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Secretum Labyrinth Dark Castles Work in progress 05/11/2018


peteym5

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Here is the latest Work in Progress of Secretum Labyrinth Dark Castles.







What is in this video, I am showing the forest village over-world and entrances into the various castles that will have a maze like dungeon under each one. I am going through designing the layout, and will be filling in more into each room a little later. Whole new dungeons have to be created for this game due to the data being more compact and encoded, this will have totally new map.



New features include, collecting currency, buying items. New items with new functions. Text from scrolls can ask questions/riddles. Multiple choice ones be able to perform different action for each choice. Many new monsters, and capable of having many more rooms in same memory area. Cannot reveal all the features as I am still making progress.


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Can a direct link be posted? the video above doesn't load here, it keeps saying to check proxy settings which I looked into too and there is no issue I can find.

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Def looks more polished.

The more time I spend with the program, the more optimize and more features can be added. Data be more compacted. For a benchmark of how much data is compacted, I look at how many screens can be fit inside one 8k bank with a bank switching cartridge, using a procedural set up for an Antic mode 4 screen. A 64K cartridge will have 2 designated for rooms. Originally, I was only expecting to fit like 80 rooms per bank, an adventure game with about 160 rooms. Now I am getting it up to 200 plus rooms, with a goal of 256 rooms per bank. Then I figured out little tricks like have the horizontal line size be from 0 to 256, instead of two instructions to make a thicker horizontal line, just set the length to 80, 120, or 160.

 

Of course with more rooms, I would like to have more different stuff for the character to do. Like you have to find a secret lever somewhere to open a hidden passage, or you can just walk through a hidden passage on the left of that screen. Have more special items that will protect from or defeat enemies in certain rooms.

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I do have enemies that move toward your direction. I will look into the ideal of monsters guarding exits or items if I can shoehorn that into the program. This next Secretum Labyrinth game went through some extensive optimizations so many new features can be added, have to see if I can find room in the bank the VBI is running from.

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Music is part of the game Vertical Blank Interrupt and is disabled during screen transition. Most of the time, the rooms are drawn under 1/60 to 3/60 of a second and no one noticed this as being a problem.

Edited by peteym5
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OK: the intention wasn't to nit-pick, but I think it's extremely noticeable and was just curious as to the cause. Thanks.

i wrote some of the music, and sometimes we have to make room for the computer to do things. so sometimes there might not be as many channels being used as we want to, or a moment of silence. thanks for understanding.

 

 

lancew

www.atarisales.com

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As many do know this is a work-in-progress and small problems are not unexpected during development. Now I run the game and played back the video, I closed my else or looked away and I cannot really hear when you are going from one room to another. The video is also comprised of several short recordings of the game being played. Are you referring to when a new piece of music started when entering a new room? There are several pieces of music being prepared for this game that will play in different parts of the map.

 

I may be taking a break from Secretum Labyrinth for awhile to work on a few smaller game projects and will be coming back.

Edited by peteym5
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i wrote some of the music, and sometimes we have to make room for the computer to do things. so sometimes there might not be as many channels being used as we want to, or a moment of silence. thanks for understanding.

 

OK. I was previously told the music is played during the vertical blank interrupt and that said interrupt is completely turned off (for some reason) when the rooms are redrawn. Interrupts tend to imply concurrency but at least Pete's explanation makes sense.

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...I closed my else or looked away and I cannot really hear when you are going from one room to another.

Ironically, the lag in the music would allow a blind observer to know when a room transition was occurring. :)

 

Are you referring to when a new piece of music started when entering a new room?

Most emphatically not. I'm referring to the lag that happens at 6s, 8s, 12s... all the way through on a perpetual basis every time the protagonist goes from room to room. It's perfectly consistent with your earlier explanation: the interrupt-based music player being completely shut off for 250-300ms or more.

Edited by flashjazzcat
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Ironically, the lag in the music would allow a blind observer to know when a room transition was occurring. :)

 

 

Most emphatically not. I'm referring to the lag that happens at 6s, 8s, 12s... all the way through on a perpetual basis every time the protagonist goes from room to room. It's perfectly consistent with your earlier explanation: the interrupt-based music player being completely shut off for 250-300ms or more.

It's a bit jarring like when a record skips. Not sure it would be that bad when actually controlling the game though, as opposed to watching someone play?

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As many do know this is a work-in-progress and small problems are not unexpected during development. Now I run the game and played back the video, I closed my else or looked away and I cannot really hear when you are going from one room to another.

 

Everybody understands that this is a work in progress, and of course you'll add improvements to it.

 

But since you state that you can not hear the issue, isn't it a good idea to leave the solution to someone else?

The fact that you 'really cannot hear' the transition from one room to another in the music, surprises me.

 

I admit: I have a very trained ear (I'm a professional musician), but I can not believe that is the reason I hear it too.

Perhaps someone else can confirms (or not) that he/she hears it....

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Everybody understands that this is a work in progress, and of course you'll add improvements to it.

 

But since you state that you can not hear the issue, isn't it a good idea to leave the solution to someone else?

The fact that you 'really cannot hear' the transition from one room to another in the music, surprises me.

 

I admit: I have a very trained ear (I'm a professional musician), but I can not believe that is the reason I hear it too.

Perhaps someone else can confirms (or not) that he/she hears it....

I can confirm, that I can hear the music stops for a moment when room changes (based on the video in the first post)...

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Everybody understands that this is a work in progress, and of course you'll add improvements to it.

 

But since you state that you can not hear the issue, isn't it a good idea to leave the solution to someone else?

The fact that you 'really cannot hear' the transition from one room to another in the music, surprises me.

 

I admit: I have a very trained ear (I'm a professional musician), but I can not believe that is the reason I hear it too.

Perhaps someone else can confirms (or not) that he/she hears it....

Yeah - incredibly easy to hear. It's one of those things that bothers me to no end when listening to satellite radio in my car. I'll be drumming along, and the song skips. Very jarring.

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Aren't we getting a little carried away with the nitpicking. Posting on here, it is not unexpected. Posting Work-in-Progress videos gives me some feedback and see what can be done about what is being observed.

 

I am trying some changes when the music at different points within the room draw routine, so the noise plays slightly longer. However since the length of time it can take to draw the next room is variable, along with the instant one leaves the room, it will only have a minor effect. The music totally stops if a new song file needs to be decompressed into RAM during a world/under world transition. This is minor and the game continues to play normal after

Edited by peteym5
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Aren't we getting a little carried away with the nitpicking.

Are we? I was satisfied with your initial answer to my question, but then Lance piped up and mansplained limited system resources:

 

...sometimes we have to make room for the computer to do things.

Thanks! Then you replied and said that you can't even hear the lag I was asking about in the first place. As ProWizard said, everyone understands this is a work in progress, but ironically enough the reaction to my question about the music lag ("Lag? What lag?") suggests that this isn't a glitch that will be ironed out later, but something that's passed completely under the radar.

 

Posting on here, it is not unexpected.

What - that someone will ask a genuine question and get the usual filibustering responses?

 

Posting Work-in-Progress videos gives me some feedback and see what can be done about what is being observed.

Exactly so. Everyone appreciates that, and this is the point. But you give the impression that legitimate constructive criticism elicited as a direct result of the WIP video really pisses you off.

 

I have no idea how the rooms are decompressed or rendered, but I imagined for some reason that drawing could be performed in mainline code while music was played during an interrupt. If that's not possible and you don't regard the observed lag when going from room to room as an issue, that's absolutely fine. :)

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Aren't we getting a little carried away with the nitpicking. Posting on here, it is not unexpected. Posting Work-in-Progress videos gives me some feedback and see what can be done about what is being observed.

 

I am trying some changes when the music at different points within the room draw routine, so the noise plays slightly longer. However since the length of time it can take to draw the next room is variable, along with the instant one leaves the room, it will only have a minor effect. The music totally stops if a new song file needs to be decompressed into RAM during a world/under world transition. This is minor and the game continues to play normal after

I hope you didn't take my posts as nit-picking. I was just answering questions others had asked, and letting them know that I could in fact hear the pauses. This reminds me of when there was a visual issue when switching rooms. We notified you about it, and your initial reaction was "the glitch is 1/60th of a second, it shouldn't matter". But you did fix it, and the game looked WAY more polished because of it.

 

I do think in this case, the feedback / criticism is not harsh, and is just meant to make the game engine look / feel like more of a fully polished professional title.

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The screen draw room process runs better by itself with the interrupts disabled and screen is off. Runs faster. I moved the RMT silence call to after a few processes were done like clear screen, sprites, reset a few variable tables, etc. Seems less noticeable to me. I experimented with keeping the screen on and music running while doing some processes and causes other problems. It is working fine with screen off and a brief pause. So I am not going to mess around with something that is working just fine.

 

Running at standard CPU, it does a new room draw under 1/15th second. I tested it with 65816 settings, and it is 1/60th second, but that visual glitch comes because the disable DMA happens at the wrong time during the frame draw. However I am only supporting the game with standard hardware, any modification someone does that will cause unusual reactions of software is not the programmers fault.

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I experimented with keeping the screen on and music running while doing some processes and causes other problems. It is working fine with screen off and a brief pause.

OK: no-one is complaining about the screen being off and I have no idea why disabling DMA implies pausing of RMT playback, but if it's a big problem to fix, I'm sure people will understand.

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