Franco Catrin

I only had two versions: A clean one that came compressed and I was unable to patch directly, and this uncompressed one by Kilroy. If you can point me to the one with the loading screen I can take a look. Font patches are welcome ?

It works fine in PAL and NTSC, but now that I think of, I don't know if in PAL the colors are the same, I think they may be a bit off. It doesn't have bosses, only a big plane from time to time. As I could see in the code, there are 4 stages for this game.

Hello everyone! I did some changes for the Screaming Wings game to improve the graphics and also improve the gameplay with it. I always felt that the game was too hard because you couldn't see the bullets neither the enemies against the background, so I changed them (see screenshots). Doing these changes I also created some reverse-engineering tools for Atari that may be interesting for some people. https://github.com/fcatrin/a8tools I also wrote a post about the process. It's in spanish but I can translate it if there is interest on it. http://franco.arealinux.cl/2020/06/a8tools-y-como-mejorar-screaming-wings-para-atari-800/ Cheers Screaming Wings 2020.xex

Of course I can do the changes that you might need! I'll send you a PM!

WOW you did in a few days what several of us were trying to do for a long time. I've just seen the first stage and got blown away! Hats off. Excellent job!

Oh no, there is no such a thing, the sprite is once in memory. The precalculated tables are at the byte level, but it seems you already got it. Also, the animations are done at 15fps, you don't need to go higher than that.

If you need faster graphics may be you can borrow some of my code for this game. It relies in precalculated tables https://github.com/fcatrin/a8pop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QGc7zjj660

Awesome work!!!!! Now waiting for the topic for purchasing them :-)

You are right! I'll take that restriction out of my mind.

Hey!! How time flies!! What an amazing port is that one for the BBC!! Reading about their progress reminded me the same struggles and doubts. Specially those about memory use, because for my code to run fast it uses a lot of precalculated tables and I don't know it they will fit on memory once the implementation grows, I must get to that point to know. As popmilo said, the graphics department have done a great job and I am the roadblock here, but the good news are that most of my real life problems are being left back and I'm "resuming normal operations" step by step. I hope to be back at A8 coding this year, there is no reason not to do it now.

Hi José!! We have to go back on track!

May be you don't realize but you are some kind of God to us. Your STAC inspired a lot of people here in Chile, I even got my first job thanks to a clone system that I did after reading your code (I was 14). Not to mention the users!! They just adore the turbo + error recovery system. Vitoco made another clone that was way more popular than mine, and I knew about him because of that. I think I'll do the reverse engineering again and then compare my findings with your source, just for fun.

This is awesome in many levels!!! I was behind a CAS with your loader for many years and I got one just a few days/weeks ago. I reverse-engineered your loader when I was a kid and I always had trouble understanding a part that seemed like an alternative bitrate estimator to me. I haven't checked your code yet and I don't know if I should jump directly into it or I'll try to repeat the reverse-engineering, it was just too fun. If that was a bitrate estimator, your loader is unique. All turbo/error recovery clones (including mine) didn't made that part, only tuned the SIO to use a faster bitrate at recording.

I use a version control system for that (Subversion in my case). I just push or pull the changes from my server and that way I can work on any machine. PS: Thanks for the good wishes. We are working on it!

It doesn't make me laugh, I think that those graphics are fine. May be you are being too critical with your own work. If I were you, I would take the learning of skills needed as a project in itself. Learn some asm, it is not so hard in these days if you have the will to do it, then come back to your game and bring it to life again! If you think that you need more help, here in AA there are people that work that way (José Pereira is the first one to come to mind)