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Gemintronic

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Blog Entries posted by Gemintronic

  1. Gemintronic
    Had to fight with a weird compiler error. Hopefully the last time I'll see "error: Value in 'cmp #256' must be <$100." Also discovered rand didn't change room types often enough. Seems to work better if I swap bits around in the result. Here's an example of what I'm talkin' about:
     

    changeworldx if worldx = 0 then worldx = 255 rand = worldx mytemp = rand room_type{0} = mytemp{4} room_type{1} = mytemp{1} room_type{2} = mytemp{3} room_type{3} = mytemp{5} room_type{4} = mytemp{7} room_type{5} = mytemp{6} room_type{6} = mytemp{2} room_type{7} = mytemp{0} gosub changeroom bank2 return
  2. Gemintronic
    Almost "family vacation" time. Hopefully will be Flea Market hopping for great justice. At night I intend to open up a laptop and code. I'm still torn between starting a simple project (Knightmare clone) or striking ground on a Atari 2600 RPG.
     
    The Knightmare clone project was continuing my trend of releasing simple games to learn Batari BASIC. Maybe I should start learning BB by making the game I want in the first place.
     
    As usual the AtariAge community has been awesome. Even caught a fresh copy of the Batari manual thanks to Random Terrain.
     
    Wish me luck getting stuff done!
  3. Gemintronic
    Didn't get much done on Saturday. At least it feels like it.
     
    Found a nice utility called SOX to convert sound effects into 8-bit 16000 mono wave files. I'm starting to realise I don't know if I can play more than one digital sound at a time. Need to play around with that a bit more.
     
    In talks with Adam Sporka to create the soundtrack for Gnuberubs Sojourn. I previously secured the OK from another artist but those were pre-made tracks that might not have suited the game. I've always been a lone gunman when it comes to video game projects so this should be interesting. I think the key is being very, very flexible. Also, be very, very clear on communication where needed.
     
    It turns out the REORGVARS line that botched my first build may not be related to SegaCD. It may be related to leaving room for the z80 sound driver. I guess I'll have to test on real hardware to see what's what. For now I'll assume it's needed. This sucks because I no longer have room for a 64x64 collision map array. I may have to just rely on soft collisions.
     
    So, build number 2 has the disclaimer screen and background music. When you press start a single digital laser firing sound is spit out.
     
    Doesn't feel like much got done in over 6 hours. Then again, maybe it IS solid progress. let's see if more gets done on Sunday.
  4. Gemintronic

    Augscii #3

    By Gemintronic,

    Okay, finally getting down to drawing the font. Got preliminaries for the numbers and letters. Seems to be a bold font. I seem to be trying to make the letter and numbers more symmetric in case I need to use them for graphics. Haven't fully thought out what symbols to gut in the ASCII table. The addition of Googly eyes are a must!
  5. Gemintronic

    Augscii Bitmap Font #2

    By Gemintronic,

    I'm using a Game Maker 5 project as a kind of "portfolio" for the Augscii font. Basically, storing the font as a sprite with multiple (256) images. I also attached other famous bitmap fonts for reference including the Aquarius MZ-700 and C64. Put in a sample of my "Perfect Palette" too.
     
    The perfect palette was my attempt to make the ideal 15 color + transparency palette for Sega Genesis work. Yes, I know I've got up to four palettes to work with. I'd rather default to one standard palette and use the rest as needed for backgrounds or palette changing effects.
     
    Awhile back I merged many, many different default palettes for different systems. Heck, I even compared crayon colors. Then, I manually chose a few "needed" colors on my own. I came up with this color palette:
     
    1. White
    2. Red
    3. Orange
    4. Yellow
    5. Blue
    6. Magenta
    7. Purple
    8. Brown
    9. Green
    10. Lime Green
    11. Sky Blue
    12. Light Pink
    13. Light Grey
    14. Dark Grey
    15. Black
    16. Transparent
     
    I guess I overlooked the fact that one of the colors is "transparent" when thinking about 4 sets of 256 chars using 4 different palettes. Doesn't that mean that one of those set/palette combinations will be "transparent"? Hmmmn..
  6. Gemintronic
    While my last 2600 project is stalled I've revisited the BasiEgaXorz Basic Compiler for the Genesis.
     
    My current plan is to make a Genesis game using IBM ASCII graphics in low res CGA 4 color mode. The tentative title is:
     
    Cigiyay!
     
    I've also started on a batari Basic Command Refernce-like page for the BasiEgaXorz community. AtariAge and Random Terrain have done a wonderful thing with its command reference. I hope the love will spread to other video game systems and compilers such as BasiEgaXorz. http://devster.monkeeh.com/sega/basiegaxorz/
  7. Gemintronic
    I just had a dream about a game.
     
    See, in order to impress a love interest our hero has to guide a stray cat to a food bowl. The hero must traverse an obstacle and puzzle filled isometric level. The cat must be allowed to follow the player. If the player steps on a pressure plate the kitties AI knows enough to move to the appropriate panel or activate a lever. The player must at times lure the cat away from dangers including rolling boulders. Graphics were failrly high res X68000-like.
     
    Does anyone else dream new game designs? I hear some people rarely have dreams where they are not themselves or doing much more than daily life events.
  8. Gemintronic
    Mulling over possibilities for an Atari 2600 RPG. I've got a basic data structure for a password system thought out. I just need to choose between styles of play.
     
    * Phantasy Star Battle layout?
    * Final Fantasy 1 Battle layout?
    * Dragon Quest battle Layout?
     
    In Dragon Quest you never see the Player sprite so they could be used elsewhere. However, seeing the character on screen like Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy does seem to connect the game player with their character better. I can have the characters exit "stage left" after their turn and a new character moves onto the screen for his.
     
    The other possibility is to create the first Nethack clone. Hmmmn..
  9. Gemintronic
    This is here for purely my own consumption. Others may make comments and such (please!) but, really, it's all about me.
     
    People right out to-do lists to keep themselves on track. I publicly declare things in order to convince myself to:
     
    A. Make sure things happen and
    B. Prove that something actually happened.
     
    What's the sound of a tree falling in the forest? Without a blog nothing really happened did it?
     
    Today (Sunday) I became curious about making a Knightmare clone. Some Portuguese guy apparently started to make one but who knows where that went. So far I've created an initial player sprite and Title for the game. I think I should step up and make this my first bank-switched game. Not sure if I'm ready to leap into multi-sprite or superchip.
     
    Things to think about:
    * Storyline
    * Techniques to use (programming)
    * Studying original game
  10. Gemintronic
    Well, last night I made the player sprite for my Knightmare clone. Ironically the second iteration I did at lunch had a worse face and better arms and legs. This night I combined both for great justice!
     
    Made the initial title, level and boss screen. The more I delve into it the less I think bank switching is needed. 'Course, I'll eat my own words as the code fills up!
     
    Multi-sprite is still too complicated for me. Maybe next game. In the mean-time I thought of several workarounds. One is to make a car sprite using the ball as a body and 2 missiles as tires. Also, since the sprites can be pretty tall I thought of just putting several sprite graphics on one sprite. I stuffed 3 "sprites" onto one 8x24 sprite with an okay result.
     
    It's also handy to have taught myself that you can use playfield pixels as additional colors in your sprite as seen in the CandyBar Chef. The trade-off is movement becomes too quick and jerky sometimes.
     
    THINGS TO CONSIDER NEXT:
    * Start coding the initial skeleton, er, code!
    * See how pfscrolling looks.
    * See how inserting the boss screen looks after scrolling the level graphics.
    * Start mulling over AI for bullets and enemies.
  11. Gemintronic
    The problem with hobbyest coding is not coding - one can do that for many hours without noticing. The problem is motivation - especially if the support and compiler is lacking. I decided on a project that entails %90 of what I know I can accomplish in my compiler/language. Keeping up the momentum by having tangible results is CRITICAL. I'll post more in the coming days.
     
    I'd especially like to thank GroovyBee for his advice during my programming slump.
     
    Later!
  12. Gemintronic
    Each BASIC dialect is different and there sure are differences between batari Basic and BasiEgaXorz.
     
    For one, there's no DRAWSCREEN command where you can determine when and where the screen refresh happens.. yuck.
     
    Work on the BasiEgaXorz Command Reference continues. The developer of this Genesis BASIC compiler really DID need help with documentation. Besides trying to fill in how-to sections I've also discovered many omissions and some outright errors. Got at least one person interested in contributing but strangely he/she wasn't even from the main BasiEgaXorz forum.
     
    Today was extra hard as I'm also trying to correct my sleep schedule. Napping and staying up too late really messes with your attentiveness.
     
    My programming efforts for today were to start my own joystick handling routine. I'm used to Game Maker for the PC so I'm trying to port over their style.
     
    Anyway, I accomplished enough for today. Hopefully I'll have more progress to report soon
  13. Gemintronic
    One of my possible game ideas for the next project is a RPG. Apparently this is a herculean task as other have failed. Some have failed hard enough to leave a bad taste in peoples collective mouths. So far I've broached the subject without injury. Just good folks with good advice so far.
     
    Here's what I've learned so far from community members:
    * Don't announce. Especially in a genre that's had disappointment and failure.
    * Design and do just for you! Popular style != Incentive to complete game.
    * Controlled randomness is key. 2600 forces less full motion video and more gameplay.
     
    Made a mock-up Treasure of Tarmin style which got some positive response. I've never programmed a 3D perspective engine so the prospect of coding further is scarry. I think a basic tile engine is in order. Whatever style I go for it seems to be needed.
     
    If I can sneak some more coding time in that's what I'll be doing.. let's see how good I am at sneaking such time in
  14. Gemintronic
    So far I've got:
     
    * 4 way scrolling (limited to current playfield)
    * Variable jump
    * Basic animation for player
    * Collision
     
    I think playfieldpos is the key to using playfields taller than just 1 screen but it's correct usage is an utter mystery to me. The Scroll3a.bas example doesn't work with pfscroll left or right properly. When the engine uses the playfieldpos magic it snaps right back to the default center position no matter how far pfscroll left or right you went.
     
    Batari took note of my problem dim'ing the foreground color "dim foreground_color = COLUPF" and fixed it. Can't wait to try out that fix when it becomes available!
     
    Attempted to compliment him too but I don't think it worked. The fact that he remains active and interested in a complicated project like BatariBASIC is truly rare. I've seen promising projects like DragonBASIC for the GBA fade and die. BatariBASIC keeps rockin'
     
    Go Fred! Go AtariAge! Go, er, I think I need to go to sleep!
  15. Gemintronic
    Seems to be some demand for new Genesis homebrew. Currently I've got on small shooter and a bigger project on my plate in that area.
     
    I'm thinking it's time to bring back Character based graphics like the MZ-700 and Aquarius. The IntellivisionLives people haven't responded to emails since 2011 about using the Aquarius character set. In lieu I must make my own. My project for this week is to create a 256 character max set. This includes letter, numbers, symbols and character graphics. You know, shapes, lines, googly eyes.
     
    In order to fake 16 color character graphics on the Sega Genesis I need the font to stay below 256 characters. See, the video memory can hold up to 1344 tiles. There are four different palettes tiles can use. With four copies of the character set I can assign the foreground color four times so:
     
    0-255 Foreground color 1
    256-512 Foreground color 2
    513-768 Foreground color 3
    767-1024 Foreground color 4
     
    Each of these can use one of four palettes so 4 character sets x 4 Palettes = 16 possible foreground colors per character.
     
    Let's see if I can meet my goal!
  16. Gemintronic
    I recently got into an Early Adopter program for an MMO creation and management company. Basically, they give you most of the tools and the server AND the credit card transaction processing for a big chunk of your revenue. Fair enough.
     
    Trouble is, the only way to import assets is through extremely expensive 3d software that one must be specifically trained on. Know Blender but not 3DS max? Too bad.
     
    It would be easier to bite the bullet if they came out and said no Blender support ever - but they didn't. They just dropped hints that it was on their list of things to do and never did. Thus I waited.
     
    When they transitioned from beta to subscription they simply cut off my access without notification. The download for the server connection client literally became a single message box stating that my services have been moved to a different server and to contact support. Again, they actively killed my account and left a client installer that just posts a misleading message box!
     
    When I did contact support I got an email that stated my services were killed because:
     
    A. Too long of inactive use (I've had this happen before, and last time THEY DID send an email before deleting content)
    B. Too little changes made to my assets ( which I couldn't import any due to no Blender support)
    C. The Early Adopter program had ended (without notification to me)
     
    Didn't even bother to point out which reason it was. Then he tried to push their paid services on me.
     
    I wrote back my concerns over their communication (or lack thereof) and my main reason for not being able to fully evaluate their product. This is what you call free feedback from your customers. How did they use this?
     
    Customer support wrote back a regurgitation of their terms of service and noted assets could be imported into the expensive supported 3d software and then imported into their product. Which doesn't help because YOU STILL NEED the expensive software in the first place!
     
    This is horrible customer service. You don't rebuke feedback. Especially if given without malice. Especially when the customer is not trying to make a claim.
     
    This company has licensed its services to big ticket games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic. You'd think that in trying to reach smaller developers with Early Adopter programs they'd give everyone a fair shot. Not so. Give feedback - get rebuked.
     
    Needless to say I'm disappointed by this experience. The technology and business model is sound - just not the human side of the equation.
  18. Gemintronic
    So, my morning efforts to queue up sound effects failed. I was afraid that I'd practically have to write a mini database system just for the sound queue. I tried just that and only sorta got things working. I decided to skip all that noise and do it my way.
     
    Basically, each sound gets its own request flag. If it wasn't the last request it gets to request attention. A delay timer awakens the sound engine after just about the time it takes to play back an effect. The sound effect engine goes down the list of sound effects to see if any have active requests and deals with them. I "waste" a variable and a constant for each sound effect (sound_request_foo and #snd_foo). For the sound effect engine itself two variables are used: sound_delay and sound_request_last. This means the sound effects are hard coded but this is a game all in ROM. Not going to be mixing anything except a drink.
     
    Using a keyboard sucks for testing, by the way. Usually you cannot have simultaneous keys being pressed. I had to turn off sticky keys in Windows and map the SHIFT and CTRL keys to buttons. Those two keys can be read at the same time so I could test simultaneous sound effect requests.
  19. Gemintronic
    Got a good deal from a local video game shop. 4 boxes full of common to rare 2600 carts. 2 more boxes of duplicate commons. I NEVER WANT TO SEE ANOTHER COMBAT CARTRIDGE AGAIN! Sorting out the duplicates was a messy, time consuming, er, mess.
     
    Plan on shipping the dupes to AtariAge but the store is closed and my wallet is empty. Shipping is gonna be killer.
     
    My programming for the day consisted of digesting Batari's answer to my multi-bank function question and experimenting with rand.
     
    I've tried to make levels using pseudo random numbers on the PC and failed. In Batari BASIC it's actually working. So far I've got a vertical dungeon that is 256 screen big. I figure I can alter the results of the pseudo random number generator to effectively have a 256 x 256 screen dungeon with zero storage footprint.
     
    It's 2am and I STILL have carts to clear off my bed.. not thinking so good.. hopefully will experiment more this weekend. Night everyone!
  20. Gemintronic

    I'm on a Cart!

    By Gemintronic,

    I MADE A CART AND IT'S GOING FAST AND
    IT'S GOT A CANDYBAR THEME: PANIC INC'S PLAN
    I'M A HOMEBREWING NERD, MADE A CART LIKE MIYAMOTO
    IF YOU WANT SOME MORE, THEN YOU'RE SURE OUT OF LUCK, OH
    GET THE JUNIOR OUT, THIS CART IS REAL!
     
    Ahem.. just got my finished carts from AtariAge. Last steps are shrink wrap and price sticker. Box, insert, cart and manual all are in place.
     
    It's official: I made a real game. Even if the Hamburgler steals it or ET grabs it and throws it in his landfill it happened. I can thank my family and AtariAge for support since the gameplay ain't proper compensation
     
    Rock on Atari! Rock on Chicago!
  21. Gemintronic
    Spent a good amount of programming time going around in circles dinking with the psueodo random number generator code in my 256x256 screen 256 level test code.
     
    Helpful comments posted in this blog gave me ideas to shorten and/or better my code but everything backfired. All I got is less random output. Not a testament to the quality of advice but rather my own inexperience.
     
    Solved the infinite staircase up -> staircase down warping loop by - wait for it - repositioning the staircases. The downward staircase is now to the top right-hand side compared to upward staircases.
     
    This may turn into a game yet. I'm thinking of adding in 8 items to collect as a main goal.
     
    Side scrolling and platform physics are peaking my interest. I may spawn off another process and make a test program for them too.
  22. Gemintronic
    After adding semi-persistent stairs to my fetch-quest-maze-game "Destiny" coding has temporarily stopped. In the past I've relied on the excitement of discovering a new tool. This worked for "Drunken Pooper" and "Uppa Creek!" as I was just figuring out Batari BASIC. I've also used contests to spur myself on. This worked for my "Candybar" game. Recently, a deadline got me to finish "Nitebear on Sleepystreet" as Neotokeo2001 needed games to sign at a horror convention.
     
    Alas, "Destiny" has very little new or contest-like or deadline-ish about it. I'm waiting for my next programming urge to come in.
     
    I've been dissatisfied with the company who makes my favorite game programming tool. While the program itself is nice they've resorted to rootkit-like copy protection, overly restrictive EULAs and now blatant censoring of customer feedback. This last bit I can't link because deleted comments via forums and YouTube are, er, deleted. Mark Overmars little learning tool has turned corporate in a bad way.
     
    All this has led me to find a new PC programming tool and I hope Unity is it. If I could just subvert it to make 2D games..
  23. Gemintronic
    10:19pm
     
    I'm having a bit of coders block on my current project. I have to make a "victim" appear and avoid the player. It also needs to traverse the multi-screen game map. I've coded myself into a corner and can't kludge my way out.
     
    I've had a decent supper of yak meat and pizza rolls. Currently suckling on a caraffe of diet coke. My intention for the rest of this hour is to backtrack a few versions of my game and completely re-write my victim AI. Wish me luck!
  24. Gemintronic
    7:11pm
     
    Haven't been focused all weekend. Couldn't get into the coding groove. I'm hoping blogging my decent into maddness will get me in the mood.
    Working on the rewrite of MMSBC II http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/207626-mmsbc-2-wip/
     
    Plan is an update every hour until I can't take it anymore. I'm truly scrizooed if it isn't nearly finished by the end of the night. Wish me luck!
  25. Gemintronic
    Had a nap. Had a full meal. Getting stoked on Mt. Dew. Have http://coffitivity.com/ playing in the background. Time to code for extended and unreasonable durations!
     
    10:00pm 'till now:
     
    Getting bogged down trying to figure out the smartest way to block the player from leaving the 5x5 screen overworld. Hopefully by the end of the next hour I can solve that. Must turn on more lights so my brain doesn't start thinking of nap time..
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