Colecovision Development

[Youki]

Hello,

I have decided to start coding on Colecovision. I found lot of information around the web and here.

I started toying with toolkit and HighTech C creating simple program.

but i have a problem with Sprites, i didn't managed to display a simple sprite on the screen despite having tried a lot.

I'm looking for a extremly simple sample that would display just a 16x16 sprite in the middle of the screen.

I use VColeco emulateur to try my code , and i wonder if there is not a compatibility problem with sprite of coleco library and the emulator.
Even if i compile the "Happy Face" source code i found in Daniel Bienvenu (newcoleco) documentation. Sprites are not displayed.

Thanks for your help

[Sniderman]

AtariAge has a very active retro-programmer forum. In fact, one of their forums is all about ColecoVision programming. Lots of activity and I'll bet the folks there can get you pointed in the right direction.

AtariAge ColecoVision programming forum (http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showforum=55)

[Youki]

Thanks a lot , i'm going check on AtariAge too.

In fact i posted here because i saw some very interresting post of newcoleco here.

Meanwhile, i managed to display a sprite!!!

In the sample "Happy Face" in the documentation i have, one line was missing : enable_nmi ();

[newcoleco]

Hello Youki,

The documentation you are refering to need a serious update since two years ago I decided to use the Coleco bios power rather than some functions made by Marcel de Kogel including sounds and also sprites. Using Coleco bios sound routines is more accurate for a ColecoVision project, however, I have absolutly no sound converter for this particular format, I use direct data coding based on what I know about the sound format to be used with the bios. To help, I dig some commercial roms and extract a bunch of sound data and put them into my web page under the name OS7 SOUND BANK.

For the sprite problem, I can't answer right now except that the documentation is based on Marcel de Kogel library, not the hack I did to use the Coleco bios routines instead. I will be back with an answer.

And yes, I did receive your email and I speack french, it's my first language... english is second and still improving it gradually.

[Youki]

Hi,

Thanks for your answer.

I did not dig yet into sound. For now i'm just trying very basic things. To see what is possible to do.

I finally managed to display sprite using Marcel's functions.
(i think EnableNmi() call is missing in your Happy Face sample)

But if you have better method using Coleco's Bios , i take! :)

If you want we can talk by mail in French! :)

[Youki]

I'm progressing quite well in learning the colecovision. Mainly thanks to all the work done by newcoleco. :)

Very interresting hardware. Quite limited but very challenging.

i would have one more question.

Does Coleco's c libraries manage Turbo Module? Do we have to use joypad_1 function to manage it? or is there other functions?

thanks

[newcoleco]

I'm progressing quite well in learning the colecovision. Mainly thanks to all the work done by newcoleco. :)

Very interresting hardware. Quite limited but very challenging.

i would have one more question.

Does Coleco's c libraries manage Turbo Module? Do we have to use joypad_1 function to manage it? or is there other functions?

thanks
Well, the variables called spinner, one for port#1 and one for port#2, are in the original development kit by Marcel de Kogel, but I decided to cut this for the library I did to support my 4K minigames developments... and because I based my new kit on this library, there is no way to support the spinners... except if you really need it so I can take a few days to make a library variation to support spinners.