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Sheddy

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Posts posted by Sheddy

  1. Posted

    Glad people are enjoying it :thumbsup:

     

     

    OK pretty sure I asked this already, and not in a disrespectful way more in a curiosity kind of way because I am trying to learn about the various funky screen modes and stuff for A8, but why are the colours quite dark? Is it the video? Is it a feature of the colours you can choose for the selected screen mode the game is running in? Has there been a change in the screen modes used in the last 3-4 years? etc etc

     

    The guys are right about the flicker modes. If there is too much variation in brightness of the colours the flicker becomes very noticeable - One of the required colours was a black, so none of the other colours could really bright. The main reason for the darker seeming colours in the last few years was I changed to a more accurate palette in the emulator I was using for doing screen-shots and videos. The earlier emulator screen-shots were very over-saturated.

     

    And now,

     

    for something completely different, err, off-topic. Can the engine of SH be used for other games, e.g. "Afterburner" or something like that ?!?

     

    -Andreas Koch.

     

     

    I've said here some Months ago that those Sega Arcade Shoots are real good ones to try...

    Driving ones like OutRun or Hang-on probably Flicker would not look good.

     

    But I said on that post that Galaxy Force could be the best one to use this.

    With the Sheddy code and someone remake the Gfxs... it certainly would be the best example I remember.

    But I wasn't an Arcade user... what other ones do you remember (Sega or any others)?

     

    No! Just No! While those games may look pretty, they're utterly unplayable, and for spectators only! Some of the code and ideas could be reused, but probably not as much as you might think.

     

     

    great job :cool: - will it be available as file version for large drives -> PBI IDE ?

     

    Nope, sorry - it'd need more memory than a standard Atari as well.

     

     

    Sheddy - this looks amazing. I downloaded Altirra just to be able to try it. (the ROM doesn't work for me using A800win). I got the title screen, but haven't figured out how to start yet - must not have set my Altirra correctly.

     

    It flickers in the emulator, but I turned on Frame Blending in the Video option and now its rock solid. I can't wait to try it out, once I get Altirra set up.

     

    A question - I searched your site but didn't find this, did you ever reveal how you make use of the Atari's players, missiles, and bg graphics to create the game? It truly looks 3D, I can see images in front of others, the scaling competes with 16-bit Genesis/Mega drive game faux-scaling, so impressive is everything! I am very curious of the technical feats.

     

    Hope you got your input mappings on Altirra sorted.

    The blending feature is great for this game - Otherwise you'd need to set your monitor refresh to 60Hz to make it look like the real thing and bearable to look at for more than a minute.

    The guys are right about the player/missile use. The man uses all the players in overlap mode, and missiles make the screen a bit narrower than a standard screen. Everything else is made from background graphics.

     

    I think PMs are for the Player, Shoots & objects are plain gfx while background is graphics, too spiced up with DLIs and PMs (clouds)?

     

    PM0&1 for Player as it seems that, probably,... 10pixels wide is enough.

    Or not...

     

    I was reading this right now and don't even bother to open another Window, but probably the ten or so pixels of the guy are probably two Multicolour Players.

    And I am now saying this because the screen isn't a Normal 32/40/48bytes wide (if I remember it right).

    Like that and because Sheddy is using a Bitmap Mode then the 5th Player enabled with four Missiles (two left and two right) with PF3-Black Mask side Borders.

     

     

    But even this there's another thing:

    If this is working in a 'Flicker between two Palletes' then there's (PF0,PF1,PF2) x 2 (I think I read it that the Flicker is two Palletes) then you'll see/study and there's more than two Palletes of these (PF0,PF1,PF2).

    Why?

    Because it seems a it exists a third Pallete: The shoots 'Dark greenwish'

    There are two 'Flicker' palletes than changes colour/luminances according to gfxs./levels but the shoots are always that 'greenwish'.

     

     

     

    The 'common colour' it's Backgr. register and there's only one, what 'Flickers'/more than one Pallete are the PFs.

    That's why the Ground aren't 'Chess Board' nd just Lines line the Sky, all these Lines are Backgr. Register DLIs.

    And this is another possible win of cycles? Bitmap Masking over (00) and just 16cycles ?

     

     

    Just some Thoughts of a 'Non coder' ;)

    José Pereira.

     

    Not far off! 16 pixels needed for the man

    There are only 2 palettes though:

    1) Background, Green, Blue, Black

    2) Background, Grey, Red, Black

     

     

    I had a quick play around in the Altirra debug with this...

     

    2 missiles are used left/right of screen for masking. Missile DMA is actually turned off on GTIA, so they retain their GRAF data indefinately.

     

    Player DMA is turned on in Antic (note of course that means missile data is fetched too).

     

    Saw one block of code executing with lots of consecutive STYs (brute force "CPU blit" )

     

    Samples played by a z-page bit of code each 4 scanlines. Only the low address gets incremented. Data isn't packed, just the AUDF values.

     

    The missile DMA still being fetched is annoying, as is the fetch every scan-line even when players are 2-line resolution. Maybe I was a little anal turning DMA on and off above and below the man though...

     

    Phaeron noticed I hadn't really optimized the sample playback routine yet when sent him something to show a problem in the Maxflash emulation of Altirra. Putting it in Zero Page was a pretty extreme suggestion of his!

  2. Posted

    [quote name='snicklin' timestamp='1310062168'

     

    You must be a great player of this to have tested the higher levels! I assumed that you must have had some cheats for testing purposes

     

     

    Nah, just had the assembler set up so that it was easy to a build different versions that only start from a particular stage rather than 1

  3. Posted

     

    Now, I'd like to ask, as I believe that you must have some due to the difficulty of this game - do you have any built-in cheats? (extra lives or level jump etc)

     

    If so, I wouldn't expect you to announce any of these now, because it has only just been released and I'm sure you don't want to spoil the game for anyone. If you do though, will you be sharing these in the future

     

    Believe it or not, there aren't any cheats. That is what the "easy" and 5 men options are for ;). You get 1 continue straight off when its on "easy". Once you get past a bonus stage you get another continue added, plus you can then start from that stage if you want. (BTW those features were only available as cheats on other home versions).

     

    A tip: go round in circles to avoid the alien missiles - they always aim at your current position when launched - so don't go back on yourself.

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

    I'm really not too keen on having to re-do and re-jig everything right now, but I'm willing to help someone else if they are familiar with porting stuff to these upgrades.

     

    Does that include an Atari 7800 console version if somebody was interested in doing that?

     

    That could be very interesting on a 7800 with enough RAM :thumbsup:

  5. Posted

    Thanks for all the kind words, people :)

     

    Regards a version for 1MB machines: will need to think about it; there are a few things that complicate it, such as screen clipping relying on the memory where the cart is to be read only. I'm really not too keen on having to re-do and re-jig everything right now, but I'm willing to help someone else if they are familiar with porting stuff to these upgrades.

     

    Regards manuals...it's just a real basic arcade shoot em up - No story or real tactics required ...just shoot everything or get out of its way if it won't die ;)

    • Like 3

  7. Posted

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B-_6-RuJR0&feature=feedu

     

    Sal was a bit quicker with the video than I thought :)

     

    I didn't think the day would come, but I've decided to stop messing about with the game and just release it. Hopefully there aren't too many problems with it...

     

    It's suitable for all XL/XE machines with at least 64K RAM. In the .zip is a MaxFlash cartridge image suitable for emulators. Of course you can also use the cartridge image to program a real 8Mbit MaxFlash cartridge to run on a real machine.

     

    sharrier.zip

    • Like 40

  8. Posted

    This conversion is stellar. Very well done. I can't wait to get the BIN file so I can copy it my Atarimax cartridge. :)

     

    Will a ATR or EXE file be released? It should.

     

    It's a *really* big game the way I've done things. It needs a whole 8Mbit cart to itself. Without a complete re-write and a very big RAM expansion, an ATR or EXE isn't really feasible.

    Many of us will receive Ultimate1MB internal expansion so memory would not be a problem.

    A complete re-write is a big problem!

    I hope kjmann this time will make a good package because I would like to buy this game.

     

    Ah, OK. With 1MB RAM it should be quite do-able. Will have to check out the Ultimate1MB.

  9. Posted · Edited by Sheddy

    This conversion is stellar. Very well done. I can't wait to get the BIN file so I can copy it my Atarimax cartridge. :)

     

    Will a ATR or EXE file be released? It should.

     

    It's a *really* big game the way I've done things. It needs a whole 8Mbit cart to itself. Without a complete re-write and a very big RAM expansion, an ATR or EXE isn't really feasible.

  10. Posted

    I think the Space Harrier logo especially could do with some tweaking in that area.

     

    Perhaps, some of those famous g2f-artists from Poland would do better? :ponder:

     

     

    Depending on the "conversion style" , the title is ok. The real sad thing is the music that still fits to the game like a flea in the hair of a giant. The digis are still to low at volume compared to that tweeter killing noise...

     

    The title screen uses the same in-game method for extra colours to allow for animation, plus some player-missile under and overlays, but there are still limitations on the colours - light blue instead of white was a necessary compromise. Think it'd be quite tough to do much better in G2F.

     

    Actually, I've just finished redoing the digi to dual pokey music volume levels, prompted by previous comments about it

    Digis are now using 2 channels for added volume and I've reduced the volume in the music some more.

     

    Still a few things left to do, but I'm not too far from being happy with how things are with the game. Thanks for all the comments :thumbsup:

    • Like 7

  12. Posted

    I had Altirras Audio Set to Non Linear Mixing By Accident.

     

    What's the use of this NLM feature then in this case? Does it mean the linear/non-linear volume ratio between GTIA & POKEY? Or is the Digi-sfx played by Pokey?

     

    IIRC, it was perry_m (who's working on ASAP emulator) who mentioned this NLM feature. The real pokey also has an NLM feature, having its effect on mutual volume ratios between the 4 pokey voices.

     

    I'd suggest doing a final testing round of this "DIGI vs MUSIC"-volume-ratio on the real thing! Not on any emulator!

     

    If I'm correct ALL of the vids linked to in this thread were recorded from emulator.

     

    I think you're right that Altirra Non-Linear Mixing feature makes it more accurate to real hardware, although it is not always easy to hear the difference. Most of the earlier videos didn't use stereo POKEY, which is why the Digi sounds louder than these new ones from Sal. I only have single POKEY machine but volume levels seem very similar to Altirra on that (less so on Atari800WinPlus). I will fix the stereo volume balance.

  13. Posted

    Yep, the cart image will be free, so you'll be able to burn your own for free if you've already got a 1MB (8Mbit) maxflash cart spare

     

    Money is a little short at the moment as there's a little Snicklin on the way, so I assume that your image will still work in an emulator? Is this so?

     

    yep, of course :) if you found a way to make things not work on anything but real hardware you'd be seeing a new version of Altirra pretty soon..

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    Now I may have misunderstood, but is there only going to be a paid for version released? I was thinking that there was going to be a free version, but that you could buy the full package at a cost? Is that so or have I misunderstood?

     

    Good question. I do have 2 Atarimax flashcartridges, 1 MByte each, so in theory I've enough space to burn (a free version of) space harrier into one of these.

     

    (not that much money now :sad: )

     

    Yep, the cart image will be free, so you'll be able to burn your own for free if you've already got a 1MB (8Mbit) maxflash cart spare

  15. Posted · Edited by Sheddy

    I haven't done much testing with Stereo POKEY, except on emulator, and didn't really notice how quiet it is (7 channels against 1 digi). The digi certainly isn't as unbalanced on single POKEY (only 3 channels against 1 digi). I'll have a look and see if I can change things for the better. There's not separate songs for mono, and separate songs for stereo, so just changing volumes in the songs won't do it. Maybe make the digi write 2 channels when stereo is detected (slower of course), or use the "global volume" feature of RMT?

    • Like 3

  18. Posted · Edited by Sheddy

    I was just hinting that people had turned this into just another C64 vs Atari fight and none or the people arguing have put forth a single line of code to accomplish the original goal.

     

    OK then, proof the Atari can do nothing faster than a C64

    Read it and weep, Atari fanboys

     

    nop

     

    OK, I was bored! :P

  19. Posted

    When I try and record a video from Altirra I get the error below (Windows XP). Im selecting ZMBV as I thought that was the way of producing smaller files :?: (RLE says not available as 24 bit video being used, NONE works but files are larger :ponder: )

     

    "A fatal error has occurred in the emulator. A minidump file called AltirraCrash.mdmp has been written for diagnostic purposes. Exception code: e06d7363 PC: 7c812afb"

    AltirraCrash.mdmp.txt

     

    Where'd you get your ZMBV decoder from? They seem to be quite rare, and I had difficulty finding one that worked properly, although I didn't get a crash like that. I had success with ffdshow (after install you have to enable ZMBV decoder in the "video decoder configuration"). Could be worth trying.

  24. Posted · Edited by Sheddy

    And will it run on expanded (let's say 64 + 1 MB) Ataris with no need of having a cartridge?

     

    No, it won't run on extended RAM Ataris, except as a cart. It would be possible to do, but it would require rewriting as the bank locations for extra RAM and carts are different.

  25. Posted · Edited by Sheddy

    Question. Would we be able to program one of our own MaxFlash 8Mb carts with the binary for use on a 64K Atari?

     

    Yes, the binary and flash image will be freely available to program your own 8Mb cart with, and it'll work on all 64K Ataris.

     

     

    And I should also add, thanks for all comments. Some of them have had me ROTFLMAO!!

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