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Asmusr

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Posts posted by Asmusr

  3. Posted

    Hello !!!

     

    Wonderfull game but I have a problem trying to play it on real hardware.

     

    I only have the standard TI-99 disk controller, so I only can use standard 90 KB disks (the disk´s image size is 180 KB).

     

    Is it any way to play this game on a standard TI system?

     

    Many thanks in advance.

     

    Matias

     

    You can delete TIC and TIO from the disk. Those are the object files left by the assembler, but they are not needed if you run TITA (E/A 5) or use the Extended Basic loader. I have done that for the attached a 90K disk image.

    Titanium90.zip

    • Like 3

  4. Posted

    - I would love to have the in-game music playing all the time, if possible. This is one of the things missing in most ti games: you have great intro music, and when the game starts: bang! silence, except for the sound effects.

    - You might want to look at making the ship's shadow-offset variable, for a sort of parallax scrolling effect (imagine the light source being roughly in the middle of the playing field)

    - The way your ship moves back to center position within the playing field after you've turned, or been near the upper/lower edge of the screen looks a bit awkward. Dunno how you could improve that though...

    - In a non-memory restricted world, you can have varying weapons/upgrades that drop from killed enemies; but that's probably wishful thinking :).

     

    Thank you for your suggestions.

    - The problem with the in-game music is that it has to be very simple in order not to clash with the sound effects. I made a compromise and decided to play a short burst of music once in a while.

    - Regarding the shadow, I like any idea that generate a spectacular effect with few resources. However, since the shadows from the spheres would not move as well I'm not sure how effectful it would be in this case. And actually, since this takes place in space where light is supposed to come from a star, the direction to the light source would not change when the ship moves. Realism is a key factor here!

    - Regarding the way the ships moves, I first kept it centered vertically, but I thought that gave you too little time to avoid approaching enemies, so I decided to move the ship slowly to the top/bottom when you change vertical direction. A problem you may have noticed is that in some cases this actually makes the ship move backwards relative to the surface.

    - Everything new I add has to be weighted carefully on a clock-cycle weight. I have used all scrath-pad RAM and most of the 8-bit RAM, so there are very few resources left to play with.

  5. Posted

    Two things I'll ask people to try when it happens. First, press Enter, and see if that clears it. Second, whether Enter worked or not, next time it happens, press and release the key that is 'sticking', and tell me if THAT works. Finally, report the key that stuck, please, and what you were using it in (because for the arrows at least, it matters whether the system was reading them as keys or joysticks).

     

    I just experienced this a few times with the up arrow (joystick up). Nothing helped except a reset. I was playing in CPU Overdrive mode.

  6. Posted

    I think the stuck controls are more a part of Classic99. I have seen this behavior in various games, including "Parsec," "Rabbit Trail," and "Spy's Demise." I have a hypothesis about what's causing it and I am going to test it out sometime soon.

     

    I have also seen that a few times in Classic99. Sometimes the ship gets stuck moving to the left all the time.

  7. Posted

    It's not just a convention—that's the way the TI keyboard is mapped. Perhaps, you could provide the user with the option.

     

    It's only mapped that way by the KSCAN routine, which I'm obviously not using, right? Anyway, I don't mind changing it in the next version if everybody expects Q to be the fire key, but having user defined keys would be too slow, I think.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    Tab is the joystick button. I guess there is a convention to use Q as there fire key, but I don't like to have all the keys so close together. Actually Q,A,O,P,Space would be my preferred keyboard controls (in lack of cursor keys), but I thought that would be too far from the standard.

  10. Posted

    I attached a new version to the first post of this thread with a few changes:

    • The mines (spheres, bulbs) now have shadows, as suggested by Retroclouds. This makes them look like they are floating, and it's more apparent that they are dangerous. On level 4 where there are several hundred mines it looks a bit strange, but in general I think it's a good improvement.
    • The collision detection with the mines is now more symmetric, but still far from pixel accurate.
    • I have added the version number to the start screen.

    I have not been able to replicate the problems reported by OLD CS1. The only problem I have noticed on my US console with the F18A is that the enemy ships sometimes start moving really fast in the vertical direction, but I cannot reproduce this consistently. If anyone have experienced these issues, please let me know.

     

    I'm not planning anymore updates in the short term. I'm looking forward to working on other projects for a change.

    • Like 1

  11. Posted

    Was it Jim who then started a Vanguard game for the TI, with full screen scrolling. I have the prototype somewhere.

     

    Edit:

    Yes, it was Jim Dramis with Paul Urbanus and Garth Dollahite. Jim and Paul also did Jungle Hunt with some clever scrolling. Paul and Garth did Pole Position. Vanguard, Jungle Hunt and Pole Position all for Atarisoft (target TI-99/4A of course).

     

    Very nice. I'm also thinking about making a Scramble clone.

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    Anyway, I have found a couple of strange things. First, after the first game, some graphics on the title screen become distorted. Secondly, at random times during the game the background graphics will stop scrolling. The background scrolls as I can still shoot targets and be killed. Notice in the second picture the "GET READY" at the bottom and some shot targets out-of-place.

     

    Thank you for reporting this. I haven't seem these problems myself, but I will try to do some more testing on real hardware. It might have something to do with the XB loader which I have to admit I haven't tried on hardware.

     

    Lastly, I see the collision is a bit sensitive around some of the red dots. I can be about a tile's-width away and get destroyed.

    Yes, the current algorithm for collision detection with the mines is very simple - I think this can be improved in the final version.

  15. Posted

    Very, very impressive stuff! Well done! If only Titanium could be put on a cartridge, I would buy it immediately.

    This game is one more reason to finally get a cartridge PCB with some RAM on it.

    I will definitely try to make a version for the 512 K card when it's released. I'm not planning on selling it, though.

     

    What I did notice is that I kept crashing into objects because I could not tell if they are part of the game scene or are enemies (e.g. the red bulbs)

    A possible improvement would be if they somehow 'stand out' by adding a shadow.

    I have tried to make the bulbs (I think of them as mines) stand you by making them blink, but I realize it's not that noticeable when the screen scrolls. A shadow is a great idea if it doesn't create too many new tile transitions.

     

    I like the tune that plays on the title screen, it's very catchy. Perhaps the same tune could play during gameplay on a low volume?

    It's using all the sound generators, so it wouldn't allow any sound effects.

     

    Either way, congratulations for writing a superb arcade game!

     

    Thank you!

  16. Posted

    If anyone is interested in this type of loader, I will have a little time tonight and could outline the general principals that you need to know and provide the source code for a SYSTEX like loader. With a few modifications this could be made to do what you want.

     

    Thank you, that's very kind of you and I would like to know for future projects. For the Titanium disk, however, I think I will just use the loader that InsaneMultitasker provided.

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    So this is a killer for HFDC, because you swap the RAM pages. Why are two bits set? Maybe try a SBO 0 here and SBZ 0 later instead of the second LDCR.

     

    Thank you, that works - try attached disk.

     

    I have also renamed TITANIUM to TITA and added an XB loader.

    Titanium.zip

  18. Posted

    It's the boot tracker code. If I don't call it, it works. It's not because the code doesn't work - it finds the right device name - but for some reason the HFDC doesn't like that this code has been called. Probably to do with enabling the ROM?

     

    [/font]
[font=courier new,courier,monospace]BOOTTR MOV @>83D0,R12         * GET THE CRU BASE IN R12
      MOV @>83D2,R9          * GET THE ROM ADDRESS FOR DEVICE
      LDCR @ONES,0           * ENABLE THE ROM
      AI R9,4                * ADDING FOUR PUTS US AT THE LENGTH BYTE
      MOVB *R9+,R4           * PLACE THAT IN R4 AND INCREMENT R9
      SRL R4,8               * RIGHT JUSTIFY LENGTH IN R4
      LI R10,FILEDV          * POINT TO TEXT BUFFER
      MOVIT MOVB *R9+,*R10+  * MOV ONE BYTE FROM ROM TO TEXT BUFFER
      DEC R4                 * FINISHED?
      JNE MOVIT              * NO, DO ANOTHER BYTE
      LDCR R4,0              * DISABLE THE ROM (R4 IS ZERO AT THIS POINT)
      B *R11                 * BRANCH TO NEXT SECTION OF CODE
ONES   DATA >0101             * WORD TO TURN ON ROM IN CRU[/font]
[font=courier new,courier,monospace]

     

    As I wrote earlier I copied it from "The Art Of Assembly — Part 7. Why A Duck? By Bruce Harrison 1991", and I don't fully understand how it's working. I would like to keep it, because I like to be able to run the game from any floppy drive.

  20. Posted

    I will try with another DRSLNK routine that Willsy provided to see if that makes a difference.

     

    No, that didn't change anything.

     

    Michael, I understand how MESS maps the different PEB slots to different cards, but how does the floppy controller cards map to the floppy drives, e.g. if you have both the tifdc and the hfdc in the PEB?

  21. Posted

    The problem is that you will very likely run into the same problems on the real hardware. Or, the other way round, if the real HFDC does not produce the file error, I'm having a problem in MESS. :-)

     

    When I try with the hfdc controller I'm also getting the FILE ERROR message. This is just a generic message I display whenever the DRSLNK OPEN command returns an error. A possible explanation is that I'm using a non-standard DSRLNK routine that I found at:

    http://atariage.com/forums/topic/163692-ea-file-access/#entry2071618

    I'm also using some boot tracking code from "The Art Of Assembly — Part 7. Why A Duck? By Bruce Harrison 1991", but this seems to work because is has correctly detected DSK1.

     

    I will try with another DRSLNK routine that Willsy provided to see if that makes a difference.

  23. Posted

    Titanium seemed to load and run fine under Classic99 using this loader from XB.

    Thank you, yes it's working fine, and so much faster than loading the object file using call load.

    I noticed this is also somehow based on SysTex, but perhaps only to load the loader?

  24. Posted

    Very nice! just getting a black screen using MESS though, I know MESS has no F18A emulation but could it be something to do with F18A mode being accessed before play has started as it does'nt even get to the title screen?

     

    It's working fine for me in MESS (0149b_x64), it just takes a little while longer to load the files during which time the screen will be blank. You can turn on the F18A mode be pressing F. Are you using Windows or Linux?

  25. Posted

     

     


    Now if I may ask, could I include it on the TI Gameshelf site?


    Certainly, a great honor for me. But you should be prepared for updates.

    BTW, here'a a link to the disk for those who are not logged into AtariAge:
    Sorry, no longer valid.
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