SIO2

I have made a few more carts and offered those to the ones I could tell were interested. Check your PMs.

Everyone has a million ideas about what it should have been myself included. They could never make everyone 100% satisfied but now that it is this far down the road and they really have nothing, it seems like a lost cause. Either build what you want and hope it sells or have a little focus group and see if you can hit 80% of that then build it. Sometimes consumers don't know what they want until they see it. At one point, I would have never dreamed I would have any use for a tablet computer. Now my tablet might as well be glued to my hand. I see someone suggested plastic cards as carts. Didn't someone try that? Anyhow, they could go really old school and use punch cards. I just thought I would throw that out since we are dreaming outloud.

It depends on parts availability, what it costs me to make, when I get a request, how much time I have at that moment, what it costs to ship and so on. These posts on here last forever so I would rather just handle each case individually. Stun Runner 87 - I had offered you one of the first run but you never responded to my PM.

Yes, I thought about it in post #66. For now, I am happy to make carts. Just takes a little time like things did in the good old days.

I don't have boxes. I have just made a few carts for people who wanted them. If you indicate your interest here in this thread, I will pm you when I make more. Thanks. I am glad people are enjoying Alpha Race.

Urban Dictionary: yahtzee. word shouted when something good happens or when you don't know what's going on. YAHTZEE!!!

Uhm I guess don't take close ups of the box wear if they are trying to sell it new in shrink? I came across a nice looking Berzerk 2600 cart in shrink at a game store. Nice looking aside from the dust on it. I asked the clerk how much. He said $100.00. Well I wasn't going to pay that for a dusty one.

Do the pegs serve any purpose on 7800?

It did compile fine with the latest version of 7800bas. Thanks again. Love it.

Master, I am humbled by your magic. Thank you. I love the demo. It didn't compile for me though on this computer. I think perhaps it is because I have the older Feb 22 release of 7800bas on here.

Awesome Mord. Glad to see you join the discussion. I will have to check that out. Meanwhile, I discovered an error in attempt 1 that prevented the ship moving up properly. I fixed that and then duplicated that structure for dealing with the sign on vx. Check this out and see what you think. ardemo try 2.zip

One thing that the easy peasy model so far presented lacks is accounting for existing velocity. Right now the dx dy values split the thrust to the each axis but that value becomes the sole velocity used to move the ship which results in a sharp turn. I think a vx and vy are needed to store the history of velocity on each axis so that vx=vx+dx and vy=vy+dy. New velocity = old velocity + acceleration. My difficulty with doing that is handling the sign (positive or negative) of the thrust because if we are in motion and flip the ship 180 degrees and thrust then we are actually subtracting velocity rather than adding. Any suggestions about ways to deal with negative numbers in 7800bas would be appreciated.

I think OR had 64 angles of rotation but for simplicity I think we should model fewer. Another issue is trying to display them. Do we need them if we can't see them? If we don't know where we are pointed when we thrust, how is that different than being out of control?

Me: I have been searching for a way to achieve this for a long while now and so far I have been frustrated but hopefully, working through this here will help me understand it and maybe help someone in the future who references this thread. Most sources I have tried to follow convert the angle from degrees to radians before doing cos and sin. 7800bas doesn't have COS or SIN built in at this point but, we can calculate those values with a PC and create a lookup table of the results for each angle. A professional told me this: Pro: Let's say that STARSHIP has 16 possible angles of movement. Starting from "North", we'll number these 0 through 15. Each angle is 22.5 degrees apart. Now, to determine our vector, we're going to always assume a 'length' of one. Now, evil geometry says that sin (vector) = opposite over hypotenuse. cos (vector) = adjacent over hypotenuse. Thankfully we always know that our hypotenus, at this step, is equal to one. This means that sin(vector) = opposite, which happens to be our "DY". And our cos(vector) happens to be our "DX". So, to determine our DX for any given angle, DX = cos(angle). And DY = sin(angle). Me: Now, I don't know but I think perhaps in this case it does not matter if we are using degrees or radians because we are just trying to get a proportional value in order to assign a percentage of thrust to each axis. That professional also advised to multiply by 100 to loose the nasty decimal places Then the professional says when we are ready to move our ship we need to do this ;X = X + (DX * THRUST) / 100; // Correct for the pixels used in movement ;Y = Y + (DY * THRUST) / 100; // Correct for the pixels used in movement What I am thinking is doesn't the division just bring back the decimals? So, why get rid of them in the first place. I mean if we can't handle them in one place, how can we handle them in another? So what I have done in the attached example is to calculate the DX = cos(angle). And DY = sin(angle) for the eight possible rotations of the ship and then place those values into a lookup table as fixed point numbers. The values in the table are absolutes as the signage will be done in the player movement routine when the the dx and dy get added to or subtracted from each axis. The decimal places have been truncated to one place. So, can anyone help me understand what is wrong with the attached example? Does anybody have an alternate method or working code? ardemo try1.zip

Is that like henway? What's a henway? Oh, bout 3 pounds.

Sigh, I not only receive feedback on this through the AA forums but I have had instant messages and contacts through other channels about this game. There seems to be a lot of interest and a lot ideas about what it should be and how it should control. One last time, I will say that I am totally satisfied with the way this game looks, sounds, and controls. I have played hundreds of games of it now and I play it every day. Working on it at this point has become just that, work and there is no more joy left in it that for me. I am not interested in making changes to this version of the game. To the few that are so determined to change my mind on that point, please don't make me regret my decision to share this. Further development may continue along a separate branch perhaps as an Alpha Race Plus or under a different name but this branch is done growing.

This thread is to develop a demonstration of a ship movement routine in 7800bas that produces a result that looks similar to Omega Race / Asteroids. This initial post is a starting point only and does not display the desired characteristics. All programmers, mathematicians, rocket scientists as well as anyone who has constructive input are welcome to participate. ardemo.zip

That is an awesome product. I have one and don't need another but they work great.

Before long I will start a topic in the 7800 programming forum and we will go on from there. QSY

I didn't assume that. I assumed that you intended to imply that I was quitting too quickly to which I responded that I felt I had given it a good effort and attempted to demonstrate such via my display of ignorance which served to cause you to confess to posses exactly the kind of information I require. So, now you are on the hook. Let me make a proposal that we let Alpha Race be what it is because I love playing it as is. I am going to make carts of it as is. If the well be poisoned then so be it. I will try to keep the level of Alpha Race carts in the well within EPA allowances. There are however more letters in the Greek alphabet. If we were to take up a discussion of model for this type of ship movement in the 7800 programming forum then other programmers could participate and learn and the result could be offered as a simple demo for inclusion in future releases of 7800bas. After that I could perhaps start to work on a Beta Race. What say you? Oh also, sorry to hear about that professional thing. I hope you get over it soon.

Thanks. I love and admire Bob's work. I think however that he speaks 6502 assembly language and I do not (at least not much). To have Bob attempt to teach me how to do this would be akin to having Beethoven teach a gorilla to play piano. (Please keep in mind as you read the following that I am not an advanced programmer and I attempt to explain things to the best of my ability and understanding at this time). However, I have given the issue of the ship's movement considerably more effort than would be apparent in this thread since I was working on it before anything about it was posted here and continued work on it even after I had posted that it will not be a part of this game. I built a simple model of the ship's control routines as a separate program so that I could play with it and see if I could achieve the desired result. After doing a lot of research and trying different things and getting results that ranged from about the same to considerably worse, I have decided to not attempt to put the Arcade Omega Race / Asteroids type ship movement into this game. There are many reasons for this decision. First, the current control mechanism snaps the ship to one of eight angles which cause effects of momentum on trajectory while turning to be much less smooth than a system that tracks more angles. Tracking more angles of rotation would mean rewriting the shot launching and shot movement routines and may also result in the need for changes to boundary checking. Also, achieving a smoother stop is going to be a challenge. New velocity = old velocity + acceleration - decay is pretty straight forward but if decay is applied at a constant rate then the effect is the same as the hard stop whether you are using whole or fractional numbers. The calculatios necessary to determine the acceleration vectors and proportional decay are not easily achieved within 7800bas. They could be achieved with additonal subroutines and or inline assembly but would still likely load the system and could potentially cause problems for display in this fast moving game. It is also possible that at least the accelration vectors could be precalculated but, I hope that you see by this point that the effort would be much greater than the benefit IMHO and this is where I stop.

Has anyone tried this on a PAL console? Does it work. I only have NTSC systems.

Thanks guys. I plan on putting together a handful of these soon. I have a busy few days coming up and I am waiting on our local print shop to make me some labels. First copy goes to Atariboy for his awesome art. After that I will contact those who say they are interested as I get some carts built.

What? You can get a six month payment plan. What more would you want? A free controller?

This is way - way off topic but, please be careful naming your children. My name is Brek Brixius which is an uncommon name and an unccommon spelling of that name. I also find it to be a bit of a tongue twister. So many times when I introduce myself to people they get stuck trying to process my name. I hear them say, "I am sorry did you say, Rick?, Brad?, Rod?, Brick?" Then after five minutes of talking to them while they go uh huh, uh huh, they say "What nationality is that - your last name?" Then I know they are still trying to put me into a box and they have not heard a word that I said. So parents, resist that urge to be different. Jim is just fine.