e1will

Found it! One of the playfield definitions was crossing a page boundary, which screwed up the cycle timings. I think the only such playfield was the berzerk room with the red robot. Does that ring a bell? Or do you recall seeing it someplace else? And as to whether there are hidden Evil Ottos in the Berzerk rooms... well, you just might be surprised. --Will

Here's the latest version, v0.23. Changes and fixes include: * New bee buzz sound (closer to the one in the video Shannon posted) * Mains hum sound for the recharging stations as suggested by thegoldenband (50 Hz or 60 Hz depending on the TV format) * "Continue?" counter fixed * When dropping objects, the objects are no longer dropped in the same place (as suggested by Nostalgic) * All but one of the scanline issues have been fixed. Should always be 312 for PAL-50, and (almost) always 262 for NTSC and PAL-60. --Will

Yeah, I've found that annoying as well. I'll see if I can squeeze in some code that offsets the objects when you drop them. Looks like you found another bug! It used to work, but I see it's not decrementing now. --Will

I'm having trouble getting it to do that. Do you recall any other details, like which level, which room, what objects you were carrying, etc.? --Will

On both of those, I think the "oh @#$% I wasn't expecting a duck to be there" factor is an important part of the challenge. But I'll keep an open mind, and see if other folks agree that a change would improve the game play. At any rate, if you can make it to the door before he sees you, he won't follow you. It is reachable if you have super-speed. If you don't, well, yeah, it's a bit of a tease. But f you can't/don't pick it up when it first appears, it will appear again later. Hmm, another bug. I'll track that down. It would, but I kind of like the "secret corridor" effect in the arcade rooms. I did put in a couple of tweaks that prevent you from getting stuck there; you should be able to always get back to the main playing area even if you're able to "sneak backstage" on those rooms. Yep. Thanks! I look forward to seeing what you find on the higher levels. --Will

Ooh! I like that. That'll be in the next version, for sure. Yeah, I'd like for the river to go up and down in volume, but it's already plenty loud at the lowest volume setting. I'll have to play around with it some more. Thanks! --Will

Fixed.

Wow! That is quite a bug! I'll quash that for v0.22. Thanks, --Will

OK. That's useful information. There's a game I had wanted to write that suddenly becomes feasible with that amount of RAM and ROM. Thanks! --Will

Hello everyone! I was able to refactor some redundant AI code and came up with a few cycles and ROM bytes free, so I added some "background" sounds. In this version: - the bees buzz - the snakes hiss - the tanks rumble - the electrical outlets hum - the warp of death growls - the rivers whoosh - and... well, you can probably guess what kind of sound this room makes. This version (v0.21) does have a couple of small bugs that cause the NTSC scanline count to be off once in a while. It shouldn't be too noticeable, and should be fixed in v0.23. One thing to note about the new bee buzz sound: there will be a faint buzzing if a bee is in the room directly below you, to warn you to get out of the way. The buzzing is louder once the bee actually enters the room. --Will EDIT: Fixed the bug Nathan found below (and a couple more.) Version v0.22 now attached.

32k E7 would be the same as above except 16k of code space would precede it. This 16k would contain 8 more 2k ROM banks accessed at $1FD8-$1FDF. Optionally, more RAM would be available. Nothing was finalized, but possibly $1FEC-$1FF1 could add another 1.5k for the 256-byte banks. As for the rest, $1FE7 still selects a 1k bank, but $1FF2-1FF6 selects which one of 5 1k banks will go there. It looks like the full 7.5k RAM will be usable. As for the 32k ROM (actually, 31.5k as there is a 512-byte hole at $7800-$79FF) there might need to be a little bit of space reserved at the beginning in case the bankswitch code can't fit in the 512-byte hole. Interesting... So is that 7.5k RAM plus 31.5k ROM, or is the 7.5k within that 31.5k (i.e. 7.5k RAM, 24k ROM)? Are there benefits in using $1Fnn bankswitch triggers instead of zero-page ones? --Will

Yes, I'd love to see that! That could really open up some possibilities. --Will

Well, if it turns out that the RAM zones can be preloaded with code (and I assume they can), then it's more like 3k of "ROM", 1k of which is modifiable. That would be a great way to save kernel cycles: just modify certain spots of the kernel before calling it. If nothing else you could replace all the 5-cycle "LDA (PTR),Y" calls with 4-cycle "LDA ptr,Y" calls. Might not seem like a lot but I have a couple of kernels-in-progress that would really benefit from that. --Will

If the full 8k is available, could you use $1000-$13FF to read a 1k RAM slice, $1400-$17FF to write to that slice, and $1800-1FFF for a 2k slice of ROM? Then you could swap among the 8 1k RAM slices using one bankswitch trigger (e.g. write the desired RAM bank # to $3E) and swap among the ROM slices using another (e.g. write the desired ROM bank # to $3F). That would let you access all the ROM from all of the RAM, and vice versa. You just couldn't access all of the RAM from the RAM, or all of the ROM from the ROM. --Will

How much of that 8k is available for the game to use? --Will

Let's say you have a 32k .bin file that contains game code. As I understand it now, Harmony could either treat this as all ROM (if it thinks it's an F4 bankswitching game) or a mix of RAM and ROM (if it thinks it's coded to use F4SC). Is there any reason it couldn't treat it as all RAM? --Will

I think it's safe to say he's let go! I actually feel bad for the guy; I was full of unrealistic dreams at that age too, and was pretty resistant to logical explanations of why they were unrealistic. I shudder to think if those conversations had been immortalized on the Internet... That said, if there ever is a Knight Rider 2600, I think the manual needs a centerfold. --Will

Thank you!

Hello everyone! Here's the latest version, v0.20. Some bug fixes in this one, and a 6th duck. Comments, bug reports and suggestions are appreciated as always. Enjoy! --Will

Looks like you ran into the same bug that Yuppicide encountered. It took a while to fix this, but it's fixed in the version I'll be posting shortly (v0.20). Yep, that's by design: if the duck is attacking, he'll follow you through the door. Seems to make it too easy to outrun them otherwise. I've tweaked the snake logic a bit; you should be less likely to run into one on the very edge of the rooms now. Yep! Good suggestion. I've made the gray rooms a slightly different shade of gray, so you should be able to see the gray objects now. I've noticed that too, but I'm not sure what to do about it without making the Berzerk room look less like Berzerk or the Dodge 'Em room look less like Dodge 'Em. But I'm open to suggestions! I'll have to give that some thought. I don't want to make the game seem less responsive. Thanks! And thank you again for your comments, the feedback is very much appreciated. --Will

You found a bug! Looks like when you drop an object off the left side of the screen, it actually ends up in the room to the RIGHT of the room you're in (at least some of the time.) I have fixed this in v0.20, which I'll be posting shortly. --Will

Probably, but you still might have to change some code, depending on how the movement logic is coded. A disassembly should tell you exactly where you'd need to make a change, but I don't think I've seen one floating around anyplace. --Will

Thanks! I'm glad you like it. There's a manual online that describes what each of the objects do. It's a little out of date but should give you a good start. http://willnicholes.com/duck --Will

I think level 1 is too easy now. I miss seeing the duck in the maze. I agree. For v0.19 I put the ducks back the way they were before. --Will

My main motivation was to make the game easier. The results of the poll I posted really surprised me... no one had completed anything past Level 3! But I think, as Nathan points out, moving the balloon to Level 2 makes it too easy. Exploring the mazes is part of the fun, and having the blue balloon available too early short-circuits that. I've restored it to its earlier location. As before, you'll need to work your way up to Level 10 to earn the blue balloon. Good suggestion! I've made that change. They can indeed! But only one of them at a time. If there are five chasing you and you go through a door, you'll only have one to contend with then. I've redone the death animation. Let me know what you think. I fixed the magnet bug. (And yes, in that version of the code I was moving the player above the visible screen. I've reworked that.) Yep, you have to throw the zapper or place it in a duck's path, just holding it doesn't do anything. Thanks again for your feedback, these are great observations and suggestions! --Will Version v0.19 attached.