Heaven/TQA Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 Not bad.... and plus/4 has similar palette and speed...(ok and color ram) 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 Seems to run on every 4th frame. Fast enough for gaming fun. You know the CPU is clocked almost the same, but the cycle stealing is even worse than on the Atari. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 The CPU clock and pixel aspect are exactly the same. Though Plus4 centres it's screen a bit better so no need for the annoying 2 character margin. 2 successive badlines per new text line since the attributes are entirely in shared RAM. The game looks fairly impressive. There are a few decent Plus4 games though they tend to use virtually all available memory. And yes, it suffers badly in having no sprites. Would be interesting to see how Xeo3 is going but it looks like no movement in nearly 10 years http://www.javalemmings.com/xeo3/news1024.htm Let's also not forget - many early Atari games were softsprites only. Especially the Apple 2 conversions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 Awesome project !9 months in development. Lot's of guys from plus4 scene got together, code, gfx, music, levels - all done by someone. Lots of levels, good use of colors. Color attributes used in best possible way. Speed is good enough (25fps) for a nice platform jumping gameplay. Similar could be done on A8, just with less colors (ok, ok - more "rainbow" colors maybe ). Xeo3 is done as it is. Coder (Mike Dailly) is busy working at Gamemaker and doing all kinds of crazy shit for "Spectrum Next". I messaged him couple times on different addresses about possibly sharing source code so we could make A8 version, but he didn't respond.... Pet's rescue looks like a great game and shows what can be done. It inspired me to work even more on a new A8 game, so I'll go back to coding. What about rest of you ? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 So is Xeo3 permanently stalled at the state reflected on it's website? Or is it a commercial purchase only? Link for Pets Rescue http://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Pets_Rescue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted February 25, 2018 Author Share Posted February 25, 2018 Seems to run on every 4th frame. Fast enough for gaming fun. You know the CPU is clocked almost the same, but the cycle stealing is even worse than on the Atari. Not sure about cycle steeling if worse than a8. Char modes are as bad on a8 as on others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 Not sure about cycle steeling if worse than a8. Char modes are as bad on a8 as on others. But that doesn't keep them from doing very nice animations there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 Maybe something can be gleaned from the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 So is Xeo3 permanently stalled at the state reflected on it's website? Or is it a commercial purchase only? Newest info is on author's blog: http://dailly.blogspot.rs/search/label/Xeo3 He started working on C64 version and never finished it as far as I know... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 So ... and pardon me if I'm missing something here ... Why is this posted in the Atari 8-bit forum? Was someone working on an A8 version? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geister Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 Maybe something can be gleaned from the game. I'd like to know more about soft Sprites. 4-5 single color players was never enough for what I wanted to do on the Atari. Are there any examples of the technique on the Atari? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 I'd like to know more about soft Sprites. 4-5 single color players was never enough for what I wanted to do on the Atari. Are there any examples of the technique on the Atari? Sure there are Sorry for boring background, but it's just testing of sprite routine. Still need to build a game around it And this is also an answer for that question "why is this in Atari forum ?". Well because it's example of how a game can look and feel on a computer with 6502 based computer without hardware sprites. We have roughly the same speed, couple tricks more with PM's and DLI's and our largest flaw is lack of color attributes. But it's a proof of concept - scrolling platform games can be done on A8 too. There are good things coming for Atari, so either be patient or get involved ! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gatherer of Data Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 C16/Plus 4 had some nice looking platformers coming out in recent years, The Lands of Zador kinda blew me away when I first saw it. The predecessor is called "The Majesty of Sprites". Not sure if that title has a double meaning 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwilove Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 When you have only 5 colours present - and the soft sprites also use the same palette - you do have the problem of them not standing out from the background - so your colour palette choice is going to be crucial. I'm all for seeing a working test version - to see how exactly it will look - with it's limitations present. Maybe if you have a lot of other stuff happening - like background animations and whatever else you can include - you can get away with it? Hardware sprites do have extra colours present - which helps them stand out. Multiplexing them is necessary to have more of them - and very clever choreography is necessary to give the illusion that more are present than usual - otherwise very bad flicker is present. This is a carry over from a hardware design history that goes back to 1978? And even in 1979 there were some last moment changes made? Such as CTIA to GTIA chip.. and others... Harvey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 When you have only 5 colours present - and the soft sprites also use the same palette - you do have the problem of them not standing out from the background - so your colour palette choice is going to be crucial. I'm all for seeing a working test version - to see how exactly it will look - with it's limitations present. Maybe if you have a lot of other stuff happening - like background animations and whatever else you can include - you can get away with it? Hardware sprites do have extra colours present - which helps them stand out. Multiplexing them is necessary to have more of them - and very clever choreography is necessary to give the illusion that more are present than usual - otherwise very bad flicker is present. This is a carry over from a hardware design history that goes back to 1978? And even in 1979 there were some last moment changes made? Such as CTIA to GTIA chip.. and others... Harvey Come on, after all those years ,it's still that hard to realize that the Atari has 9 colors for graphics without any CPU cost? You could easily move a 4 color software sprite with separated colors from the visual background. As PMg offers easily colors but hardly detail, it IS better to use them for coloring the background then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pseudografx Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 I would add the 128-char font to the list of A8's flaws. It really does make things more complicated if you want to use softsprites in charmodes. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geister Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 Thanks for the videos, but by examples, I meant code examples that show how this is implemented. Are you aware of any blogs that cover the technique? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 Even on static screens, a 3-colour software-sprite seems fine to me, e.g. Draconus - although the dwarf enemy's seem harder to pick out.When the background is moving/scrolling, e.g. Zybex, then again it doesn't really seem a problem. Bear in mind too that the original Gameboy games, although having their own dedicate sprite handling, were still playable in that those sprites aren't "lost" in the background, e.g. Micro Machines. MADS assembler comes with a "examples\sprites" folder Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 I would add the 128-char font to the list of A8's flaws. It really does make things more complicated if you want to use softsprites in charmodes. That just means, you cannot simply copy the code from C64 or plus/4 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted February 26, 2018 Share Posted February 26, 2018 Thanks for the videos, but by examples, I meant code examples that show how this is implemented. Are you aware of any blogs that cover the technique? Always wanted to write about this and share the pain It's hard enough to find time to code it, writing about it never came up, sorry. Here is whole project with couple documents (memory map and char-sprite-code brainstorming). softsprites.zip And here is example of how complex inner workings of a "good" routine look like: You have different charsets for each char row, each sprite uses only couple chars out of one charset needed for one line. You have to take into account masking to preserve background, setting good initial values to choose good preshifted shape etc. Feel free to ask anything. I'm more than happy to share info. This was a proof of concept for me. A8 can have lots of sprites like this. They don't take too much memory and are fast enough. Building a game around it is a longer project. Something like Xeo3 should be possible to code in reasonable time. Unfortunately I have a bigger project in mind than "a simple shooter", so will be couple years till you get something good out of this from me 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pseudografx Posted February 26, 2018 Share Posted February 26, 2018 That just means, you cannot simply copy the code from C64 or plus/4 . I was not talking about porting. It creates serious obstacles even in original productions. Of course there are workarounds, but every workaround adds more complexity and slowdown to the result. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted February 26, 2018 Author Share Posted February 26, 2018 So ... and pardon me if I'm missing something here ... Why is this posted in the Atari 8-bit forum? Was someone working on an A8 version? Learn from ppl having "shitty" platform to work with +4 and esp. Bauknecht guys work around the limitation of the +4... and as CPU is similar speed to A8 (1,77 Mhz) its interesting how a platformer e.g. which scrolling backgrounds can look like. we have Crownland but how wouldit look with soft sprites? That's why I posted that game. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted February 26, 2018 Author Share Posted February 26, 2018 (edited) I would add the 128-char font to the list of A8's flaws. It really does make things more complicated if you want to use softsprites in charmodes. Fully agree... an "unnecessary" pain... it really really makes a different to have 256 chars (tiles) vs 128... more complicated when layued out with several fonts on screen etc.. btw. did Miner ever mentioned where that 128 limit came from? Edited February 26, 2018 by Heaven/TQA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 26, 2018 Share Posted February 26, 2018 They based design a lot on Pet and Apple 2. The obvious optimization is to have the bitsetting for inverse video rather than waste 1K of Rom on an inverted copy of the charset (or in some C= cases, 2K for 2 chsets). The obvious oversight of course is that they muddled the design. The C= Plus4 in fact corrects the mistake in that it allows the Atari or C= legacy method of character display. Atari should have done the same, the CHACTL register should have had a bitsetting to say whether to have double sized charset or to invert video on bit7=1 chars. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted February 26, 2018 Author Share Posted February 26, 2018 there are some strange "features" like upside/down flip which could have been used for having 256 chars instead... I would have even preferred leaving the 5th color for 256 chars... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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