playsoft
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Posts posted by playsoft
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I think the opposing opinions were a bit harsh but there were some valid points just raised in a bit OTT way but free speech is just that.
As one of the people who love the game, the music and the fact its been finished I'd say just don't let it irk you, we love it and thank you for all the work by you guys, we are very grateful for the time taken to write this gem.
Paul....
And yes, it should be fun, sorry its been soured a little but horses for courses..
Just to be clear I have no issue with anyone not liking the game - there are things I don't like either. It's snide comments like "feeling sorry for the code" that I thought were completely unnecessary.
One of the options with the music was to have my two teenage nieces who are both musical do something. I would have enjoyed it and I think they would have too, but I wasn't going to risk exposing them to any nasty comments.
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The 2 background planes , animated as well, astounds me. How is this done? It appears the distant background scrolls 'behind' the next layer of background, which I'm pretty sure the A8 hardware can't do right? So is it just clever tile / charset manipulation? (Or is it a SECRET?)
Concerning the music ... any constantly-playing music will get repetitive. It would be great to have the option to silence it with the press of a key. Or even just mute the harmony and just play the nice bass line by itself for a stretch.
It's just character animation. I used 8 characters in total to form two 2x2 squares. The same animation is used in both squares and a mesh is applied over the top of one of them.
The source to an earlier demo (when it was disk based) is available here:
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/234237-what-made-crownland-so-colorful/?p=3172380
The code was given for the multiplexer but it will include the rear character animations too (it's from a while back and I don't remember how readable it is - probably a lot better than it is now!).
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This is fantastic. Are there plans to release it as a hardware cartridge?
No it won't be released on cart - it's a hobby and I don't want to commercialise it at all.
I appreciate there may be people that don't want to have to flash a cart themselves but luckily this is the Atari community. I am sure if they ask there would be people willing to help. I would for anyone in the UK.
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Forget the naysayers, I think it is amazing. Thank you again for all of your time and effort and I know I will enjoy AtariBlast for many years to come.
Thank you Fletch. It got a better reception here than I thought but I expected some people to be disappointed. I didn't expect insults though, a little hobby which is supposed to be fun...
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Paul, will you post the u1mb compatible file ?
Attached is Rambo 1088 memory expansion version - there's a xex file plus various disk sets for different format disks should anyone want to boot it from a real drive. I have only been able to test the SSSD set on real h/w.
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Thanks Steve!
I think that the 1000 point bonus animation and the end of level animation are purely amazing. I don't see it often enough and it is too fast to analyse how this was done, it looks like some kind of interlace on alternate scanlines??
It's just an image which is displayed for 1 frame in 3 instead of the normal game screen. The image has 4 frames with increasing gaps between scan lines to try and give a Jeff Minter type explosion (Mutant Camels was the first time I saw those split apart explosions).
Contrary to my come back before, I actually had a point whereby the whole game stopped, I couldn't move my craft or anything, though I've not seen this happen again after several plays.
5 seconds is suspiciously about how long it would take a byte to wrap around if you increment it every vertical blank. I have some flags that I inc and dec to set and clear. Perhaps there is a race condition which doesn't happen very often where I can miss one reaching 0 and then have to wait until it completely wraps around. I'll look at some robustness changes in this area and make a new cart version available with the Rambo 1088 version.
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There are a number of hacks on atarionline.pl and I did a quick mod to this one - it does require a 64K machine though (and doesn't seem to work with 128K).
Bounty Bob Strikes Back! (1985)(Aackosoft)(NL)(en)Req 64kk-file.atr
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Bank switching is really more a feature of the cart than the 5200 itself. The scheme which Bryan used on his 5200 port of Mule can be found here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/69649-5200-game-announcement-now-shipping/?p=856153
The Atarimax Ultimate SD cart supports the 32K bank switching version of this. If your .bin file is 64/128/256/512K long then it assumes it is this bank switching format.
The Ultimate SD also supports it's own hybrid bank switching format, with either 8K or 16K banks. The 8K bank switching also allows limited write capability to the cart SRAM. There is information and a demo program here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/221479-5200-ultimate-sd-cart-hybrid-8k-write8k-read-mode/?p=2917347
I guess the other bank switching carts are Miner 2049er and Bounty Bob Strikes Back but I've not looked into those.
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Nothing like a little help from game testers in last phases of development
The game looks great but you will now have a difficult question to answer: "Daddy, what's a Zombie?"
My nephews asked my mum one day when she was minding them. Mum knew nothing about Minecraft and thought they must have seen a horror movie. Mind you, Scoobie Doo was too scary for them at the time.
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You'll find your membership no. on the adress sticker on the envelopes from ABBUC...
Thank you, but unfortunately my envelope went in last week's recycling collection. I know the date because I noticed it when I received the parcel and emailed Wolfgang immediately. I haven't heard anything back yet but it is holiday time, so I will give it a few more weeks and then try contacting ABBUC again.
I had the same, and made contact with Abbuc. Now I paid for 3 years in advance. I am also from the Netherlands. I can speak/read German very well too. And English also.
Good idea, I will do the same.
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How do I renew my ABBUC membership? I received the "30 years ABBUC in a box" a couple of weeks ago and noticed the date on the label was 30.03.15 - so I owe money! Unfortunately I did not note down my membership number.
Back on subject, I love the look of The Monk and can't wait to see it.
Paul
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Playsoft also converted Missile Command+ and Slime. Give that Trak-Ball a workout! I have my AtariMax SD Cart on order... Can't wait to play those conversions!
Where are you, Playsoft?
Missile Command+ wasn't me, but I modified Bug Hunt to use the trak-ball which is on this forum somewhere.
Earlier this year I did some work with Darryl on DK and DKJr:
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/248578-donkey-kong-jr-atari-5200-arcade-enhanced/?p=3429463
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/249885-atari-a8-donkey-kong-hack/?p=3497095
Since then I've actually found some enthusiasm to get on with the project that was my reason for buying a 5200 in the first place - AB!
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I had an enable_interrupts routine in there which didn't. That doesn't seem to be a problem for some loaders, but I just tried DOS 2.5 and it black screened - it loads the attached corrected version ok.
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Excellent work. I remember seeing this and other isometric games back in the day and wishing for an A8 version... now there finally is!
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Fantastic work Tezz!
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And talking of from whence things came, it was Kenfused who did the original 5200 port.
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The RMT version of 6.7e still has the red shadow beside Mario of the double width player.
So the regular version is ok for you now? I didn't check whether the RMT version had the same issue.
The original xex files I used came from Atarionline:
http://atarionline.pl/arch/D/Donkey%20Kong/Donkey%20Kong%20%281983%29%28Atari%29%28US%29.xex
Ideally programs should initialise all the hardware registers... but neither of these do and I'd imagine there will be others which don't either. In this case I can "fix" them when I do the other hacks but if you encounter any other programs that don't run correctly you should try and load them differently if you can (other loaders may clear the h/w down).
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Is that on a VBXE? I'm getting that on my VBXE machine with a U1M installed. It looks like the red P/M is set for double width instead of single.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Double width player is exactly what it looks like. I'm running on 800 Incognito without VBXE (yet). I have tried various configurations, and all results are the same.
Thanks, the double width was the clue I needed - the registers are not being cleared down, so will be left in whatever state they were prior to the program getting control.
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No shadows here.
But the colours have changed from the original. Does anyone else have the same issue as Kyle?
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Something I noticed is that it seems the white of Kong's eyes seem to disappear a bit earlier than the rest of the screen, which gives an erie effect IMHO (like on the "How high can you get ?" screen.). It's even completely gone when Kong falls to his death but I'm sure this has to do with the player trick. (But players are easy to move, right ?....Oh....not vertically....)
Kong is tracked both horizontally and vertically when he stomps the girders. I didn't do it here because I liked the idea of his eyes going out when he falls. Also there are the DLIs which are repositioning that player (which is also used for Pauline's items) so they would have to be disabled.
Well to my eyeballs it still looks pretty purplish combared to the Landon's and the arcade. What about a DLI on each rivet tier that changes the colors to blues so you can pick different blues and have the lines above and below the holes blue also?
I added one extra DLI just under Kong's head on each level to restore the player used for his eyes/teeth. Adding a different run of DLIs on this level is possible, but a bit fiddly. There's also the change to the playfield to consider, with the 4 lines of girders which appear.
Looking good! Two questions:
1. How hard would it be to put the little 'covering' over DK on the girder screen?
There seems to be room for a girder above his head to the right of the score. However the supports would end up encroaching on Pauline which would mess her up as she is xor drawn like everything else. If someone does take up the challenge of replacing the xor code that may be the time to consider it.
I still prefer the original blue girders, the yellow lines just throw me off.
Any option for the fireballs turning blue when you have the hammer?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Alternate images can be added, it's a question of understanding the code enough to use them.
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Imho main focus should be on the question of this topic - Why so many unfinished projects ?
Any kind of code complexity (like pm overlays, dynamic color changes etc) increases time and effort needed to finish game.
That is why I think best chances we have is with 'standard screen modes'. One thing that we need for dynamic games is speed.
I agree with Emkay that double scanline modes are Ataris strong point so we should probably use it.
Don't see the reason why something like Gameboy, 4 shades like game shouldn't be possible on A8 ?
Plenty of good examples on more than one GBA Jams over at gamejolt:
http://jams.gamejolt.io/gbjam3/games
Maybe not so fast, maybe not so many sprites but still, a nice, good games can be made.
I think there is a lot of potential in GBA style graphics and like you say, not every game needs lots of sprites. I appreciate there will be a lot of people that don't like grey graphics on an A8, but I think the most important thing with getting a game finished is it being something you want to do and find interesting to work on.
I tried out the GBA Zelda graphics and I thought they looked great (alternated between modes D and E to stretch them out). I'll never find the time for such a project, but if I did I'd keep it grey and use colour from the PM graphics for Sin City style effects.
If you allow to have lower resolutions, you can add colours much easier. Sneaking towards "Strictly Gone Bananas" , you see the even lower 4x4 mode , but people like the game due to the fluent animations and many colours on the screen.
People get the imagination of their "heroes" fast.
With that imagination GBA graphics have green leaves, brown paths, blue sea...
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Playsoft usually comes through with a 5200 alternative, but there's only so much time in a day. When he adds functionality, he has to look for places to put them. The A8 and 5200 code often stores things in different places. So, upkeep on multiple platforms can become tedious until the finished project.
Yes, the last couple of evenings have been spent entirely on this - I have never put so much effort into trying to turn a few pixels white!
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I'd been working with normal overscan too, so didn't notice it. It's actually the bottom of one of Pauline's items. There are no items in this level but it still draws them, out of the way at the very top of the player graphics area and setting the horizontal position to 0 so they are off the left edge of the screen. However, when I set the horizontal position to line up with Kong those few lines at the bottom become visible. It's an easy fix, I'll stop it drawing anything in this case.
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GTIABlast! WIP demo
in Atari 8-Bit Computers
Posted
They are different routines but they reside at the same addresses on different ROM banks. Hence the main program (which resides in RAM) simply has to select the vertical or horizontal background bank and can then call the routines (initialise background, scroll background etc) blissfully unaware of what type of level it is.
I never did any bank switching back in the day (I didn't make it to the XL) but feel I have made up for it now...