Shalmezad

Alright, I think I'm starting to catch on, but still have few more questions. So, let's say I have Mode 0,0,1,2,3 like in your example. In theory (on phone so I can't test) I can: PRINT AT 0 COLOR 0, "Blah" 'will be black Then: PRINT AT 20 COLOR $3000, "Blah" 'will be blue Now, let's say I wanted to print blah in black at position 40. If I understand you correctly, I can increment the stack with $3000, but is it possible to increment it by 2 or possibly 3?

So, been playing around trying to figure this out, but haven't had too much luck. Long story short, I'm trying to change the background color for some cards when I print them to the screen. Now, I went through the manual, and got these bits of information: So, from what I can tell: MODE 0 allows me to set the background colors available to me PRINT "blah" AT SOME_POSITION COLOR <somecolor> will allow me to change the background color But, haven't had too much luck. COLOR $0200 led to some really funky characters. COLOR $0400 led to different characters. COLOR $1000 led to some funky blocks. Don't suppose anyone has an example on how to use this? (or perhaps help explain how the PRINT statement works with colors?) Thanks!

Went through the manual (again), found what I needed. Really need to read the manual all the way through.

Thanks for the very thorough feedback. I keep forgetting that what people want are usually different than what I have in mind. Anyways: Turned out to be an issue with X movement only. Forgot to rerender the screen on horizontal movement. Yeah, it's on my list of graphical updates. Going to put it in the middle like the "LEVEL XX" message. Going to roll this in once shields are implemented (that way I can respawn the player with a shield). Starting to get used to the fact I don't *have* to go back to the loop label every frame. Just found out about MODE after looking at the Inty-B Intro. Still playing around with colors, but so far I noticed my definition of tan and purple don't match what the intellivision puts out. Also have a couple questions related to this I'll post in a separate thread. Needs achievements, 0/10. Nah, just kidding. Toying around with a couple ideas. I'll let you know once I have something. However, I did end up adding in some level progression stuff. It's not that kind of game. Yet. See above.

Man, that 1.2 update of IntyBasic has really helped clean up a bit. Granted, some of my coding preferences are starting to show (there's a number of IF/END IF's that could be done on one line, but I decided to do a full IF block)... I did fix the flickering when I migrated to a single render_line procedure (and thus removed calling render_player_col when updating bullets). Only 2 main gameplay changes have taken place: I fixed a bug where you could go left off the screen There is now ramping difficulty. Color changes between light/dark green when it ramps up Will take a look at shields next (probably sometime this weekend). I decided it would be more immersive to use a shield and keep the bullets flowing than to have a bomb that clears everything (that, and I can use it instead of a full screen clear whenever the player dies). Shouldn't be too bad now that I have a single procedure for rendering a column to the screen. Will probably play around with some of the more graphical cards like so: EDIT: Actually sat down and figured out the cards I wanted: intellibullet.zip

Normally, I prefer holding off on updating things for a bit, but I think I can make an exception this time. Thanks for the update!

Minor update: Added horizontal movement. There's a minor flickering issue. Looking to redo some of the rendering stuff (going to mark the player's old position as dirty and just re-render that) which should help take care of it. Found out that the latest version of IntyBasic is actually 1.1.0 (EDIT: just got an email, it's actually 1.2 now ), which includes the ability to define functions (DEF FN). Updated to that, which didn't change anything so far. Definitely will be helpful later. Next big steps: Difficulty adjustment. I have a menu, let's have it server a purpose other than a buffer between games Bombs. The game's hard. Let's make it so you have 3 bombs that'll clear bullets around you. Refactoring. Probably the first thing I'll do. Code's gotten a little messy, and there's some new stuff (EDIT: 1.2 has END IF?! ) that should help tidy things up.

May want to update this. Didn't realize 1.1.0 was out until I did some digging.

Attached is the binary for those who'd rather play it than hear me talk about it. For those compiling it, I'd recommend playing around with the bullet update delay (line 50): IF FRAME % 18 = 0 THEN GOSUB update_bullets Higher number = higher delay = easier game. Lower number = lower delay = harder game 18 is about right for regular play 14 I found is pretty challenging, but still survivable with good reflexes and 28 is perfect if you have a relative that's not gaming inclined Next update I'm looking at is adding a menu to allow you to select your difficulty. intellibullet.zip

So, it's been a while since I posted, but been kinda busy with work, school, life in general, etc. However, had some time today to pluck away at it, and can finally say: It's now a game There's been a number of updates to get to that point. For those who don't want to go through the commit logs: I added a "fake player" on the other side of the screen. Right now, it's visible for debugging. The purpose of this fake player is to clear a path, guaranteeing that it's 100% possible to go from row to row Movement locking. While trying to dodge bullets, I found it somewhat uncontrollable. So, I implemented a basic lock which makes it so you move on button press, but can't move again until button release. Lives. Nothing fancy, just a way to keep the player going after making a foolish mistake or 2. Make 3 however, and you're out of luck Collision & Game Over. You can now lose the game and get a score. Here's a video of the gameplay so far (note: I did deliberately die, didn't want the video being too long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEbuIKsK7YM

And dungeon crawl stone soup, and dwarf fortress, and nethack, and.... Not that I have a thing for ASCII games or anything.

Thanks. Wanted to make sure my logic for parsing the array was correct. By doing different patterns, I could make sure it loaded each row/collumn properly. But yeah, it will be 0's in a later release. Well, still working on that one. At the very least, it'll be dodging. Bullets come in, each row you sucessfully dodge will be a point. Get hit, bullets clear, and you lose a life. Lose all lives, game over. Playing around with the possibility of adding actual enemies that'll do the shooting (since I have to do something other than random to make sure you have a possibility of surviving), having the player being able to move forward/backward as well, having the player be able to shoot back at enemies, sheilding, etc. We'll see. One step at a time...

Ran into some issues with rendering everything at once. The later elements that were rendered were flickering (video doesn't show full flicker, which was a lot faster than my recorder could capture): So, redid the rendering so the sections only render if something changes (first column if the player moves, bullets when they move, etc). Worked fine. Finally got some bullets scrolling on the screen:

Yeah, but then where's the fun in that? (I'll consider it once I get used to working with Basic. Right now, still figuring out what I can/can't do easily)

So far, managed to get some stuff on the screen, and the player moving around. Right now, going through the logic to get bullets on screen. The way I'm doing it is using an array of 8 bit integers, one for each column in the game. Ever so often, it'll shift the columns left and draw a new one on the end. Tomorrow, going to go through the manual and see if there's a nice easy way I can loop over every bit of the array to draw it. If not, I'll think of something. But, lunch break is over, so back to work I go.