Sporadic

Todays Tweaks; - The top/bottom/left/right navigation markers now show up to tell you the location of the next thing coming at you. - If its a rock and you hit it then loose 1/3rd health. - If its a nav box and you fly through it then you gain 1/8th health. - Sound effect for rock hit. - Added a pause between nav items so you have chance to react. The nav markers will show you where its coming from. - Sped up the shield reduction in main game. - Star trails in the navigation mode. - Reduced colour depth to 4bit for things it doesn't affect visually. To me the navigation part feels much better now. I'm tempted to add little score sprites when you score something. Like +100 or +150 etc etc. I'm really enjoying this and when I'm not doing it then it's one of the main things on my mind that I want to be doing Oh yeah, when its "finished" I'll be adding credits and loading screens etc

Looking very cool. I'm loving the 3d effect for the blockers. Thats a great touch. I always find it interesting creating pseudo 3d effects out of 2d.

Yes I'm happy for the binaries to be hosted on the site. I think that's a great idea actually because it can be awkward for people to find the correct binaries in forum threads etc.

Todays update; - You now have to dodge the rocks in the navigation section. - If you hit a rock you loose a quarter shield. - If you successfully fly through a navigation rectangle then you gain a quarter shield. - Shield is no longer replenished at the start of each level. You must collect Nav points to replenish instead. - Nav Score bonus worked out depending on number of navs collected. - Game bonus worked out based on hit accuracy and shield remaining.

Nice to see you pick something back up and carry on with it. Looking cool The parallax effects are really effective. Good job there. Small idea I had; How about making the occasional blocker slowly move up and down? Maybe later on when things get harder.

sounds like you need to brush up on your flying skillz Yes, i'm aware of this. I'll try counter it with some kind of hud or something. I think occasionally it's possible for the nav sprite to wrap to other side of the screen. I have also added a threshold to stop them being too far apart but if you miss one then it's hard to find the next.

Spinning boulder coming at you looks quite cool I need to swap out with a higher resolution sprite (to avoid uber much blockiness) and add in the 'dodging' code logic etc. Also as mentioned elsewhere, something to point you in the direction of the next navigation box would be useful. Especially now you have to dodge stuff, as you aren't following a direct path any more.

Ah, I hadn't even noticed! Thank you for pointing that out. PAL mode engaged...

I hadn't heard of that Chequered Flag timing issue before. I guess they didn't expect anyone to actually get flying laps? Yeah I'd like to get the switch added but would rather get a spare Jag for that first. Nice info though cheers

Haha excellent, no problem. I'm vsyncs all the way now As a follow up question, should I be detecting for NTSC/PAL and can that be done? I heard there isn't a massive difference, maybe 10% in real world tests. I know its 50 vs 60 hz etc but not sure if people really bother when doing fairly straight forward 2d stuff.

Yes I agree, there is lots of potential for some creative scoring. Thanks for the ideas, they are all taken on board. I'm glad it's being enjoyed The stars do go much faster in the bonus round, perhaps thats why it messed with your eyes. I've only tested on a PAL Jaguar, not sure if that's relevant. Lets see if I can get some more done this week.

Yes I like that idea too. Avoiding certain navigation boxes. Perhaps show an asteroid instead of the green box and dodge that.... The level time (shield) itself does run out quicker the higher the level gets but I might make that more apparent. I could also make the navigation stuff move quicker too, the further you get. As I said, i'm not finished, I just wanted to get that version out with highscores and a peek at the mini-game. I will definitely try and expand on it some more. RB+ is awesome and thanks for all the work. I never thought i'd be writing games for my Jag. I don't have the time really to learn machine code etc so finding you guys had done this was a wonderful surprise. Then my other half surprised me with a Jag CD drive a few months back (best surprise gift ever!) and the rest is history

Yeah not a bad idea thanks.

Well here it is. The updated version. Change List: - Added navigation mini-game every two levels. Fly inside the rectangles to boost your score. Hopefully the sound effects here will annoy everyone. - Added Highscores!! If running with MemoryTrack these are saved too!!! - Main menu shows highscores every 5(ish) seconds if you leave it there before playing. - Replaced sprite based Starfield with Particle based starfield. - Fixed areas of game running too quickly once new particle field added - Few tweaks to graphics. Seems to run roughly the same speed on real Jag and VJ, so haven't compiled multiple builds. Thanks to all the Reboot peeps for helping out when it was needed and adding new stuff to RB+ This isn't the final version, i'm not done with it yet. Attached are various image formats for (hopefully) your pleasure. AstroStormV11.abs AstroStormV11.rom

Yes, I've had to remove the RUPDALL from the main loop as weird crap started happening since changing to the particle field. Probably because things are running quicker now. I'm going to try vsync in the part of game in question in the actual Jag now and see how it runs. Hopefully like you say, it will be a closer match. I did of think the same about discovering if you are under emulation. But yes, the fundamental point of emulation is that it matches the hardware and could be fixed etc. I was hoping there would be some flag or something that VJ adds somewhere. I think I might just do as you suggested and create separate binaries for now. EDIT: Or punish people for using an emulator and leave it quicker Cheers

It's running much better now on my actual Jaguar. So that's a relief. I'm really liking the stars too. I just need to tweak a couple of bits, then then i'll post the new version.

Hi, I was wondering if there is a way to tell if my game is running on a real Jaguar or emulated in software such as VJ. The reason I ask is because part of my game now runs perfect on my actual Jag but is too fast in VJ. If there was a way to tell then I could slow it down based on that condition so people can play it either way. Thanks

So erm, yeah..... I just swapped out the old star code for the new particle code (made easier by using an 'include' for the .bas files) and OMG. I can barely even complete the first level now because the shield runs out too fast as the main loop is so much faster. So i'm going to have to slow that down now Then, I got to the navigation mini-game and they shot past so fast it was over in a few seconds.... I barely had time to react lmao This is all in VJ, not tried actual Jag yet but I would say that's a bloody good sign. Will post update later hopefully and maybe even new binaries....

Just awesome

Cheers, can't wait to try it

I tried assigning RUPDALL(1) to the B button on the controller but VJ just crashed. IF jpad=PAD_B THEN RUPDALL(1) ELSE VSYNC ENDIF Then you could hold down to hyperspace.

Ok right, I understand now. That sounds great. I'll have a look at the changes you've made. Thanks so much for the help. I will be looking at adding more particles if possible

It looks like the assets.txt is missing from the crytest project. I downloaded the GitHub master.zip

Strange, i've just noticed a difference between mine and yours... Could it blow up where I used RND * 512 for the angle? You used RND * 511 Just a thought. Also, perhaps the raptor_particle_pixels variable isn't large enough? I changed it to 16 and it blew up. Maybe it should be larger. Yes, that RNDRANGE is quite handy. Spotted it when looking up RND in the help file.

Also, what do the raptor_particle_drift_x and raptor_particle_drift_y variables do? I see you have set them to 1000 but I wasn't sure the exact effect of them? I'm not sure I can see any difference.