Destroyer - game in development

[sometimes99er]

It's surprising how compact assembly is. You should see all my Forth source, and it's <8K!

Absolutely. A little bit of fun with XB doesn’t hurt, but pure assembly beats everything. There’s often both compact and not so compact solutions with both languages. Speed is another factor.

 

 

Shame the instruction set wasn't byte oriented, like the Z80 - you'd have twice the code space in the same memory footprint...

Well, if things were only as easy as that.

 

My Run-Length Encoding seems to be most effective being byte oriented and then having a handful of extensions. I guess this is a bit like the Z80. Implementing this on the 9900 seems like a waste of speed (being 16 bit even with the multiplexer).

 

I might use RLE with Destroyer.

[sometimes99er]

I also want to thank Karsten for his work on Destroyer.

Still hoping to see a playable version in the near future, cause that game will definitely kick *butts* big time

Sorry for not being able to finish what I set out to do - in time. I will finish it though.

 

Edited March 1, 2010 by sometimes99er

[JonArkanix]

Enjoyed reading through the thread and the game certainly looks great! Can't wait to see a finished product in the future, another reason to keep a TI emulator installed!

 

I'm amazed at the amount of time you find to work on the project, if only my time management skills were at that level.

[sometimes99er]

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement !

 

[jchase1970]

Have you been able to do anymore to Destroyer?

[sometimes99er]

 

 

Have you been able to do anymore to Destroyer?

Thanks for asking. I've been designing, redesigning, coding and testing different areas of the game.

I haven't been posting updates here, mainly because I felt there weren't much to show. I've kept an intro screen (showing up before title/menu screen) to myself. It's actually nothing, but a quick and perhaps nice effect. There's now several cloud designs and widths to choose from in later development/testing phases. I know what I want the seabed to look like (in my clouded mind), but all graphical attempts has been scrapped. I think I'll put the seabed on hold as optional since I most definitely have to use initial compression techniques to keep within the 8K limit. Some work has been done in the physics department. That's basically tuning joystick input and movement of clouds, enemies and missiles. Yes, you can outrun a sub and I think I'll keep it like that.

I would hate to have to put sound lists together manually. Almost no progress with my sound utilities. Been studying how to recreate/simulate the sound chip - leaving out noise for now. I might have to finish Destroyer with just basic beeps, and then do a second version with better sound and a few other twists.

Here's an early title screen design. It would have been possible to select a country, but I have no idea what the difference would be. The enemy (the subs) would perhaps be the Third Reich or something political acceptable.



Edited February 21, 2014 by sometimes99er

[mäsäxi]

Here's an early title screen design. It would have been possible to select a country, but I have no idea what the difference would be. The enemy (the subs) would perhaps be the Third Reich or something political acceptable.

 

 

 

 

It was nice to see finnish flag in your title screen.

 

Country selection... maybe ships can have historical names? (one name per country) When thinking OLD computer games, it was nice to just see flag and/or name of your own country, even there wasn´t any other difference. When thinking newer games, like "The Games" series from Epyx and other companies which made olympic games games, there was no difference, you just could select your own country (if it was in the list), but that was great thing even I remember Finland was really NOT listed in every olympic game in the past.

 

When adding country selection, then you have to do bit of historical reading (or ask somebody) to give each country realistic enemies. Like thinking nazis, depending on the country, they were considered as "friends" or "enemy". In finnish Jatkosota (translated as Continuation War) in the forties, Germany was actually considered as both.

Edited August 1, 2010 by mäsäxi

[jchase1970]

How are you scrolling the clouds? I assume some kind of bit operation on the characters. I have been trying to work something like this out but haven't had it working right and now time is tied up with work for a couple of month so have to spend what time I have on stuff I need to finish for the TI, new problem solving will have to wait.

 

John

[sometimes99er]

 

 

How are you scrolling the clouds? I assume some kind of bit operation on the characters. I have been trying to work something like this out but haven't had it working right and now time is tied up with work for a couple of month so have to spend what time I have on stuff I need to finish for the TI, new problem solving will have to wait.

John

 

Did try different approaches. This method is not fully optimized, but it's running nicely.

Take 2 bytes from CPU ROM, shift a number of bits, save a byte to VDP RAM.

I want to like stamp the entire cloud wherever I want. I use one major scroll register. If the cloud is like 512 pixels wide (of course only showing 256 pixels on screen), this register is going to hold a value between 0 and 511. The 2 bytes to be taken are arranged side by side in CPU ROM. The source is like strips, destination has to be character oriented. Going from left to right through the characters fixed on screen that make up the clouds and only manipulating patterns. Utilizing auto increment with VDP.

The scroll register is actually fixed point. The upper bits containing the value to use in the scroll routine, and lower bits being decimals or numbers after the decimal point. I only have to modify and decipher the scroll register every second frame update to get good overall scrolling.

If the scroll register is the same (ignoring the bits after the point) as before (last update), then no scroll is done.

Edited May 7, 2015 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

 

You could have the destroyer ship being black and move it slowly from left to right over the logo.

Oh yes, that is a nice effect. Will use it in a future project.

 

 

Okay, see use of the effect on tms9918a here:

 

http://www.colecovision.dk/coll-kobashi.htm

 

Edit: Link broken. Found picture.

 

Edited October 30, 2014 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

Just to let you know that some progress has been made after a lot of detouring. Still working on quite too many projects, but this one is now moving along nicely. Still nothing close to playable, but quite a few routines seem both robust and generic. Although I always try and read this forum on an almost daily basis, my effective, or should I say productive TI time is rather sporadic (guess that applies to everyone around here).

 

[ti99iuc]

Just to let you know that some progress has been made after a lot of detouring. Still working on quite too many projects, but this one is now moving along nicely. Still nothing close to playable, but quite a few routines seem both robust and generic. Although I always try and read this forum on an almost daily basis, my effective, or should I say productive TI time is rather sporadic (guess that applies to everyone around here).

 

 

 

 

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

 

 

:D___Wow ! it's a real nice News !___ :D

 

 

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

[Opry99er]

Glad to see Destroyer going again!!! Yay!!! This project is quite exciting--- and I love the graphics.

 

Willsy--- TF is under 8k?? I thought you were bank switching--- someone told me you were using 16k. I can't remember who, though....

 

In any case-- assembly object code is certainly quite compact.

[sometimes99er]

Again some delightfully refreshing graphical input from UnderExtended, breathing new life into an old project.

Edited February 21, 2014 by sometimes99er

[Willsy]

Have a look at scuba dive on the zx spectrum for some beautiful animated under-water graphics...

[sometimes99er]

Have a look at scuba dive on the zx spectrum for some beautiful animated under-water graphics...

Indeed very nice graphics. That was an 39K game. Destroyer is going to be 8K (if I can help it).

 

[+retroclouds]

Again some delightfully refreshing graphical input from UnderExtended, breathing new life into an old project.

 

 

 

 

Bumping this thread. Destroyer is a game I'd really love to play someday.

I have always been fascinated by the graphics of the destroyer ship and clouds.

Edited March 5, 2014 by retroclouds

[sometimes99er]

Bumping this thread. Destroyer is a game I'd really love to play someday.

I have always been fascinated by the graphics of the destroyer ship and clouds.

Thanks for asking. This game project is not completely forgotten. Only recently I went through this thread and reloaded the graphics used (also due to changes in Photobucket). Two different general purpose collision detection systems developed, - what I call the "box effect" and "distance evaluation", - both very simple and fast. Destroyer uses "box" only. - Generally swapping between many different TI projects (games, utilities, magazine and what not). Maybe I'll have something to show someday.

 

Edited March 8, 2014 by sometimes99er

[Omega-TI]

Damn! This game is looking great so far, it looks like everything is coming together. What's the current status?

(Not exactly a bump, just a bit of a nudge)

[sometimes99er]

Thanks for asking.

For a period it was among the 5 games I was working on / switching between. Only the day before yesterday Destroyer went into the big bag and I'm now concentrating on 3 games (of the 5). Anyway, any interest shown (questions, suggestions etc.) will of course at least raise an eyebrow on my part - and yes, I'll give it higher priority.

 

 

 

[Omega-TI]

Thanks for asking.

 

Anyway, any interest shown (questions, suggestions etc.) will of course at least raise an eyebrow on my part - and yes, I'll give it higher priority.

 

 

 

 

Du er meget velkommen. Lyder godt til mig.

[sometimes99er]

Hehe. Nice one.

[JonnyBritish]

By strange coincidence when i decided to learn Turbo Forth my idea was to build a sub hunt like game with a slight twist...when you press fire instead of your sub immediately firing a missile, instead there would be a delay as a hatch opens...then bubbles appear then finally the missile launches. Now I am getting back into Turbo Forth I will try this again.

 

Noticed this game from Atari 2600 land - http://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=287

 

Destroyer is looking great! Also like the shark graphics. might be fun to add a dolphin as well so you lose points for accidentally hitting the sea creature "nice guys" :-)

 

great thread!