Serguei2 Posted January 11, 2005 Share Posted January 11, 2005 I'm wondering if it could be removed any flickering sprites in some most games like Ms Pacman, Centipede, Kangaroo ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Player Posted January 11, 2005 Share Posted January 11, 2005 Sure, you could remove the flickering sprites. But then you would have a lot less sprites in the game. For example, one ghost in Pac-Man. Do you really want them out of the games that badly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 11, 2005 Share Posted January 11, 2005 lol @ BP The reason that the sprites flicker is because the 2600 only has 5 of them. 2 "player" sprites that are 8 pixels wide, 2 "missile" sprites that are 2 pixels wide, and a single-pixel "ball". The display is 1-dimensional (so it's up to the game's display kernal - the core engine of the game - to determine which sprites appear on any given scanline at one time), and the 6507 processor is only allowed a mere 76 machine cycles to update on any scanline. While some limited additional capabilities exist (like sprite doubling or tripling and 3 pixel sizes), the display kernal of some games like Pac-Man limit the sprites to only 1 of each on any given television frame. In order to change it, the game would almost certianly need to be totally rewritten. Gotta remember, this thing was designed with Pong-type games in mind Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serguei2 Posted January 11, 2005 Author Share Posted January 11, 2005 I know that 2600 is limited by following Andrew's lessons but since I played Lock 'n Chase (Pac-Man like) without any flickers I was sure it could be fixed some flicker games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted January 11, 2005 Share Posted January 11, 2005 I know that 2600 is limited by following Andrew's lessons but since I played Lock 'n Chase (Pac-Man like) without any flickers I was sure it could be fixed some flicker games. Lock 'n Chase is a good example about programming tricks. Two cops are drawn by using one player object, the other two by using a missile object (different widths and shifted!). To avoid any flicker those two cops, drawn by the same object never overlap, they even sometimes reverse direction. Watch them closely and you will notice this. Very clever programming there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Helmet Posted January 11, 2005 Share Posted January 11, 2005 Gotta remember, this thing was designed with Pong-type games in mind A good point. With that in mind, the fact that the 2600 has such a wide variety of games is a testament to the programers and designers of the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Yeah m*network did the same thing with discs of tron. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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