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PeteD

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Posts posted by PeteD

  2. Posted

    I'm surprised it runs at all on NTSC. The interrupts aren't re-entrant safe and that version is doing stuff on the VBI that probably takes up too much time on NTSC. Probably luck more than anything that it's not crashing ;) New version is a lot tidier as far as code and technique goes and works fine in NTSC on the emus.

  3. Posted

    Yup, as I say, unfinished version. The latest one is fixed for NTSC (music and anims) and might have an extra surprise ;) Need to finish something else first before I put the finishing touches to Nyan but it won't be long, or I might upload the sans surprise version then finish the surprise one later.

  9. Posted

    Oh noes!! A C64 freak coding an A8 demo!!! ;)

     

    Final xex in a couple of days. Just adding another anim frame that I missed when I converted them because the animated gif I was working from was screwed, and making sure it all works properly on NTSC. Been kinda busy the last few days so not had chance to do those last couple of things.]

     

    Thanks to Miker for the music. :)

     

     

     

    Check out the C64 Nyan.... Oh dear. ;)

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTevgtyYbpc

  11. Posted

    It's about 150 unique chars.

     

    Created with G2F, 49 chars in use, so plenty left for animations.

    Yes, a different style, but if you examine http://www.hardcoreg...nceofpersia.htm (insightful), nearly each platform depicts things a little bit different - so I would go this way...

     

    As a compromise it looks ok but I don't think there's any need for losing/changing parts of the backgrounds AND removing parts of the map (columns etc) so you can draw the opponent in chars. BTW, the opponent DOES fall down levels and can swap screens and follow you around so you'd have to clear a larger area of colums/any other interfering chars on the screen.

     

    If you really think it'll fit in an unexpanded machine (something me and Ste were working towards on the C64 when Mr SID showed us he was 1/2 way through his version but I'm not sure how much anyone on here has looked into) then of course lower graphics overheads are a help but if not, may as well go for the best look possible and use more chars from the beginning.

  13. Posted

    Makes more sense if you're using more than 128 per screen :)

     

    Did I wrote something different? (Edit: Of course I meant with the 'pick' a single screen crop out of the maps.)

    Nooo ;) I just read into your earlier post that you were trying to do each "screen" (never mind the whole map) in 128 chars, probably just because you didn't mention multiple splits per screen as everyone else has.

     

    The opponent also masks behind pillars/chompers etc and I believe can fall down holes? (might be wrong about that last one) So you'd need a char/char sprite masking routine anyway.

     

    These may be places where I wouldn't act so strict - like removing the pillar.

    Let me explain:

    I would prefer an existing, maybe slightly different PoP - contrary to a perfect non-existant one.

    Like I would prefer a 5th colour in over 90% of the screens, than a correct pillar representation in less than 10% of them.

     

    But I fear, that this to much blasphemy for a single post...

     

    It's the type of idea I used to suggest a year or so ago and have again in this thread. There's no need to try to recreate exactly a game from another platform if doing so means that game will never be finished. Much better to work to a lower spec/different design and at least have something to play. For example Ste's ideas of the hires text screens for the intro. That could be done and dusted within a couple of hours and imho looks really good (and is kind of what the original was supposed to be, silent movie style if you read Mechner's blog).

     

    Despite what some people think, I promise we won't all point fingers and laugh if a finished A8 PoP is released and god forbid it's not as good in some way as the C64 version.

    • Like 2

  14. Posted

     

     

    Maybe you could pick one out of those: http://twinbirds.com...of_persia/maps/ ?

     

    Just for clarification: I don't think that one charset per screen is sufficient, nor that graphics may have to change.

     

    Regarding the opponent problem: It looks helpful, that the fights take only place horizontally -> opponent may consits of chars...

    I'm thinking about a char repository where the needed ones are placed into the set screen-wise.

     

    Makes more sense if you're using more than 128 per screen :) The opponent also masks behind pillars/chompers etc and I believe can fall down holes? (might be wrong about that last one) So you'd need a char/char sprite masking routine anyway.

  15. Posted · Edited by PeteD

    I'll have a look for something later (don't have the time now and all this stuff is backed up on an external hdd) but it's easy to just go find a screenshot of a screen with a few walls, columns, gates/chompers and work from that by inserting lines to align the tile heights to 64 (to get things on char heights). I think you'll be surprised how many chars some of them will use, especially if you don't reserve enough chars for the animating objects which can be quite numerous and sometimes overlap each other and animate at different times. I'm also not sure there are enough PMGs to draw you and an enemy guy and your swords..

     

    *edit*

     

    I do have this screen which was built by Ste (not sure it's an existing game screen) to test his Palace level tiles. It's by no means the most complex the levels can be but does contain most of the tile types.

     

    Bear in mind it's been reduced to 4 colour, and not in a sensible way so a lot of detail (front facing walls etc) has been lost but it still has quite a high unique char count.. I'll try to find a better one later.

     

    test.bmp

  16. Posted

    I really don't think a rewrite is THAT big a job. It's all basically data driven and the data is there to be pilfered and then you get to do the rest of it how you want (ie chars instead of bitmap) because you're no longer limited by another machines foibles. Still, someone might feel more comfortable working from an existing modern version if they've never taken on writing a game before because sometimes it's "the game" part and making it a whole that's the biggest problem.

  20. Posted

    I doubt pop runs at 25fps anyway, probably quite a bit less and if you play the C64 version with your sprite and just 2 falling platforms it slows down quite badly.

     

    As far as the tile masking etc, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, before Mr SID made it clear he was working on PoP me and Ste were working on one, a rewrite rather than a code port and as such we made the tiles sensible byte boundary sizes, all in chars and with masking areas made as code friendly as possible. That stuff is available if anyone wants to play with it although you're probably better off getting it from Ste as I don't think I got his final version.

  24. Posted · Edited by PeteD

    afaik they're both as close to direct ports from the Apple version as is possible. This is definately true for the C64 one and I'm pretty sure the A8 is the same (I did check but it's been a long time ago).. Bitmap mode, no hardware anything (ie no hardware scrolling or sprites). So that means software scroll (ie rotating through the bitmap), software sprites. This is why it's so incredibly slow.

     

    So for PoP you've got a static char screen taking up no CPU (for scrolling), software+pmg sprites which while slow in themselves, drawing them is the bulk of what the games CPU is taken up on. They don't need to run 50fps, none of the versions do so.

  25. Posted

     

     

     

    Really?

     

     

    Colour mode and big Softwaresprites, we have in Karateka. And it's rather slow. And the screen is less high.

     

    Now we try to use charmode + Softwaresprites + PM overlay + 200 lines?

     

    How about :Forget it?

     

    Possibly it could be reached with full preshifted objects. Even then it might not be fluent.

     

    Go take a look at the code and exactly how Karateka works then you'll be able to make an informed comment ;)

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