Adding paddle support to Spacesnake?

Pedro Lambrini · Post by **Pedro Lambrini** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:44 pm

How hard would it be to add paddle support to the Commodore game Spacesnake? It's always been one of my favourite games and when I was wee always wanted to play it with my under-used paddles...

Post by **Jeff-20** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:28 pm

Not to Hi-jack your thread. I've been thinking about a related project. Programming for Alternate Controllers

Leeeeee · Post by **Leeeeee** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 12:05 am

It won't be easy as it's a hybrid BASIC and machine code program and a lot of the BASIC lines are too long to edit with a Vic.

Apart from that...

Lee.

Pedro Lambrini · Post by **Pedro Lambrini** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 4:15 am

Jeff-20 wrote:Not to Hi-jack your thread. I've been thinking about a related project. Programming for Alternate Controllers

Oh, you so did hijack my thread. Thief! :p

As far as the coding goes, then, it's maybe out of my league...I don't know the first thing about ML. I might have to come back to this idea in another 26 years!

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 5:01 am

Wouldn't steering be much different with paddles? For comparison, there are separate joystick and paddle versions of e.g. Clowns, although the joystick version seems to be unknown among collectors.

nippur72 · Post by **nippur72** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 6:29 am

any link to download SpaceSnake ?

Pedro Lambrini · Post by **Pedro Lambrini** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 6:46 am

nippur72 wrote:any link to download SpaceSnake ?

Arma's Tapes has it:

http://www.6502dude.com/cbm/vic20/arma/staps.html

It's listed as two words but it should be Spacesnake.

As far as changing game-play goes: I think it might have an effect if it was treated as an analogue controller but if it was just giving signals for up and down it wouldn't change a thing. I've just always thought the paddles as a controller would suit this game. To be honest, I think that paddles are totally underused - I don't see why all Space Invaders, Breakouts and a multitude of other genres don't use them ubiquitously.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 7:10 am

By the way....is there ANYONE who prefers to use Paddles for playing Omega Race? I only ever use joysticks (could never play for long with the paddles). In fact - I even forgot until now that you could even use paddles with the VIC-20 version of Omega Race.

nbla000 · Post by **nbla000** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 7:27 am

if someone need, i've fixed space snake some time ago to work from disk too, get it from this disk with other fixes.

There is an HANDIC cartridge present on Mega-Cart with the same name but it's a similar game even if it uses paddles.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 9:05 am

Similar? I thought the tape and cartridge versions were identical? If I recall correctly, Spacesnake was programmed by Commodore Benelux (user group in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg). Possibly though the cartridge version was improved, compiled version of the tape one?

nbla000 · Post by **nbla000** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 4:34 am

carlsson wrote:Similar? I thought the tape and cartridge versions were identical?

No, i confirm you that they are different, in the tape version the snake moves from left to right while in the cart version the snake moves from up to down and may use paddles too.

You may download the Zimmers cart image used for Mega-Cart too.
http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/ ... 0Snake.prg

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 6:24 am

Hm, ok. I think this topic was up for discussion a few years ago but I had forgotten. Based on the screenshots though the two games seem very much alike.

Pedro Lambrini · Post by **Pedro Lambrini** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 4:20 pm

I had no idea, until recently, that there was a cart game called Space Snake. When I found out that it used paddles I was over the moon. Then i found out it was a different game - gutted!

I haven't played the cart game. Is it at all similar to the CBM game?

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 7:02 pm

I've never seen the Handic Space Snake cartridge in my life... someone must have for it to be dumped of course.

nippur72 · Post by **nippur72** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:25 am

Pedro, are you sure paddles are suited for that type of game? I've played it a little with keyboard and seems very sensitive; with paddles it can even be worse.

Also, Lee mentioned Space Snake being mix of basic and ML, but the version I've downloaded seems to be entirely in ML (it has a single SYS). What is the correct version?