NRV

naaaah.. that would be to easy in reality I don't think that static screens make this thing justice.. I just need to draw the maze and select some nice camera points, so expect the demo tomorrow sunday. By the way I'm having some problems running the demo in the last Altirra emulators (pre12 and pre10 at least): I suppose an Atari cannot do that (and if it can I would like to know how ). It seems this happens after loading the demo and using the arrow keys (keeping them pressed) for some time.. the screen jumps between normal and this kind of "garbage". If I try to capture the screen with "copy frame to buffer" all looks normal and I can fix things by selecting "Reset window layout". I believe that there is a change in the keys behavior, because right know they seem to use the starting and auto repeat values from windows and I think it wasn't like this before (but I could be wrong).. hope this helps.. (Is not my fault that the "bugs" cover most of the details in the demo! hehe)

Yes .. PM 1.5 approaching fast..

Hi, I'm still lurking in "silent work" mode I wanted to have something to show at the "two months" mark, but I didn't have much time to work the last weeks.. anyway I haven't found any big problems and I have some of the algorithms and tables already working, so I still think I can reach most of my initial goals.. I would like to have my first screens this weekend, so wish me luck! Regards (hmmm.. some unrelated "eye-candy" for the people that like this things )

I like this one: http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5634

Well, this one seems very near to the colors I remember, from when I programmed in real (NTSC) hardware.. Larry-NTSC.zip hope it helps..

I already converted the Laoo palette (PAL) and the Larry palette (NTSC), from .act to .pal format, now at least you can read them with GIMP or convert them to another format.. palettes.zip Regards.

In Gimp (2.6) you can change the image mode to "indexed" and then choose any palette (with dither and removing the unused colors if you want), like the "laoo" palette.. Also, ImageMagick is your friend: (a command line tool) http://www.imagemagick.org With it you can use any image as the palette! (and do like a billion other things). Regards.

Maybe someone will feel motivated to do something more constructive after watching these: (or to do more "research" like sack-cos ) Combat? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoBOvYmY7HU Spelunker? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKPiv4ElXaA Mr.Do? we need one of these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMdVKJG905k&NR=1 Regards. (hmmm.. anyone know what percentage of the installed base are the 130XE and the C128?)

Yes.. the "strange" thing is that the Wolf RPG looks like a modern Wolfenstein version (real 3D) and the Doom RPG looks like the original Wolf Will try to find a video of that one..

Thanks for the explanation. I will try to test on real hardware at some moment and let you know of any difference in the behaviors. Regards.

Great work, I was waiting for this The only thing that I miss right now is the "change palette" options, and it seems to me that the frame rate is a little more unstable than with Atari800Win, something like a lower priority thing, but maybe is just me (I'm testing it on WinXP by the way). One question.. what would you say is the status of the IRQ timers emulation? complete or work in progress? (I am interested in the 1.79Mhz timer interruption and the STIMER behaviors). Thanks!

Yep, with the high quality of many flash or simply web games these days.. is like sometimes some of them talk to you.. "port me.. port me please".. maybe I'm hearing things.. For example GTIA 9 (or G15 + some DLI's), hi speed horizontal scrolling, a wide screen.. and this one: http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/ Regards. (no C64 programmers, we saw it first!.. well, well you can have the doves in better resolution.. go ahead)

To analmux.. one question In the "other" thread you said that "Maybe the most flexible way to do this is to use timer4 (the other timers: timer1 & timer 2 might be needed for more flexible pokey features for the music). Then clocking pokey at 15khz, channel 1&3 can be individually clocked. Then we'd have sawtooth wave if needed, or distortion 2 @ 1.79mhz to have high notes in tune.".. I prefer to use a timer in channel one, clocked at 1.79mhz, then you can have almost the same options, but with access to the 64khz clock (for voices 2, 3 and 4). With your option you can have 2 channels clocked at 1.79mhz, but I don't know what is better from a "music" standpoint.. what do you think? To PeteD.. yeah, you cannot use the timer channel for music because you need the AUDF register to set the timer value.. but if that frequency value is useful to your music composition maybe you can use it . You can change the volume and the distortion of the channel.. and you can play samples with that channel (because that uses only the volume part). One example, that I know works in real hardware and in the last Altirra emulator (1.3pre10, posted somewhere in this forum), from project-M: using the 15khz, timer 4.. // start disabling IRQs sei lda #0 sta IRQEN // I dont use the OS code, so I hijack the IRQ vector lda #<IRQ1_address sta IRQH_VECTOR lda #>IRQ1_address sta IRQH_VECTOR+1 // init irq timer 4 and general clock lda #0 // volume = 0 sta AUDC4 lda #1 // 0 ==> count one scan line (minimum resolution!), 1 ==> count two .. sta AUDF4 lda #1 // 15khz mode sta AUDCTL After that, you need some code to sync the start of the IRQ to a specific horizontal position (you need to do this only once in your game). In my case I wanted to sync to a point near the start of the line. There is jitter here! your entry point is not the same every time. You can only be sure that you are starting BEFORE a given position. This code isn't necessarily the optimal one and maybe is doing some unnecessary things.. Also this thing is syncing to an odd or even scan line (I don't remember which), because I'm doing one IRQ every 2 scan lines. If you want one IRQ every scan line, or every 3 or 4, or another value, you may need to change this code. // sync IRQs start (to an odd or even scan line) sta WSYNC sta WSYNC lda VCOUNT Sync_irq_15KHz sta WSYNC cmp VCOUNT beq Sync_irq_15KHz sta WSYNC sta WSYNC lda #0 sta SKCTL :10 nop // dummy cycles.. add more or less to start at a different x position in the line lda 0 lda #3 sta SKCTL lda #1 // just need to be different than 0 sta STIMER cli // enable IRQ's But we still need to enable IRQEN with the number of the timer that we are going to use (1, 2 or 4). I do that on a DLI at the start of the screen with just: lda #4 sta IRQEN and the last IRQ in the chain in that frame does: lda #0 sta IRQEN to disable the IRQ's.. The general IRQ code does something like this: IRQ1_address sta m_irqSaveA // reset the timer lda #0 sta IRQEN lda #4 sta IRQEN // IRQ code.. // exit lda m_irqSaveA rti Anyway I think that the way to go is the 1.79mhz timer (only in channel 1), specially if you need to sync to different horizontal positions, in different scan lines.. Hope that helps

What emulator are you using? With Atari800Win is normally a drag and drop thing.. with Altirra you need to go to the menu I think. Of course all emulators need the normal Atari Rom files, so.. can you run other programs in your emulator? and if so, how do you do that normally? Regards.

Thanks, is good to know. Here, a pack with all versions in one place.. for the Atari800Win emulator and for real hardware: PM1_all_versions.zip I added the NTSC versions for real hardware, with better colors. I still don't know if the "_179" versions work, probably not according to the numbers from Analmux. Regards.

Great great images! very nice colors

Well, is just a technical demo right now.. maybe some day it will be a game for the 8-bit Don't worry that much.. I suppose that you want to see this thing completed as much as me, but don't think that I am losing time just because I'm asking some questions. You are not going to see me talking about the problems that I will have with the next stage, just the final result in one or two months (I hope), that's the way I "work". Also, sometimes I like to advance in the details, sometimes in the main algorithms.. I can do both . This is my "road" and is supposed to be fun over all things.. My principal "enemies" right now are the "scaling in X" artifacts, but I think I can minimize them without compromising the frame rate (my main goal).. all other things are advancing well. The luck and encouragement are well received by the way Regards.

Is good to know that, I normally sync the effects through trial and error Right now I cannot test this in PAL hardware, so maybe you are right and it doesn't work with this value. Yep, that's like the optimal solution, I had taught about it, but in reality is too much work. I don't have a "constant workload" in every frame that I can "interleave" with something like that right now.. maybe for another project. Regards.

Hi, I have 2 new versions for PAL hardware: PM1_PAL_HW_15khz.zip PM1_PAL_HW_179mhz.zip I have implemented the IRQ's with the 1.79MHz clock and changed a little the method for the 15KHz clock (to something more reliable, I think). When the programs start you can see where the GTIA mode changes are made, but if you press any key all goes back to normal. For the 1.79MHz method I needed to use a value of 109+114 in AUDF1, for one IRQ every 2 scan lines, but if I wanted one IRQ in every scan line I needed to use a value of 109.. I don't know why is this (only tested under emulation anyways). Also I just clocked channel 1 to 1.79MHz, but didn't joined channel 1 and 2 (is this necessary?, I don't want to lose two sound channels to use the IRQ's). At least they work on the last Altirra beta emulator.. Could someone test them in real hardware? Thanks!

I think I found the problem, try this version: PM1_real_HW_fix1.zip I was doing a: lda #1 sta STIMER every frame (in the DLI that starts the IRQ's).. now only in the init (Altirra detected the problem correctly). Also, seems that the song used an effect that changes the clock for a moment, near the end, so now I'm forcing the 64KHz clock in every frame (inside the RMT player's code), to avoid the screen corruption that it caused. Regards

Great sound! Should be the test song for all emulators Regards.

Thanx!, good.. correct sync at last.. But about the sound, do you think is a problem with the song and the clock or maybe some bug in my code? When I test it in Atari800Win it sounds the same as before. In Altirra it sounds different than in Atari800Win.. like with more bass.. Regards

Thanks eru Do not worry, I am no underestimating the "beast" that is a ray caster (and I will try to surprise you with the next stage ) Could someone try this on real hardware, PAL or NTSC? PM1_real_HW.zip the last Altirra 1.3pre10 seems to like it.. (but in Atari800Win it starts one line too late) (I should be sleeping..) Regards!

Added a small update in the original thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...p;#entry1817944 Regards

Update: project-M 1.1 - Added song from Miker. Being my first time integrating RMT I should say that it was pretty painless, the only thing that I had problems with, was the reset of the voice that I was using for the IRQ. I don't know if there is a "correct" way to do this (I tried with the SFX feat without success), but I commented the code that updated AUDF4, AUDC4 and AUDCTL in the RMT player and it worked. - Added special NTSC version with similar colors to the PAL version. Should be used with the Larry-NTSC palette that seems to be the more accurate from what I remember from my own works (it was posted in this forum, but I don't remember the topic). Also added the laoo palette and the NTSC one as .PAL formats, for those that want to use them in Gimp or some other programs. These are still only for the emulator, as I haven't had the time to sync the IRQ's in real hardware yet (hoping that the new Altirra emulator arrives soon ) Regards! (Many thanks to Miker for the song!) PM1_1.zip