[Coco] CoCo Sound Chat and a li'l MiniHog news. Was: New game for CoCo3...

[Nickolas Marentes]

> Tonight, I thought I'd mess around with the CoCo 3's GIME registers and
got
> it to do some interesting things (Still no 256 color mode, which I'm
> starting to think was just a rumor).  Still won't be able to incorporate
> horizontal scroll because the new sprite data that would come in after the
> scroll will slow everything down, but I've increased the resolution to
> 320x225.  This would allow the playfield to increase vertically a bit, but
> that'd mean I'd have to recreate the levels I have already made to use
this
> and rewrite my level editor, which would just add too much time, so I
might
> not do this afterall.  I'm going to make a routine that when Mini reaches
> the edge of the screen, the screen will scroll to the next one instead of
> just insantly showing up, also allowing you to survey the field a little
bit
> before continuing so you don't run into something bad that you couldn't
see
> up ahead!  Using this method will also free up a lot of memory, which if I
> wanted to, would allow larger levels but then that'd use a lot more disk
> space.  BTW, I was really impressed with the GIME's vert & horz offset
> register speed.

Just a few suggestions....

I assume MiniHog is based on Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog. If this is the case,
the character will be flying from one side of the screen to the next
relatively quickly (as fast as CBASIC will allow at least). It may get
annoying and break up some of the games suspense if it is constantly
stopping to redraw the next screen.

May I suggest that you change the game a bit to something more like the
Super Mario type games. These games didn't run as fast and relied more on
the additional "game elements" such as jumping over obstacles, hitting
enemies, collecting objects. Sonic tends to fly past a lot of these very
quickly and it becomes a case of how many of these extra elements you can
get as you fly fast. In other words, try to get the most playtime out of
each screen.

Sonic relied on it's fast breakneck speed going through the level. If you
haven't got the speed to match, I suspect the gameplay may fall flat.

Also, why use Sega's mascot? Why not CoCo Cat?  :)

Just a suggestion.

Personally, I'd put the effort in to learn assembly language if I were you.
You can't beat the raw and unhindered  2Mhz speed of CoCo assembly language.

Well, maybe you can....has anyone devised a reliable 4Mhz (or faster)
upgrade for the CoCo3 yet?

> "Frederick D Provoncha  said...."
> Now that I think of it, I have "Aandark III" half-written, which I
> started back in the late-'80's. It's a graphical adventure game for the
> Coco3. Hey Nick, if you write a new game, I'll finish Aandark III. Deal?

Ok! Here's the deal. If two people commit to writing a new CoCo3 game, I'll
commit to doing one also. In 12 months, we may have 3 new games for the
CoCo!  :)

Currently, I am playing with the idea of doing a CoCo themed Pinball game or
a conversion of arcade Rally-X. Which would people prefer?

Nickolas Marentes