Making Telemachus | Programming in bAtari Basic! | Moving Sprites
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ก.ย. 2024
- #Atari2600 #bAtariBasic #AtariHomebrew #GameDev #IndieGame
I’m making a game for the Atari 2600! Join me in this second video for a breezy look at my early code-- as I get a lot of things wrong-- but manage to slide some sprites around.
I'm learning bAtari Basic, and have a swiss-cheese understanding so far, so feel free to share your more accurate knowledge in the comments below…
Resources___________________________
GDC Post Mortem: PITFALL! //
David Crane explains--
www.gdcvault.c...
Stella Programmer's Guide //
Written by Steve Wright
"I bought some batteries, but they weren't included. So I had to buy them again."
www.taswegian.c...
bAtari Basic //
Created by Fred Quimby--
github.com/bat...
Atari Dev Studio //
Created by chunkypixel--
marketplace.vi...
bAtari Basic Commands //
My main cheat-sheet, by alienbill-
alienbill.com/...
8bitsinthebasement //
Started my journey with this guy’s excellent bAtari Basic tutorials! Thx, Peter!
/ @8bitsinthebasement
Memelvar //
Humorous 'making of' an Atari game in assembly-
/ @memelvar
8Blit //
Deep dives into the Atari 2600, including assembly code exercises available via Github-
/ @8blit
Atari Age //
Informative programming forums-
forums.atariag...
Into the Vertical Blank //
Fun Atari podcast-
intothevertical...
Special thx //
To my kid brother Wayne and my pal Dr. Gonzo for their cartridge photography- check a look at Wayne's arcade and pinball videos-
/ @vgre3000
In honor of Warren Robinett hiding his credit on-screen in ADVENTURE I "hid" an Atari 2600 cartridge in this video-- did you catch the brief appearance of a game timed to me quoting the main character //and// the sound effect of his iconic accoutrement?
It's fascinating hearing how limited things are...but how much developers then (and now) can do with it. I'll definitely share this with geeky developer friends who love this stuff, too!
Thank you sir! Yeah, my jaw kinda dropped when I realized I couldn't simply rotate a sprite to have it face another direction! I never realized how much programming for the 2600 was tied into its hardware before, not until I started this project-- it all seems to come down to, "How do we trick the scan line to do something cool?"
@@byWilliamJMeyer That's one of the things I like about you documenting this. Me: "They just told it what to do...just in a specific language."
Reality: "So, I have this nutty idea about how to make it do the thing we need it to do..."
Good luck with making the game! I will soon be in the same boat as my New Year's resolution is to start my own game from scratch. So far my only experience was in making a "hack" (what the retrogame scene calls a mod apparently) of a game that was fully annotated in assembly. To answer your question either in this video or the other about the pixel shape/size, the basic kernel in Batari is what's called a "two line kernel" with square pixels (two rectangles stacked on top of each other) whereas Pitfall was a "one line kernel" using the rectangular single pixels. In the two line variant, the sprites are only updated every two display lines to save on processing power. That incredibly limited CPU cycle limit is also why you can't use the missile when you have a multicolored sprite. If you're programming in assembly and counting CPU cycles manually to stay under the limit, you can do both but Batari is trying to simplify things to make sure everything comes under the limit so adding one option typcially means you're losing another just to make sure. I actually asked that exact question over on the AtariAge forums a couple months back because I was also under the assumption that it was somehow being used in the color change. Hope that helps! I've been studying the limitations and principles behind 2600 coding but pretty much almost all of my knowledge is theoretical instead of practical so add salt as needed.
Hi! And thank you. Best wishes with your game as well. Thx also for such detailed explanations. So I'm already-- by default-- using the two-line kernel? Interesting! Repeating lines seems a clever way to save cycles. p.s. good to see you escaped the Zentradi after all