EricBall's Tech Projects

Yes, I'm very anxious to see item 4.

In spite of my intentions, I spent last night banging at a complete rework of the kernel to replace the BLIT code with (ZP),Y lookups. I had a scare for a moment when I realized the range of Y was 0-159 and thus there could be page crossings, which would royally screw up any timings. But then I remembered that if the sprites were after the background bitmaps, that this couldn't happen. (However, it does mean I can't put all of the sprites on one page.)

 

I am happy to say that it looks like it will work. Plus I squeezed in the REFPn so I won't have to store separate left & right sprites. However, I now need to replace the BLIT code before I can test everything out.

Sounds like good work with the kernel, Eric!

 

Rewriting the kernel, though often scary and mostly fraught with deadends (for me, anyway), can dramatically improve a game, IMO. With Reindeer Rescue, a bunch of rewrites, to accomodate some of Nathan's ideas, really took the game to the next level, both in gameplay and in how it looked.

 

And is it really necessary for enemies to bump into each other? Do they in Lode Runner? At first thought it doesn't seem necessary except in order to prevent multiple enemies from falling into the same hole.

 

I'm glad you decided to at least take a hack at fractional positioning for the sprites; I think it will make a better game. Well, and for some selfish reasons: I think I will enjoy the game more if everything moves a little bit faster.

And is it really necessary for enemies to bump into each other?  Do they in Lode Runner?  At first thought it doesn't seem necessary except in order to prevent multiple enemies from falling into the same hole.

Because the game is deterministic and multiple enemies can fall in the same hole, you can end up with two enemies which overlap forever.

 

I'm glad you decided to at least take a hack at fractional positioning for the sprites; I think it will make a better game.  Well, and for some selfish reasons: I think I will enjoy the game more if everything moves a little bit faster. 

Sigh... I already use fractional positioning for the enemies. The difference will be changing the player to use fractional positioning (and the enemies to use non-fractional).

Rewriting the kernel, though often scary and mostly fraught with deadends (for me, anyway), can dramatically improve a game, IMO.  With Reindeer Rescue, a bunch of rewrites, to accomodate some of Nathan's ideas, really took the game to the next level, both in gameplay and in how it looked.

 

I'm working on a kernel for Wormy (another game I started in 1994 but abandoned). Didn't get as far on that one as on Col (Strat-O-Gems) but I've managed a proof-of-concept kernel demo that shows the basic idea is sound. The question is what to do with it.

 

Currently, the kernel supports a 32x16 playfield bitmap for the snake, plus up to 128 objects that can either be mines or goodies (shown using a striped playfield). I've got all this stuff working in a kernel that uses a missile to show the head of the snake; at present, the snake is limited to motion in playfield-sized steps but I've got oodles of cycles to work with. I could also use the ball to move the tail smoothly. My biggest problem is that memory is going to be extremely tight (try fitting a 32x16 bitmap plus 128 objects plus 64 'clicks' of snake tail all within 128 bytes of RAM!) so I don't want to use any more than I must in the kernel.

 

My guess is I'll probably do a few kernel rewrites before the thing is done, making different RAM/time/versatility tradeoffs. Still, even what it does now is sorta neat.

I'm glad you decided to at least take a hack at fractional positioning for the sprites; I think it will make a better game.  Well, and for some selfish reasons: I think I will enjoy the game more if everything moves a little bit faster. 

Sigh... I already use fractional positioning for the enemies. The difference will be changing the player to use fractional positioning (and the enemies to use non-fractional).

I guess I misunderstood.

Hi,

 

Do you like this climbing sprite

 

 

better than the current one

 

 

Cheers,

Ben