231 replies to this topic

[neotokeo2001]

Looks like we were fixing the 7 at the same time.  
I made the score font smaller and a few shape changes. I'll post it for posterity.



BIN:
 Defender_Arcade.bin   8K   132 downloads

Edited to correct BIN. I had the (2) messed up but it is fixed.  

Edited by neotokeo2001, Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:01 PM.

[Atariboy2600]

 PacManPlus, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 3:43 PM, said:

 Paranoid, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 1:33 AM, said:

So, when you're not making killer joystick mods, you code homebrew games?

Heh... I am Jack's green envy.

Thanks, man

You know the saying 'Jack of all trades, master of none'?  That's pretty much me.  I'm good up to a certain point, then that's it. :-/

I know I cant never play this on any emulator on this damn linux run computer so how much do I have to pay you for a made cart so I can finaly play it?

[Lord Helmet]

New observation:

The Lander's eye does not move in Defender the way it does in Stargate.

You should also put a credit 2006 PacManPlus with the 1984 Atari.

Is it possible to draw the line at the top of the playfield (along the bottom of the radar) all the way across the screen?

To differentiate this game from Stargate, you should see about changing the shape of the mountains slightly...if possible


Of course, these are all just suggestions, the game is nearly perfect already

[PacManPlus]

 Lord Helmet, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:20 PM, said:

New observation:
The Lander's eye does not move in Defender the way it does in Stargate.

Getting a little picky, are we?
I've changed the lander's shape to match more with the arcade Defender. (binary below)

 Lord Helmet, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:20 PM, said:

You should also put a credit 2006 PacManPlus with the 1984 Atari.

No room on the screen using the current bitmap   That's ok, though.

 Lord Helmet, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:20 PM, said:

Is it possible to draw the line at the top of the playfield (along the bottom of the radar) all the way across the screen?

I actually had already looked in to that (with the knowledge that I have).  Didn't see a way to extend what it was already doing

 Lord Helmet, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:20 PM, said:

To differentiate this game from Stargate, you should see about changing the shape of the mountains slightly...if possible

Already did that above, using Supercat's suggestion, and lightened the red to an orange as per your suggestion

 Lord Helmet, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:20 PM, said:

Of course, these are all just suggestions, the game is nearly perfect already

Thanks
The suggestions are great!  ...  Although I keep thinking I'm done...      

Thanks!

@Atariboy2600 (and anyone else who is interested).  I'm thinking about making carts of this, although I'm not sure of the price point because of the SARA deal... I have to figure that out.  (Hey CPUWIZ!  I'll get you more sales by proxy!)

Attached Files

•  defarcad.zip   32.5K   196 downloads

Edited by PacManPlus, Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:15 PM.

[Gregory DG]

Great work Bob! How is this only 8K though?!

Also, I think the ship would look better without that extra bit on the end of it's nose... The extra ships up top look good though.

[Lord Helmet]

 PacManPlus, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 10:11 PM, said:

Getting a little picky, are we?

Nope, just trying to make your newest project the best it can be

Quote

@Atariboy2600 (and anyone else who is interested).  I'm thinking about making carts of this, although I'm not sure of the price point because of the SARA deal... I have to figure that out.  (Hey CPUWIZ!  I'll get you more sales by proxy!)

Count me in. It will be worth the extra $$$

[Pac Munchkin]

 Lord Helmet, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:45 PM, said:

 PacManPlus, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 10:11 PM, said:

Getting a little picky, are we?

Nope, just trying to make your newest project the best it can be

Quote

@Atariboy2600 (and anyone else who is interested).  I'm thinking about making carts of this, although I'm not sure of the price point because of the SARA deal... I have to figure that out.  (Hey CPUWIZ!  I'll get you more sales by proxy!)

Count me in. It will be worth the extra $$$

Wow Bob every time I think you are done you make it better, and with all the help from Supercat and Lord Helmet Wow this is great!!!!!!!!!

Wade

[CPUWIZ]

 PacManPlus, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:11 PM, said:

I'm thinking about making carts of this, although I'm not sure of the price point because of the SARA deal... I have to figure that out.  (Hey CPUWIZ!  I'll get you more sales by proxy!)

Contact me privately, I'll cut you a deal if you make more than 10 of these.    

[espire8]

Well done Bob...  defender_hack__w_credits.bin   8K   122 downloads
Check out this binary! I put your name '2006 Pac-Man Plus' and redid the title to make room for the '© 1984 atari'. Thought I help you out in this department since you mentioned earlier you had no space for your name credit. Hope you like it.

Attached Images

• 

Edited by espire8, Sun Jul 30, 2006 12:01 AM.

[supercat]

Here's a rough version with a COLOR scanner.  It's a little quirky, doesn't show the humanoids at the bottom, and doesn't yet have the right colors, but you'll notice some enemies are red and some are green.  I'll tweak it later so the proper enemies are the right colors, inlcluding some yellow, and so that some enemies flash colors.

Attached Files

•  D2_REL2.ZIP   32.95K   141 downloads

Edited by supercat, Sat Jul 29, 2006 12:49 AM.

[PacManPlus]

 Gregory DG, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 11:35 PM, said:

Great work Bob! How is this only 8K though?!
Also, I think the ship would look better without that extra bit on the end of it's nose... The extra ships up top look good though.

Thanks!  I changed around things on the 'Defender II' ROM, which was only 8k to begin with
I tried to recreate the look of the Arcade Defender ship, which actually does have something by the tip of the nose - I was trying to get it close.

 espire8, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 2:07 AM, said:

Well done Bob... attachment
Check out this binary! I put your name 'Pac-Man Plus 2006' and redid the title to make room for the '© 1984 atari'. Thought I help you out in this department since you mentioned earlier you had no space for your name credit. Hope you like it.

Ah...  I see what you did...  Don't know why I didn't think of that.
Thanks for the idea; I'll do some rearranging and put it on there   Thanks!

also @Wade - thanks for the compliment!

Supercat, that's a *very* cool idea, but I'm trying to keep it at 8K if possible

Thanks guys.  Updated binary to be posted soon...  How do the 'new' landers look?

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[PacManPlus]

Updated binary with "'06 PacManPlus" added in.

Attached Files

•  DEFARCAD.ZIP   32.61K   156 downloads

[Nukey Shay]

Working at adding in arcade controls (tho joysticks would need to be sacrificed).  Still buggy...but here's what I've got so far.  Go ahead and use any mods if you want them (such as the arcade-like scanner deal).  The control is set as options in the assembly, so the plain old Stargate method can still be used.

Attached Files

•  DeArcade.zip   31.55K   117 downloads

[Jerky]

Is there a way to change the positions of the title letters?  

If you can get those blocks of graphics to display horizontally, then you could change the title screen to look like the original arcade title.  Make it even more like the arcade version!

[Paranoid]

Watching you guys do this is amazing, from the genesis to the point where you've got several independent homebrew authors all collaborating on this project, like a real-world "Life" project. It is just really cool to be a fly-on-the-wall watching this take shape.

As for the whole "Jack of All Trades, Master of None"...

That is supposed to be MY title... I can more or less copy your schematics for sticks, but I could never figure out how to make one of the circuits on my own. I was just complaining about how people who know me think I'm brilliant because I'm so well rounded, but I can't get a job because I'm not specialized enough in any one skill (including but not limited to my IT skills). I can generally talk-the-talk on a wide range of subjects, but my practical application almost invariably sucks... Heh.

To me, that is a Jack-of-All-Trades. A guy who can hang a ceiling fan, put a new floor in his travel trailer bathroom, make a MAME cabinet from scratch, build a joystick, build or troubleshoot a PC, paint a watercolor landscape, play a few songs on guitar... whatever... but isn't good enough at ANY of it actually make a living. Hi, my name is Jack!

Ok... so, I couldn't actually HANG the ceiling fan without enlisting outside assistance.

People who can do stuff like what you guys are doing here... that blows me away.

[supercat]

Here's my latest updated scanner.  I think I've got the colors how I like them.

Landers are green.  Humanoids are pink.  Falling humanoids that are in danger of going 'splat' are flashing pink.
Mutants flash pink with green.  Pods are slow flashing white.  Swarmers are fast flashing white.  Most other nuisance monsters flash pink, white, and green.

What do people think of the scanner mods?  I think they add a very nice touch.  Note that the .bin is 16K, even though the first two banks are largely blank.  Use the -g6 option in Z26.

Attached Files

•  D2_REL3.ZIP   33.42K   148 downloads

[Lord Helmet]

 supercat, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 2:38 PM, said:

Here's my latest updated scanner.  I think I've got the colors how I like them.

Landers are green.  Humanoids are pink.  Falling humanoids that are in danger of going 'splat' are flashing pink.
Mutants flash pink with green.  Pods are slow flashing white.  Swarmers are fast flashing white.  Most other nuisance monsters flash pink, white, and green.

What do people think of the scanner mods?  I think they add a very nice touch.  Note that the .bin is 16K, even though the first two banks are largely blank.  Use the -g6 option in Z26.

I like the scanner in color!

PMP, do you think adding this to yours is worth the double size of the binary?

With most of the second 8k blank, what other features could be added? I'll keep brainstorming

[supercat]

 Lord Helmet, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 3:38 PM, said:

PMP, do you think adding this to yours is worth the double size of the binary?

Note, btw, that it wouldn't require doubling the size of binary if one were to shrink the size of the title screen and move a few things around.  Not sure how to move things around without breaking stuff, though.  Throwing stuff out into another bank was a quick and easy way to make things workable, but is hardly the best.

[PacManPlus]

 Lord Helmet, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 4:38 PM, said:

 supercat, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 2:38 PM, said:

Here's my latest updated scanner.  I think I've got the colors how I like them.

Landers are green.  Humanoids are pink.  Falling humanoids that are in danger of going 'splat' are flashing pink.
Mutants flash pink with green.  Pods are slow flashing white.  Swarmers are fast flashing white.  Most other nuisance monsters flash pink, white, and green.

What do people think of the scanner mods?  I think they add a very nice touch.  Note that the .bin is 16K, even though the first two banks are largely blank.  Use the -g6 option in Z26.

I like the scanner in color!

PMP, do you think adding this to yours is worth the double size of the binary?

With most of the second 8k blank, what other features could be added? I'll keep brainstorming

WOW - absolutely, you've made me change my mind!  Now I'll have to merge my changes (lander shape, etc.) into this assembly...  I'll work on that tonight.

Great work Supercat

Bob

Edited by PacManPlus, Sat Jul 29, 2006 4:29 PM.

[supercat]

 PacManPlus, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 5:28 PM, said:

WOW - absolutely, you've made me change my mind!  Now I'll have to merge my changes (lander shape, etc.) into this assembly...  I'll work on that tonight.

It may be easier to merge these changes into your assembly.  Aside from the the addition of myd0.asm (the first two banks) the only real changes you need to the other banks are:

-1- Replace the "LDX $F0F9" at address $D86E with "NOP $1FF7"

-2- Replace the "JMP $DFF2" at address $DC36 with "NOP $1FF6"

-3- Replace the instruction sequence at $F322:

  if 0; &*&*&*&*&* Eight bytes; 11 cycles
LF322: LDA	#$C2   ;2
	   STA	COLUP0 ;3
	   STA	COLUP1 ;3
	   LDA	$F0	;3
  else
LF322:
	   lda	$F0FF  ;4
	   sta.w  COLUP0 ;4
	   sta	COLUP1 ;3
  endif

-4- Replace the "JMP $FFF2" at address $F550 with "NOP $1FF6"

There are some other changes in myd1.asm, but they're all in code that's now bypassed.

[PacManPlus]

Once again, thank you Supercat!

We now have a color scanner (looking forward to trying this out on the real thing!) and all changes incorporated into this 16K binary.

Let me know!

***Remember, if you are using z26, use the -g6 option.

Attached Files

•  defarcad.zip   34.11K   146 downloads

Edited by PacManPlus, Sat Jul 29, 2006 9:41 PM.

[supercat]

 PacManPlus, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 10:41 PM, said:

We now have a color scanner (looking forward to trying this out on the real thing!) and all changes incorporated into this 16K binary.

I found a couple bugs in the scanner code.  I'll post a fix shortly.  It also runs over time (aboiut 6 scan lines) when there are lots of monsters.  I'll expand some of the data tables to shrink the code.  Gives up any chance of an 8K cart, but such is life.  Maybe the thing should be produced as a 32K cart with both enhanced Stargate and Defender on it.

[espire8]

 PacManPlus, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 8:14 AM, said:

 Gregory DG, on Fri Jul 28, 2006 11:35 PM, said:

Great work Bob! How is this only 8K though?!
Also, I think the ship would look better without that extra bit on the end of it's nose... The extra ships up top look good though.

Thanks!  I changed around things on the 'Defender II' ROM, which was only 8k to begin with
I tried to recreate the look of the Arcade Defender ship, which actually does have something by the tip of the nose - I was trying to get it close.

 espire8, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 2:07 AM, said:

Well done Bob... attachment
Check out this binary! I put your name 'Pac-Man Plus 2006' and redid the title to make room for the '© 1984 atari'. Thought I help you out in this department since you mentioned earlier you had no space for your name credit. Hope you like it.

Ah...  I see what you did...  Don't know why I didn't think of that.
Thanks for the idea; I'll do some rearranging and put it on there   Thanks!



Thanks guys.  Updated binary to be posted soon...  How do the 'new' landers look?

Sorry-- but concerning the new landers . They're still quite a step away from the arcade original look. The legs need to be converged more like a tri-pod as I already had done in the first bin I posted (which has a bug in the bonus screen that I missed earlier and fixed here). Also, in spite all the comments concerning the player's ship, no one addressed the rest of the enemies likeness,   which needs help as well, esspecially the bomber which is way too wide. I fixed most of them and re-did the lettering for the title. I also improved some of the on-screen messages with better fonts. I have provided a combined screen shot of all the graphical changes posted below along with the BIN utilizing them. It's kind of small and hard to see the differences. Please look at them carefully, I believe these sprites are as close to the arcade's as possible. This is going to be a great hack seeing how alot of people are now wanting to see this game look just right.
BTW, excellent contribution with the color scanner supercat.
--Put me down for cart as well. It's looking great!  
 defender_hack__w_credits.bin   8K   138 downloads

[supercat]

 PacManPlus, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 10:41 PM, said:

We now have a color scanner (looking forward to trying this out on the real thing!) and all changes incorporated into this 16K binary.

I took your last binary and made some changes.  The scanner code is largely rewritten so as to be much faster; hopefully it should no longer run overtime.  It uses a couple 256-byte tables plus another that's over 128 bytes, so it's unlikely squeezed into 8K.  The game logic sometimes runs slightly overtime (~1 scan line) during vblank, but that's not the fault of the scanner code (which runs during overscan).

I also improved the mountains' appearance.  This was almost easy.  The trouble came when the planet blew up but remained partially visible.  So I changed some code so the planet explosion now removes the top 42 pixels of the planet instead of the top 28.  This in turn required rearranging the data for the "GAME OVER" message so as to avoid some odd junk at the top of the screen.

Once I took care of that, I decided the planet explosion was rather wimpy.  Not any more.  

Attached Files

•  D2_REL4.ZIP   34.73K   170 downloads

[Andrew Davie]

 supercat, on Sun Jul 30, 2006 5:45 PM, said:

 PacManPlus, on Sat Jul 29, 2006 10:41 PM, said:

We now have a color scanner (looking forward to trying this out on the real thing!) and all changes incorporated into this 16K binary.

I took your last binary and made some changes.  The scanner code is largely rewritten so as to be much faster; hopefully it should no longer run overtime.  It uses a couple 256-byte tables plus another that's over 128 bytes, so it's unlikely squeezed into 8K.  The game logic sometimes runs slightly overtime (~1 scan line) during vblank, but that's not the fault of the scanner code (which runs during overscan).

I also improved the mountains' appearance.  This was almost easy.  The trouble came when the planet blew up but remained partially visible.  So I changed some code so the planet explosion now removes the top 42 pixels of the planet instead of the top 28.  This in turn required rearranging the data for the "GAME OVER" message so as to avoid some odd junk at the top of the screen.

Once I took care of that, I decided the planet explosion was rather wimpy.  Not any more.  

I had a look at this using z26 today, and it's looking very nice.  Apart from the name on the title screen, which is just really really tacky.  Get rid of it.  Unfortunately, though, when I came back to my PC after about 2 hours or so, there was what I'd describe as a "red screen of death".  The game had crashed, but Z26 had not, nor had my PC.  So, methinks there's a bug in there somewhere.

Cheers
A

PS: And seriously, the name on the title screen... ditch it.