New game release - Quadrillion

[Rybags]

quad15s.xex

 

Last update for this weekend (probably).

 

Hires text working much better now. Again, Altirra 1.8 for the best emulation experience.

Issue with ball heading left after pause seems to be fixed.

 

Still a fair amount of work to go:

- game end text popup to be fixed with proper delay (currently flashes for a split second, then is lost)

- colour tweaking needed.

- some text not coloured properly.

- possibly edit the layout of some of the levels.

 

- write level editor (a possibility - the data structures are pretty simple, an editor could be knocked up in Basic in an hour or two)

[Rybags]

Game programming is 99.5% complete. Just a couple of minor changes to incorporate.

 

It will be released very soon, initially to be bundled with the VBXE 1.24 Core update package.

 

New video showing title screen with RMT music kindly provided by kjmann, Instructions, and several game levels:

 

Edited December 5, 2010 by Rybags

[electron]

Game programming is 99.5% complete. Just a couple of minor changes to incorporate.

 

It will be released very soon, initially to be bundled with the VBXE 1.24 Core update package.

 

New video showing title screen with RMT music kindly provided by kjmann, Instructions, and several game levels:

 

 

Excellent work, Rybags ! Congratulations. I know that feedback will be poor, but don't give up ! I'm looking forward tor your next release(s).

[+Stephen]

Game programming is 99.5% complete. Just a couple of minor changes to incorporate.

 

It will be released very soon, initially to be bundled with the VBXE 1.24 Core update package.

 

New video showing title screen with RMT music kindly provided by kjmann, Instructions, and several game levels:

 

 

Excellent work, Rybags ! Congratulations. I know that feedback will be poor, but don't give up ! I'm looking forward tor your next release(s).

No idea why that would generate poor feedback. Looks awesome!

[+bf2k+]

No idea why that would generate poor feedback. Looks awesome!

 

Absolutely great! (And I am not even a gamer).

[Shawn Jefferson]

Looks good!

 

About the poor feedback: maybe Electron just meant the whining about it not being a "real" Atari 8-bit anymore with VBXE installed. Personally, I don't take my hobbies that seriously... otherwise they stop being fun.

[Heaven/TQA]

cool stuff

[spookt]

Looks great. I seriously need to find the time to get my VBXE installed!

[analmux]

Looks O.K., but I agree with MaPa. Without VBXE and using some PM underlays / GED tricks, gfx with similar quality or at least acceptable quality could be reached.

[Rybags]

The temptation is there to do a standard version in APAC, CIN or maybe just plain Antic 4.

 

Other stuff will probably take precedence though, so see how it goes.

[Rybags]

quadrili.xex

 

This is the final Release version, as bundled in the 1.24 VBXE package.

 

Note that it works properly only on the 1.24 Core due to the attribute bug (still playable on earlier versions but slight visual corruption). I've been running that release for near on 2 weeks now, highly recommend it.

 

Also of course works on Altirra Emulator, best results on version 1.7 or later.

 

This version should fix all the issues of the earlier ones, also has "proper" RMT music done by kjmann. Also modified a couple of the levels, one was just too long so I removed some objects.

Edited December 14, 2010 by Rybags

[analmux]

[...]

This version should fix all the issues of the earlier ones, also has "proper" RMT music done by kjmann.

[...]

What is this "proper" supposed to mean?

 

...just curious

[Rybags]

Compare it to the title music on the earlier version.

 

Initially I was using 2 16 bit channels and a translation algorithm to replay all the Plus4 sounds/music on the Atari.

So, factor in the slight error in translation there, the fact it only does the translation 50/60 times a second compared to maybe double that on an actual Plus4 - the original music wasn't so crash hot.

[drac030]

This is the final Release version, as bundled in the 1.24 VBXE package.

 

It doesn't load here, neither from SDX nor from my loader, nor from MSDOS46.

 

EDIT: disregard this, I keep forgetting that my VBXE still needs the additional wire that makes MEMAC work past $7FFF. Apologies.

Edited December 15, 2010 by drac030

[electron]

It's a shame, drac030 But I'm not sure if this missing wire can be source of your problem ... For me, Quadrillion loads fine under SDX 4.43rc (using X command and BANKED config + "A" core of course).

[drac030]

Booted the "A" core. Pulled off the Maxflash. But it still doesn't work.

[Rybags]

Weird.

 

It likely won't work if a cartridge is present. Even though the program itself isn't exactly large, the RAM footprint is pretty big. It should even work on a 48K main RAM system with VBXE (400/800).

 

It maintains 2 copies of the bitmap image, and uses the blit to copy the Plus4 format to an Atari Mode F one.

 

Basic on/off doesn't matter, it switches it out early in the load.

 

OS - I've not tested it on other OS versions but there should be no reason for it not to work with most/all other variants.

 

VBXE - it only uses MEMAC, PORTB is left at $FF - so A or R Core shouldn't matter, D6 or D7 install shouldn't matter either.

 

At what point of the load does it hang? If you load the game at normal SIO speeds, the logo moves up and should hit the top of screen by the time the loading is down to the last 2K or so.

Edited December 16, 2010 by Rybags

[drac030]

I wrote myself a test proggie, which says the MEMAC works here even past the $7FFF. So it appears that the missing wire is not a problem. I yet will do more testing on this, though.

 

The Quadrillion, when loaded from SIO, loads 14 sectors (max. 3584 bytes), then there is a very quick flash of colorful garbage on the screen, and then the display goes black. This is the end, the loading does not continue.

[Rybags]

Do you have any other hardware attached? And what's the loader used (DOS, SIO2SD, APE etc)

 

You can check out the Source Code in the VBXE 1.24 package.

 

The quadload4.src is the one to look at. It does the preliminary initialization.

It's a bit of a scrappy affair, it switches the VBXE banking around a bit as I added stuff as I went along and they all had slightly different requirements for window size/location etc.

 

You can build the entire program easily enough with the batch file provided. Of course the latest AtAsm is needed to assemble the thing first. No need to assemble everything, only the part that you're changing.

 

Maybe modify the quadload4.src a bit, put some distinctive COLBAK colour changes and maybe you can work out at which part it hangs.

Edited December 16, 2010 by Rybags

[drac030]

I have my harddisk attached. Unplugging it from the ECI/CART connector does not make any substantial difference. Same with the Maxflash cart. The loader is as I wrote above, SpartaDOS X 4.43rc2, SDLOAD, MSDOS 4.6. All to the same result.

 

I'll take a look at the src as you recommend.

[Rybags]

Forgot to ask - what location is your VBXE?

 

It should work on both, as a matter of course I now just set Altirra to $D7 which means I have to do compliant code that'll work on both types.

 

You could easily enough change the loader so it's forced to your install type, although I doubt it'll make a difference.

 

Debugging this type of thing is just so much harder on real hardware - occasionally I'd introduce bugs which crashed the game but with Altirra it was a matter of minutes to work out the problems.

[drac030]

My VBXE is on D6.

[Rybags]

Which is the "missing wire" you described?

[electron]

Which is the "missing wire" you described?

 

I was talking about CASINH connection to VBXE - this is already documented in hardware schematics / manuals for both VBXE 1.x / 2.x. This wire was introduced for compatibility with core revision 1.21 or 1.22 if I remember.

[xxl]

terribly difficult game