Arcade game aspirations

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dethfactor
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Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2014 9:33 am

Arcade game aspirations

Post by dethfactor »

Howdy,

I'm pretty new to the platform but I have aspirations to write/put together a game that eventually want to put into an arcade cabinet using the JAMMA uze boards. My wife bought me the uzebox kit 4-5 years ago and unfortunately I lost interest in doing anything with it, but have recently been kicking an idea for a game around I think would work.I have a pretty strong concept but I need some direction as to where to get started.
The main feature of the game is that it's going to have multiple game sections, some static, some scrolling each carrying over information and increasing difficulty in a classic "treadmill" fashion. I guess my biggest question is, can this be accomplished?(I can't see why not, but who knows) and what kernel would be recommended? I'm going to start putting together my dev environment and then start working on some general game outlines.

Thanks in advance for any advice,
-M
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uze6666
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Re: Arcade game aspirations

Post by uze6666 »

Hi,

If you intend to do a game in portrait mode (because your cabinet screen is in this orientation), there's some limitations. Screen sections can only be horizontal on a normal TV meaning only vertical sections on a screen turned 90degrees. Moreover in video mode 3 you can have only have a top static section with a main scrolling section. Mode 2 supports many screen sections but resolution is limited to 160x224. Check out this page
for all video modes details.

Note that it's always possible to hack video modes if your good in assembler. It could be possible to have it work in vertical mode with a top static section and the remaining scrolling. But due to timing issues and the limited cycles that available per pixel, loading info for the next section would cause a couples rows of blank pixels in between sections.
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