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Arkanoid clone feeler...all comments welcome.


vdub_bobby

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I don't think I can get multiple-hit bricks in at all, due to RAM limitations.  How important is this?  Can people live with two kinds of bricks (breakable/unbreakable) or not?

 

I love the multi-hit bricks with less compromises. How about just using more RAM? Superchip get's you an extra 128 bytes.

If AA sold extra-RAM carts I would code for them. Until they do, I'll stick with what exists. ;)

 

If people would rather wait for an extra-RAM, better port, I have no problem putting this on the back burner. I don't want to spend time doing something people aren't interested in. :)

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I think that your game will be great either way. If you have powerups and you can shoot the bricks then I'm good!

 

Meanwhile, my curiousity has been piqued regarding the SARA chip. I've spoken with Curt Vendel and he has said that, at some point, he will take a look at the SARA chip schematics and may even try seeing how it would be converted to a modern programmable logic chip. No promises but it would be interesting to see...

 

Thanks for making this game Bob.

 

- David

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Meanwhile, my curiousity has been piqued regarding the SARA chip. I've spoken with Curt Vendel and he has said that, at some point, he will take a look at the SARA chip schematics and may even try seeing how it would be converted to a modern programmable logic chip. No promises but it would be interesting to see...

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I'd be curious to see the SARA chip schematics, but I'm not sure how much better one will be able to do than a PLD plus a RAM chip, unless one wants to do custom silicon (which would not be practical for anything less than 10,000pcs). Homebrew 2600 development may be picking up steam, but I don't see it picking up that much.

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Are you going for an Arkanoid port? Personally I always though it would be better to do an Arkanoid-like game since some features will probably be impossible to port to the 2600.

 

If you don't stick to an Arkanoid port, then you can maybe come up with some new features/levels that are easier to do within the limits of the 2600 to make up for the missing original Arkanoid features.

 

What about a pill available on some levels that flips the board? Or a board that changes over time? How about a pill that lets you nudge the ball while it's moving (kinda like Video Pinball)? Some sort of bonus round would be cool.

 

I do like the unbreakable and multi-hit blocks. Maybe you could have an alternate kernel mode for levels that require them which reduces the number of blocks that can be displayed (every other line, or chop some lines off the top or bottom).

 

-paul

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Are you going for an Arkanoid port?  Personally I always though it would be better to do an Arkanoid-like game since some features will probably be impossible to port to the 2600. 

 

If you don't stick to an Arkanoid port, then you can maybe come up with some new features/levels that are easier to do within the limits of the 2600 to make up for the missing original Arkanoid features.

Actually, I don't think that many features have to be sacrificed. I think all the pills are feasible. The biggest sacrifices will be the graphics, I think - the 2600 just doesn't have the resolution or the colors-per-line to make a 1:1 port (I know you are all shocked at this revelation :))

 

The main obstacles are the multi-hit bricks (which is a RAM limitation) and getting more than 2 enemies onscreen at once with acceptable flicker (which, to me, is at least 30 Hz).

 

As far as multi-hit bricks - that could probably be done by reducing the number of rows of bricks (original: 18 rows of 13 bricks; my demo: 15 rows of 16 bricks; probably need to reduce down to 10 rows of 16 bricks to get multi-hit bricks).

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As far as multi-hit bricks - that could probably be done by reducing the number of rows of bricks (original: 18 rows of 13 bricks; my demo: 15 rows of 16 bricks; probably need to reduce down to 10 rows of 16 bricks to get multi-hit bricks).

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Did you see my suggestion about only setting one of the two PF bits for a brick to make it a two-hit brick and then on each frame toggling all of those bits from the left side to the right (using a 256-byte lookup table)? That shouldn't take any extra time to process in the kernel and should be reasonably fast to handle during the retrace.

 

Another possibility would be to, rather than tracking which multi-hit bricks had been hit, count how many multi-hit bricks have been hit since the last brick was broken. This could perhaps be indicated by changing the intensity of the ball. I think Atari's Centipede and Millipede do something like this, rather than keeping a hit count for every single mushroom.

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As far as multi-hit bricks - that could probably be done by reducing the number of rows of bricks (original: 18 rows of 13 bricks; my demo: 15 rows of 16 bricks; probably need to reduce down to 10 rows of 16 bricks to get multi-hit bricks).

899126[/snapback]

 

Did you see my suggestion about only setting one of the two PF bits for a brick to make it a two-hit brick and then on each frame toggling all of those bits from the left side to the right (using a 256-byte lookup table)? That shouldn't take any extra time to process in the kernel and should be reasonably fast to handle during the retrace.

That's an interesting idea, but flickering the playfield doesn't really appeal to me. :)

Plus a 256-byte table is kinda, uh, big.

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That's an interesting idea, but flickering the playfield doesn't really appeal to me.  :)

Plus a 256-byte table is kinda, uh, big.

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Well, a 256-byte table would be a little big if you're shooting for a 4K cart, but not out of the question. And if you're going for a larger cart it'd be no problem at all.

 

I do think that if you're going to have multi-hit bricks, they should be visually distinct. Striping the playfield (with alternating colored and gray lines) would be a nice way to achieve this if there's enough RAM, but RAM does seem rather tight.

 

What do you think of the idea of having multi-hit bricks but keeping track of the 'ball's power' rather than the number of times each particular brick has been hit?

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That's an interesting idea, but flickering the playfield doesn't really appeal to me.  :)

Plus a 256-byte table is kinda, uh, big.

899153[/snapback]

 

Well, a 256-byte table would be a little big if you're shooting for a 4K cart, but not out of the question. And if you're going for a larger cart it'd be no problem at all.

 

I do think that if you're going to have multi-hit bricks, they should be visually distinct. Striping the playfield (with alternating colored and gray lines) would be a nice way to achieve this if there's enough RAM, but RAM does seem rather tight.

 

What do you think of the idea of having multi-hit bricks but keeping track of the 'ball's power' rather than the number of times each particular brick has been hit?

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I like that idea. :)

 

If I decide to make a faithful-as-possible port of Arkanoid it wouldn't be appropriate, I don't think, but if I make a clone instead it is definitely something to consider.

Edited by vdub_bobby
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One vote for 'Faithful-as-Possible' :D

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I'll counter with a vote for "As cool as possible, doing whatever works best for the 2600." A really faithful Arkanoid port just isn't going to be possible without memory expansion (all those nice colored bricks on one scan line? Bleagh). And besides, some things about Arkanoid were annoying. I'd rather have a game that can take best advantage of the 2600's abilities than an iffy arcade port.

 

BTW, one thing I'd like to see which Arkanoid doesn't have would be a 'grabber' function so that when the player didn't have the lasers the fire button would cause a 'hand' to shoot up a short distance to grab power-ups. When the player does have lasers, they could be used to 'bounce' the power-ups back into the air a short distance. Otherwise, if a power-up is timed to reach the ground at the same time as the ball, there's no way for the player to get it.

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One vote for 'Faithful-as-Possible' :D

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I'll counter with a vote for "As cool as possible, doing whatever works best for the 2600."

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I'll second that. True ports are only cool when every feature of the original game was cool. I've never played the original Arkanoid, but I don't think "being faithful to the original" is ever a good reason for porting bad aspects of a game. It's my opinion that you can never go wrong with the phrase "as cool as possible" (especially when coupled with anything involving video games :)).

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Ok, I've been playing with some stuff on paper, and I think I can get 3 types of bricks in: single-hit, double-hit, and unbreakable.

 

However, they all will look the same (no color striping), and it will require two (!) 256-byte tables. Yeesh. That will pretty much require a bank-switched cartridge.

 

In fact, I don't think color striping is really possible without extra RAM.

 

On the other hand...the flicker idea might just work - unbreakable and two-hit bricks would flicker and single-hit bricks (and two-hit bricks that had been hit once) would be solid (no flicker).

 

But flipping all those bits would eat up a lot of Vblank/overscan time...

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