Tempest Elite coming soon to Atari 8-bit

[peteym5]

I am suspecting something is going on with having both the color map active and VBXE sprite layers active at the same time. I need to research into the being a possible cause. Anyone ever try having both these things active at the same time.

 

I working on resolving these issues for the owners of Tempest Elite because I do value my customers. However, working with them and my beta testers need to be kept confidential through email because I cannot post peoples personal information in the public forums. I am only responding to related customer reports and information provided from VBXE programmers.

 

If you have any concerns about the distribution of the game, you may contact Video61. The binary will not be posted and no one has my permission to do so. If posted, or linked to where it can be downloaded, I will request it to be removed.

Edited August 14, 2017 by peteym5

[Keatah]

I believe the amount of help given in the forums should be limited or stopped. Unless someone wants to be taken advantage of.. Can't help but seeing things that way.

[Mclaneinc]

I totally forgot about this. It was an honest mistake so no worries. I've posted the full binary since then so people are free to make their own carts if they want to.

 

You did, I must have missed that

 

But thank you for the understanding, it truly was an honest mistake and there's one thing I'm not and that's a liar.

[+mytek]

I find the whole idea of asking for peoples help on a public forum for the purposes of making a game better, and then getting worried about the free exchange of information is a bit strange. I do realize that the idea is to make money off of the final product, but you really can't have it be both ways. I would suggest if protecting trade secrets is so important, then you shouldn't be discussing any of this on an open forum. And since the help that is being asked for relates to an item that is to be sold for a profit, I would sure hope that compensation is being paid back to the people providing said help. After all what's seen as fair from one viewpoint, needs to be fair from all ways of looking at it.

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

- Michael

[peteym5]

Demos of Tempest Xtreme, Secretum Labyrinth, Delta Space Arena, and Megaoids were all provided. I believe that is fair compensation for any help I receive to fix these games. It was KJMANN12 who requested that I remove these demos. I will be offering a way to patch Tempest Elite since it is on a flash cartridge once I figure out what is going on.

[Keatah]

I find the whole idea of asking for peoples help on a public forum for the purposes of making a game better, and then getting worried about the free exchange of information is a bit strange.

 

It's a form of cognitive dissonance.

[+remowilliams]

Demos of Tempest Xtreme, Secretum Labyrinth, Delta Space Arena, and Megaoids were all provided. I believe that is fair compensation for any help I receive to fix these games

 

[+Stephen]

Demos of Tempest Xtreme, Secretum Labyrinth, Delta Space Arena, and Megaoids were all provided. I believe that is fair compensation for any help I receive to fix these games. It was KJMANN12 who requested that I remove these demos. I will be offering a way to patch Tempest Elite since it is on a flash cartridge once I figure out what is going on.

How does that help compensate someone for helping you track down an issue on Tempest Elite? You really are a strange guy.

[peteym5]

 

; XDLC bits
XDLC_TMON       equ     1     ;enable Overlay Text Mode
XDLC_GMON       equ     2     ;enable Overlay Graphics Mode
XDLC_OVOFF      equ     4     ;disable Overlay 
XDLC_MAPON      equ     8     ;enable colour attributes
XDLC_MAPOFF     equ     16    ;disable colour attributes
XDLC_RPTL       equ     32    ;no changes in next x scanlines
XDLC_OVADR      equ     64    ;set the address and step of the Overlay display memory
XDLC_OVSCRL     equ     128   ;Set scrolling values for the text mode
XDLC_CHBASE     equ     256   ;set character base
XDLC_MAPADR     equ     512   ;set the address and step of the colour attribute map
XDLC_MAPPAR     equ     1024  ;set scrolling values, width and height of a field in the colour attribute map
XDLC_ATT        equ     2048  ;Setting the display size (both Overlay and Colour map) and Overlay priority to the ANTIC display. And Overlay colour modification.
XDLC_HR         equ     4096  ;enable the High Resolution mode (640, 4 bpp)
XDLC_LR         equ     8192  ;enable the Low Resolution mode  (160, 8 bpp)
XDLC_END        equ     32768 ;XDL end (the last XDL record), wait for VSYNC.

MAIN_XDL
      .WORD XDLC_OVOFF + XDLC_RPTL
      DTA $1C
      .word   XDLC_GMON + XDLC_MAPON + XDLC_RPTL  + XDLC_OVADR + XDLC_MAPADR + XDLC_MAPPAR
      DTA $BF
      DTA $58,$66,$00,$00,$02
      .long $070000
      .word   40*4
      .byte   0 ;hscroll mapy
      .byte   0 ;vscroll mapy
      .byte   7 ;width
      .byte   7 ;Height 
      DTA %00000000,%10000000					
MAIN_XDL_SIZE = *-MAIN_XDL

Some things were missing from the XDL...

Edited August 14, 2017 by peteym5

[Level42]

similar LOTS

 

Galaga can't be done on stock A8

 

Yeah. That's what they said about Space Harrier....

[Level42]

First: Amazing work on this game, it looks fantastic.

 

But what's all this fear of piracy of a game that is a DIRECT copy of Tempest ?

 

Have you arranged a license with Atari ?

 

Is Dave Theurer getting any money ?

I think it's really a double morale....

[+Stephen]

First: Amazing work on this game, it looks fantastic.

 

But what's all this fear of piracy of a game that is a DIRECT copy of Tempest ?

 

Have you arranged a license with Atari ?

 

Is Dave Theurer getting any money ?

 

I think it's really a double morale....

 

Jeff Minter's Tempest 2000 was the inspiration, and I think it used that music too. I'm sure Llamasoft and Imagitec(music) weren't notified either.

 

No sense trying to rationalize with this guy. he doesn't seem to have the "normal" thought process. It's fine to ask for (and get for FREE) help from everyone on the forum for his coding issues, but by GOD nobody will ever see it or a binary, etc.

[peteym5]

XDLC_GMON + XDLC_MAPON + XDLC_RPTL  + XDLC_OVADR + XDLC_MAPADR + XDLC_MAPPAR + XDLC_ATT + XDLC_END 

XDLC_ADD and XDLC_END were missing causing the sprites not to show. The priority bits seem to get reverse if the color map is active. By doing these things, it may allow it to run on real hardware and be an issue running in emulation. I had someone test it with the color map disabled and the blitter seemed to work except for not clearing the screen properly. If all else fails, I can switch back to using standard Atari graphics 160 4 color mode background with the VBXE sprites on top.

[peteym5]

I personally will not be getting involved with a Galaga type game project. I have too many projects I am involved with currently. I decided not to do any more arcade ports because of the bashing I dealt with for Tempest and Venture. I just suggested a few pointers on how to get more colors with standard Antic/GTIA graphics, or doing with VBXE. Maybe someone can use my ideal that detects if VBXE is present, load the appropriate routines that place sprites at X,Y screen coordinates.

 

When the colormap is used, it overrides the priority in the XDL and that may be causing the problems here. So I need to figure out what setting puts the VBXE sprite overlay over a hi-res 320 mode background.

[+remowilliams]

I decided not to do any more arcade ports because of the bashing I dealt with for Tempest and Venture.

 

And I'm afraid you've learned absolutely nothing from the feedback (aka "bashing" in your parlance) from the rather amazing Atari 8 bit community.

[peteym5]

This blame the punters ideal just stinks, its why I can't really deal with Petey, he's a carbon copy of his pal Sal, absolutely paranoid about his work being pirated yet there's no Piracy scene on the Atari 8 bit and has not been for a LOOOOONG time and as always I repeat that the Atari fans are most loyal to their devs, the nearest I think we came was me posting a released demo of one of Teps games for which I have repeatedly apologised for but it wasn't a malicious thing, it was a demo released on an ABBC disk and I didn't realise at the time it was from there and posted it to show the game demo off.

 

And as far as I know that is as near as anyone has come to piracy on here and to be fair that isn't very near, we respect the devs and I've not seen peteys stuff as files and there's no pirate sites but once again petey accuses people of playing pirate copies with ZERO proof and with draws tech support unless you prove you own it....Jebus, how trusting is that.

 

You are your own worst enemy, to be honest your attitude could make it more likely the games get dumped and I make it clear I 1. don't have the skills needed to remove any protection or 2. don't want to get involved in any Atari piracy spreading, my past is still my past, I've got no wants to return to it.. I own one of Peteys games, Venture and that's it, I have no others games in any form be it cart or file of his..FACT.

 

Is your Venture cartridge working properly? I still cannot figure out what the so called bug is suppose to be doing. With the Williams Cart version, there might had been a timing issue between different Atari models, PAL, NTSC, and I recently found out with the 5200. The Player/Missile mulitplexer uses DLIs that may cause have an artifact at the top or bottom of a sprite. This only lasted a few frames and went away and the game continues to play normal.

[peteym5]

What I have been learned so far is that the meaning of the priority bits might had been reversed. Possibly this got changed between VBXE core versions.

 

Does disabling the OS ROM, setting PORTB to $FE affect the VBXE in any way? Tempest Requires the RAM under OS to function properly.

Edited August 18, 2017 by peteym5

[peteym5]

I have made a final decision to remove the VBXE color map from Tempest Elite and the web lines will be the a single color. There will be no lane highlighting in VBXE mode. The spikes will be dotted lines to distinguish them from the web lines. Since there are multi versions of the firmware, two different address setting, and could have other circuits attached, I decided to default to something simpler. I will not be sharing my source code with anyone that has not signed a non-disclosure agreement.

 

The updated cartridge will be available from Atarisales.com. I am working on something that can verify the original cartridge for the people who had purchased the game previosuly and update the changes. This may not be available for awhile.

Edited August 19, 2017 by peteym5

[peteym5]

 

Here is a video showing how VBXE mode will play after the update. It looks pretty much the same, exempt instead of spikes being green and looking like they were still in 160x192 mode, they now appear as dotted lines in 320x192 mode. The slightly brighter ship lane for lane highlighting was no longer possible without the color map. Sprite Overlay without the Color Map is known to always work. I cannot be sure if different hardware additions or configurations along with the firmware updates caused things not to display properly.

 

I wanted to get Tempest Elite fixed those that bought the game or looking to purchase the game. Things were getting a little frustrating trying to get it to work with both the Color Map and Sprite Overlay Layer and kept getting same results from beta testers, but I did know removing the Color Map layer allowed the sprites to work. That along with how things were starting to get negative on the public forums. I have other on going projects. I ultimately decided to be done with it and set it adjust the color registers to work with 320x192 (graphics 8 ) mode for the background.

Edited August 19, 2017 by peteym5

[Aking]

NOW Tempest elite works like a dream on vbxe + ultimate 1mb(pbi turned off)+stereo machines

either pal or ntsc

 

[Kyle22]

It requires the PBI BIOS be disabled? Why?

[peteym5]

Tempest Elite uses the whole 64K RAM, including the area under the OS ROM, for digital sounds, font, screen ram, self modifying code, RMT music, level tables, pre-calculated tables for all the lanes in the level. I tried to keep the digital sounds in the cartridge banks, but the extra cpu cycles needed for bank switching made it impossible to be running the game at the same time.

[Kyle22]

ok.

[peteym5]

It appears to be fixed and after Video 61 has his own beta testers check it out, the updated cartridge will be available. I will be working on my own program to re-flash the cartridge for those who already own it. I am considering modifying the Atari Max Flash program to check if Tempest Elite is already on a flash cartridge, or create a new program that only flashes specific banks. For those who need assistance running Tempest with VBXE, please send me a private message or email Video61.

 

Since I could this to work with VBXE sprite overlay and VBXE color map, I removed the color map and adjusted the game to run without it. The VBXE experts could not figure it out either. Some believe it was an issue with disabling the OS ROM, but RAM under OS is an entire different memory area that should not effect anything with VBXE. The other theory, is it could be a bus cycle issue. The Color Map steals extra cycles, and my beta tester had a machine with a 65816 CPU. I also noticed little glitches happening because the VBI not completing. Since I did not get assistance to make it work, I decided to remove VBXE color map from the equation to get Tempest to play with VBXE sprite overlay.

[flashjazzcat]

The VBXE experts could not figure it out either... Since I did not get assistance to make it work, I decided to remove VBXE color map from the equation to get Tempest to play with VBXE sprite overlay.

Are you for real? People did the best they could to diagnose your issues on the basis of tiny drip-fed code fragments. You were repeatedly told that any one of several people here could probably have fixed the problem for you within ten minutes of having sight of the binary. You have a lot to learn about collaborative troubleshooting and I for one won't waste another moment of my time trying to help you out in the future. Blame-shifting, entitlement, and paranoia are not traits which encourage people to offer assistance on these forums.