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Mord's Blog

A blog by Mord

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About this blog

I'm really not sure what I'll use this blog for so I should probably leave this blank, but that would require backspacing. Much easier to just hit a period and stop typing.

Entries in this blog

 

Raise

Got a raise at work recently. While I have some things to catch up on first, this means I may be able to start ordering from the Atari Age store again! We'll see how it goes I guess. I'll likely get something when my tax refund is processed (A reward for getting the damned thing done on time!) but after that we'll see how things go through the summer. Might be better to save up some cash to get a nice christmas order.
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PSP Go? No thanks...

So let me get this straight.   No UMD Drive. Smaller screen. Non-replaceable battery that's as weak as the 1001 series. No memory stick duo support. Higher cost than existing PSP 3000. (Close to the price of a PS3 with the Slim's drop in price)   No sale.   I find it funny how they're trying to entice the european market to buy one with 3 free games from a limited selection of old first-party games. IF they already own a PSP. To qualify for the free games with your PSP Go you apparentl
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PSP Additions

Among a lot of other things, I bought a PSP out of my income tax refund this summer. The library of games currently stands at:   Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles Dynasty Warriors Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max Gradius Collection Astonishia Story Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology Generation of Chaos   I saw a bunch more rpgish types up at one of the stores in town, so I'm p
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Projectz

Spent precious little time on the rom this month. Most of the (free) time I have has been split between the Scrapyard Dog Project, Ar tonelico, and working on my Aardwolf Area on their builders port.   I have been sitting down and thinking about how I want to handle objects and monsters in the game, but haven't decided on a method just yet. Since most objects will go into inventory and can't be stolen, things can be compacted a bit by declaring various things "regional" to a specific portion
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Progress!

As the screenshot shows, I've fixed a couple of things from version 0.013 already.   1. The Object Manager is in place. This is the Real Deal. Although it will need a couple more tweaks and I'll probably try to make the code a bit more compact, this code is probably going to be used from this point on. It cycles through the list of existing objects, and selects up to 2 to display on the screen. If it finds 0 or 1, it'll make 1 full run through the list. If it finds 2, it'll also update it
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Procrastination Punishment!

Here's a zip with code etc for Action RPG as of version 0.016.   Be careful with trusting comments, as they could be outdated. I'm horrible for that at times, especially if I'm copy/pasting sections of code.
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Procrastination means I'm on the right path!

Or so I'm letting myself believe. I'll find out later if that's true though.   I've been thinking over the code needed for what I described in the last entry and I think I have a good idea what's needed. It just feels real ugly.   I hate ugly code. This is why I'm thinking about it more than coding it. I want to make the code as simple as possible, yet as understandable as possible. (For me if nobody else. )   As a result serious attempts at the code are being put off little by
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Preparations

I seem to have started regaining a desire to make the 2600 Do Stuff.   Most likely I'm going to try to start from scratch on the whole Action RPG/Maze Realms idea. Trying to get the old program to do anything new generally resulted in a lost month of bug fixing with nothing done.   Dasm and crimson editor is installed again, and I've re-bookmarked the old resources I use to have on the old computer. Going to try to find time to actually do stuff with it by the weekend - at least try to work
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php

I've started attempting to learn php again in an attempt to overhaul my own website in the future. Should be relatively easy this time since it's actually a lot like Kermit, which I've been fiddling around with at work lately. Which means they're both similar to C.   Printed off a bunch of tutorials to read on break at work regarding file manipulation and the like. I'll be printing off the less advanced stuff as well tomorrow or something just so I know the syntax. This is pretty much the
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phase 2 complete.

Phase 1 was simple. Just adjusting the hotspots for the existing rom and adding 2 dummy banks. I did that in 10 minutes without any glitches.   Phase 2 was more challenging. The moving of all vertical blank code out of the Display Bank (bank 0) into it's own bank (bank 2) and then adjusting the code to allow quick movement between the banks. One problem with this is that I also wanted the startup code out of the Display Bank. But the Display Bank was where the labels were. Got around thi
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Persona 3 FES

I've blasted my way through Ys The Ark of Napishtim. I like how everything is voiced in the game, although I'm sure that's a big reason why the game feels so short.   Next up, will be Persona 3 FES. I've started this one a couple of times but I always got distracted by other games. Then when I finally sat back down to it, I was completely lost so would start over. X_X   Going to give it a shot again and since there aren't really any games I'm aware of being released soon that I'm going to
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Perhaps a bit late.

For version 0.016. While writing the code I've been thinking about how it would react in flicker conditions. And it's quite likely I'll need to make some extra modifications to the Object Manager to give object preference at times. In other words, some objects, particularly room-loaded objects, may be negatively affected by flickering. So for those objects, it would be best to not let them flicker at all, at the cost of the other objects flickering a little worse. (or perhaps a lot worse, bu
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Pac man and obesity?! OF COUSE!

What say we sue pac man for the current state of growing obesity in north america? The subliminal messages of "eat until you burst" through the last generation is just unforgivable!            
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P0/P1 Collisions

I've worked on that some more since the last time I looked at it. And I was apparently wrong with it being a problem with the Tick based code. (That might have been a problem as well, but fixing it didn't change the behaviour)   The real problem, (this time I'm pretty sure it's the case!) is that I was examining the P1P0 collision during the Vertical Blank of the following frame in AI routines. The problem is that, by necessity, the AI routines are processed after the Object Manager does it'
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Optimization/Re-implimentation

I got the animation mod working (although it wasn't being used - I'd have to modify the AI for that.)   The new code was displaying the objects properly at any rate. But I noticed some Bad Behaviour shortly after as I mucked about. Screen jumping. At predictable points.   In short, it looks like the Vertical Blank is taxed beyond capacity under some conditions (holding an object while pushing against walls was a sure way to do it if there were a few other objects on the screen) etc. I d
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One hundred million billion dollars

I was discussing/ranting to nobody in particular on irc about how I'd go about doing a colecovision cartridge release, to get an idea of how much money it'd cost me to pull it off, I ended the rant with:     [19:55] <Mord> then take a large gold brick and put it in as a bonus since by then the gold brick will be cheap compared to everything else that's gone into the design. [19:56] <Mordiechu> but everyone will be going "ooo, gold brick. must buy~"   That aside, it'd still be f
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On track for a weekend version 0.015!

I wrote a small diagram for visualizing what the display code was doing in the top 2 lines where the graphics corrupt. I'm going to keep that diagram. It kind of puts the code into a very simple to understand light. At any rate I knew for a while that there was a 1-off error corrupting the graphics I just wasn't sure what variable was off. Turns out it wasn't a variable but a constant. I was loading Gamefieldsize and Gamefieldsize+1 as the scanline to calculate the initial switchdraw grap
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OH EM GEE.

It's the 16th and I haven't made a post yet this month?   Well, I guess that's bound to happen when I'm not doing serious coding. I have, however, been somewhat productive overall. Only 3 levels left to map out for Scrapyard Dog (4-3, 5-3, 6-2) - I've actually gotten a bit faster with doing them compared to way back when I was doing level 1-1. I'm not anticipating problems with 6-2, although the x-3's are going to be a pain I'm sure. Hopefully I'll be able to finish all 3 tomorrow.
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new mp3 player

I broke down and bought a new (cheapish) mp3 player to listen to at work. I've been using my failing cd/mp3 player (uses cd-r's) for a while since the last mp3 player started to break down in the earphone connector. overall it was just 10 dollars more expensive than the last one but I don't really expect it to be much better than the old one. Still, this one wasn't on as big of a sale as the last one when I bought it so... Listening to the sound on it, it seemed to be about the same as the o
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New Computer Project

Sharing a post I made to Livejournal just to potentially get more responses. I'm mostly just looking for suggestions and opinions at this stage, I'll be doing my own research throughout the summer anyway before I start trying to buy components likely 1/month.
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Nearing Persona 3's end.

I'm on the final month for Persona 3 FES now. I won't likely get max social links, but I knew that a long time ago. Still going to try to raise them as much as possible however. I'm also going to be going to Tartarus to run everyone ragged every 2-3 days when everyone's feeling ok. Basically will run one party ragged, then run the rest ragged, then I'm going to solo on my own for a while in the lower blocks for money. I'll then try to fuse up all my personas which is getting expensive now s
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Music Link Time

Oh Hi Thar. I thought since I'm listening through the songs on his site again, that I'd drop a link to Jonathan Coulton. Good songs, much fun.   Still haven't had a lot of luck with the rom, although been editting it for a few little errors here and there. I'll dig up and post the last rom that shows the problem tomorrow so others can see why it's driving me nuts.   Hm. Krokodile Cart supports Superchip carts iirc... I should try it on real hardware to see how it behaves on the 2600...
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Moving and Homebrews

Nearly time to go sign the lease and get the keys for the new apartment (on friday). Haven't heard back from them, so that's a Good Thing. (The appointment to get the keys is already set as a given, so long as there were no problems with the application at which point they'd call me. And as they said before, they aren't expecting problems.) Later today when I wake up I'm going to see about making sure some relatives are willing to help me move my stuff over the last week of the month so to h
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More games

And so I now own Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, and Yggdra Union. Hopefully I'll be able to contain myself and avoid further purchases until December when Ar Tonelico 2 is suppose to come out.
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