Polarium on the 2600?

[+atari2600land]

Could there be a Polarium-type game on the Atari 2600? For those of you who don't know this game, it's a DS game where you try to make rows of tiles the same color with one line so all the colors in the particular grid disappear by drawing a line, and whatever squares are in the line change color. There's an outer gray border that doesn't change color and doesn't change color and therefore isn't important in changing the black & white tiles. I was thinking that there would be a cursor that would cover the inside of a square and to start drawing a line, you would cover a square with the cursor and start drawing the line. When you were done, you would press fire again and the tiles would change color. You only get one line to draw in the DS version, and it would have to be this way, too. I figured there would be different puzzles by pressing the game select switch like in Marble Jumper. I've added a speculation screenshot below.

Edited June 25, 2006 by atari2600land

[jbanes]

Could there be a Polarium-type game on the Atari 2600?

Yes, but not in bBASIC. If you time things right, you can easily use the Playfield graphics to produce the board.

 

For those of you who don't know this game, it's a DS game where you try to make rows of tiles the same color with one line so all the colors in the particular grid disappear by drawing a line, and whatever squares are in the line change color.

There's a flash version here in case anyone wants to try for themselves. It's an interesting game, relying heavily on spatial reasoning instead of time pressures. Reminds me a bit of Tetris Attacks in Puzzle mode, even though the gameplay is extremely different.

 

Perhaps an easier to understand explanation of the gameplay is as follows:

 

1. You can draw a single line similar to the "snakes" in games like Nibbles.

2. The line cannot cross itself.

3. You want to touch every block of the same color with your "snaking" line.

4. Once you've placed your line, the touched squares will change from black to white or vica-versa. You only win if the board becomes monocolored from this shift.

[+atari2600land]

Well, I didn't figure it could be done with bBASIC. I figured since Video Chess had an 8x8 grid, making a 9x9 grid would be possible. If that's too hard to make with the Atari, there's lots of puzzles for this game that are 8x8 and smaller.

[jbanes]

Well, I didn't figure it could be done with bBASIC. I figured since Video Chess had an 8x8 grid, making a 9x9 grid would be possible. If that's too hard to make with the Atari, there's lots of puzzles for this game that are 8x8 and smaller.

The 2600 actually gives you a playfield that's 40 x 192. If you want square blocks, then you need to use about 8 rows per column, giving you a maximum board of 40x24. Most of the trickiness from there comes in trying to get the playfield to be different colors in different columns. One way of accomplishing this is to use playfield on as one color, and playfield off as the other. This would give you the black and white squares for "free", but still leave you with the difficulty of the grey border.

 

The border could then be solved with careful timing of the playfield colors. Simply set the color to grey at the beginning of the scanline, then reset the color to white or black (depending on which one you use for the background) immediately after it's drawn.

 

Unfortunately, you're still not out of the woods. You still have to draw the "snake" somehow. There are two options I see:

 

1. Play more timing tricks to discolor the selected part of the playfield.

2. Use solid sprites to cover the part of the board every few frames. This would create a flashing effect that could be extended across the entire line using the venetian blinds trick.

 

BTW, it looks like I lied a bit on the game design. The entire board doesn't need to be monocolored. Only each horizontal row. As long as the entire row is the same color, it will clear. This is important in some of the more complex puzzles.

[vdub_bobby]

That game is pretty cool, though I found both your description and the instructions on the flash game's site incomprehensible. Had to go to Nintendo's site to figure out the rules.