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Just posted 0.5 of ORB (see first post). Quite a few bug fixes in this release. I found a very strange bug that had to do with playfield hits. If the players ship died hitting the playfield over and over, all sounds became extremely slow. All player graphics were also incorrect. I hunted and hunted for a way to fix this but was unable to. The graphics and sound was so messed up, believe I've ran into some sort of DCP+ kernel issue. I ended up removing playfield hits and everything seems fine now. If anyone knows anything about this, let me know. I was hitting player0 with the playfield.

Thanks for all the info MK and RT. I have posted version 0.4 that runs at a solid 262 scanlines.

Thanks much, glad you like it Mountain King! On the scanline count, how can I identify where this is happening at? Am I over a lot?

ORB The planet Orb can be a dangerous place full of mystery. The Alliance has lost many ships while trying to explore the planet. Too many to count. It will be your mission to rescue downed pilots and return them to the Mothership. Get to know your ship: At the start of the game your ship will appear in a safe area of the planet. Your ship is only large enough to hold three pilots. You only have one ship complete your mission. Your ship has a strong shield that can sustain 8 hits before it will be destroyed. The shield is indicated by the bar on the bottom right of the screen. Most enemies will take one shield unit away as you are hit. The exception is the Orb with will take two shield points away. Your ship is equiped with "lazor cannons" They can shoot left and right. Terrain hits WILL (in latest release) damage your ships shield units. The Mothership: After you have saved three pilots the mothership will decend on the safe landing area. Because of expensive fuel used by the mothership it will not decend unless you have three pilots aboard your ship ready for rescue. Your ship must dock with the mothership to transfer the rescued pilots. At that time all of your ships shield power will be restored full. You will also get 100 points for any remaining shield units. You will get 1000 points for each pilot returned to the mothership. Enemies: The Orb - The orb will be aggresive and try to ram your ship. If hit you will lose two shield points and one rescued pilot will be removed from your ship. Destory the Orb as soon as possible. Meteors - Meteors can not be shot and must be ovoided. If they hit your ship you will lose 1 shield unit. Falling Craft - The purpose of these has not been discovered. They can not be destroyed by your cannons and must be avoided. Planet Patrol - Look to defend the planet. These enemies can be shot. One of these, if hit will drop a shield unit. Collect it to gain one shield unit. Other items of interest: There are places where you can descend deeper into the planet. As the game progresses you must go down in order to rescue pilots as they will no longer appear on the top levels. Pilots appear on the surface based upon the level of the game, which is based upon how many pilots you have rescued.. They appear as follows: 0-9 pilots rescued - appear on surface 1 12-18 pilots rescued - appear on surface 2 (none will appear on surface 1 at this point) Up to 27 pilots rescued - appear on surface 3 (none will appear on surface 1 or 2 at this point) Control: At the title screen press the fire button to start. The fire button also starts a new game at the game over screen. Joystick controls the ship in eight directions. Joystick left or right plus the fire button fires your lazor cannons. Only rescued pilots and shield units remaining will provide points. One special ship will, at times drop a shield unit when destroyed. Better scores can be achieved when the game is controlled using a joystick (for me anyway). Created using batari and the DCP+ kernel. Hope you enjoy and as always comments are welcome. Orb 0.7 contains the code that fixes the nasty corrupt sound/graphics error. Thanks to ZackAttack for providing the ASM code to reset the stack in order to prevents the stack overflow that was causing this error. Thanks also to Random Terrain for also being on top of this issue. Orb 1.0 - Quite a few speedups. i had not looked at this code in a while. Wish I had put more comments in it - Pending bugs this is likely the final release. Screens orb-0.6.bin orb-0.7.bin orb-0.8.bin orb-0.9.bin orb-1.0.bin

So has anyone found the easter egg in Alien Pinball?

I do the same thing Graywest Super glad you are enjoying it.

Thanks Mountain King. I need to give this a closer look.

Thanks Killad517. You are likely the The Universal champ! A true Deep Head

Is it possible to put DCP+ kernel games on a cartridge? If so how does one do that?

The Deep Version 0.2 is now available. What's new: A bit of tweaking here and there. When oxygen level gets dangerously low a klaxon warning sounds and the oxygen level begins to flash. After level 1 and after, a CZ drone will be released when you are about to get the treasure. This drone is impervious to your hydro missiles. After level 3 and after, a boat will appear on the surface. Avoid the boat. Animated sprites. Hydro missiles are faster. I forget if I added anything else As always comments are welcome and thanks much for those that have already commented and made suggestions.

Glad you like it joelm! The next version is coming soon.

Oh no. Hope you get it fixed and it looks like you have good help. When RAID drives do funny things it can be bad news. One night I had power drop on about 20 large scale raid arrays (don't ask), each with about about 30 or so drives in them. They were hosting two large MS email servers, lan storage, web systems, ERP systems and a bunch of other things. We had at two spares for each array thank goodness. It was a very long night but could have been much worse. Good luck.

Thanks much Atarius Maximus! I might have just got lucky on the time. I tend to plow ahead adding stuff without extensive testing but I didn't do that on this one. The done subs went in last or I would have never been able to test it Who knows, the next one could take forever. Doing Diamond Drop in 10 hours is super and it's a fun game. Being OCD is a good thing Love the suggestions. Thanks!

Surely someone knows the deal with missiles and would be willing to chime in It's almost like parts DPC+ are not completely documented (or I just have overlooked them) on RT's excellent web site. I've not seen it wanting to display hex in my score. I do absolutely nothing special. Pretty much all I have is score = score + 1000 (or whatever). I've seen some weirdness in DPC+ for sure though. I've even had to change which player I'm using on some stuff to make things work properly. For example the sub started out as player1. As soon as I put in playfield collision logic I would get a hit all the time (with nothing to hit). Changed it to player0 and all was good. At this point I'm always using player0 for the human controlled object. Same in Alien Pinball also.

Thanks much Mountain King! Well.. I made the torpedo a sprite because DPC+ and missiles have become a mystery to me. They just don't seem reliable or someone please tell me the deal on them. I get odd collisions when using them. Can they only correctly detect player0 correctly? I had one of the drones firing missiles but took it out because oddness occurred.

Hey Random Terrain. It was almost all black and red I have a technique down on firing. The direction thing is an interesting idea but I have developed a sort of a rhythm thing on the joystick (btw, this game works much better with a joystick than a keyboard). Get above the drone, drop down on his opposite side, fire and move out of the way. Sometimes I still miss but most often I get a hit.

I like it. Very unique. I keep forgetting to use my bombs and I keep thinking I have more than one life. Also like the bars on left and right that fill in after you lose.

Thanks much for the kind words Atarius Maximus! You made me look on how long it took. From start to where it is now took a week.

Thanks kaeruYojimbo! I like the little guy also. I agree the sub crane does look like a faucet. Such is limited graphics work I'm with you, not sure if the hydro torpedoes are slow are not. It has not affected my playing. It does share a lot with Aquaventure. Sort of like The Hollies song "The Air That I breathe" sounds like Radiohead's "Creep".

Thanks neotokep2001! Like your suggestion but I don't think I wish to add anything to make it even more difficult. Might just be me but I get challenged by it now. I have got better though. I was averaging around 2500 points a game. Now I think its about 4000 or so.

I took a break from Alien Pinball and there will be no update this week. Instead, we have The Deep. Created using batari and the DCP+ kernel. The Deep Having created your own one man personal sub with (patent pending) hydro torpedoes, you set out to explore the waters and collect deep sea treasure. Only problem is, the treasures are guarded by sea drones placed there by a mysterious and extremely wealthy mad man who lacks the sub technology to collect the treasures for himself. You have unlimited hydro torpedoes to destroy the sea drones, but only a limited amount of oxygen. Your oxygen indicator is located on the bottom right screen and will reduce as oxygen is depleted. Your oxygen sensor will omit a sounds as it ticks down. When you are very low on oxygen an alarm will sound. After level 1 when you near the treasure a CZ-Drone will be sent to destroy you. Beware your hydro torpedoes will not stop it. After level 3 a boat will appear on the treasure retrieval screen. Avoid it when breaking to the surface. Joystick controls the sub in eight directions. Joystick left or right and fire button - fires hydro torpedoes. Each drone destroyed is worth 100 points. Each treasure successfully retrieved is worth 1000 points. Successful treasure retrieval renews your oxygen supply (anytime your at the surface your oxygen is renewed). Also this will move your sub to the next treasure dive. Each treasure dive is deeper and more dangerous. You have three subs and there are five treasure dives. Avoid any obstacles with your sub. You must explore the depths, collect the treasure and return it to the surface without getting destroyed. the deep-0.1.bin the deep-0.2.bin the deep-0.3.bin the deep-0.4.bin

Hey Arenafoot. If the left difficulty is set to A, the joystick up which fires both flippers is disabled. If set to B, joystick left = left flipper, joystick right = right flipper and joystick up fires both flippers. B is the easier choice. Think that's what you are seeing?

Thanks much Mountain King glad your liking it! The plunger is doing double duty It's there for the plunge then moves to the left side. It will show you your 2x or 3x bonus. It changes to a 2 for 2x and a 3 for 3x. It's a 1 when it first shifts over there.

Thanks Papa. Sometimes I score well, sometimes really really bad. After many games I think 150k is the right point for an extra ball.

Likely final Cows, version 0.5 Minor graphic update.