New interpretation of Pitfall! for PAL Vic + 16K

Discussion, Reviews & High-scores

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
mrr19121970
Vic 20 Nerd
Posts: 873
Joined: Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:22 am
Location: Germany
Occupation: IT service manager

Re: New interpretation of Pitfall! for PAL Vic + 16K

Post by mrr19121970 »

I downloaded this some time back. I couldn't even remember infact. At 1st I loaded on the C64, didn't work. Then the VIC20 just now. Great work. Thanks
User avatar
ral-clan
plays wooden flutes
Posts: 3702
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2006 2:01 pm
Location: Canada

Re: New interpretation of Pitfall! for PAL Vic + 16K

Post by ral-clan »

I just downloaded this and tried it out (in emulation as I have no PAL VIC-20).

Really, really excellent! An amazing feat of programming. If was not already familiar with the VIC-20, you could have convinced me that the VIC does have hardware sprites based on the graphics in this game.
Image Music I've made with 1980s electronics, synths and other retro-instruments: http://theovoids.bandcamp.com
User avatar
mrr19121970
Vic 20 Nerd
Posts: 873
Joined: Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:22 am
Location: Germany
Occupation: IT service manager

Re: New interpretation of Pitfall! for PAL Vic + 16K

Post by mrr19121970 »

The original atari 2600 fitted into 4k. I am wondering why the vic20 needs 5x the memory. Anyone know ?
User avatar
Mike
Herr VC
Posts: 4816
Joined: Wed Dec 01, 2004 1:57 pm
Location: Munich, Germany
Occupation: electrical engineer

Re: New interpretation of Pitfall! for PAL Vic + 16K

Post by Mike »

Several reasons: the Atari 2600 has no frame buffer at all, the whole display (including the PM graphics) comes from a few registers. When those aren't altered, the contents of a raster line are simply replicated.

On the VIC-20, with this implementation, you have the display routine which does the in-line splits of the background register for each raster and the colour FLI for the player character and the baddies in a big unrolled loop that runs in the interrupt and spans the address range $29xx..$42xx: ~6.5 KB, by far the biggest single routine in the game.

$1000..$1FFF is mostly dedicated to graphics data and tables, $2000..$2500 part of the game logic, $2500..$2900 another set of tables, $4200..$4D00 another part of the game logic, $4D00..$5000 once again some tables, $5000..$5FFF also mostly data structures interspersed with a few bits of code; surely a music player and sound effects routine are also placed around there.

...

Of course you could always try yourself to fit Pitfall! with all the described features into an unexpanded VIC-20. SCNR. :mrgreen:
User avatar
eslapion
ultimate expander
Posts: 5458
Joined: Fri Jun 23, 2006 7:50 pm
Location: Canada
Occupation: 8bit addict

Re: New interpretation of Pitfall! for PAL Vic + 16K

Post by eslapion »

This game and Robotic Liberation are among the 2 most important reasons why I am happy to have both NTSC and PAL VIC-20s.
Be normal.
Vic Porter
Vic 20 Amateur
Posts: 61
Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2016 9:12 pm
Occupation: VIC porter

Re: New interpretation of Pitfall! for PAL Vic + 16K

Post by Vic Porter »

Now *this* is what a good port looks like. Bravo!
naujoks
Vic 20 Drifter
Posts: 35
Joined: Tue Aug 16, 2005 6:25 am

Re: New interpretation of Pitfall! for PAL Vic + 16K

Post by naujoks »

I think this is absolutely amazing.
It doesn't even look and feel like a VIC-20 game.
Congratulations and thank you very much. It's a 10/10 from me.
Post Reply