8bit-Dude

I know this is a pain, but I would like to convert the G2F code in the same manner as we did for the CIN code: OS ROM enabled, and only DLIs running. Flash, could you possibly do this for me? Please, please, please, pretty please! (see attached, g2f.a65) Atari-G2F.zip demo.xex

I have a quick (and important) question: does anyone know how to read MCPP files? Atari Interlace does not import ASM files for this format, only xex (see attached) MCPP.xex

Thanks for the input Irgend. I am going to mull over this the next couple of days, and see if it can get me progressing a little faster (I have already consummed 4 weeks of my entire freetime on this PMG/GFX stuff). Meanwhile, if some generous soul could look into ways to accelerate the CIN rendering, I would be very grateful.

Hmmm, not that bad actually... though clearly not as good as C64 equivalent. When I stumbled on CIN, my hope was that I could achieve equivalent (or better) GFX. In the end, gameplay matters more, so perhaps in the shorterm I could latch onto this. Could you tell me how you produce the image and code to display it? P.S: the game uses pixel color to determine speed. Grey/Yellow for the track (full speed), Purple for walls (0), and everywhere else slow speed.

In order to help veterans understand better my problems, I am attaching here the sources of a cross-platform tech demo for C64/A8. The D64 in VICE gets 32 FPS, whereas the ATR in Altirra gets 12 FPS. Could the vets (Flash? Rybags? Popmilo? Phaeron? Irgend? Schlortt?) help me improve the file /include/Atari/CIN.a65 as follows: (1) Use IRQs instead of DLI vector, to speed up the code. (2) Add refresh for timer/keyboard/joystick, so the OS ROM can be disabled? (I badly need the memory to run the full game). Many thanks in advance guyz! sources.zip demo.atr demo.d64.zip

I wish I could use one the built-in gaphics modes, but they absolutely suck. I am attaching below a comparison of original track (256 colors), converted to CIN and G10, to make the point (there is also the C64 version thrown in). If someone with the needed skills could hook up with me, I would really appreciate it. Ideally, I want to run IRQs (instead of DLIs), and switch off the ROM while still having the necessary functions for the game (timers, keyboard, file reading).

Please ignore that video, it is very old and not representative of the current status of the game. The C64 version is ready, and got much better FPS than shown on that old video. The sounds are also improved, etc... I have original C64 and XE at home, with ethernet cards (DragonCart in case of A8). So I am testing the game at each step on actual hardware as well as emulators.

Could you point me to an existing example of such programming method? I have no idea where to start with implementing this. :-S

I tried adding 20 nops at the beginning of the loop. The image still displays correctly (20 is the max, at 21 sync is lost). However, the FPS of the game does not improve. loop: nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop nop eor #$c0 sta wsync sta prior dex bne loop

Hey Phaeron, Flash helped me a lot getting the OS ROM functioning again, by following your instructions. I have attached the resulting code. But as you predicted, there is not a lot of CPU time left for anything, so FPS on my actual game is very low (3 times lower than C64). If I wanted to use IRQ, would it be a lot of effort modifying again the code? Atari-CIN.zip

That would be awesome! :-)

Most of the code is straight forward, but there are some sections that cannot easily be converted, like this piece of the CIN code: dlist0: dta d'pp',$70+$80 dta $4e,a(buf0) :50 dta $f,$e dta $f dta $4e,0,h(buf0+$1000) :44 dta $f,$e dta $f dta $41,a(dlist0) dlist1: dta d'pp',$70+$80 dta $4f,a(buf1) :50 dta $e,$f dta $e dta $4f,0,h(buf1+$1000) :44 dta $e,$f dta $e dta $41,a(dlist1) Furthermore, I am also using the RMT player which is a huge amount of code. Maybe I should compile with MADS, and use a dissasembler....

P.S: I fixed the PMG, I was still writing to hardware registers as needed for the original CIN code. Now that the OS is back on, I need to write to the shadow registers...

Hey Flash! I tried to insert the code you recommended, but all I get is a yellowed screen and crash (See attached): .proc StopCIN jsr waitvbl mva #$40 nmien gr0 ldx #$00 ;zamkniecie IOCB #0 lda #$0c ;CLOSE jsr ?xcio lda #<ename sta icbufa,x lda #>ename sta icbufa+1,x lda #$0c ;READ/WRITE sta icax1,x lda #$00 sta icax2,x lda #$03 ;OPEN ?xcio sta iccmd,x jmp ciov rts .endp Trying to figure out the PMG issue meanwhile...

Hey guyz, I have a program mainly written in CC65, and currently I jump from my main program to sub-progs written in MADS for RMT and CIN support. I would like to do everything in CC65, but it only supports 6502 opcodes (MADS macro are not recognized). I have seen that MADS can export header files to CC65, but can it somehow convert an assembly file containing macros to one containing only 6502 opcodes? Thanks in advance!!!

WOW, this worked!!! Thanks so much Flash, you have really helped me a lot! I have integrated your latest code in my demonstration and attached the sources (press space bar to go through the various screens). I only have two little remaining issues: (1) When stopping the CIN code, the screen remains stuck in graphic mode 10, do you know how I can return to default text mode? (2) The sprites are all screwed up (black and occupying the entire screen), would you know how I can fix that? I have also attached the C64 version (which can be opened in VICE), to show how the demonstration should look like. sources.zip demo.atr demo.zip

Yeah, the colors show up correctly in that case. But "sei" disables interrupts again, which means the OS does not refresh timers/keyboard... :-S

Thx buddy. But the colours are still wrong for some reason (see my attachment above)l.

This is what it should look like.

Hey Phaeron, I think I followed your suggestion step-by-step, but I must have made a mistake somewhere, as the colours are wrong (see attached). This is the current code: // Atari Interlaced Studio buf0 = $2010 buf1 = $4010 RTCLOK = $0012 VDSLST = $0200 SDMCTL = $022F ;dmactl = $d400 SDLSTL = $0230 COLPF0 = $02C4 ;COLPF0 = $d016 COLPF1 = $02C5 ;COLPF1 = $d017 COLPF2 = $02C6 ;COLPF2 = $d018 COLPF3 = $02C7 ;COLPF3 = $d019 COLBK = $02C8 ;COLBK = $d01a GRACTL = $d01b SKCTL = $d20f ;PORTB = $d301 DLISTL = $d402 WSYNC = $d40a VCOUNT = $d40b NMIEN = $d40e NMIRES = $d40f /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ org $80 regA .ds 1 regX .ds 1 regY .ds 1 cnt .ds 1 /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ .get 'menu.dat',-9 ; palette org buf0 ins 'menu.dat',0,8000 org buf1 ins 'menu.dat',$2800,8000 /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ .align $100 dlist0: dta d'pp',$70+$80 dta $4e,a(buf0) :50 dta $f,$e dta $f dta $4e,0,h(buf0+$1000) :44 dta $f,$e dta $f dta $41,a(dlist1) dlist1: dta d'pp',$70+$80 dta $4f,a(buf1) :50 dta $e,$f dta $e dta $4f,0,h(buf1+$1000) :44 dta $e,$f dta $e dta $41,a(dlist0) /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ main lda:cmp:req RTCLOK+2 ;sei mva #$00 NMIEN ;mva #$fe PORTB mwa #dlist0 SDLSTL ;mwa #dlist0 DLISTL mwa #dli0 vdli lda #$c0 sta mode+1 sta loop+1 lda #(<dli0) sta VDSLST lda #(>dli0) sta VDSLST+1 ;mwa #NMI $fffa mva #$c0 NMIEN lda:rne VCOUNT wait lda SKCTL ; press any key and #4 bne wait lda:rne VCOUNT ;mva #$ff PORTB mva #$40 NMIEN ;cli mva #$ff 764 ; clear info about pressed key rts ; exit /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ dli0: sta regA stx regX ldx #192 mode: lda #$c0 loop: eor #$c0 sta WSYNC sta GRACTL dex bne loop eor #$c0 sta mode+1 lda regA ldx regX rti /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ NMI bit NMIRES bpl vbl jmp dli0 vdli equ *-2 vbl sta NMIRES phr mva #$22 SDMCTL mva #.get[0] COLBK mva #.get[1] COLPF0 mva #.get[2] COLPF1 mva #.get[3] COLPF2 plr rti /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ run main

My problem is as follow: I can get the entire game (IP65 network code, Joystick, SFX, RMT music, PMG) working with the 4 color Graphic Mode 15. All I want now is to replace GFX 15 with CIN, as it gives me 64 colours with the same resolution. But I would like to achieve this without restructuring the entire code, because the codebase is shared between C64, A8 and Apple II.

There is a lot of good talk here, but the problem is that it is way beyond my level of understanding. To try and make things clearer, I have attached a portion of my code. In the file demo.c, I load the menu CIN image, and then have a keyboard loop. The keyboard hit is never detected, because the OS rom is disabled. If I remove the line that disables the OS rom in the CIN asm file, then the image is not displayed. I have a real hard time understanding the connections between the various elements: OS ROM, NMI, VBI, DLI. So my hope is that someone will understand what I am hoping for: something like the JAG code (see attached), that is CC65 friendly, does not jam the OS (timers/keyboard), and does not burn all CPU time. Atari-CIN.zip Atari-JAG.rar

P.S: Attached is an example of CIN showing the track, and just 2 players running around. demo.atr

Guyz, thanks for the good replies already! I plan to use CIN for actual gameplay, so reducing the time used by CIN is critical. With the current code, FPS tests show my game runnning at 10-20 FPS (depend on number of players, 2-4). If the FPS reduces dues to usage of DLIs, it is bad news.... Could you guyz give m specific lines of code I should use to convert this code to IRQ, while still having the OS ROM running in background for timers/keyboard/joysticks?

This is a "call to arms" for veterans. I am developping a cross-platform Atari/C64 online top-down racing game (8bit-slicks). see: http://8bit-slicks.com/ and https://github.com/8bit-Dude/8bit-Slicks The C64 implementation is complete, but I have been battling the A8 for the past 3 weeks to figure out how to get good GFX/Sprites/Music/Sound. I am 95% done, but there is one last thing that I am struggling mightily to achieve: streamlining the CIN code for gaming. The CIN as ouput by Atari Interlace Studio disables: the OS ROM (mva #$fe portb), all interrupts (sei), and runs a custom NMI (mwa #NMI $fffa). This is fine when just showing an image, but not when running a game because the timers, keyboard, joysticks... don't get updated. So I would like to have the CIN code running in a way that is similar to the output of the JAG creator: One VBI to set the first line, and then switch GFX each raster line with DLIs. Then setup the VBI like this, so that it still runs the OS VBlank code for timers, etc...: ldy #(<_VBI) ; install VBI ldx #(>_VBI) lda #6 jsr SETVBV So yeah, this is what I wanna do but I am struggling mightily to write the ASM code for it... :-( So if one of the veterans of A8 ASM could help me achieve this, I will be soooo grateful! P.S: it will be even better if the code is pure 6502 opcodes, rather than MADS macros, because then I can compile it with CC65 as part of the main program! sources.zip menu.xex