Star Castle RC1

Posted by cd-w, 12 April 2012 · 2,959 views

Star Castle is basically feature complete now, so here is the first release candidate for testing.

Please note that you must upgrade to the latest Stella 3.6.1

The main changes this time are:

New sound effects by LS_Dracon
Title screen music by Kulor
High score table (will only work on Harmony cart)
Improved collision detection
Different ring colours on each wave

During the game, the following can be changed:

Pressing SELECT will skip to the next wave (this is for testing and will be removed in the final version).
Setting the LEFT DIFFICULTY to A will cause the ring segments to be destroyed with 1 hit (instead of 2).
Setting the RIGHT DIFFICULTY to A will cause the ship to be destroyed by the rings (instead of bouncing off).

I'm still trying to figure out the Harmony CU bankswitching format - I'll post up a Harmony version once this is done.

Please let me know if anything is broken, buggy, or just plain annoying!

Thanks,
Chris

starRC1.bin (28K)
downloads: 279

starRC1_src.zip (69.51K)
downloads: 148

EDIT: Harmony version now available. Make sure that you have BIOS 1.05 on your Harmony cart, then unzip and drop the starRC1.cu file onto your SD card. Note that the high score table is not stored to flash in this version, so it will be deleted when you switch off your Atari.

starRC1_harmony.zip (13.87K)
downloads: 155

EDIT2: Alternative ring colours version:

star_altcols.zip (27.34K)
downloads: 120

cd-w
Apr 17 2012 3:00 AM

Quote

Noticed a bug - if you and the enemy ship shoot each other simultaneously and you keep firing, after you die your shots will appear out of nowhere and travel up the screen.

Thanks - I have found the cause and it will be fixed in the next release. There is also a problem with the B&W mode (invisible outer ring) that will be fixed next time.

Chris

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SpiceWare
Apr 17 2012 9:08 AM

cd-w, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 2:51 AM, said:

I believe this is the same behaviour as the arcade - only the outer ring forces a regeneration. However, I could be interpreting the behaviour wrongly.Chris

Just tried it in MAME and yeah, it's tied to the destruction of the outer ring. However, the rings visually expanded outward so that:

middle ring = new outer ring
inner ring = new middle ring
new inner ring is generated

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cd-w
Apr 17 2012 9:19 AM

SpiceWare, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:08 AM, said:

However, the rings visually expanded outward so that:

middle ring = new outer ring
inner ring = new middle ring
new inner ring is generated

Thanks for testing. I can't do the visual expanding effect, but the rings are copied in that order so that the inner ring is the new one.

Chris

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iesposta
Apr 17 2012 9:50 AM

For the color changes (they've grown on me), how about a progression?
It starts out Red Orange Yellow. $46, $26, $16
How about next Orange Yellow Green, $26, $16, $C6
Yellow Green Blue, $16, $C6, $A6
Green Blue Violet $C6, $A6, $66
?

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cd-w
Apr 17 2012 10:21 AM

iesposta, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:50 AM, said:

For the color changes (they've grown on me), how about a progression?It starts out Red Orange Yellow. $46, $26, $16How about next Orange Yellow Green, $26, $16, $C6Yellow Green Blue, $16, $C6, $A6Green Blue Violet $C6, $A6, $66?

OK, I've uploaded a version with these colour values to the blog posting (NTSC only for now). This version also contains a fix for the B&W mode and reverses the left difficulty switch.

Can anyone who has an NTSC TV set let me know if the darker ring colours in this version look better for them?

Many thanks,
Chris

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SpiceWare
Apr 17 2012 10:27 AM

Ah, so it does. The inner ring was solid when I noticed that so I didn't realize it was filled in by expanding outward.

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iesposta
Apr 17 2012 11:30 AM

I like the mines as "dots."
(Would be good for high difficulty)
Looks great on RF television!

Changes made in:
bank2.asm

  ; Set Missile Size                                  <-- should be Ball ???? Size
  lda #%00000000            ; [24] + 2
  sta CTRLPF                ; [26] + 3

MineData
  DC.B  %10000010
  DC.B  %10000000

Anyone object to the darker ring colors?? (NTSC television... the old colors look fine in Stella.)

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iesposta
Apr 17 2012 12:35 PM

I just tried it on a 2nd 14 inch television.
Should have tested on 2 sets before makiing suggestions!
It's not as washed out, and the darker colors are too dark.
Settle in the middle? (Unless anyone else gives their opinion.)

One thing I did change and liked on both sets: TextCols0 to NTSC $88 (Darker makes it look more like vectors with the "B" frame dots showing more - I don't really see the B-frame dots with the bright blue.)

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Legend
Apr 17 2012 2:08 PM

I just tried this with the latest version of Stella. It plays fine, but the graphics are very flickery to the point of being blurry and the text hard to read. Am I missing a specific setting or something I need to set?

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stephena
Apr 17 2012 2:37 PM

It's 30Hz flicker. Try pressing Alt-p to turn on the phosphor effect. And if possible, use OpenGL rendering and turn on vsync.

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Nathan Strum
Apr 17 2012 2:40 PM

Enable phosphor effect. Launch the game, hit the Tab key, then Game Properties, Display, and Use Phosphor = Yes.

Or use the keyboard shortcut.

But going through the menus will make it stick so you don't have to re-enable it every time you launch the game.

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Legend
Apr 17 2012 4:23 PM

ok. That did it. Thanks.

Really nice work on the game Cd-W. Star Castle was always one of my favorites.

Any chance for a Fortress of Narzod port?

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Thomas Jentzsch
Apr 21 2012 12:54 AM

How about making the screen taller? Or do you need that space for computing? In that case, if you tell me, which code is consuming most CPU time, I could have a look at it.

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Thomas Jentzsch
Apr 21 2012 4:03 AM

I tried to assemble the code and got "Label mismatch" errors. What DASM version are you using?

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cd-w
Apr 21 2012 5:12 AM

The game is stealing some of the scan-lines from the display as the ring rotation and collision detection calculations require a lot of cycles.

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Thomas Jentzsch
Apr 22 2012 8:57 AM

The enemy can shot through the two outer rings. It seems that only a gap of the inner ring is required.

The arcade doesn't do that.

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Keatah
Apr 26 2012 11:28 AM

Now that the other starcastle project is probably going to become available at a reasonable cost to us. What is going to happen with this version?

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Thomas Jentzsch
Apr 26 2012 11:39 AM

This is so close to completion, so I am pretty sure it will be released.

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Nathan Strum
Apr 26 2012 1:12 PM

Thomas Jentzsch, on Sun Apr 22, 2012 8:57 AM, said:

The enemy can shot through the two outer rings. It seems that only a gap of the inner ring is required.The arcade doesn't do that.

I mentioned this in a previous thread - I recall there wasn't enough time to do the necessary calculations to make that work, so the compromise was just having it shoot through the inner one.