94 replies to this topic

[iesposta]

This is another Star Castle by cd-w and with programming help and suggestions from the AtariAge community.
Play-testers get your comments/suggestions in now!
Video and screenshot below.
This is _NOT_  D. Scott Williamson's Star Castle.
If you have a Harmony Cart (latest firmware), or latest Stella 3.6.1 http://stella.source...t/downloads.php  a playable version of Star Castle from cd-w is on his Blog:
http://www.atariage....tar-castle-rc1/
It is at Release Candidate 1 (RC1) and will be finalized soon and available on the Melody Cartridge with high score support! Free binary for Stella emulation and for use on flash carts for real systems.
Report any bugs on his blog.
Advice is needed about darker or lighter ring colors on NTSC TVs.

Some great features are:
NTSC, PAL or Black and White is selectable.
Title Screen with music.
One shot or two shots to clear ring segment.
Three Chaser Mines.
Enemy ship shoots fireballs when it has a clear shot at you!

Attached Thumbnails

• 

Edited by iesposta, Thu May 3, 2012 8:17 PM.

[iesposta]

/ Idiot Mode On /
More colors than the 1980 coin op arcade game!
You get to fly a SHIP through a STAR FIELD, IN SPACE!
_AND_ shoot things!!!
Bounce off the rings... Keep moving as it gets harder... Thrust...
Shoot the mines, shoot the rings, shoot the enemy ship!
The closer you get to being able to kill the enemy ship the more intense the sound gets!
>>>>> The biggest explosion effect of all time using one player sprite! <<<<<
28K of programming awesomeness!
All this on the Atari 2600?
Yes!
/ Idiot Mode Off /
Seriously, you should check this out.

[rmaerz]

I kicked the tires on this...looks cool. My only complaint is that you have almost no room to fly North and South. It's as if the objects are  not in proportion with that of the arcade.

[iesposta]

rmaerz, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 8:26 PM, said:

I kicked the tires on this...looks cool. My only complaint is that you have almost no room to fly North and South. It's as if the objects are  not in proportion with that of the arcade.

They are not proportional. The arcade game fits in from about the second ring inward. The ship is smaller also.
Well if I were programming it, you would get 210 vertical scanlines of resolution or more, not 192. Come on, who's television overscan's that much in this day and age? Get a good monitor or learn how to adjust your set. I have 220 lines and I want to see 220 lines being used! (Disclaimer: I have no idea how many scanlines this game uses.)   

[stephena]

It's actually Stella 3.6.1.  And including that in a link (http://stella.source...t/downloads.php) would be helpful too.

[jdrose]

Impressive.

[Jinks]

Anyone have a video on real hardware?

[iesposta]

Jinks, on Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:39 AM, said:

Anyone have a video on real hardware?

I will make a video!  Am I allowed to?  Should cd-w be consulted first?

[cd-w]

iesposta, on Thu Apr 19, 2012 2:12 PM, said:

Jinks, on Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:39 AM, said:

Anyone have a video on real hardware?

I will make a video!  Am I allowed to?  Should cd-w be consulted first?

Feel free to post us a video of the gameplay.

Also, thanks to everyone here for the play-testing and complements.

Chris

[Jess Ragan]

Holy Shatner!  What's that Mappy game in your avatar?  I wanna know more about that!

[Thomas Jentzsch]

iesposta, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:39 PM, said:

They are not proportional. The arcade game fits in from about the second ring inward. The ship is smaller also.
Well if I were programming it, you would get 210 vertical scanlines of resolution or more, not 192. Come on, who's television overscan's that much in this day and age? Get a good monitor or learn how to adjust your set. I have 220 lines and I want to see 220 lines being used! (Disclaimer: I have no idea how many scanlines this game uses.)   

I agree. The vertical size should be increased if possible. Currently it is only 180 pixel.

[maiki]

220 scanlines was never a problem for TVs... perhaps 240 is still a problem on the other hand

[iesposta]

-quote- The vertical size should be increased if possible. Currently it is only 180 pixel.
Thomas,
May I ask where can you tell that it is 180? Stella? Source code?

Jess Ragan,
That's what you can do on the 2600 with the latest batari basic DPC+ 1.1d
So far it's just pretty sprites. One Player0 and eight Player1 with intelligent flicker (and each Player 2-9 can use NUSIZE but then you get double or triple missles...)
For almost the last year I've been mentally puzzling out horizontal scrolling and patiently waiting for DPC+ music to be added to batari basic.
If no music is added, I'll have to give a go at hacking the display kernel.
There won't be Mappy without 3-channel music & sound effects.
I've mocked up the 1st screen and the balloon bonus screen.
Both have their challenges and tradeoffs.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

iesposta, on Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:34 PM, said:

May I ask where can you tell that it is 180? Stella? Source code?

Screenshot and source code.

[iesposta]

Thomas Jentzsch, on Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:19 PM, said:

iesposta, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:39 PM, said:

They are not proportional. The arcade game fits in from about the second ring inward. The ship is smaller also.
Well if I were programming it, you would get 210 vertical scanlines of resolution or more, not 192. Come on, who's television overscan's that much in this day and age? Get a good monitor or learn how to adjust your set. I have 220 lines and I want to see 220 lines being used! (Disclaimer: I have no idea how many scanlines this game uses.)   

I agree. The vertical size should be increased if possible. Currently it is only 180 pixel.

I was trying to be funny for rmaerz (220 lines).. and I know that the less lines used the more processing time you get in vertical blank.
I just want to know where you can get that this game is using 180 scanlines? My screenshot is 512 pixels.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

iesposta, on Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:48 PM, said:

Thomas Jentzsch, on Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:19 PM, said:

iesposta, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:39 PM, said:

They are not proportional. The arcade game fits in from about the second ring inward. The ship is smaller also.
Well if I were programming it, you would get 210 vertical scanlines of resolution or more, not 192. Come on, who's television overscan's that much in this day and age? Get a good monitor or learn how to adjust your set. I have 220 lines and I want to see 220 lines being used! (Disclaimer: I have no idea how many scanlines this game uses.)   

I agree. The vertical size should be increased if possible. Currently it is only 180 pixel.

I was trying to be funny for rmaerz (220 lines).. and I know that the less lines used the more processing time you get in vertical blank.
I just want to know where you can get that this game is using 180 scanlines? My screenshot is 512 pixels.

Make a screenshot where the ship is positioned so that it can be seen at the top and at the bottom. How wide is it? 640? Then you have to resize it to 320x256 pixel.

Use a paint program to tell you the position of the very top and bottom pixels of the ship.

Then do the math.

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch, Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:55 PM.

[iesposta]

Thomas Jentzsch, on Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:37 PM, said:

iesposta, on Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:34 PM, said:

May I ask where can you tell that it is 180? Stella? Source code?

Screenshot and source code.

I figured it out. After cropping a screenshot, resize to 320.
Then the vertical shows 180!
Thanks for explaining.

(The Harmony DPC+ demo, first demo with Frosty and the blue lines with gray score area at the bottom, runs at 210 if anybody needs to test a 210 vertical display.)

[Thomas Jentzsch]

For fine tuning and to make the game as close as possible to the arcade version, it would be great if people figure out some parameter of the arcade version:

E.g.
- player ship (acceleration, max. speed, slow down, turning speed...)
- player shots (how many, how fast, how far, wrap around... )
- rotation speed and directions of the 3 rings
- ring colors
- mine AI (homing, speed, switching between rings and leaving rings) and lifetime
- cannon AI (targeting/turning speed, shoot speed and intervals...)
- scoring and lives (initial, bonus and max lives)
- timing of intermediate screens
- all that for different waves
- also dip switches which may affect some parameters
- sound effects (especially compared to the current game: different or missing)
- ...?

Thanks in advance!

[LS_Dracon]

Quote

sound effects (especially compared to the current game: different or missing)

I did all the sound fx and they are most close as possible with original. All the samplers are there, including new ones like the switch sound (pause).

The background siren for example updates the AUDFx on the fly, trying to simulate better than just one frame update. Here is the bullet shooting sound in .wav to compare, the first sound is the original and the second is the TIA incarnation :

Attached Files

•  scastlebullet.wav   35.08K   60 downloads

[Thomas Jentzsch]

LS_Dracon, on Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:37 AM, said:

I did all the sound fx and they are most close as possible with original. All the samplers are there, including new ones like the switch sound (pause).

The background siren for example updates the AUDFx on the fly, trying to simulate better than just one frame update. Here is the bullet shooting sound in .wav to compare, the first sound is the original and the second is the TIA incarnation :

I didn't want to criticize at all. The game is very complete. I didn't even had the chance to test everything in detail so I wrote down everything that came to my mind.

On to compare the sounds now.

[LS_Dracon]

Hehe I wasn't complaining, sorry if sounds like that.

The sound fx are present on the last update.

Not all the sounds are equal because some limitations, rom, frequency etc... But I think they are ok.

Edited by LS_Dracon, Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:31 AM.

[rmaerz]

Player shots wrap around.

On early stages, sparks only wrap around the screen if your ship is right on the edge of the screen when they are close to you. Otherwise, they do not wrap around the screen until you hit 15,000 (roughly) at which point you must stay on thrust full-time.

Sparks will release from the rings when the segment they are on is destroyed. I am not certain about how or why they hop from ring to ring.

Rings: innermost is yellow, middle ring is orange and outer ring is red.

The yellow and red rings rotate counter-clockwise and the orange rings clockwise.

When your ship bounces off of the rings, it flips 180 degrees.

Edited by rmaerz, Mon Apr 23, 2012 12:15 PM.

[iesposta]

Someone asked for a video, cd-w said it was okay.
First try, first YouTube post!

[keilbaca]

I can do up a video as well. It won't be until tomorrow, however. I'm wanting to test out the new program that I found for recording.

[rmaerz]

What happens to the name of this release, since Williamson is also releasing a Star Castle? How about "Ring War" which was the working title for Star Castle at Cinematronics.