Thomas Jentzsch
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Content Count
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Joined
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Days Won
3
Posts posted by Thomas Jentzsch
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1 hour ago, alex_79 said:
If someone doesn't have 4 sets of paddles, Track and Field controllers could be thrown in the mix too. The buttons seem to be far away enough that two people can play using a single controller.
Partially broken paddle controllers might get a new life too.
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7 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:How about VR∞M!
I had thought about this one too.
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6 minutes ago, Karl G said:Or Octo-Racers? 🙂
High Octane, Octoboost...
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2 minutes ago, Karl G said:I'm looking forward to seeing you guys race 4 cars each.
Me too!
I plan to a add a simple AI for the cars which have no driver. Then, when you start a new game, all players have to press their buttons within a few seconds. The remaining cars become AI driven.
BTW: You monitor or camera seem to have a heavy blue tint.
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16 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:I have four sets of paddles and I'll check it out today (and in the news section of the show tonight)! 🙂
Cool! But don't expect too much. There are still a lot of things missing. And to fix (e.g. the cars coming to a full stop if you brake too much).
BTW: I suppose I will name it only VROOM! (without the 8 ). Or VROOOOOOOOM!
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On 2/28/2021 at 8:36 PM, Thomas Jentzsch said:I created a non-playable demo of my simple, eight player, one button racing game.
Gameplay (not implemented yet):
- When the button is pressed and the car is over the boost arrows, the car accelerates.
- When the button is pressed and the car is not over the boost arrows, the car brakes.
- When no button is pressed, the car slows down gradually.
- The horizontal position of the car signals the position in the race. Also it requires the reaction of the leading players to be faster. Currently the difference per position is half the car width, this may change, even while the game is played.
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Continued here.
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After having a coarse idea for an one button racing game, I went ahead and started coding.
The current result is nowhere near to being complete, but I think it is good enough for a first impression. On real hardware it works with a QuadTari and four(!) sets of paddles, from which only the buttons are used.Gameplay:
- Press SELECT to select game length (30, 60 or 90 seconds) and difficulty (white = kids, blue = easy, yellow = normal, red = hard). Difficulty affects computer AI and braking.
- Set LEFT DIFFICULTY switch to A to activate red colored "SuperBoost" arrows. These occur randomly and provide twice the boost of a normal arrow.
- Press RESET to start the 5 seconds race countdown (indicated by 5 appearing red lights).
- During the countdown, each player must press his fire button to activate his/her car. The activated cars will become brighter, the other cars will be controlled by the computer AI. After the countdown, the race starts.
- During the race, press the fire button while your car is over the boost arrows. The arrows will turn your car's color if done right and black if you missed them. The former will accelerate your car, the latter will brake.
- The position of a car reflects its position in the race (not the gap to opponents). This gap will increase during the race, moving the leading cars further to the right. This reduces the reaction time for new boost arrows.
- Shortly after the race is over, the distance covered by each car will be displayed instead of the cars.
Note: This game uses paddles (fire buttons only), up to eight if you use a QuadTari.
There is no end to the game yet, you can only try to take the lead.BTW: During coding, I found that the latest Stella 6.5.2 still is missing some QuadTari support. Paddles aren't working as expected. But you can use Joysticks with directions left/right instead. Default mappings for 3rd and 4th controller are the identical to 1st and 2nd controller, but with Shift pressed.
And since my QuadTari is still shipping, testing is a bit hard currently.
Vroom 8! (v0.2) (PAL60).bin Vroom 8! (v0.2).bin
Vroom 8! (v0.3) (PAL60).bin Vroom 8! (v0.3) (NTSC).bin
Vroom 8! (v0.4) (PAL60).bin Vroom 8! (v0.4) (NTSC).bin
Vroom 8! (v0.5) (PAL60).bin Vroom 8! (v0.5) (NTSC).bin
Vroom! (v0.6) (PAL60).bin Vroom! (v0.6) (NTSC).bin
Vroom! (v0.7) (PAL60).bin Vroom! (v0.7) (NTSC).bin
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I went back several versions (until 4.7.2) and this demo never worked in Stella. It uses some TIA tricks which are not emulated in Stella.
@DirtyHairy Do you want to have a look? Should we create an issue?
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6 minutes ago, doug0909 said:Not sure how many people even have the equipment to play, but would 4 Trackball hacks work for Centipede and Missile Command? If so, would that only be in analog mode?
Trackballs are not listed as compatible on the QuadTari website. But I think they should work.
Then multiple trackballs hacks should work too. if there is enough CPU time during kernel display.
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I created a non-playable demo of my simple, eight player, one button racing game.
Gameplay (not implemented yet):
- When the button is pressed and the car is over the boost arrows, the car accelerates.
- When the button is pressed and the car is not over the boost arrows, the car brakes.
- When no button is pressed, the car slows down gradually.
- The horizontal position of the car signals the position in the race. Also it requires the reaction of the leading players to be faster. Currently the difference per position is half the car width, this may change, even while the game is played.
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Are you pointing the Image path in the Launcher settings to the correct directory?
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Brainstorming:
A one button, eight players racing game might work. Either eight horizontal or vertical lanes (one for each player) or a circuit layout with 8 different starting positions.
The track consists out of two (maybe three) types of zones (accelerate, brake, (neutral)). When you press the button, the zone you are currently on gets active. So you have to time your button presses so that you hit the accelerate zones and avoid the brake zones.
In case of separate lanes, you race towards the checkered flag. In case of a circuit, you try to catch and eliminate your opponent ahead.
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A simple hack: Use EOR BEQ/BNE instead of CMP BEQ/BNE.
This has two advantages which might be useful:
- A is 0 if equal
- The C and V flags are not changed
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The same would work with the missiles and the ball, and playfield of course. And you could read NUSIZx registers that way too, also some bits of CTRLPF. Reading RESMx is also possible. And you could use the VDELed shadow registers and gain another 16 bits!
Plus one bit from the ball.
There was a thread about this somewhere on AtariAge.
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3 hours ago, atari2600land said:It would be really interesting, if possible, to make an 8-player game using four sets of paddles.
Not feasible with the QuadTari. Only the buttons would be supported.
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7 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:I wouldn't blame an organisation that's had the heart ripped out of it by other forces.
Politics alert!
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7 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:Die Post ist hier voellig Kaputt, niemand weis was passiert, wenn mann ein Packet zur Post gibt. Das ist Einfach so Immoment.
Hat auch viel mit Politikischen Sachen Zu tun, die wir hier nicht drueber Schnacken.
Du bekommst Deine Karte, musst mal bisschen warten, wie alle.
Almost
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Have you tried auditing your ROMs?
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12 minutes ago, Dieter Laser said:I would rather have someone explain, why they are still on Facebook.
I am neither on Facebook nor Discord (etc. pp.), because I value my privacy and do not provide my data to companies who will use it to manipulate me.
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6.5 switched to a SQLite database for properties. So settings for 6.5 and versions before are independent.
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26 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:QuoteOh - another small issue but this may be user error: when I run from the command line with -lc joystick -rc joystick, should that override the 'auto detect' feature? When testing Lady Bug Arcade, it seems no matter what I specify in the command line, the QuadTari and SaveKey are always detected. This seems to happen even in 6.3, although I'm almost certainly this worked at some point.
It should override auto detect, so that's a bug. I'll look into it.
It tested with the attached ROM. Without any parameters, QuadTari is detected for both ports, with "-lc joystick -rc joystick" joysticks are detected in both ports. Can you double check your input, please?
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3 minutes ago, johnnywc said:PS Looks like the default is -UI/+Emulation; perhaps the default should be +UI/+Emulation?
Should be "+UI/-Emulation". And according to my tests it is.
How did you get -UI/+Emulation as default?
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18 minutes ago, johnnywc said:Thank you Stephen and the Stella team!
One issue I'm having (and I had it in 6.5.1 also) is that when I hit ESC and ~ to view properties, my mouse pointer is not visible.
I've reverted back to 6.3 temporarily since it's almost impossible to debug without the mouse cursor and that works fine.
Have you checked "Mouse cursor visibility" in Options/Input Settings/Mouse?
18 minutes ago, johnnywc said:Oh - another small issue but this may be user error: when I run from the command line with -lc joystick -rc joystick, should that override the 'auto detect' feature? When testing Lady Bug Arcade, it seems no matter what I specify in the command line, the QuadTari and SaveKey are always detected. This seems to happen even in 6.3, although I'm almost certainly this worked at some point.
It should override auto detect, so that's a bug. I'll look into it.
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Vice-versa, A = Expert or Advanced and B = Novice or Beginner. The reverse order frequently confuses people, that's why Advanced/Beginner is a good memory hook.
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VROOM!
in Homebrew Discussion
Posted
I wonder too.
Obviously I cannot play individual sounds for all 8 cars. I suppose I will play sounds for the two leading cars. Sounds will be the typical buzz sound (based on speed, maybe with some shifting). Or a braking sound, in case a player missed the boost arrows.