KenJennings

Thanks! It's fun for about two or three rounds. Then starts toward tedious once you catch on to the rhythm of the fast moving boats. The original game was made by a high school student, so it is simple and has extremely limited goals. Basically, just a twitch game that looks pretty on the Atari until you get tired of it. Or like a human-interactive graphics demo. (It certainly isn't going to win awards for its sounds.) Mostly this is a mental exercise to see how much Atari graphical-ness programming could be worked into the game without substantially changing the game mechanics itself.

OldSkoolCoder presented a video on YouTube and source code on GitHub for a Frogger-like game written for the PET 4032 in 1983. The PET assembly source is here: https://github.com/OldSkoolCoder/PET-Frogger The OldSkoolCoder YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtWfJHX6gZSOizZDbwmOrdg/videos OldSkoolCoder's PET FROGGER video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPiCUcdOry4 Atari Assembly code is here: https://github.com/kenjennings/Atari-Pet-Frogger A video of the gameplay for the Atari version is here: https://youtu.be/UtNz5EE3xno ---------- PET FROGGER for Commodore PET 4032 (c) November 1983 by John C. Dale, aka Dalesoft. Ported (parodied) to Atari 8-bit computers by Ken Jennings Version 00 - November 2018 This is the original program ported from the PET pretty much as-is. Version 01 - December 2018 This was re-tooled to break the code into modular functions and introduce frame-oriented timing. Visually still mostly the same as Version 00. Version 02 - February 2019 Version 02 expands on Version 01 with some Atari-specific enhancements. Custom Display Lists, redefined character set for better graphics, Display List interrupts providing color, coarse scrolling by Display List LMS address updates, joystick input, and a Vertical Blank Interrupt managing the world's lamest sound effects and music sequencer. Version 03 - August 2019 This expands on Version 02 with more detailed graphics via redefined characters sets, fine scrolling boats, Player/Missile graphics for the Player, more color, blah blah. The lame sound effects now include a buzzy motor sound for the boats engines. SELECT and OPTION keys can change the number of lives and starting level.

We played the heck out of it, so yeah, it was fun. But we made fun of it at the same time. The sounds were not very similar to the arcade. We would repeat, "Gonk, gonk, gonk, gonk", while playing to make fun of the lame dot eating sound.

Attached are some PDF files that print graph paper pixel grids to draw on. The difference is these are (more or less) scaled to the aspect ratio of NTSC color clocks. These would be good for any system that outputs pixels based on the NTSC color clock timing. (To a CRT, of course.) That should cover Apple II (at least high res, not sure about low res), Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit computers, Amigas, and others. The "11x13" in the file name is the aspect formula from an Amiga RKM on graphics. This aspect is good for those modes that have square-but-not-quite-perfectly square pixels -- half a color clock wide, and a scan line tall. Examples: Amiga Low res (320x200 or 640x400[interlaced]) or the Atari 8-bit high res (320 pixels across), or any other Atari 8-bit graphics mode that appears square using the same multiple of color clocks and scan lines (i.e. 160x96, 80x48, ...) Also, Amiga sprite pixels fit this aspect, and Atari double-line resolution Player/Missile graphics pixels are this ratio. And of course, text modes based on this pixel aspect can also be designed on this paper. The "22x13" is the aspect for a single color clock that is one scan line tall. This extrapolates to pixels that are equal fractions, or equal multiples. On the Amiga this is interlaced low res 320x400. On the Atari this is "medium res" for 160 pixels x 1 scan line tall. ANTIC text modes 4, and 6 are based on single color clock pixels. Also single-line resolution Player/Missile graphics are single color clock pixels. Thanks, Ken. GraphPaperAspect11x13.pdf GraphPaperAspect22x13.pdf