Ok, how about Killer Bees for the 2600/7800?

[~llama]

Hey I was the first one to suggest a port of killer bees in my post about ports of a bunch of the great O2 games, including KC Munchkin and Pick Axe Pete...

 

But I think you are barking up the wrong tree with the 2600 and 7800.  The 2600 will have difficulty with the flicker issue, and both systems use digital joysticks.  The 2600 has a trackball, but it's digital.

 

Killer Bees would be the PERFECT game for a mouse or real trackball  with it's open playfield.  That's why I'm amazed noone's done a remake for the PC.  As for Atari systems, the 5200, with the killer analog trackball, would be best....

926863[/snapback]

 

I think 2600 isn't really going to pull it off easily, but... having played Robotron on 7800 I can safely say that Killer Bees is no match for the MARIA. The only advantage the 5200 has is, as you say, the analog trackball.

[vdub_bobby]

I think it would be possible to use the ball (HMOVEd every line) for the player's bee swarm, a missile (also HMOVEd every line) for the other bee swarms, and the two players, each with 2-line resolution, for the beebots and tombstones.

 

This would give you up to 4 objects on any one scanline without flicker. With a decent AI algorithm to avoid scanline overlap whenever possible I think it would look reasonably good.

[+atari2600land]

I know this thread is like 4 years old, but since the topic of killer bees has been brought up on another thread, i thought i'd give it a try. If anyone could point me in the direction of an instruction manual or tell me how to play the game on my O^2 emulator, then I might get a little better grasp of what I have to do here.

killerbees.bas.bin

killerbees.bas

[Impaler_26]

If anyone could point me in the direction of an instruction manual or tell me how to play the game on my O^2 emulator, then I might get a little better grasp of what I have to do here.

Here you go:

 

http://www.ozyr.com/o2/o2killer.html

[liveinabin]

Although bear in mind that there are several 'versions' of Killer Bees (in the same cart. a bit like Super Gameboy carts) depending on your system. The basic Odyssey2/Videopac version is visually basic but fun but when you play it on something like the JoPac, it's graphically pretty flash.

 

Only reason I mention this is that it might look bit flashy under emulation, but you can really kill a lot of the graphics (and all of the background) without changing the game one bit. The 2600 could do it without breaking a sweat, I'd imagine. And I'd LOVE to play a conversion.

[ZylonBane]

The 2600 could do it without breaking a sweat, I'd imagine.

Did you read the first page of this thread? A gameplay-faithful version of Killer Bees would be a murderous flicker-fest, since so many objects can easily end up on the same horizontal level.

[kirin jensen]

As I suspected, three-playfield-pixel bots look absolutely horrible. A port of Killer Bees that looked like that would just give O2 owners something to feel smug about.

 

Using the playfield for the walls and headstones, players for the bots, and missiles for the swarms is probably the best-looking approach. It would have to be an insanely tight kernel to pull it all off though.

Every time this discussion comes up and inevitably turns to the possibility of completely gutting the play mechanics in order to produce a game that only vaguely looks like Killer Bees! it gives O2 owners something to feel smug about.

[supercat]

Every time this discussion comes up and inevitably turns to the possibility of completely gutting the play mechanics in order to produce a game that only vaguely looks like Killer Bees! it gives O2 owners something to feel smug about.

 

Killer Bees! features five bee-bots that are 8 pixels wide by IIRC 16 or 18 scan lines tall. Rendering those using 3-block-wide playfield graphics (12 pixels) would not be totally outrageous. The swarms could be drawn using P0/P1/M0/M1. The issue of colors might pose some difficulty, but might be ameliorated by blanking the swarms on alternate lines. Not sure if there'd be enough cycles for that. Let's see:

; Even lines:
14 Load two GRPx.
10 Load two COLUPx.
8 Zero two ENAMx.
28 Load four playfield bytes.
5  Load playfield color.
3 Strobe HMOVE.
*68 total

; Odd lines:
8 Zero two GRPx.
10 Load two COLUPx.
20 Load two ENAMx and two HMMxx.
28 Load four playfield bytes.
5 Load playfield color.
* 71 total

Seems like that might be workable, at least in theory.

[kirin jensen]

The graphic output isn't the real killer. It's the motion of the beebots.