Please creatate Pitfall 3

[rjchamp3]

PTFALL 3 PITFALL 3 PITFALL3

 

 

 

 

Atari 2600,800,xe,5200,7800and Colecovison

 

 

 

Harry lookout ARRRRRRRRRRRRH :!:

 

 

 

DUN DUND DUN DDDDDDDDDR

[+atari2600land]

http://www.atari2600land.com/articles/pitfall.html

 

They may not be on the classic systems, but proves that Pitfall is still going strong after 20+ years.

[SeaGtGruff]

I kind of doubt that a "Pitfall! III" homebrew would ever make it past the copyright cobras, trademark tar pits, and licensing laser beams. But it might be possible to create a Pitfall!-like homebrew that captured the spirit and fun of Pitfall! without offending the Game Gods.

 

Michael Rideout

[rjchamp3]

Actually I spoke with David Crane personally about this

 

He was fine with it

 

 

Its time it's way past due

[SeaGtGruff]

Actually I spoke with David Crane personally about this

 

He was fine with it

That sounds great! Except, would Activision have anything to say about it, or does David Crane have all say-so with regards to Pitfall! games?

 

Michael Rideout

[vdub_bobby]

Of course he doesn't. Activision holds copyright on Pitfall stuff.

 

And I, personally, appreciate how you come in bragging about how your ideas are the best EVAR but the only ones you share turn out to be as derivative as possible: Pitfall 3. Hacks.

 

Ahhh! The originality is blinding me!

 

 

Please.

Edited July 27, 2006 by vdub_bobby

[Lord Helmet]

Hey now, go easy on the NES Jaws world record holder. Royalty you know...

Edited July 27, 2006 by Lord Helmet

[rjchamp3]

Well i have many ideas

 

And Pitfall 3 would not be a hack

[Room 34]

What's going on here, did Electric Troy sneak back in with a new screen name when I wasn't looking?

 

[Inky]

This project is going to need (snicker) a lot of (guffaw) HARD WORK (pause for big laffs)

[jbanes]

This project is going to need (snicker) a lot of (guffaw) HARD WORK (pause for big laffs)

There's the understatement of the century.

 

Pitfall I pushed the 2600 to its absolute limits in terms of platform games. So much so, that Pitfall II was actually quite impossible on the default 2600 hardware. To get around this, David Crane came up with an innovative co-processor called the Display Processor Chip or DPC. (Hey, I said the chip was innovative, not the name!) This co-processor fit into the cartridge and created super-tight display code on the fly. By offloading the main processor, the 2600 was able to focus more on producing good looking graphics and amazing sound.

 

If anyone wanted to create a Pitfall III, they'd need to either yank out the patent for the DPC and replicate it, or they'd need to repurpose a modern embedded processor for the task. Either way, the work would require an incredibly skilled individual, lots of time, and very painful debugging sessions. Emulators would be useless, so all testing would have to be done on real hardware. And even then, the programmer can't override the basic limitations of the 2600. He's can only push it so far before there's nothing more he can do.

 

In other words, Mr. Rjchamp3, your "idea" of creating a Pitfall III is up there with "How about we create a Pacman that doesn't suck?" i.e. Incredible broad, devoid of all content, and utterly useless to performing the actual task.

[+atari2600land]

rjchamp3 should get himself a SNES or Sega Genesis and a copy of Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure.

[rjchamp3]

Even though im a Pharmacy student

 

Beyond science i think anything is possible today

[BLarry71]

Even though im a Pharmacy student

 

Beyond science i think anything is possible today

 

Pharmacy student that explains it

 

Can a game be made using the dpc chip, I mean emulators can emulate it so can new games be made that need it and can they be made into carts if those chips are taken from the pitfall 2 carts??

[SeaGtGruff]

Can a game be made using the dpc chip, I mean emulators can emulate it so can new games be made that need it and can they be made into carts if those chips are taken from the pitfall 2 carts??

*Gasp* Tear apart a perfectly good Pitfall! II cartridge? Nooooooooooo!!!!!

 

Actually, I don't know if the DPC would be necessary today. What I mean is, the programmers were more limited back then as far as bankswitching and extra RAM. Now that supercat's 4A50 cart has raised the possibility of having lots of extra RAM that can be used for storing/creating executable and self-modifying code, is there really a need for the DPC?

 

But the unhappy truth is, David Crane might be okay with the idea of someone creating a Pitfall! III game for the Atari 2600, but I have trouble believing that Activision would ever allow it.

 

Of course, that doesn't mean that someone couldn't try to create a new game that captures some of the fun, spirit, and gameplay of the first two Pitfall! games, without infringing (too much?) on them.

 

Besides, if someone created a brand new platform-action-adventure type of game, without trying to associate it with Pitfall!, the game might stand a better chance of being a success, since the mere act of attaching the name "Pitfall!" to it would create an extremely large (and perhaps unfair?) degree of expectation around it, such that it would have to be really, really good, or else people might say that it sucks-- not when judged purely on its own terms, but when judged in comparison to the first two Pitfall! games.

 

Michael Rideout

[+Random Terrain]

I could make Pitfall 3 using batari Basic in about a day and a half. It would have unlimited levels using advanced controlled randomness techniques and super-secret algorithms and it would also have 16 billion colors through knowledge I gained from reading David Crane's jewel encrusted notebook that he personally gave to me. We're best friends you know. He gave me permission to make the game as long as I let him drive my DeLorean.

[+atari2600land]

What about my Super Maria Sisters? Isn't that like Pitfall?

[supercat]

Pitfall I pushed the 2600 to its absolute limits in terms of platform games. So much so, that Pitfall II was actually quite impossible on the default 2600 hardware.

 

Pitfall! was innovative for its time, and created the platform genre, but it hardly pushed the 2600 to its limits. The notable thing about it was that it was the first 2600 game that tried to make a running person actually look like a running person. Objects in the kernel fall into very clear vertical zones and only one object can move among them (or even move vertically at all). All of the zones the player can enter that aren't fairly small have nothing in them except the player and either a ladder or vine, neither of which requires much CPU time.

 

The audio in Pitfall II is certainly beyond anything the 2600 could do without spending all of its CPU time on it. Even using the DPC chip, the audio uses enough CPU time that generating the rest of the display requires the DPC chip. If one were trying to code Pitfall II without the use of a DPC chip, I don't think it would be terribly difficult. The screen divides vertically into zones, each of which has one sprite and the player. The total ROM requirement would probably be 16K instead of 10K, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

 

Incidentally, the DPC chip could have handled audio with far less CPU overhead if it were wired so that an access to $59 or $5A would cause it to output an audio sample on data bits 0-3 for between 0.42 and 2.0 microseconds; the value put there should be one greater than the value to be written. Then, instead of having to use fourteen cycles and trash a register on each scan line, the game could simply use ten cycles and only trash the N and Z flags.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

What about my Super Maria Sisters? Isn't that like Pitfall?

[+atari2600land]

Hey, it's as close as anyone's ever gonna come for a while. & besides, I think SMS is pretty good for someone who's been programming for only a couple months.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Hey, it's as close as anyone's ever gonna come for a while. & besides, I think SMS is pretty good for someone who's been programming for only a couple months.

Sorry, I really thought you where joking.

[+atari2600land]

OK, so it isn't. Oh well.

[jbanes]

Objects in the kernel fall into very clear vertical zones and only one object can move among them (or even move vertically at all). All of the zones the player can enter that aren't fairly small have nothing in them except the player and either a ladder or vine, neither of which requires much CPU time.

All of which means that Mr. Crane was very good at playing to the 2600's strengths. For a non-flickering platform game (where all the action happens in the same "zone" vertically), there's practically nothing that could be added without having to resort to flickering or other less-than-desirable tricks. A 2600 programmer might be able to achieve more action in a Mario Bros. type game (thanks to more vertical levels), but I don't see how all the left-over CPU power helps you in Pitfall!. There's really nowhere to spend it that isn't already being used, and there's not enough system memory to scroll the screen ala Pitfall II.

 

The audio in Pitfall II is certainly beyond anything the 2600 could do without spending all of its CPU time on it. Even using the DPC chip, the audio uses enough CPU time that generating the rest of the display requires the DPC chip. If one were trying to code Pitfall II without the use of a DPC chip, I don't think it would be terribly difficult. The screen divides vertically into zones, each of which has one sprite and the player. The total ROM requirement would probably be 16K instead of 10K, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

I haven't decompiled the DPC source or anything, so you may have me at a disadvantage. However, it seems to me that the scrolling playfield, animated water, and several other effects were not really something that could be accomplished inside the 2600's cpu and memory constraints. There isn't enough time to assemble a tiled playfield in the kernal or enough memory to store a precalculated version or enough ROM to store the entire playfield. With a large enough RAM expansion, I suppose that someone might be able to replicate Pitfall II without the use of the DPC. But it would be extremely tight, and probably require one of the best 2600 programmers around here.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

However, it seems to me that the scrolling playfield, animated water, and several other effects were not really something that could be accomplished inside the 2600's cpu and memory constraints. There isn't enough time to assemble a tiled playfield in the kernal or enough memory to store a precalculated version or enough ROM to store the entire playfield.

I am not so sure here. IMO the graphics could be done without using the DPC and more memory.

 

Crane used several kernals in Pitfall! so, I suppose he did the same here. Specialized kernals require much less CPU time and can optimize memory usage at the cost of using more ROM. Also, large parts of the playfield are symmetrical. And some parts looking like an asymmetrical playfield is actually done using sprites (you can tell from using the emulator keys ALT+Z,X,C,V,B,N).

[rjchamp3]

ITALY 2006 WORLD CUP CHAMPIONS

 

 

 

GO ITALY GO DEFEATED THE GERMANS 2-0

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

 

 

PROUD TO BE AN ITALIAN