DZ-Jay
-
Content Count
13,060 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
21
Posts posted by DZ-Jay
-
-
7 minutes ago, intvnut said:On my wife's PC (Firefox) and phone (Android/Chrome), we see something even different: A large light grey box with a slightly darker grey version of the do-not-enter symbol in the center. i.e. a grey version of this: ⛔
Right clicking on that and "view image in tab" showed the same grey box/do-not-enter symbol. The URL for the image pointed back to a "googleusercontent" domain.
So there's either a permissions issue, image format negotiation issue, an image size issue, or an unsupported version of the image format itself. I think I have seen this problem before with inline images. When I get around to reposting them, I will post attachments.
The more motivated among you can snoop the EXIF data to figure out when and where some of these steps took place. This has stretched over months, with some concentrated sprints.
If you'd like, I can try reposting the images, since I seem to be the only one who can see them.
-dZ.
-
1
-
-
For the record, I'm in for both.
-dZ.
-
Just now, DZ-Jay said:Hi, @cmadruga,
I also forgot to mention something else I noticed: the "glare" effect on the outside windows flickers wildly, which gets distracting. I suppose you are trying to multiplex MOBs. Putting aside that I am not really a fan of that effect on the Intellivision, it wouldn't be too bad except that it seems to miss certain frames making it doubly distracting.
You may need to review your core engine to see if the STIC updates are being dropped for some reason, or skipped.
UPDATE: I see in the debugger that writes to the STIC are not dropped. I also noticed that it only happens when the player changes position from rest: whenever my avatar is idle and I press a new direction, the glare skips one frame. It may be related to starting the animation state.
Perhaps someone can test on an LTO Flash! on the hardware, just to see if its an artefact of jzIntv.
-
Hi, @cmadruga,
I also forgot to mention something else I noticed: the "glare" effect on the outside windows flickers wildly, which gets distracting. I suppose you are trying to multiplex MOBs. Putting aside that I am not really a fan of that effect on the Intellivision, it wouldn't be too bad except that it seems to miss certain frames making it doubly distracting.
You may need to review your core engine to see if the STIC updates are being dropped for some reason, or skipped.
1 minute ago, cmadruga said:The ammo clips are already in the game. Sorry, I'm trying not to give any spoilers
Hehe, no worries. I thought it was something mentioned in the guide that I missed.
-dZ.
-
1 hour ago, cmadruga said:Ammo is found later as you play the game.
Oh, wait, I just realized that the bullet counter includes a clip counter as well. I didn't pay attention to that. Sorry. DOH! :facepalm:
That's probably what happened. I'll play again and try to pay attention. Are there Ammo clips already in the game or do you mean that you will add them later?
-dZ.
-
14 minutes ago, intvnut said:I think the issue is that I pasted these as inline images, and rather than upload the image, the forum has linked directly to the copy at Google Photos.
It's weird because that works for me whenever I do it (or at least I haven't heard anybody complaining of missing images).
A screenshot from PaleMoon (which does not show the images), suggests that they are being rendered as their
MIME content in Base64some weird source URI:
Perhaps the format or type in the clipboard on your PC was missclassified during import. You may need to attach them -- or maybe try again, copying the images from another source program in order to coerce a standard format, like PNG or JPEG.
-dZ.
-
1 hour ago, 1980gamer said:No go on Firefox or Edge.
Do I have a copy of Netscape Navigator around here?
Well, admittedly, my browser is called InterWeb, a variant of Mozilla, custom built for older Mac OS X versions. Essentially, I use it to access the "modern Web" from Mac OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.6), which has been locked out by almost the entire WWW when they switched to TLS 1.2 a few years ago.
I guess it works better than I expected: the LTO Flash! pictures look great.
-dZ.
UPDATE: Confirmed that PaleMoon (from an old fork of Firefox build for old machines) does not show the images.
-
I can see the on my PC browser (Mozilla variant), but not in my iPad (Safari).
-
1
-
-
For the curious programmer, here's an example program that illustrates how to use the tracker from IntyBASIC. It has some boiler-plate created by the IntyBASIC SDK, so you can ignore the "title.bas" part and additional comments. Notice that it is very easy to do and the "bas-interface.bas" does much of the work for you.
Do not be intimidated by the length -- it's got much more comments than code, to describe what it is doing.
Spoiler' ========================================================================= ' IntyBASIC SDK Project: Tracker Demo ' ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ' Programmer: James Pujals (DZ-Jay) ' Created: 2020-12-26 ' Updated: 2020-12-28 ' ' Project automatically generated by INTYNEW. ' ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ' History: ' 2020-12-28 - Tracker Demo project created. ' ========================================================================= OPTION EXPLICIT INCLUDE "constants.bas" INCLUDE "title.bas" ' Set up a recurring task to update ' the tracker on every frame. ON FRAME GOSUB UpdateTracker ' ========================================================================= ' Game Program ' ========================================================================= ' INITIALIZATION: ' Initialize the tracker as part of your ' game initialization routine. CALL TRKINIT ' MAIN PROGRAM: ' ' <... YOUR CODE GOES HERE ...> ' ' LOAD & PLAY SONG: ' At any point after initialization, you may ' load a song ... ' ' The routine TRKLOADSONG() is a special ' IntyBASIC interface that receives a pointer ' to the song data structure via R0. ' ' The song will start playing immediately. CALL TRKLOADSONG(VARPTR DRUMS(0)) InfiniteLoop: GOTO InfiniteLoop ' UPDATE TRACKER STATE: ' The state of the tracker needs to be updated ' once per frame, ideally at the same place ' every time. We use ON FRAME GOSUB in this ' example, but all you really need to do is ' invoke TRKPLAY at some point from your regular ' game engine loop. UpdateTracker: PROCEDURE CALL TRKPLAY END ' ========================================================================= ' Game Data ' ========================================================================= ' Include the tracker IntyBASIC Interface library ' anywhere in your program, along with any other ' libraries you use. INCLUDE "lib/bas-interface.bas" ' INCLUDE SONGS: ' Include any songs to play in your program. ' ' Song are still defined using assembler data ' structures and macros, and so must be loaded ' as assembly language modules. ' Include the standard global music definitions ASM INCLUDE "music/global-music.asm" ' Include sample song. Note that assigning a ' label before including the song allows us to ' address the structure using VARPTR when we ' load it. Otherwise, we would have to dig up ' its actual address from the assembler's ' output LISTING file. DRUMS: ASM INCLUDE "music/drums-demo.asm"-
1
-
-
5 hours ago, David Rolfe said:I suppose this is fair moment to toss in some rambling memories. I'm not checking the facts, just noting what I recall off the top of my head, which may have degraded over the years...
This was in the early 80's when Intellivision had been on the market a couple of years, and the original team was still at APh. I think there may have been regional variants of the show, but my recollection of the name is "Say POW", and it was broadcast by a local TV station, KTTV, at what I recall to be a late time: 10:00 or 10:30 on Sunday night. The KTTV studios were on Sunset Blvd. just west of the Hollywood freeway. The show didn't have a very long run.
The nature of the game require a live show. No tape, no delays, because the caller had to see the live image. They invited a studio audience, so one night four of us tech boys piled in a car to see how the sausage is made. It was a small studio, and we were practically the only people in the audience. So the cameras never panned the audience, and if they used any crowd reactions, it would have been canned sound. I think it was a version of Hal Finney's "Star Strike" that was used for games, and I suppose there were others. I hadn't done any mod work to render games pow-accessible, so I hadn't been concerned about the gory details.
Nothing noteworthy happened during our visit, but a couple weeks later Hal Finney (who hadn't been with us) went to the show and came back with an odd anecdote. I had no independent verification that this actually happened, but Hal was not a teller of tall tales, so I assume it's real.
As I said, this show was necessarily live, and the emcee had a phone for the purpose of connecting to the contestant. Apparently that phone had a direct-dial number, rather than just being a switchboard extension. And apparently some joker knew that number. So, as Hal reported it, as the emcee was chatting with the contestant as the game started, a joker somewhere in the world was picking up a phone and calling the phone company operator and telling that operator there was an emergency and it was necessary to immediately cut in on such-and-such a line. I'd never thought about this, but I guess it makes sense that operators would do this in an emergency situation. So the POW game would sputter as an operator came on the line and announced an emergency, and then cut in with the joker who would start to curse. The emcee would hang up and try to restart, and of course another "emergency" would happen. The emcee was struggling to tell the operator that there was no emergency and not to put the joker on the line, but it was an uphill battle.
That is an interesting and funny story. Thanks for sharing it, Mr. Rolfe!
5 hours ago, David Rolfe said:That's what Hal told us. If it's not true, then it should be.
As they say, se non è vero, è ben trovato.
-dZ.
-
9 minutes ago, intvnut said:Added.
😎
P.S. That's some impressive cartridge-porn collection you have there! 😱
-
1
-
-
2 hours ago, intvnut said:There will be some firmware differences, and there will be a number of additional items that come as part of the overall package. For example, the plan includes matched serials between the board, manual, box, and shells (plural), extra replacement cart labels, and additional packaging around everything. It will truly be a deluxe experience.
So, the circuit board won't be different. But the package as a whole will be.
Thanks! Sounds good!
47 minutes ago, intvnut said:Howdy, all. I just spent the last several hours going through this thread and my AtariAge inbox.
@raven9000's complaints notwithstanding, I think I have found everyone in this thread and in my AtariAge inbox who has expressed interest. I will send personal AtariAge messages tomorrow. In the meantime, this is my list. If you do not see yourself on this list, and would like to add yourself, comment or message now. If you are on this list and want to be removed, let me know. And if you're on this list but I misspelled your AA handle, comment and let me know so I can fix it.
This list is sorted ASCII-betically, and does not account for "Special Edition only" vs. "Regular Edition." I will contact everyone on the list below to confirm interest and quantity, and will provide ordering instructions.
- <EVERYONE BUT DZ-JAY>
Hmmm ... I didn't know you were actually keeping a list. Can I be added as well?
Thanks!
-dZ.
-
7 hours ago, cmadruga said:When the bullet count goes up again, it is usually because there is still an ammo clip left. It gets decremented automatically.
Did you see that happening?
Yes, but I wasn't sure where the clip came from. All I noticed was that I was running out of bullets, then later I was still shooting and had even more bullets. I'll have to be more observant in the future. :)
I found the Health boxes, but where do you get ammo clips?
-dZ.
-
1 hour ago, cmadruga said:Bullets are actually quite limited.
The previous version had an animation bug that showed the gun still firing if you kept the button pressed after running out of bullets.
That was fixed in this latest version.
I saw my bullet count go to zero at some point. Then on the next room, I continued firing at the next monsters. The counter was greater than zero again. I'll see if I can reproduce it, but I know I didn't run out of bullets even though I kept the trigger going without stopping whenever I saw the enemies.
-
1 hour ago, cmadruga said:Just out of curiosity, why the double quotes on "alpha"? Is the term not adequate?
No, I just quote the word. *shrug*
1 hour ago, cmadruga said:I disagree a little. Scale of sprites and background graphics is generally compatible.
Is it perfect? No, but we will look for ways to refine it. Thanks for the feedback.
Well then, why are the doors smaller than the sprites?
It's your game. You can take the feedback or not, as you like. I will say that it diminishes the overall professionalism of the game when there are clipping problems and when the sprites' scales do not really match the props in the background.
1 hour ago, cmadruga said:The map layout is fully coherent. It's not a matter of the "programmer needing a map", but of players realizing that there are corners in that map, and that the "camera" has changed perspectives. Many classic and modern games employ this. I guess it comes down to a matter of style and preference. But the feedback is noted.
I got that the "camera changed perspectives." However, it doesn't really come through like that. It actually looks more like an oversight. Just my opinion, of course, but don't be surprised if others will feel the same and only mention that it's confusing.
1 hour ago, cmadruga said:One feature of the post-contest version would be an auto-map, and it would show your location... I think that would help navigation.
It was actually getting ready to be included, but we ran out of space due to the bank switching restriction imposed by the contest.
An auto-map is nice, but that's not really the problem I was pointing out.
-dZ.
-
6 minutes ago, Peripheral said:Thanks for the jzintv debugger tip, but unfortunately that only helps when the bug reproduces reliably.
I've only encountered the problem that one time.
I understand. I made the suggestion for future runs: if you are play-testing a game that could have some unknown or rare bug, then it helps if you are pro-active in running the game with the debugger every time. That way, if it ever happens, you can trap the error in the act. :)
6 minutes ago, Peripheral said:One other question. It wasn't clear to me how close I need to stand to the enemies
when firing. There's a short flash, but no indication of any harm done to them. So
I try to get real close, which of course puts Ellen in peril. I would think the gun easily
fires across a whole room, but I could not be sure.
That's a good point, the same happened to me. I just shot continuously until they died. It seems I had unlimited bullets, but I thought that was done on purpose during testing.
-
Hi, @cmadruga,
I played the latest "alpha" version and I have a few comments, which I hope are useful. First, let me tell you that I like the atmosphere of the game so far. You have captured it well with the music and the graphics. Personally, I am not a fan of that style of graphics, where colour boundaries are loosely applied (it reminds me of lesser machines, like the ZX Spectrum), but overall, the game looks fine. Also, although the game played well, I found a few trivial bugs.
-
First, regarding the graphics: The sprites do not seem to match the scale of the background. Everything looks fine, but the enemies and player sprites appear to be too big for it. Not only is it a bit visually distracting, it causes "clipping" problems when the player approaches doors at an angle. For instance, in both the images below, my player can walk right through the walls. This may seem inconsequential, but it adds to the "polish" of the game.
My suggestion is to make the sprites slightly smaller, perhaps just by a few pixels. Nothing says that your sprites must span the full height of a MOB.
-
Second, regarding navigation and room orientation: It seems very strange that sometimes you enter a room from the bottom, but it doesn't have a commensurate exit in that direction. There are quite a few places where I exit a room from one side, only to arrive at a room that has exits on opposite ends. This tends to be disorienting -- but not in the good "I'm-in-a-spooky-and-creepy-game" way, but in a frustrating "I-think-the-programmer-needs-a-map" way. The below illustrate examples of this:
Exit through the bottom, but entered from the left:
Exit through the top, but entered from the right:
It almost feels like a cartoon scene.
My suggestion, build your map in a coherent way that follows the same rules all throughout.
-
Third, on passing through "open walls": There are rooms in which the background graphics suggest that a wall is completely open, not just a door; yet you cannot cross it at any point, but must still align to a specific region. Because the "open wall" has no features, there is no direct way to identify the actual walkable region. Below are some examples of "open walls" that block my access until I moved to a correct spot to pass it. In both these cases, the location where the sprite is standing is blocked, yet the graphics do not suggest any obvious obstacle.
My suggestion, either make a distinction in your game mechanics to account for a fully open wall, or modify the graphics to visually cue the player about the narrow passage.
-
Fourth, sound effects: The sound effects are fine, and I like the gun shot sound -- but it unfortunately does not match the visuals, which look more like a flashing machine gun, or some sort of repeating shot.
My suggestion is to either alter the visuals to avoid the rapid flashing, or add a bit of "stutter" to the initial attack of the sound effect to make it sound a bit more like a machine gun. It doesn't have to sustain the sound long, just do like a quick-fire "ptrrrr!"
-
A bug that I found was in a specific room, where the elevator door does not get drawn. The elevator works fine, and I am able to go in and out of it, and the door is animated as well when it arrives; but in its "closed" state, there is no door. Here's an illustration of my player waiting for the door-less elevator to arrive. I only noticed it in that specific elevator.
-
Just a comment on the dialog. Most of it is fine, but there was one instance that I thought was a bit too "casual," in the "Research Bulletin":
The phrase "way beyond," strikes me as a colloquial slang construction, which I do not think a research scientist would use in a bulletin. Perhaps something a bit less folksy would be "Our specimens have strength beyond all expectations!" which takes the same amount of characters.
That is it for now. I will continue exploring the Pandora ship to see what else I can find. Great job so far! I think this game has some excellent potential.
-dZ.
-
First, regarding the graphics: The sprites do not seem to match the scale of the background. Everything looks fine, but the enemies and player sprites appear to be too big for it. Not only is it a bit visually distracting, it causes "clipping" problems when the player approaches doors at an angle. For instance, in both the images below, my player can walk right through the walls. This may seem inconsequential, but it adds to the "polish" of the game.
-
1 hour ago, Peripheral said:I had been exploring, so no, not straight to the bridge.
I tried reproducing it ... but no luck.
And shortly afterwards, I hit this:
CPU off in the weeds!
PC: $03DE Instr count: 34988587 Cycles: 344624190
HALT!
PC: $0010 Instr count: 34988637 Cycles: 344624190
Likely also another sporadic issue, so hard to chase.
If you feel brave, enable the debugger, then issue the command "h" (CPU History) at the debugger prompt, and run the game. If it crashes again by sending the CPU into the weeds, issue the command "d" to dump the CPU history to that point. Providing the ".hst" file here could allow someone to trace what happened at the moment of crashing.
-dZ.
-
1 minute ago, 1980gamer said:Games I didn't put in the top 10, but would have been at a given point in time...
Pitfall
Beauty and the Beast
Locomotion
B17 Bomber
Bomb Squad
Space Battle - I have the upgrade, but haven't gotten to it yet.
Sub Hunt ( was my favorite for a while ) Haven't played it in so long... it can't be on the top 10.
Night Stalker was a good game also, but now it is Ms.Night Stalker
Awww shoot! I forgot Night Stalker!!
- Dracula
- Microsurgeon
- Star Strike
- Astrosmash
- B-17 Bomber
- Bomb Squad
- AD&D
- BurgerTime
- Utopia
- Loco-Motion
- He-Man
- Atlantis
- Work Whomper
-
Christmas Carol - Night Stalker
3 minutes ago, 1980gamer said:Hover Force is a great game too and was the single most played game in the house for 5-6 months. But that didn't get it into the top 10. If it came out in 83 it would certainly have cracked the top 10.
Oh, crap! Hover Force, of course!!!
- Dracula
- Microsurgeon
- Star Strike
- Astrosmash
- B-17 Bomber
- Bomb Squad
- AD&D
- BurgerTime
- Utopia
- Loco-Motion
- He-Man
- Atlantis
- Work Whomper
-
Christmas Carol - Night Stalker
- Hover Force
That's it, I swear. That's my Top 10 of the original 125 Intellivision Games.
Man, I really suck at this.
-dZ.
-
1
-
3
-
My Top 10, in no particular order: my favourite Intellivision games from the classic set -- the ones I remember playing over and over when I was a child, along with some joyful discoveries I made later in life:
- Dracula
- Microsurgeon
- Star Strike
- Astrosmash
- B-17 Bomber
- Bomb Squad
- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Cloudy Mountain)
- BurgerTime
- Utopia
- Loco-Motion
- Masters Of The Universe: The Power Of He-Man
- Triple Action: Biplanes
- Atlantis
- Worm Whomper
- Shark! Shark!
-
Christmas Carol
I tried to keep it at 10, but I failed miserably. Any of the above, I would be more than happy to play again today. However, if I really have to narrow it down to 10, then ...
- Dracula
- Microsurgeon
- Star Strike
- Astrosmash
- B-17 Bomber
- Bomb Squad
- AD&D
- BurgerTime
- Utopia
- Loco-Motion
- He-Man
- Atlantis
- Worm Whomper
- Shark! Shark!
-
Christmas Carol
Damn. Missed again. Let me try again, this time, I'll only include my top-rated favourites, the ones I would enjoy playing right now:
- Dracula
- Microsurgeon
- Star Strike
- Astrosmash
- B-17 Bomber
- Bomb Squad
- AD&D
- BurgerTime
- Utopia
- Loco-Motion
- He-Man
- Atlantis
- Work Whomper
-
Christmas Carol
Wow, I'm really bad at this. OK. That's it. I give up. My Top 10 of the original 125 Intellivision Games includes 14 games, one of which is a modern homebrew. Oh well.
-dZ.
-
1
-
2
-
On 12/29/2020 at 7:51 AM, intvnut said:I can confirm there's no hardware difference on the circuit board for the Special Edition. The firmware will report itself a little differently, but games will play the same.
I've started to fan out units for sale at 3rd party vendors, including Europe and Canada. In the next couple days, i will contact everyone who has expressed interest in LTO Flash.
Merry Christmas, everyone! LTO Flash is back in print.
Hi, Joe,
Thanks for confirming this. I may have missed it if it was mentioned already, but since there are no hardware differences, what then makes it a "Special Edition"? Is it that it includes new features in the on-line launcher or special games?
-dZ.
-
By the way, I used the information on this page as a guide in recreating the TR-808 sounds. Like @DragonGrafx-16 suggested, the sounds are rather simple. However, they used different waveform oscillators and filters, which are not available in the Intellivision PSG. So these are mere approximations, but they are pretty cool, and much better than the typical sounds used for drums in old consoles like the Intellivision.
-dZ.
-
12 minutes ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:Really... a oscillator and a pitch envelope or LFO is all you really need to make drum sounds... though a noise generator also helps.
Yes, that's true; but you also need to know how to use them.
The cool part is that the tracker allows you to define the drum sounds as instruments and then you can just use them in any song by creating patterns for them. This particular tracker supports 2 drum channels. The sample drum track in the post uses a third channel for the deep bass tone of the 808 kick.
-dZ.
-
Yes, with the right tracker software.
I just released an updated version of the Intellivision Music Tracker, which allows Intellivision programmers to play specially-crafted music files in their games. The song format is similar to the classic "XM" module from Fast Tracker II, but with all instruments synthesized in software. It also includes facilities to synthesize drum sounds to accompany your tracks.
I included in this new distribution some very cool sample songs and a library of useful envelopes, effects, and drum sounds to use in your own songs. The software also comes with full documentation.
If you are interested, check out the main topic thread in the Intellivision Programming forum:
So ... want to hear the Intellivision play drums? Check out this kick-ass drum track I created to showcase the new drum sounds I created for the tracker:
The drums are based on the sounds of the classic Roland TR-808 drum machine. I call the track, "Funk My Drum Machine."
Not too bad for a sound chip with only square wave tones and no filters whatsoever.
Enjoy!
-dZ.
-
5
-
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
HSC - Holiday Triple Pack w/ Bonus Game
in Intellivision High Score Club
Posted
Thanks! That's an awesome score.