Most Difficult 2600 Programming Feat?

[AtariKari]

What are some of the more impressive 2600 game effects / games, from a programming point of view?

 

I know there have been several "fav. effect," etc. threads, but I'd be very interested to see what some of the 2600 coders here think are the most impressive / difficult feats on the 2600?

 

Similarly, what are some of the most difficult / impressive games for the system?

 

Thanks in advance,

Mike

[liveinabin]

FMV

[StanJr]

Ms. Pac-man is pretty impressive.

 

The depth of Pitfall II is impressive.

 

BMX Airmaster is pretty cool too.

 

Overly impressed Stan

[AtariKari]

quote

(liveinabin)  FMV  

 

You mean like Frankenstein's Monster? Sweet.

Hey, if GBC could do Dragon's Lair...

 

I was thinking more of games like Merlin's Walls (is it really that impressive?), Thrust, Pesco, Pete Rose Baseball, Xenophobe, even Galaxian. But since I tend to associate assembly with Legos and not the 2600, I wondered what those with experience thought.

[Ze_ro]

I still can't even imagine how Activision was able to pull off a game as amazing as Pitfall II on such limited hardware. Of course, they sorta cheated by adding an extra chip for sound, but the graphics alone blow my mind.

 

--Zero

[Big Player]

Found this article here in the Atari Age archives, from IEEE Spectrum magazine, March 1983:

 

"Ironically, flicker has never been used at Activision, the software company that Mr. Whitehead helped start when he left Atari in 1979. Mr. Whitehead did not say Activision will never use the technique in a game, but he noted that the company's programmers will rethink the philosophy of a game to avoid it. 'It is a tradeoff that is not acceptable,' he said."

 

Here's a link to the rest of the article.

 

 

Design Case History: The Atari Video Computer System

[mos6507]

What seemed like the biggest feat became a standard trick later on.

 

The biggest breakthrough was the six-char routine that was used for scoring and other effects. This took the sprite copy feature which enabled games like Space Invaders and let you have individual shapes for each copy, basically 48 bits of highres bitmap graphics to work with. The way this is actually done leaves NO free cycles left. It's only _barely_ possible. But once you get there, it looks easy.

 

That's what was used for all the scoring, control panel graphics and radars and all that other good stuff.

 

There was also a lot of HARDWARE innovation. Being able to implement RAM on a cart slot with no read/write or clock lines was a feat in and of itself. So the Supercharger, CBS Ram+, and Superchip RAM are all amazing inventions, as is the Pitfall II DPC chip.

 

The other trick is what's used in Galaxian and Robot Tank to get even more than six sprites on a line. You can actually fill an entire scanline with sprites that way. I guess the limit is like 14 or something.

 

Another trick that was only used once was the Suicide Mission bitmap, which manages to fill the entire screen (albeit dithered) just with sprites using a combination of flicker, interlacing, and the Starpath RAM. Suicide Mission represents the ultimate capability of the 2600 hardware to paint with sprites. It's really amazing that with only the two player objects you can cover so much of the screen at once.

 

I think the best tricks are possible only with RAM, since you can then do self-modifying code and all sorts of dynamic RAM lookup tables and bitmap tricks. RAM lets you overcome a lot of the timing constraints of the 2600. That's why most of the latter-era games from Atari Corp looked so good. They had a combination of 16K ROM and 256 extra bytes of RAM to work with.

[AtariKari]

Glen -

 

Wow, thanks for the response. This kind of technical breakdown for the layman (me) makes playing these games that much more enjoyable an experience.

 

Time to go fire up Stella Gets a New Brain and the CCart...

 

What about Merlin's Walls? I think I read that the programmer (Eric or Igor) got an effect similar to this to run on a non-tipped TV. Or was that Thomas (Thrust)?

 

I forget, but have always wondered how impressive this game looks. Is it similar to London Blitz, visually?

[Paddle-Man]

This may sounds a little crazy but...

I really like the scroll-paralax effects in JungleHunt -did you see it?-

[Tempest]

Not making your graphics flicker like mad.

 

Tempest

[Room 34]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tempest:

Not making your graphics flicker like mad.

---

 

Agreed (spoken as a non-programmer). So what was Activision's trick to avoid this? (I have to note, though, that apparently they got lax on this in the later days — there is definitely some flicker going on in "Commando.")

 

[ 05-29-2002: Message edited by: room34 ]

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

Well, from a programmers point of view, I'm most impressed how many Jammed levels Thomas squeezed into 4K.

 

And I think those AIs of games like chess, checkers and others are quite impressive, too.

 

Solaris.

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[Thomas Jentzsch]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cybergoth:

Solaris

---

Yes, Solaris is great!

[Cupcakus]

Solaris is the #1 game for the console as far as pushing the envelope of what it can do...

 

But don't forget Space Shuttle. I still can't figure how the screens were assembeled for that one.

 

And what is also great about the all mighty Activision is all of their games had the little animated Activision logo at the bottom.

[Cupcakus]

Sorry to bring this post back from the dead... Just sounded like something fun to do :-) :-)

[Voch]

I always like the explosion of the Qotile in Yars' Revenge.

[Happy_Dude]

Driving at night in Enduro totally blew my mind when i first played it.

I have a version where the tail lights are green and orange. I think it looks better than the original.

Probably not to difficult an effect.

But man is it fun

[Inky]

The other trick is what's used in Galaxian and Robot Tank to get even more than six sprites on a line.  You can actually fill an entire scanline with sprites that way.  I guess the limit is like 14 or something.

 

Could this trick be implemented to produce a flicker free Ms. Pac-man?

[AtariKari]

Anyone else find the flame effect on James Bond 007 to be impressive?

[memorymoog]

HERO is the most impressive game i've played on the 2600

[Stella'sGhost]

Aside from getting some impressive graphics out of the atari, I'm impressed with some of the Artificial Intelligence on alot of these games.

 

I do some game programming in Lingo -(which is one of the Highest level languages out there!) and I always find the most challenging aspect of game programming is the game play itself, key to this it seems to me is how complex the A-I of the game, the bad guys, the space ships, the "world" that the game is in..... its amazing how a simple sub routine can give a bad guy some really cool A-I, and on many Atari games the A-I is top-notch, state of the art, brilliant stuff!!

 

So its all about A-I! Aint it??

 

I'm pretty much a self-taught programmer so I'm no expert - and I don't know assembly but I can appreciate it!

[Rob Mitchell]

2600 Battlezone still impresses me .. I'm playing this game on the 2600? The treads moving in opposite directions, the horizon, the radar, the firing from behind ..

 

You know the gameplay happens inside a sky dome with the horizon in the distance all around. Well if you take the cart apart, there is a circular bubble chip inside .. This is the arena in which Battlezone takes place! And the game continues inside this dome chip even after the cart is removed and put on the shelf for storage! put the cart to your ear .. you can hear the explosions!

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

[King Atari]

Xenophobe

 

That's my vote for most impressive. The graphics, the sound, the gameplay, all exceptional. I just wish two players could play at once, instead of waiting for the other to finish the level.

[CrazyImpmon]

I'll list a few that were rather advanced hardware wise.

 

Solaris: 16 K of ROM. Atari 2600 can only address 4K and to get around that for really large games requires really complex bankswitching scheme. Only think more complicated than this would be a 16K game with RAM chip.

 

Pitfall 2: AFAIK 2600 can only 2 souned channels but Activision added a sound chip that allowed a 3rd channel and made possible the background music.

 

Supercharger: a reprogrammable 6K RAM cart that can play off any sound sources. Cuttle cart is like this except it also contasins several bankswitching circuit and can handle all 2600 games except for Pitfall 2.

 

Burgertime: it had the most difficult bankswitching scheme of any single game cart. I posted this a few weeks ago. It's a shame Mattel couldn't do a better graphics with the extra hardware.

 

Space Shuttle: probably the only realistic sim for 2600.

 

and finally:

Video Chess: the only 2600 game that can cheat.

[Witchfynde]

Tunnel Runner was absolutely amazing, with the smoothe, fast-scrolling 3D graphics, but of course that was with the additional "RAM Plus" chip in order to pull that sucker off. Scary as crap too...I'm surprised of never hearing of a fatal heart attack happening with that game like the arcade version of Berzerk!