titlescreen kernel

[jwierer]

Got it now. I got one to work. Got a simple skull picture to display. When I try to do Activision logo, it comes out as one big blur.

Are you converting the graphic to Black and White? If it can't distinguish color from background it will be all 1's or 0's.

 

-Jeff

[+atari2600land]

Has anyone actually tried putting this in a game they were working on before? Well, I just did and apparently I did something wrong because the guy isn't where he's supposed to be. I attached the .bas file I'm working on too, just in case it's needed.

ag4073010.bas

[RevEng]

I took a quick look.

 

The interesting thing is I rem'ed out the gosub and added a goto to your game setup the same thing happenened, even though the kernel wasn't called.

 

I'll dig a bit deeper later today.

[RevEng]

The titlescreen kernel wasn't the culprit; there just a small bug in your basic.

 

When your game_setup routine is called, eventually you reach the "player1y=player1y+y" statement in the joystick loop. But y isn't initialized before that loop, so whatever it was before is added to the player1y position.

 

Your previous code worked because you didn't happen to use y until then game_setup. But when you added the titlescreen code, you also added a "y=198" in the titlepage loop.

 

If you add a "y=0" at the beginning of your game_setup routine then everything works the same as before.

[+atari2600land]

OK, sorry, false alarm. Anyway, thanks for looking through my somewhat sloppy code to find the problem.

[RevEng]

No worries!

[yuppicide]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RcSzCJ2e68

[yuppicide]

Hmm.. we have the title screen thing. Who's going to be the first person to find an "alternative" use for it in a game besides just a title screen.

[RevEng]

I'm working on something that might open up some additional possibilities for that...

 

titledemo.bas.bin

 

...the "advanced" 48x1 minikernel can scroll anywhere in an image that can be up to 256 lines high.

 

Used creatively you could move the index between 2 images, changing the color for each frame, to get Michael's suggested 2 color flicker bitmap.

 

Or you could move the index between more images as an ad-hoc menu, to get atari2600land's NBA team selection.

 

Or you can just skip the index and just have a full screen image of ~190 lines.

 

There's also no reason why it couldn't be adapted to a regular bB minikernel (the kind that sits above the score display) for displaying pre-rendered text.

Edited August 1, 2010 by RevEng

[+grafixbmp]

Ya know. If the base for the image storage was say a harmony cart, and the location for the images was RAM instead of rom. One image could be displayed for a game level while rendering the next screen and then be able to switch to it and then the cycle continues.

 

It would be interesting to see how well the elite 3d demo(s) would look under this method

Edited August 1, 2010 by grafixbmp

[yuppicide]

I wonder if we can use this to make a nice title screen, for example a Jungle Hunt title screen. Then when you press fire it'll go to a section in the bB program and use the ASM command to insert the whole Jungle Hunt game.

[RevEng]

While it's possible, its going to take a fair amount of effort on the ASM side...

 

You could include the ASM in a bB program, but you'd need to modify JH so it fit in the free banks and bank-switching played nice with bB. The VCS can start in any bank, so you need to modify the Jungle Hunt code to bankswitch to the bB bank.

 

Also, the titlescreen kernel has overscan and vblank code that matches the bB kernel, which does things in a fairly unique way, to allow for cycles and cyclescore. This code would need to be matched to the jungle hunt kernel's way of doing things, or else you'll get a big screen roll during the transition.

[yuppicide]

Then again, we could compile the title screen .bin and Jungle Hunt and combine them together..

 

Somehow you showed a demo in the past, but I had never got it to work. I'll have to dig that thread up.

 

I'm doing some adult themed game hacks. I was thinking my Jungle Cunt hack would look nice with a better title screen.

[RevEng]

I have a feeling the demo might need to be reworked a bit for real hardware. I didn't have a harmony at the time, and I learned about the "starting in any bank" thing after I wrote it.

 

Also, the demo relied on the games being 4k non-bankswitched. JH is 8k, so you'd still have to rework it's ASM code to do the right thing if the 2600 started up in one of the JH banks.

[yuppicide]

Nah, no worries. was just a thought of another use for the title screen kernel.

[RevEng]

Just thought I'd post a teaser, to show you guys I'm still working on this...

 

titledemo.bas.bin

 

...it's an advanced "color by flicker" example I'm building for the docs.

 

I'm considering tossing out the "basic" variants of the minikernels, since the only real advantage they have over the "advanced" variants was a easier-to-read bitmap format. Based on the trouble a lot of people had with the formats, I'm thinking that isn't that big of an advantage. Reducing the number of minikernel choices seems the better choice.

 

It's also worth noting that Philsan has posted the latest version of L.E.M, which uses the titlescreen kernel.

[+Random Terrain]

I'm considering tossing out the "basic" variants of the minikernels, since the only real advantage they have over the "advanced" variants was an easier-to-read bitmap format. Based on the trouble a lot of people had with the formats, I'm thinking that isn't that big of an advantage. Reducing the number of minikernel choices seems the better choice.

Yeah, I'd rather have one version that works great and can make colorful title screens like your example. It would be less confusing. I can't wait to add a link to your new thread from the bB page. Every bB game will be able to have a more professional look.

 

I'm glad you're trying to get it as perfect as possible before you post the finished product. Easy-to-use code and easy-to-understand instructions that will help us make high-quality title screens is something we've needed for years. Thanks to you, we won't have to beg you guys with big brains to make cool-looking title screens for us. We'll be able to do it ourselves and not be as much of a burden.

 

Thanks again for doing this.

[+Random Terrain]

I didn't try your older versions because I was waiting for the finished product, so this might be a stupid question. Will we be able to have a title screen and switch out the data for a game over screen too? If not, would it be possible to use a less advanced version of your code to display a game over screen?

 

 

Thanks.

[Cliff Friedel]

Attached File titlescreen_kernel_alpha_20100726.zip (16.59K)

 

Is this the latest and greatest or is there a newer version? Just wanted to ask before I try using it. Also, could you please post the latest ZIP to the first post. Makes it a little easier to find.

 

This looks great. I can't wait to use it. Great work as always!

 

Cliff

[RevEng]

Thanks for the encouragement and kind words, Guys.

 

I didn't try your older versions because I was waiting for the finished product, so this might be a stupid question. Will we be able to have a title screen and switch out the data for a game over screen too? If not, would it be possible to use a less advanced version of your code to display a game over screen?

 

Not a stupid question at all. It's possible to kludge in a data change to turn in a titlescreen into a game-over screen, but it would eat variables and might not be worth it.

 

A minimal game-over addition could be done... but I'm not looking at taking on additional features until the official titlescreen kernel is released and the dust settles. If I do take it on, I'll also make a similarly optional "built with bB" logo screen.

 

Attached File titlescreen_kernel_alpha_20100726.zip (16.59K)

 

Is this the latest and greatest or is there a newer version? Just wanted to ask before I try using it. Also, could you please post the latest ZIP to the first post. Makes it a little easier to find.

 

That alpha is the only released version so far. I'm looking at releasing the latest code in a week or two, if I can get the time to work on the docs.

 

The data format is changing for the bitmap minikernels, so I could only recommend using the alpha if you're just playing around. If you're trying to build something you want to keep, then wait for the official release.

[Cliff Friedel]

 

The data format is changing for the bitmap minikernels, so I could only recommend using the alpha if you're just playing around. If you're trying to build something you want to keep, then wait for the official release.

 

Got it. If you need any help testing, let me know. I am thinking of maybe multibanking passthrough 2600 and writing a new game, so that would give me an opportunity to try them out then.

Edited September 10, 2010 by Cliff Friedel

[yuppicide]

What I was thinking that since space didn't matter to me.. I'll just bump my cartridge up to say 8K or 16K.. I thought maybe two or three screens could be swapped in.. so you could give the appearance of say your title on top, and a monkey hanging off a tree branch below, but swinging.

 

I didn't try your older versions because I was waiting for the finished product, so this might be a stupid question. Will we be able to have a title screen and switch out the data for a game over screen too? If not, would it be possible to use a less advanced version of your code to display a game over screen?

 

 

Thanks.

[RevEng]

What I was thinking that since space didn't matter to me... I'll just bump my cartridge up to say 8K or 16K.. I thought maybe two or three screens could be swapped in. so you could give the appearance of say your title on top, and a monkey hanging off a tree branch below, but swinging.

With the present code multiple titlescreen kernels won't work, for reasons similar to those that limit you to one bB kernel at a time.

 

It's possible to animate an image within a titlescreen, so long as the animation takes 256 vertical lines or less. (so you could create 4 frames of a graphic 64 lines tall)

[freshbrood]

On 7/28/2010 at 3:31 AM, atari2600land said:

I was just wondering. It would be cool in my game I might make (NBA Basketball 2011) to select the team by having the team logo appear instead of the NBA logo. Since it'd probably have to be divisible by 2, the number of logos could be 32 (30 NBA teams + NBA logo + my team I'll make). Was just wondering if there was a way you could fit more than one title screen logo and change it by for example, joystick left and right.

Before I discovered the Title Screen kernel I wrote my own sub to display 10 different multicolored faces for my Ninja Kombat (Mortal Kombat) clone. Although I'm new at coding and don't understand the intricacies of assembly it seems I was on to the same premise. The widths are 16 pixels but the heights can be nearly any- with up to 6 colors on each line. (with blending and flickering) I think it's pretty impressive if I do say so myself and it could easily be implemented to do what you want to. I have a downloadable demo here if you follow my profile posts.

 

Edited November 4, 2020 by freshbrood