Tony Cruise
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Posts posted by Tony Cruise
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On 7/20/2020 at 12:03 AM, Ikrananka said:As this will be a programmers reference style book, is there any possibility that the printed edition could be produced spiral bound?
I haven't seen any print options that allow spiral bound at an affordable price but I haven't decided on the printer for the physical edition yet, so we shall see.
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I have moved the Kindle edition release date to the 28th August 2020, you only get one shot with these things and I still have one more chapter to finish off properly, more proof reading (thank you Matt Householder) and the cover to finalise. This is it though, you are only allowed to move a pre-release once - good motivator
I want it to be the best I can make it, so a little bit more time is needed to get it right.
The book is looking like being around 250 pages, as soon as the Kindle edition is finalised I will let everyone know what the physical edition pricing will be, there will be both Colour Cover Black & White interior and full Colour editions.
As a little taster, attached is the current Table of Contents to wet your appetites!
You can pre-order the kindle edition here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B5WNV3K/
Programming Games for the Colecovision - Draft Preview (Contents Only) - 2020-07-19.pdf
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11 hours ago, lawdawg710 said:Is this something, say , someone with zero programming experience can purchase and learn to program from? Or is a basic understanding of programming needed?
You do need some programming experience, but if you want a taster see how you go with my older online series here:
The book is similar but I have expanded the detail and of course it is completely focused on the Colecovision and Adam, plus has the technical reference section.
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You have done an absolutely wonderful job with this. And yes the Colecovision version is definitely the best home conversion and one of my favourite games I had for my Colecovision back in the day.
I have actually built a dedicated mini-upright Tutankham arcade cabinet, all done bar the artwork, so I might ask you a favor in the future to perhaps help me with the artwork for the control panel and marquee as of course neither is the same size as the original arcade
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16 minutes ago, mumbai said:For which host platform(s)?
Specific instructions for Windows only, but information provided for setting up on other platforms is also included. I may still revise the chapter a little, but we shall see how I go time wise.
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A project I have been working on for the last two years is nearing completion i.e. my next book called 'Programming Games for the Colecovision and Adam in Assembler'.
It includes a tutorial section working through the steps of creating a game, with a Z80 assembler primer and information on how to set up a cross development environment (similar but extended from my Let's Make a Retro Game series).
It also includes a complete Colecovision BIOS reference guide, covering ALL of the jump table BIOS calls with explanations and examples for using each call.
There are extensive memory and port maps, also with explanations etc.
It will have a dedicated web site section where you can download the code (for lazy typers :)).
The early pre-order link for the Kindle edition is available here. Cover is still a draft.
Shortly after I have released the Kindle Edition, there will also be a physical print edition available on Amazon's print to order service, which I used for my last book and has been received well.
It does have some colour screen shots and pictures in it, let me know how many people would be interested in a full colour edition, rather than a colour cover with black and white interior.
The book is currently 90% complete, with the majority of the content completed, but I have about ten quality read through passes to do and need to tidy-up/check all the source code etc.
I am aiming for a 1st August 2020 release date at this stage.
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8 hours ago, christo930 said:I notice in the video when you get killed, you die but the screen is not redrawn with a new room and new positions for the robots to be in. A randomly very bad situation would basically end the game as happens in one of the videos posted. Also, I noticed the difficulty ramped up more quickly. In the arcade I know you get a couple screens of red before it moves on to the next color. It looks like the dust is not killing your guy.
I think the speech needs a little more tweaking.
Looks great though. Looking forward to the release.
The room randomization has a bug at the moment, was working, one of the things I need to clean up.
I need to have the robot firing go through two levels of speed.
I'll keep playing with the speech, but there are limits to what the sound chip can do.
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10 hours ago, digress said:Looks really good. Pretty much ready to go.
Here's a few things I see but not necessary.
Otto's jump seems too linear. perhaps not jump so high and slow towards the peak of the jump.
In the preview the robot seems to move a larger step size then in the game play itself. Is that a speedup that happens later in the levels?
The fx are cool. I think if you have a high pitch initial digital file might convert clearer. I used the same compressor a few times.
Maybe even slow it down a bit so the lack of bit stream size has a longer time to create the sfx. so maybe stretch out to %150 or %200 length of the sample before you convert it.
Thank you, all feedback is definitely welcome:
- Yes Otto does jump just a bit too high, it's little tweaks like this that are left to do (there are some collisions with the walls that are a little off as well).
- I probably don't have the same tick counter for the demo/preview screen - I'll have a look
- Good idea with the speech samples, I didn't think of slowing down the original WAV's first, I will try that. 'Chicken' in particular is hard to understand. I have room left in the Rom, and can compress the graphics (not compressed at the moment) if I do run out.
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5 hours ago, zaphro72 said:Is the clipping of the sprite what makes it look like a bouncy ball effect?
Yes that is Otto squashing during his bounce, its the same as the arcade. I have noticed that I am missing Otto's appearance animation, so will add that.
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Well Berzerk for the Colecovision is now functionality complete and ready for some initial testing.
All speech sentences are done, all player, robot and Evil Otto actions are done.
There will probably be more Robot AI tweaks and collision detection improvements.-
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On 5/10/2020 at 3:47 AM, youki said:Sorry, if my question sounds stupid. But on the videos you posted is there speech? What does it say? If there is i guess it is because i'm not native speaker to understand.
But great job, your version looks awesome!
The speech is never going to be super clear, but it is recognizable, on start-up it is currently saying 'Destroy'.
During the game the robot chatter, currently rotates through:
- Kill
- Attack
- Alert
- Shoot
- Intruder
- Destroy
This will change to multi-word chatter made up of a number of words e.g. Kill the Intruder/Humanoid
When you die, it is saying:
- Got the humanoid, got the intruder
If you leave the screen and haven't killed all the Robots it says:
- Chicken Fight Like A Robot (although this is one I would like to tweak i.e. it is not very clear).
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Next update of my port of Berzerk for the Colecovision.
Evil Otto makes an appearance, and chases the player!
Pretty much functionality complete, but I have quite a few tidy-ups and speech/collision/timing tweaks to do, but extended play testing will be started very soon!
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On 5/5/2020 at 10:58 PM, alekmaul said:So @Tony Cruise, you're also using the speech synth. for sound effects ? no more use of standard coleco soundbios for that ?
Yep the sound effects are using the samples from the arcade game, no BIOS sound routine running at all, gives back cycles
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I have a number of people, who missed out on the 1st run, ask if there was going to be another run of my EA Classics title.
Toby has given the go ahead, but it will of course be limited in number, so now is your chance to express your interest so that we can gauge numbers.
Only one version will be released, more than likely the arcade cabinet cover, but please indicate your preference in this thread.
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14 hours ago, artrag said:Is it my algorithm?
If yes, you are probably the sole using my encoder in a game (after uridium for colecovision I mean).
Nice to know my tool is being used I'm the scene
Ah yes definitely your routine, it works very well. I think the sound effects are very close to the arcade now, and you can understand the speech so it is doing it's job well. I am going to write a wrapper routine that allows you to queue up a set of sounds, as the voices in Berzerk are made up of quite a few words in combination.
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Hi Tony, what are you using to play speech? Looking great!
Just normal Coleco sound chip, using the Math Lab based sample generation code, not perfect but doesn’t do a too bad job considering the limitations of volume control on the sound chip.
One sound effect or voice at one time, so have a priority for player shoot sound and the rest only start if the queue is clear.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk -
Another quick update of my Berzerk port for the original Colecovision.
- Added a graphic to the main title screen based on the Marquee
- Laid out the High Score screen with any current high scores (added some initial static scores)
- Demo mode now displays robots and they move and shoot
- Fixed a couple of bugs in the game play (not shown)
Next it's onto:
- Evil Otto
- Collision detection tweaks and adjustments
- Robot AI bug fixes and adjustments
- High Score entry
- Play Testing!!
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Quick little update to my port of Berzerk for the Colecovision, fixed some bugs when re-spawning. Added some information to the title screen, have written the code to move robot bullets.
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17 hours ago, MrPix said:If you’re using 24k of ROM, you have 8k left. Split that into two 4K blocks. One reads, and one is aliased to the same 4K, but as writes. So you can have the address decoder select an SRAM and assert read for the lower 4K and write for the upper 4K.
Make sense?
Yeah understand the concept, would need a custom PCB to be designed and would be more expensive than a straight 32k Rom cartridge, but doable. Not necessary for this game, but would definitely be worth looking at for some future projects, especially ones that would benefit from either additional Ram or flash storage.
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2 hours ago, MrPix said:That said, you could use up to 24K of ROM and have 4K of RAM in the cart that is fully readable and writeable. That's a useful extra amount of RAM to have on a CV, if not on an Adam.
I didn't know there was a cartridge layout that allowed that, I know one of the Megacart designs has read/write flash storage as part of it, they allow up to 128k Rom, are definitely more expensive though. I hadn't heard of any for smaller cartridge sizes. It would also depend on manufacturing cost as well.
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On 3/2/2020 at 9:57 PM, rietveld said:This looks great. If you ever need another beta tester I would love to play this
Have you considered a standard colecovision release or 'cavern fighter' as well as a 'super cavern fighter' that would use the Adams extra RAM.
I don't think extra Ram would add that many features, although I have thought about additional non-arcade levels and different cavern end bosses. I could mostly do this with the remaining Rom space as I have only used 18k of Rom so far and can easily use up to 32k if needed (same cartridge cost - not like back in the day). It will depend on how I go with writing my own sound effects engine and how many bytes I can steal from OS functions I am not currently using
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After a little bit of early beta testing, I had a few bugs to fix and I decided I would have another go at trying to get Cavern Fighter to run on a standard Colecovision without needing the Super Game Module (SGM) or an Adam with their 32k of Ram.
I had to rewrite quite a bit of the games scrolling engine and object engine but I have managed to get the game to run stability in the standard Coleco's 1k of Ram!
This is of course great as it widens the audience that will be able to enjoy the game.
I have sent it off for some more testing and have a couple more bugs to sort (including improving the sound effects), but it is very close to being done. Another update very soon.
The game will be released in physical form with a box and a manual by CollectorVision.
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Another update and demo of my official port of the arcade game Berzerk to a standard Colecovision.
#retro #colecovision #berzerk #homebrew #stern #collectorvisionChanges since the last update:
- Robots now start moving
- Robots move in their chosen direction and animate
- Robots can collide and die when they hit walls
- Speech example is now clearer
- Robots speed up as levels progress
- Has placeholder sound for shooting - to be replacedTo do:
- Robot firing
- Adjust robot moving logic
- Allow robots to change direction or stop moving
- Evil Otto!
- Remainder of speech samples and sound effects
- Bug fixes from testingAnother update soon!
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I agree DKIII would be a great one to do, but not worth the danger of using any of the Big N's properties, same as doing anything with Konami's name on it.
Now a game inspired by DKIII that would be cool
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VGM Compression Tool
in ColecoVision Programming
Posted
I think extending the last chapter of my book is in order with this update - very well done. If you don't mind I will add VGM playback as a 2nd sub-chapter after my coverage of using the OS 7 BIOS routines. And if I get time I will see if I can optimize the player code and share back here.
Can't wait to play with this some more!