Bouncy Ball 2
Bouncy Ball 2 is a side scrolling action game reminiscent of Ping Pong and Arkanoid. It is the enhanced version of Bouncy Ball, and is targeted for the Coco 3. Bouncy Ball 2 boasts high resolution graphics, animation, sound and music. More levels, more sound, more graphics. Hey, sometimes more is more.
Follow the BB2 development blog where I post progress reports every week or two.
About Bouncy Ball 2
My first version, Bouncy Ball was released at the CocoFEST 2016, and was well received. BB1 was coded in C using CMOC, and was an exercise in learning about the Coco. Now I have turned my attention to learning assembly.
As such, Bouncy Ball 2 will be 100% assembly. I decided to use the 256x192 16 color mode, as that graphic mode is ideal for taking advantage of hardware scrolling. Also, what makes this mode cool for me, is that it’s a mode that I was never able to use when I was a teen programming in BASIC back in the 80’s. Heck, I didn’t even know the mode existed.
Any Coco 3 hires graphics mode is going to gobble up your available memory. In this case, 48K for just one page of video memory! This means we will be making use of the GIME’s MMU, which maps memory into the 6809’s 64K address space. Another nice thing about this video mode is that it fits perfectly into 3 8K MMU blocks.
So in all, we get to play with hi res graphics, palette sequencing, MMU, hardware scrolling, and using the Orchestra.
Development Setup
For those who are curious, my development setup is:
- UltraEdit is currently my editor.
- LWTools for compiling.
- MAME emulator for testing code.
- Color Computer 3 with 512K and a 6309 CPU. A second Coco 3 has 128K and a stock 6809 CPU.
- Multi-Pac with an Orchestra 90, Speech Sound Cart and Coco SDC, and the 4th slot currently occupied by Mega-Bug.
- Tandy Deluxe Joystick
- Serial to USB connector for DriveWire.
- Main machine is an iMac.
System Requirements
Required: Coco 3, 128K, 6809
Supported: Orchestra 90
Recommended: Joystick, Orchestra 90 (for enhanced sound and music)