few bytes of free ram could be discovered or created. Eliminating the color/b&w option could help out here. The way that games normally accomplish that is to save a table of colors to ram locations (where they can be altered at any point of the program)...and then the kernal pulls the revised color info from that table now sitting in ram. Step 3 would be to divide the display kernal into seperate sections for each 3rd of the playfield. Chances are, this is already done...so all that is required is to alter the existing display routine for the center area to include a player sprite in addition to the ball. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keilbaca Posted July 15, 2004 Author Share Posted July 15, 2004 Gah... i took a look into the coding and the tutorials, it kinda makes sense but not really... like i used to program all the time like gwbasic and cobol, but this is nothing like that... i mean i imagine that some of it is, and like i said some of it makes sense but i just don't get where to start... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 For reverse-assembly? Start with what you KNOW to be true...and build off that. Use Distella to create a disassembly...then comment areas that you do understand. If label LFE00 holds the shape of the player sprites...then search for LFE00 in the program and comment it. Maybe even search and replace the label "LFE00" to be more descriptive. As you fill in comments of what you understand, the parts that you don't will slowly take shape and start to become more clear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keilbaca Posted July 15, 2004 Author Share Posted July 15, 2004 I mean the whole language itself... maybe its just i outgrew the patience that i had for building programs... i think i'll just stick to playing with hardware, then programming... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nostalgic Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 I think the ball is quite literally the ball graphic, so there'd have to be flicker to get multiple balls on the field. I believe the missiles are used for the kings, so there'd again have to be flicker to use those for balls. In addition, writing kernels for paddle games can get pretty tight, since you're reading the paddle on most every scanline to get fine-grain resolution. That reduces some of the time on each line that you can use for other things. However, what I'd really want out of an enhanced Warlords is a better one-player experience. The other computer players, especially the one in the lower-right, don't provide much of a challenge. They all move rather slowly and just follow the ball at a constant speed; if the ball is faster than the paddle, it's likely to get by. They should move faster and/or more like a human player in that they could jump from place to place and possibly be a bit more defensive (like sitting in front of a hole in the wall). An alternate method of scoring could make things interesting. Rather than only the winner getting one point, have each surviving player get one point when the round ends. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjk7382 Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 I have been reading the programming tutorials and it is still about as clear as mud. I always get hung up on the playfield sessions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keilbaca Posted July 15, 2004 Author Share Posted July 15, 2004 At least i'm not the only one having problems... i mean i would like to learn how to program it, being i do like to program, it just seems to blend in with each other way too much, like all the fields look the same... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 There is a Warlords for the 2600 and of course the recent homebrew See, out of those 50% have the dragon! 2600 programming is very hard for people who don't have pretty good assembly background because it requires writing code that runs in real-time with TV display. Basically, what you are creating is something to replace the missing video DMA hardware. -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keilbaca Posted July 15, 2004 Author Share Posted July 15, 2004 Heh... I know i won't be able to have time for this due to my job, so i guess i will just have to wait and hope for someone to make it... or buy a 5200 and get castle crisis... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 Heh... I know i won't be able to have time for this due to my job, so i guess i will just have to wait and hope for someone to make it... or buy a 5200 and get castle crisis... Or get an 8-bit computer and Castle Crisis. This gives you access to cheap 2600 paddles. -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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