splendidnut

Hey all, Is there any official DPC+ documentation? Currently I'm working off of the DPC+ Demo posted here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/163495-harmony-dpc-programming/ That is my sole resource for working in DPC+. But after RevEng's response here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/247084-platformer-wip-help-needed/?do=findComment&comment=3410657 It appears that I'm missing quite a bit. Can anyone help with this? Thanks.

@RevEng Thanks for clarifying.

To start off with, I am not a bBasic programmer. But I am a bit confused by this. I was only looking at the 6507 code. Is there a way to even see the ARM code in Stella? From what I've read on DPC+ itself, there appears to be no collision detection or scrolling features. Unless you are talking specifically about the DPC+ kernel in bBasic. Does bBasic add upon the features of DPC+... and if so... is there documentation or source code? Could you please elaborate on this more and provide references to places where programmers have been caught off guard? How do you cycle check on real hardware beyond just checking for a stable picture? I apologize for the tangent but I wanted to clear up any confusion I or anyone else may have.

It's a bit of a trick and requires a basic understanding of 6502 assembler and the internal workings of the Atari 2600... I switched into the debugger and stepped thru the code using the [+ Scan] button until after the display was done rendering, found where a timer (TIM64T) was setup at (Address 1B07) and then I watched the code until it hit the loop which waits until the timer runs out which is at (Address 1957). I'd say you only used about 50% of your available cycles. That's just an educated guess though...

@MausGames Pretty awesome looking so far! I'm not too familiar with bBasic but, after taking a quick look in Stella, it appears that you have plenty of time for more logic. Also... the Stella emulator perfectly emulates an actual Atari 2600. There are only a few minor differences so you should be fine in regards to this running on actual hardware.

Mostly under-the-covers progress has been made... nothing really visible yet. I'm currently working on the code for drawing the burgers on the level utilizing the DPC+ registers.

Example of simple code commenting that is quite helpful: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/247017-help-with-1st-game/

The most useful piece of advise I can give you would be: Comment your Code. Learning to/being able to comment your code will help you out in the long run. After walking away from a project, just for a little bit, we tend to lose context of what code does what. Commenting as you go will help give yourself hints in the future as well as help you think more about what you are doing... and actually improve your skills in the long run. AND It would be immensely helpful to the rest of us, and probably lead to more people stepping up to help. You know your code way better than the rest of us. Tell us what it does. At the very least, indicate where you handle the different player conditions of grabbing the vine, jumping, shooting, etc. After a quick glance, my first question is: What are the variables b, c, and d used for?

What would be your choice for the next project? For when this one gets done...

M-Network (Ron Surratt, specifically) actually did a really good job with it. The display engine of the original was as crammed as it could be. The extra RAM they had in the cartridge was used for storing the game variables since the main RAM in the Atari was almost completely used by the display engine; mainly for the burgers. The extra RAM/bankswitching also made it easy to make it a two player game. There really was no way they could make it better at the time. My original idea was to finesse their engine, but that would have been way too much work. I started without using any special bankswitching, but soon gave up and switched to using DPC. Which worked for the most part, but didn't quite have the power needed for really improving the burgers. To display the burgers with differentiating colors requires 8 TIA updates per burger display line. With DPC handling the sprites, I had something working that just fit within a display line and updated at least the colors (4 of the 8 TIA updates). I didn't have enough time left to also update the playfield display of the burgers for showing them being knocked by the Chef. If I really wanted to, I probably could have come up with some way to do it... I had that bouncing around in the back of my mind since August... but then November came around and nothing had come to me, so I had to come up with some other idea. I started digging around and hit upon the DPC+ Demo. I remember reading about the bus-stuffing capabilities back during the summer. It sounded cool... then when I saw the demos, it really hit me how much power it would give me. One of the big benefits outside of the 10 cycle TIA writes was the ability to write back to display RAM... which should give me everything I need to really make it work and look good. Maybe even make the burger pieces look like real pieces on the level.

Surprisingly, I think that might be an untouched version from the original game... displayed in full-resolution glory. Yes... definitely on the todo list to fix the movement issue.

ChaoticGrill is an attempt to bring a new version of the arcade classic BurgerTime to the Atari 2600. With a grill in the midst of chaos, you control Pete the chef to build burgers for eagerly awaiting customers. Sounds like an easy job, right? Well it would be if it weren't for some other pesky ingredients trying to interfere with your burger assembly line. It's chaos on the grill. But you can manage, right? To play, navigate your chef around the kitchen and knock down pieces to build your burgers while avoiding the hot dogs, pickles and eggs. You can use the FIRE button to spray pepper on the enemies. Knock down all the pieces to complete a level and move on to the next one. Controls: JOYSTICK - Move player around FIRE BUTTON - Spray pepper (also start game) SELECT - Switch levels RESET - Reset to title screen RIGHT DIFFICULTY - Turn on/off music Credits: splendidnut - programming, sound NostAlgae37 - graphics Latest Version (as of August 18, 2019) chaoticGrill-2019-08-18--NTSC.bin chaoticGrill-2019-08-18--PAL60.bin ------ Original Message ----

Sorry about the lack of updates; I got distracted by a trail of other things: acquiring an Atari 5200 and games, working on the house, dealing with fleas in the basement, etc. Basically real life really snuck up on me and turned my attention towards other things. So I've decided to open up the project to the community for those who wish to collaborate and hopefully help drive this project to be completed sooner. So how can you help? I could really use help on the game logic... I know this project is in assembly language... but if someone could create a crude demo of the game in Batari Basic that implemented the actual game logic, it would give me something to work off of. There are definitely other areas (music, character graphics, etc.) that I could use help in too. One of the big reasons I want to open up this project is incase there is someone out there more motivated than me to drive the project home sooner I just recently switched it from using DPC to DPC+ because I have some ideas on how to harness the more advance features to take care of some of the issues I'm having now with not having enough cycles while drawing to really make the playfield usable. Oh... if anybody wants to give input on the name... I'm torn between calling this project ChaosGriller or ChaoticGrill. Sorry if this seems like just a quick update, but I really wanted to just get this out there.

Sorry about the lack of updates; I got distracted by a trail of other things: acquiring an Atari 5200 and games, working on the house, dealing with fleas in the basement, etc. But I'm off of work till the end of the year, so I now have lots of time to work on it. I'm thinking about reworking the engine to use DPC+ instead of DPC... I really need the extra capabilities to do a better job and of course free up some extra cycles when drawing

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys!

Started a blog about it here: http://atariage.com/forums/blog/614/entry-12174-burgertime-remake-the-start/

M Network's BurgerTime for the Atari 2600 is a decent game. It was one of the first games I played on an Atari 2600 emulator back in the late 1990's. But it is not without it's issues. The chef moves quite sluggishly, the graphics are bit on the bland side, and the controls could do with some improving. The graphics were a compromise made when the game was developed to avoid as much flicker as possible. The only time the game flickered was during the use of pepper (which wasn't too bad) and when a bonus item is shown (which was bad since it was a 2 frames on/2 frames off interleaved with the hotdog). Not too long ago, I spent some time working thru a disassembly I created of the game. I tweaked the "finished" burger colors and doubled the speed of the chef. The game became much easier to play, maybe a little too easy. But there was a really nasty bug that emerged (or became easier to trigger). When dropping more than a couple of burger pieces at the same time, an infinite loop would be triggered which would black out the screen and freeze on whatever musical note was playing at the time. So after seeing a couple of people discussing the issues, I've decided to take on the challenge of creating a better version/conversion/port of the game for the Atari 2600. I figured the best way was to start from scratch. My main goal is to create a more accurate arcade version while still working within the limitations of the Atari 2600. What I've done so far: I have programmed in the graphics for the first level from the Arcade version. I'm currently using an asymmetric kernel for the displaying the level. The level and ladders are colored based off the first write to PF1. The burger pieces are properly colored within the level and there can be four different pieces on a line. They are still just colored rectangles but being properly colored helps them stand out better. I still need to figure out a way to show them after being stepped on by the chef. I'm currently using DPC (the Pitfall 2 chip not the more recent DPC+) to be able to display 2 sprites updated as a 1-line Kernel. Currently only 1 of the sprites has their color updated every line. The other is just a solid color. I don't quite have enough cycles to do both. I'm working on a round-the-corner algorithm for the joystick control to help ease the movement of the player thru the level. I plan to use the 20/30 Hz flicker routine (seen in the Pac-Man 4k remakes) to display upto 6 detailed sprites. The display kernel is 5 lines long. One line for the level platform or ladder piece. A blank line for figuring out what burger pieces are displayed. Three lines for displaying the burger pieces. Time-wise, I'm not sure how long this will take since I'm only working on it sporadically. But I'm going to try to give updates maybe once a month. That's basically it. I've attached a screenshot of what I have so far running in Stella.

Did you try change the channel and back again to allow the TV to retune? Or maybe try rerunning the channel search? That's the only thing I can think of. I have to do that when I first turn on the TV for playing Atari. On another note, so far it seems older LCD TVs work better with handling the Atari. I've run my Atari on both a 40" Insignia LCD (purchased 2012) and a 19" Toshiba LCD (purchased sometime around 2008). So far the 19" Toshiba works better. I can't even play Halo 2600 on the 40". It displays all washed out with a loud buzzing for the audio. The other game I've had issues with only the 40" is that Q-bert seems to like to display long white horizontal distortion lines when completing the level. Only seems to happen occasionally though. I would also suggest you acquire an CRT... Especially if you have a 6-switch. There's an interesting 3D hue effect I've noticed that makes the games look fantastic.

Burgertime is actually one of the 2600 projects I've been playing around with... (the other is my own original game). So far I've only changed the look of the finished burgers on the plate and sped up the chef's movements. Even with the chef moving faster, I'm still not that great at playing the game, but at least I can make it a few levels in now. I've thought quite a bit about doing more work on it, especially after reading all of @iesposta ideas posted here, and in another post somewhere else in the forums on AtariAge. it would take quite a bit of work to do anything beyond a few changes... especially to fix up the graphics. The big debate I'm having right now with the Burgertime project is whether to keep hacking away at the original or just start from scratch.