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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

 

Apartment Hunts

It's possible that I've got a new apartment to move into for the end of the month now. Damage deposit etc all paid, so unless they have issues with the application it's a done deal. They seemed to be ok with it and aren't expecting any problems at least, so I'm going to pray everything works out as planned. I'd rather worry about how I'm going to move and when, rather than the Where. (And seriously, if they take longer than friday to get back to me about it, it's really going to screw over my
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Another Week Passes.

Adding this special type of room object is proving to be a bit more difficult than I had planned. The idea is that one of the 3 room object slots would be able to avoid flickering even in the worst of conditions by just causing the other sprite to handle the flickering of all the other possible objects. This is best for when collision between two objects is important.   At any rate it's not working properly yet. Haven't had a chance to check the object's AI and collision routines - I jus
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And now for something completely different.

So like, I've been listening to a lot of vocaloid and utauloid music lately.   And so, since I've been thinking about trying to get my own projects back in order and to try to use this blog regularly again, I figured this is as good an excuse as any to learn how the media tag works. Here, listen to a song by CircusP.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cWVYwDv1IE
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Also. Pictures!

Finally took the time to examine the little digital camera I bought back in 2006ish. I have a LOT more than the little bits shown in here, but that would require effort to unpack out of boxes, etc.
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Adding Dreamcast to the Mix

Dynasty Warriors 6 is something I can hack away at for an hour after I get home from work in the morning. So, for the weekends I think I'll add a little more spice. As such, since the Dreamcast is technically hooked up anyway, I'm going to replay Grandia II for the Game Complete list. I should finish that before christmas no problem.   After christmas I'll play through Ar Tonelico in preparation for the release of Ar Tonelico 2 on January 20. When all that's said and done, or maybe befor
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Actually being productive!

It took a few days longer than originally planned, but I finally finished reformatting the old Action RPG code and it's dubbed Maze Realms now. Action RPG has a different code base that I haven't gotten too far with just yet. It's all good tho.   So now that the insane levels of potentially inaccurate comments and the like are taken out, I've started the second phase. That being fixing some of the bugs I spotted while I went through the first time as well as reworking some of the existing code
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Action RPG version 0.018 source

With how much time has passed, I've gotten rusty with the 2600 again. As a result what I HAVE written is difficult for me to update and continue. So.... I'm going to start over again. Although I'll be using the code from this as a guideline. At any rate, posting the source for the last stable version for this build for the curious. I'll post "version 0.020" when I get the new code sufficiently caught up. I want to handle objects differently in particular, as well as have a better system fo
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Action RPG Version 0.014

I'm done for the day. There are apparently some timing issues with moving between horizontal rooms. This is probably just a branch or something being pushed over a page boundary again. I'll deal with it when I jump back into the code for the next version.   There are now two objects, both operating differently. The heart's been given an AI routine to make it flash it's color. Otherwise it acts the same way it use to as I haven't altered the Heart Placer function to fill up the item slots
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Action RPG v013. Finally.

Spent about 4 hours today hunting the code for what was causing problems with the glitches. As per the replies I got in the Atari 2600 programming forum, the glitches were being caused by the routine I was using to clear main ram. It simply wasn't doing what I thought it was doing, and since it was copied code I didn't suspect it as a problem. Since I'm positive I copied that code with copy/paste, I guess I copied it from one of the chapters that had an error in it. The proper routine (8 byt
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Action RPG Buggy Rom

Here's the rom of the elusive pseudo-random bug. I tested it on the krok cart and while the data was wrong still, it remained constant all the time. Probably an effect of how the superchip is done on the krok.   To see the bug in action on the emulator (I've just been using Stella) start the emulator, start the rom. Notice the weirdness regarding the player. You should just be seeing a single copy of the missile sprite for the player in a squarish formation. Offhand not sure what the colo
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Action RPG

Adding the playfield was a nightmare.   I had thought up ways of trying to impliment it but not only could I not get them to work at first - I also saw the glaring problem of excessive ram usage that really wasn't necessary. As a result, versions 0.002 and 0.003 are dead. I could have just named this as version 0.002 but given this version does reuse some of the code I wrote in both versions 0.002 and 0.003...   The playfield has a similar, but greater, resolution as Atari's Adventu
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8k->16k

I had this idea that it would be easy to change the 8k rom into a 16k rom.   Yeah, I'm still laughing myself.   I'm still planning on it, since I'll need it for extra room for objects, but I have a few things to separate first.   Collision Routines: For some unknown reason, I decided to put collision labels in the object data itself instead of into a table. (Like what I did for AI routines) This had to be removed and put into a table so that I can push all of those into their own bank.  
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7800 Controllers

They are distilled liquid pain to use.   I hooked up the 7800 to test out the new games I got for it over the weekend (Dark Chambers, Ms. Pacman, Galaga, Pole Position II (a double, but a dollar wasn't a bad price tag) Donkey Kong, and Xevious.)   I couldn't play for even 15 minutes. (Although Ms. Pacman wasn't that hard to play.)   I suppose I should seriously consider getting some of those european styled controllers.
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*sob*

Well gee. I wonder why the heck my test item here would never show.   Item_Heart .byte %00000000; ........ .byte %00000000; .xx..xx. .byte %00000000; xxxxxxxx .byte %00000000; .xxxxxx. .byte %00000000; ..xxxx.. .byte %00000000; ...xx... .byte %00000000; ........   Excuse me while I put my head in the oven.     So anyway. Once I actually filled in those magic zeros. ... Something started to display, but not the entire item.   At first it looked like it might be upside down,
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[Action RPG] Prelude to Version 0.013

Working away at version for 0.013 and since I'm running away from the code I'll give a general idea what I'm planning on having this release do when I'm finished.   The display has been lightened up some already, but it's looking like trying to iron out timing issues with branches crossing page boundaries is going to be a nightmare. I did a manual count of the bytes to see how things would fall. As it turns out there was a branch crossing right on the boundary. When I did a little moving of
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[Action RPG] Display Kernal Lite

I've been wracking my brain in hopes of having a new way to do Action RPG's display kernal to save space. Manually counting up the the byte requirements, the display kernal requires about 689 bytes. Could be a bit more. Could be a bit less. But 689 is a lot, especially when you consider it's a 5-stage display kernal. I wanted to find a way to reduce that, hopefully drastically. If I could get it to fit in 512 or less bytes I'd be happy. But that means I needed to find a way to drop some o
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(Action RPG) Version 0.10 Beta

The screen no longer rolls on hardware when using my Gemini. If anyone runs it on other 2600/7800 models and finds it still rolls the screen, leave a note? (If for no other reason than I know I'll have to come back to it.)   Attached is a rom. While the code has been optimized somewhat it is functionally identical to the version 0.009 release except it works on hardware.   The problem looks to have come from how I terminated the visible portion of the screen right before entering Oversca
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(Action RPG) Version 0.018 - 16k Rom

Version 0.018 is complete. This upgrades the rom to 16k. And the amount of space available in each bank is awesome.   I've spliced up the code as detailed in the previous post. The rom plays essentially the same as the previous version/beta as far as anyone were to tell by playing it. There's just a lot more space available to add things now.   As I mentioned, I took a stab at trying to modify the Random Number generator. After reading it over and actually understanding what it was d
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(Action RPG) Version 0.017 Hold/Drop Objects

Ok, so adding the fire button to drop the objects wasn't as difficult as I feared. Just make sure the latches on the fire buttons are turned off, and add a counter on the frames. Incrementing it (up to FF but no wrapping) when it detects the button is pressed, and taking an action when the button is released based on the counter. If >= SomeValue, then drop the object, otherwise assume the player wanted to use the currently equipped item.   Equipped items don't work yet obviously. So pres
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(Action RPG) Version 0.016

And finished. Had several weird things happen this version to work around, as well as unexpected (read: braindead) semantic problems to deal with.   Anyway, nonflickering room objects are now added. Having some objects avoid flickering can help with making sure collisions register asap. (As soon as the object it reacts to gets swapped in)     One use, as demonstrated in this version, is castle gates/doors/etc that are locked. The black key does indeed unlock the castle and you can go
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(Action RPG) Version 0.015

And done. Mostly it seems a couple of the glitches that cropped up were just me confusing the meaning of some variables. And then "fixing" things that weren't broken. In the end I refreshed some of the code I was fixing and found the real culprit. (A comparison on the Heart AI and unnecessary checks on hardware sprites on the key AI)   Flicker works as expected although I can think up a few ways to help reduce flicker. Right now, for instance, even if the key isn't displayed on the scr
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(Action RPG) Version 0.011 Beta

I copied over the code I've been working on to fit as much of the setup code into as few lines as possible for the vblanking. Here's what it looks like in stella. Looks the same in z26.           Sprites are fine. unlinked and all that as they should be. Haven't tested for their correct scanline yet but it should be. I still have to add code to set up the sprite's reflection (if needed) and size. (which would also adjust the sprite's coordinate for drawing with the position-a-sprite r
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(Action RPG) Version 0.011 - Room Loading

With version 0.011 I've added/fixed a couple things. First of all the sprites are positioned properly. They're hardwired for now, and there's no mechanism to determine what sprites need to be displayed each frame, if any, depending on the room. There are no actual items yet!   There are, however, actual rooms!   The exits are working although it's not prefect yet. I still have to add the room exit info to the collision detection routines. So if you try pressing against a wall while wal
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(Action RPG) Version 0.011

As "punishment" for falling behind on my code, here is a zip containing binaries, screenshots, and source code for Version 0.011 of Action RPG as it stood prior to me adding in bankswitching. I'm aware of inefficient code and excessive - and not always correct - comments. So anyone using the code for their own nefarious purposes keep in mind there are likely more efficient methods and don't always listen to the comments. Except with respect to the nop. It does in fact look darn purdy.  
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(Action RPG) Version 0.010

Ok optimization done for now. I think I could probably save a few more bytes in there yet but it's ok for now. Plenty of CPU cycles saved overall.   One additional concern to look out for reared its ugly head with this version. The Status Bar routine is extremely tight for timing. To the point where if it's positioned so that one of it's branch operations crosses a page boundary....   To fix that, I've got it ORGed. I'll have to remember to ORG the display code as well so those things
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