Ute

And here is my own example of a quick, half-assed attempt at creating a level from scratch.

Screen editor is almost done. I’ll be posting it later today/tomorrow. Some limitations: For now you must load character sets and maps one at a time. You must edit the individual map files and because it doesn’t load executables yet. You must put the generated files back in to the assembly file and re-assemble the game. There are bugs I’m sure, they’ll be fixed as found or reported. There are some planned fixes for the next version: Display DLI colors on the screen Fix tile graphics to display properly Load the executable file and edit it directly A tile editor with color so we can actually make our own tiles. And of course bug fixes Right now there is a lot of hard coded stuff but that will get changed once the executable is loading properly. However there is a problem with editing the executable directly and I’ve mentioned it before: If you make or edit a screen whose final RLE is larger than the original the program will not run properly. Also since the source code is not completely relocatable for now, this will also be a problem for editing the individual files. If the RLE is smaller no problem, the file can be padded out with zeros. If the RLE is larger then the original, then it won’t compile. Once code is all relocatable or at least certain portions, that problem will go away. Thanks for your patience and enjoy. Edit: Forgot to mention - Use the files in Fantomas' incbin.zip for loading the fonts and maps.

Level editor progress

I'm working on a level editor right now. I'm about 2/3 done. I can decompress files just fine, my re-encoder is off a few bytes - just need to tweak it to get it running. My ideas for the editor: Load in our version of the game. Un-compress all levels. Have a drop down to select a level. Once the level has been selected load DLI lines, DLI color changes, and tile set associated with that room. Be able to select tiles with the mouse. Once a tile is selected draw it on the screen where ever needed. Re-compress file and save it back to the game file. Screen shots attached. The first was an attempt to display the first character set. The second is my new work in progress.

The maps are stored with the lamps already drawn. First attachment - Code on the left is uncompressed level, code on right is screen dump from altirra with no lamps gather. Screens are identical. Second attachment - Code on left is still the uncompressed level, screen on the right is after collecting 5 of 6 lamps. So I think you're exactly right, RLE screens are stored with lamps already drawn. Edit: Forgot to attach files.

It scrolls a single line and copies one byte for each character into the character set at a time. So the Atari can only draw part of each character. When its time to scroll again, another byte has been copied to the character set and so a little more appears. Repeats this until all of the character set has been copied.

Fantomas that's great. I agree we should start splitting the source code in to meaningful files or logical partitions. I'm going to upload the new baseline with Alfred's fixed part. Then I think we should start using forks or branches on Sourceforge. We can then work independently from each other and merge whenever we need also independently from each other. I would like to start working on the screen editor again now that Fantomas has made the map screen data relocatable. I welcome any help. More importantly, I hope everyone who is interested in working on this project feels like they have a voice and feels included. I haven't seen anyone take a fork yet from Sourceforge.

Sorry Alfred I didn't have time to respond yesterday. I changed L0CDD to something more meaningful: ResetRoomsVisited, then called called from above code.

Tonight I finished merging DMX's commented file and my own, and uploaded it to Sourceforge. Fantomas, I hope you don't mind I uploaded your files as well. I would like to upload these pictures too if the authors don't mind(Philsan, emkay, and others.) Jose, you have some nice screens in the other Bruce Lee thread, would you mind if I uploaded those?

Could you be talked into coming over to the dark side and using Wudsn, Mads, Dis6502, Altirra, and other various cross compilation tools?

This became very apparent last night as I was working on a room editor. I realized that because each room uses RLE , the encoded rooms will all be a different size. This becomes a problem if an edited room is bigger than the original room. Pointing to the new locations would solve this until room 20. Where this would overwrite whatever data is stored after room 20. So I will put the room editor on hold for now. Once everything is relocatable I have a couple of ideas how to overcome the RLE. Most obvious would be store the data for rooms without the RLE, since the program is only 41K for now, we could use extra room. Another possibility would be to turn it back in to an ATR after all changes are done, and it could load a smaller executable once the title screen and music have finished, just like the ATX and ATR do now. Anyway, this is all moot for now. So I'll keep on chugging away at disassembly.

Created a Sourceforge project here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/bruce-lee-aa/ I uploaded BruceLeeXEX.asm. This should be almost identical to what Alfred has so we will all be on the same page. Not sure how everyone would like to create their account. I can give the admin name/password so that anyone who is interested in the project can add a developer account for themselves. I've never used Sourceforge before, but it looks like we can use either Git or SVN, or both? First thing I would like to do is Merge DMX's changes in to the 'trunk' or base or whatever the terminology is for Sourceforge.

I think you're brave doing it on real hardware.

Yes a repository or some kind of version control would be a good idea. Github or something like that?

The zero page init was something I had added because I was looking at another hacked version that was setting zero page locations. Initially I thought I needed to do this too, but once I realized the ATX version was not doing this I commented it out. BruceLeeXEX.xex

Omnivore is a great tool. I was hoping for something more specifically geared towards the game itself. It looks like Fantomas already has an editor we might be able to tweak for our purposes. Yeah, some kind of tribute would be cool. We could even include that quote above in the initial screen or maybe even the title screen. DMX, thanks for your help! Your comments are saving us countless hours of disassembly! Very grateful for everything you have shared, and very grateful for your willingness to help. You're very gracious. Fantomas, this is excellent!!! Thanks so much! That is huge!! Would you mind if I ported your code to C#? And maybe throw in a few tweaks to be geared more specifically to Bruce Lee itself?

BruceComments and DMX are the same version just commented differently. Both from a version I converted from ATX -> ATR and then from ATR -> XEX. The ATR version is nearly identical to the ATX version with protections removed. For the XEX I had to make a few space choices. But the engine is still using Ron's original work and nothing is functionally different, just some jumps and labels relocated in memory, and of course there is no loading in between screens. I am willing to give it a try time permitting. Something I always thought would be fun as a kid would be to have a level editor for Bruce Lee, like there were for other games(Boulderdash, Loderunner, etc). There are issues I noted on an earlier post, such as the engine is tightly coupled with the lamp table, which means the original code will have to change. Unless we want for example, screen 12 lamps always to be tied to some function happening on screen 4.(I hope that makes sense, I'm crap at explaining things sometimes) But this all sounds fun to me. Thanks. I'm flexible as far as what direction we go. We could do a fairly accurate ROF, or something else. Technically while were cracking it open we can do anything we want: Colors, character shapes, music. I'm open to whatever. One thing I would like to come away with at the end of all this would be a nice level editor.

Just a couple of tweaks and it's compiling. Didn't play test all the way through. Has a lot of good info. Fills in a bunch of gaps from my other commented file. I have attached the compiling DMX version and also my own commented version. I'll use Winmerge and try to get a nice working file going. Edit:Adding the caveat; My comments may not be %100 correct, especially any comment ending with a question mark. Edit 2: Awesome effort Paul, much appreciation to you! Edit 3: Gratitude to DMX as well! DMXBruceLee.asm BruceComments.asm

Taking a look and checking to see if it compiles. Thanks for all of your efforts Paul.

No problem. Hopefully he can give us a lot of useful information. At the very least his new maps and map packing tool would be very interesting to have. Edit:Spelling.

That's cool. It's too bad they are expensive and rare in the U.S. I've been messing around with mine quite a bit, and I really like it.

Just got an STE from the UK last week. Put a Meanwell supply in it and it's running great.

Here is a version I converted from the original VAPI ATX, with minimal intrusiveness, just copy protections removed, and slight rearranging of some code so it could compile in to a smaller xex. This can be reassembled with MADS(2.0.4 b7)or later. I have a version that is a bit more commented, but hopefully he can give some details on this non commented version and we can fill in the blanks from there. Bruceleexex.asm

Creating new levels graphically is not that hard. IIRC there are four character sets that change as the game progresses, each screen accesses a different character set which is dynamically loaded depending on the screen loaded. Accessing the the tables that draws each screen is pretty easy, just a matter of changing what character set, and what index into that character set each screen byte accesses. The challenge would be re-programming the level engine. There is a table that records which lamps are collected, and each time Bruce changes a screen it accesses this table to see if that particular screen should do something such as add ladders, open walls, open the floor on screen 2 etc. Totally possible, but would need some time and effort. I have made a disassembled source file that is partially commented, I can dig up if anyone is interested. I don't have a lot of free time, but I would be interested in working on this if there are others interested as well. Yeah, the one game I actually like more on the Apple IIe was Conan, game play could have been much better. Zorro also left much to be desired. Could have been better graphically and game play wasn't that fun either. I agree. I also hated the green Yamo. Relatively easy change the color for the Yamo, a bit harder for Bruce's face color because it was tied to the shirt color. Bruce and Yamo both used two Player Graphics each. Ninja used all four Missile Graphics. Source would be awesome! Fingers crossed, some authors are willing - some are not.

Well..........There is some effort there also. PP has some great drivers though that make it relatively painless.