NRV

Well, at last.. Yesterday night the "release candidate 1" was ready, but I needed to sleep So.. now, after having breakfast, expect news in about one hour. I need to test all things and write a long post. Regards.

:thumbsup: thanks for all the hard work, for me this a great tool. (all versions of project-M likes Altirra 1.8 )

Ooooh.. really nice They seem to be the same ones, with all the info. Thanks, I 'm going to abuse of the google translator.

I knew it! Speaking of the video.. that was the "lame" way to lose a pack inside the ship with the robot haha (not that it happened to me..) I always wanted to have a guide with pictures of all the ships and an explanation of all the races and parts in that game, the manual doesn't have much info.. anyone have any idea if something like that exist? I know that the map of the levels are in some site, I have the pictures somewhere. About the parts I remember generators that let you move faster, better (and different) shields and weapons, two radios (that played music!.. one of them was the melody from ballblazer), things like heavy weights (that make you very slow), a map of the level that let you track ships from different types (races?), etc. Also, I remember getting to level 20 but without being able to finish the game, was that possible in the final version of the game? (does that version exist?!?) Regards.

Yes! I suppose my factor was more like 3.5 anyway But that was because I had some fun adding a lot of "little" details.. and I could continue doing that for some weeks, but now is time to let this "child" go.. With a little luck only one more day. Regards.

doesn't seem overkill (what? you are working instead of doing your next demo? can we have everything?? )

damn! I clicked the link hoping to see something cool.. hmmm.. too much weeks being the "next week", should be this one or at most the start of the next.. the problem is that I'm having fun adding things these are the previous links: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/148697-project-m-stage-1/ http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/152979-pm-1-5/

Congratulations for your first place! This is a really great demo. Personally, I like a lot the effects, the music, the graphics and the "cohesion" between all the parts (and probably I would like the code if I take a look at it ). The only "hard" part was trying to read the greetings . Yeah! please provide any info about that and about the 256-dot matrix with "depth cue" . Can you change charsets midline with pixel resolution? inside a char? or are you limited to a char resolution and use the black line to cover some parts? Can you apply that to changing colors midline, inclusive in bad lines? Regards!

Yeah.. looking really good Making me have a "new" appreciation for gr.0 or 8, plus P/M's One question.. the small objects, like the keys and plants, have a black background (inside the tile)?, it seems so in the video, but I believed that is not possible if you are using P/M's with 4x size.. Regards!

I don't think this conversion will have any problem, but this is an example of what could go wrong sometimes: http://blog.pikimal.com/geek/2010/12/06/8-bit-dj-hero-gets-a-cd/

Great work as ever, Sheddy! :thumbsup: About the PAL to NTSC color thing.. I was working in that today and I could say that a fast and simple rule to do the conversion is: add one to colors from 1 to 9 (don't change the brightness). All others should stay the same. You aren't going to get the exact same colors (not that is possible), but is a very good start and you can fine tune hue and brightness later. The only problem is that color 10 from PAL is like "in between" color 10 and 11 from NTSC, so you can choose the one that fits better (Altirra is the perfect test bed by the way). Did you arrive to the perfect software sprites method? (any big rewrites to the code this year?, you should write a technical doc about your engine sometime!) About your next big thing.. what do you think about Hang-On (or Super Hang-On) and Enduro Racer? Do you think that is possible to have something fun and playable with your current engine? Regards!

what kind of syntax are you using? things like: org $4000 or CODE_ADDRESS = $4000 org CODE_ADDRESS work all the time for me.. at least that you found a bug in Mads.. post the code line! regards (both "org" lines should have spaces before, but the forum doesn't like tab..)

Looking at the picture... Am I correct that you lowered the horizontal resolution twice from previous demo? regards, Jakub No, I haven't touched the screen resolution or the texture resolution.. same as ever. Why do you think that? maybe the picture looks compressed? I experimented changing the fov at some point (to a greater one), but the wall graphics lose definition that way, so I reverted to the original. By the way, that picture is from a bug and the graphics are corrupted, don't think it still look like that Regards. (by the way, how is YOUR project going? )

Oooops.. you should always take the time given by programmers and multiply it by a factor of 1.5 at least Just a small update, the "thing" is running without major bugs since Thursday night (and at a good frame rate I should say..), and now I'm having some fun packing memory, testing some graphics, doing a new map and adding some "gameplay" elements (!?), so probably I'm going to take some more days.. but I suppose that if someone has waited for a year, a week more is nothing Regards. (a picture from the previous week)

Don't be anymore Nice timing by the way haha Just yesterday night I was feeling like posting some kind of cryptic message to tease the people here, because.. it was kind of cool looking to the fine movement forward and backward, at different points in the map, running at over 20FPS (in fact I haven't lost that silly smile yet.. haha) The only thing that I don't like right now is some artifacting with the forward/backward movements, because of the low horizontal resolution, but I can live with that (for now). I HATE to give dates.. you know.. but I (hope) to have something to show the next week. I still need to fix a bug with the movement (1 hour), add some code to use the tile offset in negative directions (a couple of hours) and fix any possible bug with the "texture coordinates" or any other unexpected bug (unknown hours). After that I probably try to do some visual and speed optimizations. Ah.. also: choosing Miker's music for next demo (8 hours.. is hard to choose, ok?). After the video from Allas at post 40, I was thinking that the difference wasn't that bad. I don't know, but maybe the current Altirra is a good indicator of the difference between PAL and NTSC? (with PAL artifacting ON/OFF). If that's the case I can live with that.. but obviously PAL has the better "rendering". Greetings.

Yes! that's the attitude facts: - I'm still alive - I still want to advance this to the point that was my main objective one year ago - I have resumed work the last weeks and I'm going to have more time from here to the end of the year (a lot of things happened this year..) So.. no promises, but thinks are looking good right now.. Anyway, I hope nobody lose sleep or get to feel sad or angry just for this project (@Miker: Errr.. you mean I have been something like a bad mother? )

Come on.. you know what they say about hope I couldn't resist .. as Sandman said..

sadly, no.. summer was bad for programming (that and work, earthquakes and that kind of things..) but don't worry, I hope to start again soon..

Great work Allas! is nice to know that NTSC looks like that.. I like the bob up and down effect.. I should put it in the next demo I will try this in the future to see how it looks

Thanks for that version Tebe! Yes, that's a good point. Right now I still need to finish some of the basic functionality of the engine, and that will be same for 64K or 128K, so I don't think that I will need to redo any work yet. Also, I'm already planning the memory distribution to use banked memory, useful when doing a version with a special loader, to run on real machines. I want to know how many features I can put on 64K and then what's the best game I can do (in 128K). One of the modern cartridges could be also an option. Well, something like the barrels of the previous demo have a "medium" cost in memory and cpu time.. I wouldn't like to have more than one on screen in the current state of the demo. But for the next step I will try to use the P/M's to do one enemy, with some frames of animation and scaling. In that way you don't need to mask the graphics when drawing to the screen, and don't need to have pre-shifted frames in memory (well, in the GTIA case you only need 2 pre-shifted frames.. or just one, if you can live with the coarse movement). I still haven't seen the demos in a real NTSC so I'm curious to know about that.. maybe now that there is fixed version "someone" (cough Allas cough) could film this?

I assume that you are talking about the pictures, here it is: mazes.zip The 3 executables are almost the same engine, but one for gtia9 (the only one with floor and ceiling), the other for gtia10 and the other for g15. I can post the sources in some days, because I need to search a little for them, and maybe clean and port them to mads. I had already posted the source to a similar engine in the previous "P.M." thread by the way. These ones are slow (compared to project M), because of the renderer (is not optimized and there is the need to pack 2 or 4 pixels per byte, with LDA-AND-ORA-STA sequences). In project M the renderer writes the full byte all the time. Also there are only 32 rays per screen and the "engine" only need to do additions and subtractions (no multiplies, divisions, square roots, sin or cos functions), with the help of some tables. In other words, the old methods can be optimized to be faster (also, because with those you don't have freedom of movement, only like 8 positions per tile). I underestimated a little the time needed for the raycasting, but I still have some optimizations to do. In very open areas I have seen the frame rate go below 10, so I'm going to try to optimize that case also (at that time I got out of the map, by error, so it was like looking directly at the memory of the computer ). Normally, when you are in a closed area, the renderer do a lot of work and the raycaster very little and in open areas is the other way around, so is kind of balanced.

Here.. a version for Atari800Win PM_1_5 PAL A8Win.zip I hope it helps.

Hehe.. as the last one was loading for people with "modern" devices (SioToSomething..) I was hoping that this one will also load "magically".. well I will start planning the ATR version with a special loader then. I always knew that I will have to do it, but I wasn't giving it priority yet. No one complaining about the pictures yet? That are from a very old raycaster demo that's veeeeeeeeeery sloooooooooooooow (like 2 or 3 fps), but I like the ambient that the floor and ceiling and the "depth cue" gives you.. maybe I should try to speed it up with the new techniques. Technical blablah later

Hi.. better late than never Small post, technical explanations tomorrow.. Use Altirra emulator 1.3 or 1.4, probably real hardware, not Atari800Win.. The raycast engine base is there. Right now is only rotations, I need to add some tables and code to move the player. There is going to be a cost associated to moving.. probably will lose another 5 fps or more, but I have at least 3 optimizations to test yet, so is not that bad.. the real problem should be memory because I'm very near of the limit. I can do a very good version in a 130XE, but I want to do something with 64K Keys: - I: interactive mode On/Off (when "Off" you can rotate with the left and right arrows) - R: rotation speed: 2, 4 or 6 degrees per frame - TAB: change camera position (between 4 predefined points) - M: music On/Off (maybe to gain some fps) Many thanks to Miker for his great song (as always). Also to Tebe (mads), Raster (RMT) and Phaeron (for his great emulator, Altirra). PM_1_5 PAL.zip

thanx for the explanation.. yes, probably the keys doesn't have anything to do with this, is just that I noticed that if I hold an arrow key it's under the influence of the auto repeat settings and I believed that it wasn't like that before.. but I looked at Altirra 1.3 and it was the same (I just think that is strange that if I want to use the arrows keys as buttons, like in a real Atari, I cannot do that) by the way my card is an "old" nvidia 7900GT and the bug doesn't seems to happen in Altirra 1.3.. well I cannot reproduce it with my last build either in the 1.4 version.. the next time it happens I will try to send you that build.. Now, to post that demo..