So you haven't heard a lot from us in the last two months, have you? You tried to order
your copy of Road Fighter and didn't get a reply? There's a perfectly good explaination,
and if you're in a hurry to learn more, you can just jump to the "Latest News" section
below.
For the rest of you (and those who have read the news section and have now returned to
this part of the blog entry) we've got something new on the site: The posters section!
If you are a frequent visitor at the AtariAge forums, you may recall that our friend Dale
Crum wanted to squeeze a little extra money out of the artwork he did for our boxes by
selling posters featuring said artwork. It didn't work out very well at first because the
asking price was a little steep, and later, Dale lost access to the printer he was using
to print the posters on cardboard. I did manage to buy my own set of posters at the time,
and the picture below demonstrates what they look like on my bedroom wall.
Dale had pretty much given up on the idea until I investigated another avenue, namely the
print shop near the place where I work. It turns out they can produce nice 12x18 inch
posters at a reasonable price, on Hammermill paper instead of cardboard, so Dale and I
agreed to restart the project, with hopefully better results in terms of sales. So just
click on the "How to Order" link in the sidebar for more information. The first print
run I did for Dale was 10 copies of each poster, which are now currently in Dale's hands,
so if you want to buy some, don't wait! I would like to point out that neither Eduardo
nor myself make any money from the sale of those posters. All profits go to Dale.
SUDOKU HOMEBREW LOG
I was able to do quite a bit of work this past month on my very first ColecoVision
homebrew game, which is a simple game of Sudoku. The first thing I did was to introduce
myself to C programming on the CV by reading Daniel Bienvenu's PDF document "ColecoVision
Programming in C". I also tested the compiler via the CCI interface, which (I'm happy to
report) works quite well under Windows XP. I also designed all the graphics for my Sudoku
game, including the title screen and options screen. I could show you screen mockups right
now, but I would rather keep that little treat for a future blog entry. ;-)
I haven't started coding the game yet, but I did code a routine to randomly generate grids
of numbers. I used a script language called DML, which is an fun little language developed
and used at the company I work for. You can probably imagine that making a program that
can solve a Sudoku puzzle can be a daunting task, but did you know that generating a
complete Sudoku grid of numbers is not as easy as it sounds? The main problem with doing a
Sudoku grid generator is that the more numbers you randomly put in the grid, the closer
you get to reaching an impass in filling the remaining free spaces. In the end, my
solution to this problem was to start over from scratch when I detect such an impass. The
tests I've done show that a complete Sudoku grid can usually be generated randomly in
under 10 attempts.
With the number generation algorithm done and tested, the rest of my Sudoku homebrew game
should be relatively easy to code in C for the ColecoVision. My next step will be to
examine the graphic tools available for encoding graphics in binary format (because I
obviously don't want to manually encode all those graphics byte by byte!). Afterwards,
I should be ready to start coding the actual game. Look for a progress update in my
next blog entry.
LATEST NEWS
Eduardo's job has been keeping him outrageously busy these past few weeks, with no
free time whatsoever to spend on Opcode-related duties. The last time we talked to
each other, Eduardo told me his boss put him in charge of preparations for some kind
of workshop which will happen right after Easter. There's a mountain of work to do,
and neither Eduardo nor his co-workers want to be stuck at the office on Easter Sunday,
so they're rushing to complete what needs to be done in all deliberate speed. Whether
they pull it off or not doesn't change the fact that, after these workshop preparations
are done, the workshop itself will also require time and effort the following week, so
Eduardo will only finally be able to rest in the later part of next week. And then we
don't know what the future holds, another rush period might follow... God, I hope not...
So if you have contacted us to order your copy of Road Fighter (or any other Opcode game)
and haven't gotten a reply yet, the paragraph above explains why. There's not much else
to say except that your patience will be eventually rewarded. This rush period in
Eduardo's life isn't going to last forever! Eduardo promised me a couple of free copies
of Road Fighter, which he hasn't been able to assemble and mail yet, so I have to wait
just like the rest of you!
This also implies that no progress was made on Pac-Man Collection since my last blog
entry, I'm afraid. In fact, Eduardo has been so busy lately that our e-mail communication
suffered greatly. We don't have much to talk about anyhow, as Eduardo's short-term agenda
is pretty clear: Honor Road Fighter orders as quickly as possible, and once things settle
down, complete the software for Pac-Man Collection, in order to (finally) release the game
later this year. Discussing any other future project at this point in time only serves to
distract Eduardo from the work he has to complete now, so I try to keep my mouth shut as
much as possible.
Oh, here's one last piece of news: Space Invaders Collection is once again sold out, and
it will be quite a while before we get around to producing more. So don't bother trying
to order a copy of that particular game from us. At this point, your best bet is eBay.
