popmilo Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 5 hours ago, emkay said: Some of your posts, particular this below: > 23 hours ago, popmilo said: > Looks exactly as it should. Good work ! It's really that "projecting one's thoughts into other's" . People like you fire up people who do some coding, to feel right about your ideas of what's possible, ignoring everything else. And That's exactly the point why my proposals get blocked on and on, not just by you ... The slight difference here is that it isn't up to me to be always right. I just want to have the right stuff done , what the Atari can do. At the end it might look like the same, but the cause isn't. rensoup's demo still points to nowhere, btw: "looks exactly as it should". Yes. Rensoup said he's going to try bitmap mode and soft sprites with masking. That's exactly what he did. Nothing more, nothing less... What else could I say about that ? Of course I expect him to add scrolling and show how subhunter could be done. Imho people like me fire up people who do some coding or some gfx or music. They feel their own ideas are possible, and test them. Not just talk about them. I'm ready to test any proposal from you as long as it makes sense. Think we agreed long time ago on big pixels and benefits of double scanline modes. So far only idea of yours I really don't think much of is using pmg for background. There just isn't enough pixels in scanline available for anything decent looking. Wrathchild said everything there is to say about Robix... Don't know what is "wow" in it for you. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 (edited) 4 hours ago, Wrathchild said: Here seems a prime example of why people tend not to associate you with any credibility with regard to this topic. Sprites in that video seem designed to not overlap and with no background graphics do not have to worry about masking. I could use your words this way: Here seems a prime example of why things don't get done on the Atari with regard to this topic. Sprites in that video seem designend to not overlap and with no background graphics ... What could be more worthy to show ? An unfinishable Demo, or a Game written by one person showing upgradable ideas ? Only for people who won't be correct to their end, don't turn … Even on the Amiga they used the Sprites to create an additional layer to the gameplay. On the Atari it seems forbidden. Edited August 30, 2019 by emkay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
José Pereira Posted August 30, 2019 Author Share Posted August 30, 2019 Oh God! What joy is to play that simple stuff with some things and jumping robot with some line shots. P.s.- Sorry to the authors (and I didn't remember who and didn't want to go and see so that I probably wouldn't post this ) but I don't see a great gameplay there and a clean sky with small soft sprites or a single large end large soft sprite just to have something on-screen... And if I remember it correctly is just a single level and game ends, right? I don't see gameplay and the gfxs/looking also helps. Is there anything of these there? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 12 minutes ago, emkay said: Even on the Amiga they used the Sprites to create an additional layer to the gameplay. On the Atari it seems forbidden. Yes they did because there's actually enough of them and can be handled by a co-processor. Imho PM is totally fine and good to use as couple small objects or as coloring tool as we've seen in manic miner etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
José Pereira Posted August 30, 2019 Author Share Posted August 30, 2019 Even back then with so many lack of games, I think I would only play it once ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 23 minutes ago, emkay said: showing upgradable ideas That point is redundant as it is no different from saying that the proof-of-concepts (*) supplied in this thread might not be used 'as-is' but drawn upon in any final works and so hence are equally 'upgrade-able' ideas. (*) i.e. they are not an unfinished (or able) demo nor intended to be a game. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 11 minutes ago, Wrathchild said: That point is redundant as it is no different from saying that the proof-of-concepts (*) supplied in this thread might not be used 'as-is' but drawn upon in any final works and so hence are equally 'upgrade-able' ideas. (*) i.e. they are not an unfinished (or able) demo nor intended to be a game. As you are one of those who did really nice stuff for the Atari, I think I must not explain to you, if all CPU resources have been used to squeeze something out of the system, there will not be any additional possibilities. Raster's game was a real quantum leap in that part. I guess, his Intentions were to have a 2 player game, as he had other "crossover" projects together. Robix itself has a lot resources free, as it uses the hardware on the "resources saving "side. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
José Pereira Posted August 30, 2019 Author Share Posted August 30, 2019 Sorry to know now it was Raster ?... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 24 minutes ago, emkay said: I think I must not explain to you, if all CPU resources have been used to squeeze something out of the system, there will not be any additional possibilities. Yes, but please credit those developers on this thread that they possess the intelligence to know that, and though it might be demonstrated "I can get X s/w sprites working with this", they understand that's not going to be final figure. I, for one, have been very impressed with rensoup's approach at coming to a new platform as he demonstrates the 'savvy' to comprehend and re-purpose the advice being offered. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 (edited) 20 minutes ago, Wrathchild said: Yes, but please credit those developers on this thread that they possess the intelligence to know that, and though it might be demonstrated "I can get X s/w sprites working with this", they understand that's not going to be final figure. I, for one, have been very impressed with rensoup's approach at coming to a new platform as he demonstrates the 'savvy' to comprehend and re-purpose the advice being offered. But, as you might also have recognized, he derailed Popmilo's approach, to show something "better". Listen to other's is also a part of intelligence. Or, let's say it way round: After 40 Years someone finally brought a nice character sprite demo. Then someone else "can make it better", using the old technical routines that brought every other to the dead end of the road. Where would a final game end then ? Possibly a 32 byte wide sidescroller, no parallax, 4 color game screen with a 4 color PM objects at 25 fps and 170 lines ? Edited August 30, 2019 by emkay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 If you think after 40 years us coders are going to have our noses put out by someone ignoring our advice I'd have to laugh, don't sweat the small stuff 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 I really admit those 20 softsprites on screen. More than I ever dared to try. So I am sure few days we see the parallax scene of Subhunter on A8. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 damn... emkay would rather stick to his fantasy rules rather than face the reality in front of his eyes... Quote There are unwritten Rules by the given Hardware: -Games on the Atari can only reach half of the Details, compared to the C64 -Games on the Atari can reach 7 times more colors , compared to the C64 -Games on the C64 can reach 8 times more free moving objects than the Atari -Games on the C64 are only 1/2 at speed , if using any 3D calculations. ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 (edited) Well, I'm done cleaning up the restore code at least and I was able to remove some unused tables and useless instructions. So I got 20! ...but I had to remove the last panel line as it was so close to going over a frame. Honestly... I'm surprised that I got that many ? I thought using mode4 was ok for static stuff... but I still think I'm losing cycles compared to modeE. I will probably not use it at all from now on, even for UI. Even the memory saving is not obvious when you factor in that 1KB alignment requirement. 1943_3.obx Edited August 31, 2019 by rensoup 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 (edited) Just one last test with the plane: plain screen clearing! Well... surprisingly I only managed to get 23 planes on screen. Looks like the code for setting up the restore/clear code is still taking a fair amount of time compared to the clearing itself. (it's pretty clean now though and isn't that long so there isn't any significant gains to be made anymore) 1943_3c.obx Edited August 30, 2019 by rensoup 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 Still thinking about the simplest way to do the splitting... The problem is that both the display and restore functions have to be modified and they both have to work otherwise it'll look like a mess. Here's what it looks like currently: 12 subs in case you can't count them! subh2_buggy.obx 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheNameOfTheGame Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 That is quite the achievement. Congratulations. Things are looking better and better with each iteration! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmsc Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 (edited) Hi! Quote If you think after 40 years us coders are going to have our noses put out by someone ignoring our advice I'd have to laugh, don't sweat the small stuff I normally don't reply to threads like this, but after seeing this strip I really needed to share it: https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-08-30 Edited August 31, 2019 by dmsc 2 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 2 hours ago, dmsc said: Hi! I normally don't reply to threads like this, but after seeing this strip I really needed to share it: https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-08-30 Haha... yeah but not many are young here (well depends on your reference point... ) 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 7 hours ago, rensoup said: Still thinking about the simplest way to do the splitting... The problem is that both the display and restore functions have to be modified and they both have to work otherwise it'll look like a mess. Nice progress ! How does your inner loop look like ? Do you use preshifted data and mask too ? Or do you maybe use auto-generated mask (as you use only couple colors for submarines) ? My guesss, maybe best would be to parse list of all sprites before drawing them. Split them into bunch of smaller sprites with different vertical sizes. Then rendering and clearing is simpler. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 8 hours ago, rensoup said: Still thinking about the simplest way to do the splitting... The problem is that both the display and restore functions have to be modified and they both have to work otherwise it'll look like a mess. Here's what it looks like currently: 12 subs in case you can't count them! subh2_buggy.obx 14.36 kB · 14 downloads Could be interesting to see separated calculation steps to compensate the scrolling steps on every of the 5 scrolling layers. The change of the engine could be set in the DLIs. But it would be always one scanline late. An option is to create additional DLIs above the next layer change. 2 color Subs, would be an OKish compromise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+skr Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 Just out of curiosity I wanted to see that on the real hardware, but I cannot get it to load and start there. It looks like it loads to something like $800 which is too low. I have no skills to change that manually, so I would like to ask you if you can change it to some higher memory area? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 32 minutes ago, skr said: Just out of curiosity I wanted to see that on the real hardware, but I cannot get it to load and start there. It looks like it loads to something like $800 which is too low. I have no skills to change that manually, so I would like to ask you if you can change it to some higher memory area? Yeah I'd like to know as well, right @popmilo ? Here's the source and an obx built at $1000. If you need to rebuild it, just use do.bat subh2s_190831.zip 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 5 hours ago, popmilo said: Nice progress ! How does your inner loop look like ? Do you use preshifted data and mask too ? Or do you maybe use auto-generated mask (as you use only couple colors for submarines) ? My guesss, maybe best would be to parse list of all sprites before drawing them. Split them into bunch of smaller sprites with different vertical sizes. Then rendering and clearing is simpler. Thanks ? well it's a precompiled sprite so I have a table with a pointer to each code line. I will self modify the code for the splitting. (so not an auto generated mask) Parsing the list would be nice but I think it would be a luxury I can't afford as I would be writing back a lot of data. I want to avoid disabling too many sprites just for this as I still have to add the PMGs (with a bit of multiplexing! ) I'm think I'm going to split the sprite as I display then save the splits values for the restore. The sprite display can be horizontal (subhunter, slower but easier for splits) or vertical (1943, faster) but the clearing is always vertical Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 3 hours ago, emkay said: Could be interesting to see separated calculation steps to compensate the scrolling steps on every of the 5 scrolling layers. The change of the engine could be set in the DLIs. But it would be always one scanline late. An option is to create additional DLIs above the next layer change. 2 color Subs, would be an OKish compromise. They're software sprites so there can't be any compensation in the DLIs. Still have to add the PMGs and different graphics for enemies that José sent me. So it should be very colorful and varied! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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