DPC+ Expansion for Robot Zed and future games

[Sprybug]

Hey guys.

 

After talking with Albert on here and at PRGE, along with others, it seems that we can get more space out of DPC+, which is something I will need for my game. I've redesigned it one more time, but now I am set on my redesign, which will actually take advantage of the levels stored in data tables rather than graphic tables, which is currently at a 1 bank limitation. This will allow my levels to be large and I have developed a routine that can scroll this data on, just like my other games. The thing is, in order to get all these nice juicy levels, along with advanced enemy AI (which I want to have to expand the enemy's behaviors), I'm going to need more than 32K (20K of which is only available to me). If I'm going to have these things, along with a soundtrack, and added features such as more power-ups, flying stages, and different boss fights, then I'm going to need to have at least 64K. From what I understand, after PRGE, it would be possible to do more than that (512k if I remember it right). Now my question is, what do we need to do to make this a reality?

[+Random Terrain]

Superchip RAM gave us 48 extra variables, so when DPC+ was being worked on, I assumed that we'd have at least 74 variables. Wrong, burger boy!

 

I can't deal with the DPC+ stack. It's too much for my tiny brain. I need plain old juicy variables. If we're going to cheat, lets cheat.

[Sprybug]

Superchip RAM gave us 48 extra variables, so when DPC+ was being worked on, I assumed that we'd have at least 74 variables. Wrong, burger boy!

 

I can't deal with the DPC+ stack. It's too much for my tiny brain. I need plain old juicy variables. If we're going to cheat, lets cheat.

 

I've learned how the DPC+ stack works, but it's such a CPU cycle eater as I have found out in my game. Zed in its current form, calls to read and write to the stack a couple times at least every game cycle, and man does it really eat CPU cycles. To get the demo done in time for PRGE, I had to slap on a bunch of drawscreen band-aids which really slowed down the game. My redesign would bring scrolling back, which would space out the enemies more. But if we could get more variables without eating a lot of CPU time, you know what I could do with that? So much! I would love it!