Thomas Jentzsch

Cybergoth · October 12, 2006

Crap!

vdub_bobby · October 10, 2006

How do you play the game?

Zach · October 1, 2006

Thanks. I should have asked for help earlier. I've learned a couple things from this experience.

I had the same problems with Splatform 2600. Learned my lesson there.

BTW: I suppose VSYNC is the really critical part.

Zach · September 30, 2006

Try enabling VBLANK before VSYNC (or maybe even directly after the kernel).

Cybergoth · September 26, 2006

Or use one byte for each pair of digits, holding a value 0-99.
...

Very elegant and straightforward solution. It should be even possible to get rid of the unrolling and use a loop instead.

Nathan Strum · September 26, 2006

If it helps, it's still on the frontpage of my Blog arrangement, since I added it to favourites

Same here. :party:

Cybergoth · September 26, 2006

I'm curious now to have a look at River Raid as well. There certainly must be some kind of limiting restrictions to its method, or?

IIRC Caroll calculates with graphic pointers instead of scores. The limitation is the necessary graphics data organisation.

Don't know if that's useful for the NES too.

Cybergoth · September 26, 2006

It seems a reasonably good binary to decimal conversion will roughly consume some 500 cycles for a 16 Bit number and 1000 for a 24 Bit number. Now consider for example a Highscore list with twenty 24 Bit entries

But you can avoid conversion (check the River Raid disassembly).

Thomas Jentzsch · September 25, 2006

Many thanks for the compliments and suggestions.

I haven't decided yet if hitting the wrong color will restart the sequence or only decrease the timer. Restarting will probably result into game over too often.

The power up ideas are good, but probably require too much space. Though I might check reversing controls or swapping the colors when hitting the enemy.

Thomas Jentzsch · September 25, 2006

First thing that comes to mind: could use same method as Kaboom!: lose a life and go down one level. Of course, then you have to add "lives," which you may not want to do. Maybe move down one level and have a time penalty?

Yes, adding lives would probably cost too much space.

I don't think advancing a round without successfully completing it is good game logic, so I'd rule out #4.

Agreed.

Thomas Jentzsch · September 25, 2006

Thanks. Yes, I think it's pretty unique. :party:

Regarding the collisions (or wrong color), I am not sure how to penalize the player. There are a few options:

1. game over

2. timer decreased (game over when zero, this is fixed anyway)

3. restart round, but with less time

4. end this round without any points and go to next round

5. ...?

1., 3. and 4. could be good for enemy collision, 1., 2. or 3. for wrong color.

By using option 1, the game would probably loose a lot of dynamic, because the player has to be extremely careful. So maybe 3. for enemy collision and 2. for wrong color could be good compromise.

What do think?

Cybergoth · September 14, 2006

If the game was available on disk and tape as well, then it seems absolutely logical to copy everything from ROM into RAM first.

EDIT: The 4k garbage could be hires graphics, sprites or something like that and $FF/$00 maybe color values. :party:

SpiceWare · August 24, 2006

Paddles! Just tell the emulator to emulate them. Read emulator manual for details.

Nathan Strum · August 24, 2006

>100,000? I would like to see that!

SpiceWare · August 20, 2006

don't have my op code notes handy, though I suspect the ASL method would take an extra scan line.

A few extra cylces, yes.

BTW: Depending on the minimum and maximum possible positions, you may be able to set HMxx directly after the DivideLoop.

Did you happen to watch the video I posted of my BBS software in action?

Nope, must have missed that. Link?

SpiceWare · August 17, 2006

Just a hair over 8 scanlines. Need a 15-byte table of HMOVE values.

Even works without a table:

 lda TempRAM,X
 eor #$07
 asl		  
 asl		  
 asl		  
 asl	  
 sta HMP0,X

Untested. :lol:

supercat · August 9, 2006

Just sprites. Venetian blinds, shifted every row.

Cybergoth · August 5, 2006

What I'm very happy about though, is that with Lady Bug we'll still see an Arcade conversion this year. And what an excellent conversion it is! It's been a while since I last bought me a 2600 homebrew game, but this one is a definite must!

Definitely! I just tried the PAL-60 version on my TV and is is absolutely great! :lol:

BTW: I am just having a controversity with someone at the German Wikipedia regarding Lady Bug. One guy really believes there was an Atari 2600 Lady Bug before and constantly removes my corrections.

Cybergoth · July 24, 2006

]Actually removing the RESP is exactly the right approach. Maybe you should have a look at my 11 Invaders code.

I thought you were doing some weird things with all the "patch" bits in order to blank the gaps. Then those are only to offset the whole set of rows, making it move, or?

No, the offset is done by the code which jumps to the RAM display kernel.

The patch bits are there for enabling and disabling the invaders. The code could be much simplier, but I tried to make the invaders moving range as wide a possible, so there are some extra patches necessary.

Zach · July 20, 2006

Good idea.

Cybergoth · July 20, 2006

Hm... I think I tweaked Eriks code some, just turning all STA RESP1 into STA RESP0 and it looked exactly the same

Shouldn't be. When you RESP then the first copy doesn't show up. So NUSIZ has to be set to two copies close, with GRP0 and GRP1 interleaving.

The only way I see right now would be clearing the GRP register. Just removing the matching RESP wouldn't do anything useful I think.

Actually removing the RESP is exactly the right approach. Maybe you should have a look at my 11 Invaders code.

Cybergoth · July 20, 2006

1. Why do all demos I saw, especially 11 Invaders stuff, use both sprites? It seems that one should be enough already. Else, what was the plan to display explosions?!?

1a) Spacing

1b) No explosions, just let them flicker

2. What strategies are available to "not" display sprites in the chain?

Selfmodifying code in RAM.

Zach · July 17, 2006

I'm going to include Knight Jumper as a bonus game with Four-Play.

Good idea.

Since I'll need to explain how to play in the manual, it doesn't make sense to make it an Easter egg. However, I can still keep the means of starting it a secret. What do you think? Would you rather be told how to launch a bonus game, or figure it out for yourself?

Depends on how hard you make it to find out. It shouldn't be too easy, then it makes no sense. And it shouldn't be too hard, so that everybody is able to find it. And they should then be able to play Knight Jumper without always having to "waste" a long time with Four-Play before.

This limits the possibilities quite a lot. So probably, not hiding it at all is the better idea then.

Cybergoth · July 10, 2006

No more 2600 games from you?

supercat · July 9, 2006

Very nice!

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