pseudografx
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Posts posted by pseudografx
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I've been using v1.28 since its release and never experienced any crash, bug or whatsoever.
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Quantum? Haven't found it neither at Fandal's site, nor at Atarimania...
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Very nice! Sounds pretty much like NES sound chip.
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Now imagine yourself in the 80's if you had been born on the other side of the iron courtain. There were NO official software distributors, NO game stores and even hardware could be bought only in special shops where you could pay only with special currency that you bought for your (incredibly hard to get) foreign exchange or in the bootleg market. Piracy was the only way to get software for your machine and one of the reasons why user clubs had been established so that computer users could exchange their software with others. This situation lasted until 90's when retail channels with 8-bit stuff had been long abandoned.
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To explain this: Touching an enemy costs 1 point of energy on Easy and 2 points on Hard. Falling down 2 whole floors costs 3 points.
The formula for calculating energy loss for falling is like this: falling by less than a whole floor is always harmless. After that each half a floor costs one point of energy.
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Might have to try dropping onto the enemy to see if the loss is lesser.
Believe me, it is. That's why I designed that part of the level this way :-)
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Also there's that second last time bonus in Level 5 - in getting it you have to lose energy via the falls, and you only end up gaining 12 seconds or so because you've backtracked.
But the last 3 levels as I said - the best laid plans are often quashed, so easy to get screwed over in a big way through just 1 or 2 seemingly small mistakes.
I don't really remember if it applies to the situation you describe, but I do remember that there is a place where you can collect a bonus when falling down several floors, which indeed costs quite a bit of energy. However, if you time your fall so that you land on an enemy, you will lose less energy than by falling.
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We (me and MaPa) just did some speed comparisons regarding speed of various BASIC implementations using the following program that calculates PI to 40 decimals:
5 POKE 20,0:POKE 19,0:POKE 18,0
10 ? "START"
15 A=10000:C=140:DIM F©:B=0:E=0:G=0
20 FOR I=0 TO C:F(I)=2000:NEXT I
25 ? "INITIALIZATION DONE..."
30 D=0:G=C+C:IF G=0 THEN GOTO 80
40 B=C
50 D=D+F(B)*A:G=G-1:F(B)=D-INT(D/G)*G:D=INT(D/G):G=G-1:B=B-1:IF B=0 THEN GOTO 70
60 D=D*B:GOTO 50
70 C=C-14:? INT(E+D/A):E=D-INT(D/A)*A:GOTO 30
80 ? "END"
85 ? (PEEK(18)*65536+PEEK(19)*256+PEEK(20))/50;" SECONDS"The algorithm was taken from the following site: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/math-faq/mathtext/node12.html; the C code was reimplemented in BASIC by MaPa.
Here are the results:
Atari BASIC rev. C: 49.84 sec
Altirra BASIC 1.32: 32.68 sec (speed factor of 1.525x compared to Atari BASIC)
Turbo BASIC XL 1.5: 19.34 sec (speed factor of 2.577x compared to Atari BASIC, 1.69x compared to Altirra BASIC).
The improvements are great. Btw using some commands specific to Turbo BASIC reduced the time to 17.64 sec. There may still be some room for improvement in each of the BASIC implementations.
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Thanks for links. It has some good ideas, but mostly useless stuff at this stage. Btw. Dragonstomper, you are RGB author ? Czech COMRADE !? How come we didn't meet on Atariada ?
Unfortunately, MaPa (not Dragonstomper) never visits Atariada, but he regularly visits Forever and Bytefest so perhaps we all can meet there!
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Thank you, Fandal, your site was my everyday visit since I found it. And the reason that I got to know you and a start of a great friendship and cooperation!
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In Atari BASIC, even if it is not a common technique, you can call it fairly accepted. It is like BASIC self-modifying code: you print the contents of a command or a new program line on the screen, print "CONT" below it, set the cursor above everything, do the POKE, and execute STOP. The cursor starts going down as if the user was pressing the Return key, so it enters the line/command/whatever, then finds the CONT and thus the program restarts itself.
It is used in some programs like Graph 3D for example.
I remember using this technique for bulk renumbering program lines since Atari BASIC doesn't have any form of RENUMBER command. It wasn't my idea, but I don't remember where did I get that from.
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Also you can shoot them from offscreen so it can be beneficial to just speculate when you know it'll match your colour.Y
Yes, this is true but only to limited distance, not if they are too far off the screen.
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After all, the explosions are not that long.
Btw. some hints for the gameplay:
- When an enemy robot stops, be careful since it will shoot at you.
- Each time you shoot at a robot, it will freeze for a short while (or is eliminated if that colour was the last remaining). This can help you avoid damage. If you added a colour by that shot, do not forget to shoot at it again to disable the colour that was added.
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Completed Easy, all levels in one go at last - score 444,600.
Good job, Gary!
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You might save some cycles by switching to narrow screen at a point where the text is narrow enough (128 and fewer pixels).
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No, 4th color was removed due to optimization. There were 4 color changes in single scan line and I thought that was reason why it glitched that much. Reason was somewhere else but 4th color did not return.
Now I'm not sure if it could be put back easily...
Nemezyro DeLuxe?
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Actually, there is a bit more happening in the DLIs than just changing 2 colour registers: There are 6 fonts used in the gameplay area, which are switched on every line. Then there are the PMG overlays for all robots, bonuses and the recalibrator machines, whose horizontal positions and colours also have to be changed quite frequently. When you add the widescreen mode used, you end up with pretty busy DLI routines to control everything.
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How about a hypothetical case when you have display DMA turned off (559,0) - in such case, could you generate a nice colourful image just by quickly changing COLBG?
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As far as I know, crownland was finished to the point that there was no memory left to make it any longer. I consider it complete. But even author of Dimo's Quest himself admits that various pieces of the game are still not there.
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Here are the results of the abbuc vote
Dimo's Quest 1.
RGB 2.
Ransack 3
Nemezyro 4
Joe Painter 5
Ramprage 6
Congratulations to all partisipsnts!!!
Thanks for the report and congratulations to your victory.
Now for the little more sour aspect:
I am let down by the fact that unfinished productions can compete with (and beat) productions that are complete and ready for release. I think the organizers should reconsider what is acceptable and what is not. We have never submitted to the contest a game that was not complete. This was the second year in a row where an unfinished production was accepted and even won the competition. And to think that X:8 is still not finished after a year...
Please, note that I am not attacking 8bitjunkie. His work deserves great respect, since Dimo's Quest is one of the best first productions I have seen. Who I am addressing are the organizers of the contest.
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Small request: Could you change the controls so that the trigger is responsible for jumping and pushing up is shoot? ATM jumping is IMHO quite tedious and other moves during fire seems to be prohibited anyway(?). (Maybe it's only me, but I don't like jumping by directional input - I had/have the same problems with 'Ridiculous Reality'.)
Feature request implemented. Now you can press Help during the game to switch joystick up/fire actions. Check Fandal's archive (http://a8.fandal.cz) this Sunday for the final release.
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At least this video shows how german is pronounced wrong
Yes, of course, the authors of the video themselves admit that it was just a hyperbole.
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That reminds me of
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music player with low cpu usage?
in Atari 5200 / 8-bit Programming
Posted
One other option to reduce player overhead is to play a tune at 25fps. That would save 50% of time required. Of course the tune would have to be adjusted for that but might still sound reasonably good.