321 replies to this topic

[StephenJ]

SpiceWare,
When I want to show my friends just what the Atari 2600 is capable of, the first game I fire-up is Medieval Mayhem. I'm amazed by how much you are able to accomplish...with so little resources.
And now with Frantic (2600), it looks like I'm going to have another showcase title.
Any updates on the progress of Frantic (2600)?

Many thanks for your efforts,
StephenJ

Edited by StephenJ, Sat Oct 29, 2011 9:51 AM.

[SpiceWare]

Thanks!  Though there are more resources for Frantic as I'm using the ARM processor in the Harmony / Melody for all the game logic.  

I might have a minor update in the near future, but after that I doubt there will be another update until next year.  I'm currently working on my presentation for the Houston Arcade Expo(I'm going to present it using my iPhone!  I picked up the dock -> VGA cable last night to test it out - it worked extremely well) and the rest of November is tied up as well due to birthdays, holidays and other things.  I might have a free week at the start of December, after which my folks will be arriving from Africa for a few weeks.

Edit: Oh, and the game's just Frantic.   The (2600) in the topic title is so people know which console it's for as this forum is not console specific.

Edited by SpiceWare, Sat Oct 29, 2011 10:37 AM.

[StephenJ]

SpiceWare,
Thanks for the quick reply. Hope everything goes well with your presentation and with all of your other events.
Moving forward, I'd like to make sure I get the latest version Frantic (2600), so please consider posting any updates in this thread.

Thanks again and all the very best,
StephenJ

[SpiceWare]

Here's some screenshots from the forthcoming update.  I hope to get it wrapped up in the next day or two, at which point Frantic will be put on the back burner until January.


Special images are in place.  At the moment the only thing they do is animate.  Top image of each pair is from the arcade version.

Big Otto






Power Plant





Central Computer





Factory






Solid walls in Frenzy variation can now be shot-out - note the left and bottom walls.




Exiting through a "shot-out" door - plus the humanoid now shifts with the room

Edited by SpiceWare, Tue Nov 1, 2011 4:44 PM.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Still working at two projects in parallel?

[SpiceWare]

more than 2 - I'm also working on my presentation for the Houston Arcade Expo.  

This update was mostly putting in place espire8's graphics(run them through my converter and drop them in the code) as most of the other changes were already in place.  I've been waiting on the graphics so I could post an up-to-date build before officially announcing the furlough.  I sent him the test build yesterday and he's working on some revisions.  Once those are in place Frantic will officially be on hold.


Edit: forgot to mention - I wanted to have the graphics in place for the presentation.

Edited by SpiceWare, Tue Nov 1, 2011 8:48 AM.

[StephenJ]

The screen shots look great (guess you're getting tired of hearing that).

Thanks!
StephenJ

[SpiceWare]

Thanks!  If I do, I'll stop posting screenshots

[Matthew]

Great work SpiceWare. Your work is awesome!.

[SpiceWare]

Here's the last planned update until next year!

Besides the afore mentioned special room objects, there's also updated humanoid and explosion graphics.

The Harmony ROMs now crash Stella, so download the _stella_ version if you're playing in the emulator.



ROMs (Stella instructions in 1st post)
 frantic_harmony_20111104_ntsc.bin   32K   153 downloads
 frantic_harmony_20111104_pal.bin   32K   114 downloads
 frantic_stella_20111104.bin   32K   200 downloads

[StephenJ]

Thanks SpiceWare!!
Now to fire-up the ol' 4 switcher.

StephenJ

[Nathan Strum]

Mighty impressive! As much a leap over 2600 Berzerk as Medieval Mayhem was over Warlords.

[stephena]

SpiceWare, on Fri Nov 4, 2011 5:34 PM, said:

Here's the last planned update until next year!

Besides the afore mentioned special room objects, there's also updated humanoid and explosion graphics.

The Harmony ROMs now crash Stella, so download the _stella_ version if you're playing in the emulator.



ROMs (Stella instructions in 1st post)
frantic_harmony_20111104_ntsc.bin
frantic_harmony_20111104_pal.bin
frantic_stella_20111104.bin

Now that you've progressed to the point where Stella will crash with your ROM, I think we should get Stella updated.  I hope to find some time over the next few weeks to look into this, but if you can describe the changes required (or provide code) it would be a great help.

[TrekMD]

This game just gets better and better.  Fantastic job!

[espire8]

StephenJ, on Tue Nov 1, 2011 1:14 PM, said:

The screen shots look great (guess you're getting tired of hearing that).

Thanks!
StephenJ

Thanks.. those screen shots were from the first draft of graphics I prepared earlier.

The latest binary has a newer revision of the special objects graphics with twice the resolution and more detail which looks far better than the first.

[espire8]

Nathan Strum, on Fri Nov 4, 2011 7:27 PM, said:

Mighty impressive! As much a leap over 2600 Berzerk as Medieval Mayhem was over Warlords.

Hard to believe that was 6 years ago. And this is only my second time working with Spiceware homebrew. Time sure has flown by. Time to set the clock back an hour!

[Nathan Strum]

Was it really that long? Man. Now I feel old. Good thing I get that extra hour to sleep in.

[Lendorien]

I have to say that I love the new animations. The guy running animation is really pretty fluid and the explosions of the robots are awesome. They really add a lot to the game!  I do feel like there needs to be some sort of sound as warning when Evil Otto comes into the room, even if it's not a digitized voice. Maybe a siren sort of sound.

Anyway, really enjoying this come together. It's really shaping up to be an amazing game.

Edited by Lendorien, Sat Nov 5, 2011 2:13 AM.

[SpiceWare]

stephena, on Fri Nov 4, 2011 8:20 PM, said:

Now that you've progressed to the point where Stella will crash with your ROM, I think we should get Stella updated.  I hope to find some time over the next few weeks to look into this, but if you can describe the changes required (or provide code) it would be a great help.

Because of the ARM bug that was giving me grief, the C routines now disable cache by setting MAM to 1 by changing the value in address 0xE01FC000.  The ARM emulation in Stella throws up the following:
The ARM emulation fatal error:
read16(E01FC000), abort

I also have a fix for a bug in the DPC+ driver.  The 3-voice audio routines read from ROM instead of RAM.  In function peek(), this:

		  case 0x05: // AMPLITUDE
		  {
			// Update the music data fetchers (counter & flag)
			updateMusicModeDataFetchers();

			// using myProgramImage[] instead of myDisplayImage[] because waveforms
			// could also be in the 1K Frequency table.
			uInt32 i = myProgramImage[6*4096 + (myMusicWaveforms[0] << 5) + (myMusicCounters[0] >> 27)] +
					   myProgramImage[6*4096 + (myMusicWaveforms[1] << 5) + (myMusicCounters[1] >> 27)] +
					   myProgramImage[6*4096 + (myMusicWaveforms[2] << 5) + (myMusicCounters[2] >> 27)];

			result = (uInt8)i;
			break;
		  }

should become this:

		  case 0x05: // AMPLITUDE
		  {
			// Update the music data fetchers (counter & flag)
			updateMusicModeDataFetchers();

			// using myDisplayImage[] instead of myProgramImage[] because waveforms can be modified during runtime.
			uInt32 i = myDisplayImage[(myMusicWaveforms[0] << 5) + (myMusicCounters[0] >> 27)] +
					   myDisplayImage[(myMusicWaveforms[1] << 5) + (myMusicCounters[1] >> 27)] +
					   myDisplayImage[(myMusicWaveforms[2] << 5) + (myMusicCounters[2] >> 27)];

			result = (uInt8)i;
			break;
		  }

Specifically the 3 instances of myProgramImage[6*4096 + become myDisplayImage[.  I'll provide you a ROM that shows off this bug.

Edited by SpiceWare, Sat Nov 5, 2011 9:15 AM.

[SpiceWare]

Nathan Strum, on Fri Nov 4, 2011 7:27 PM, said:

Mighty impressive! As much a leap over 2600 Berzerk as Medieval Mayhem was over Warlords.

Thanks Nathan!

espire8, on Sat Nov 5, 2011 1:01 AM, said:

Hard to believe that was 6 years ago. And this is only my second time working with Spiceware homebrew. Time sure has flown by. Time to set the clock back an hour!

6 years?  I think it's only been 5 (it was written in 2006)- but it sure has flown by

[SpiceWare]

Lendorien, on Sat Nov 5, 2011 2:13 AM, said:

I have to say that I love the new animations. The guy running animation is really pretty fluid and the explosions of the robots are awesome. They really add a lot to the game!  I do feel like there needs to be some sort of sound as warning when Evil Otto comes into the room, even if it's not a digitized voice. Maybe a siren sort of sound.

Anyway, really enjoying this come together. It's really shaping up to be an amazing game.

espire8 outdid himself!  I was thinking the same thing about a warning sound for Evil Otto, just haven't had time to do it yet.   Thanks!

[ComputerSpaceFan]

By the way, I tried the latest version of Frantic to see if it would play at all on my modded FB2 (previous versions never did) and this latest one finally sorta does. At least i get past the spinning Harmony logo now. What I end up with though are three views of the title screen, one on top of the other, and when I go to launch the game I get a rolling screen (but I can't tell if my character is moving or not). Almost looking like a PAL game playing on an NTSC TV. And yes, I definitely downloaded the NTSC version.

Any hopes these little snags might be ironed out for us modded-FB2 players out there?

[WildBillTX]

This is a awesome game, and it's kicking my butt right now in the Frenzy mode in Stella.

It's amazing to see all those robots go into a full attack blitz on a 2600.. makes me wonder could your game be converted into a Robotron 2084?

My only gripes is the humanoid seems a little too sensitive around walls and exploding robots.. it's too easy to get zapped.

Edited by WildBillTX, Wed Nov 9, 2011 12:37 AM.

[SpiceWare]

Thanks!

It probably could, but it'd be quite the flicker fest.  I'll most likely work on porting Rally X after Frantic.

Yeah, that he is.  I suspect a big part of that is how much more space the walls take vs in the Arcade.  Possibly I could change the wall collision routines to check for collisions against "just the core" of the humanoid's body.

Edited by SpiceWare, Tue Nov 8, 2011 7:45 PM.

[WildBillTX]

SpiceWare, on Tue Nov 8, 2011 7:44 PM, said:

Thanks!

It probably could, but it'd be quite the flicker fest.  I'll most likely work on porting Rally X after Frantic.

Yeah, that he is.  I suspect a big part of that is how much more space the walls take vs in the Arcade.  Possibly I could change the wall collision routines to check for collisions against "just the core" of the humanoid's body.

That would help. It took me awhile to get used to how sensitive the humanoid is since I'm so used to playing the original 2600 Berzerk. I'll have to try your rom on my Harmony Cartridge and 2600 Jr. tonight.

BTW is there a way to keep Evil Otto from appearing like on the 2600 Berzerk using the A-B difficulty switches?

As for Rally X - awesome! Love that game. I'll be really impressed if you match the speed of the arcade game on the 2600.