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Frantic (2600)


SpiceWare

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It's a Harmony ROM, but likely has the bug that causes problems on the Encore. I've added a patched version to that blog entry - basically the first 3K was removed and replaced with a newer DPC+ driver. The new comment shows how that was done.

 

Thank you. :thumbsup:

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Should note that the problem depends upon the BIOS version of the Encore. While attending PRGE in 2017 I picked up an Encore from batari and it's worked just fine with the original ROMs for all my games so I can't confirm that the _encore versions I've recently made work as expected.

 

Looks like he released the BIOS update back in 2014, it will auto-patch DPC+ ROMs as it loads them so they'll work on the Encore.

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  • 1 year later...
7 hours ago, keebz said:

What's the status of this? It's so freaking good! I hope it gets finished and a cart one day! 

 

I plan to reboot Frantic to use CDFJ instead of DPC+, like I did for Draconian, after I finish the CDFJ tutorial in the Harmony/Melody Club

 

I was originally going to reboot Frantic as a test case for the SpiceC framework, but have decided against that because the sprite drawing routines use custom logic (robot colors and moving eyes) that's not useful for other games.

 

I've also decided to keep SpiceC on the back burner until after Frantic is finished.

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  • 1 month later...

As revealed on tonight's Zero Page Homebrew, Frantic has been reboot using CDFJ and now features speech using the AtariVox. Thanks to @Nathan Strum for his quick work on creating the AtariVox data for me, and thanks to @sramirez2008 for helping to playtest.
 

Console Switches:

  • TV Type = B&W, score display shows time remaining for Vertical Blank and Overscan. Time remaining has been significantly improved over the DPC+ version, which would jitter/roll the screen when there was lots of action.
  • Left Difficulty A = Max Robot Stress Test.  Score will be red and player does not lose a life (so can play forever).
  • Right Difficulty A = Frenzy Special Room Test. Every room will be a special room.
  • GAME RESET + GAME SELECT = Sound Tool.

 
Frenzy Special Rooms are:

  • Big Otto - will launch a swarm of Ottos if you shoot Otto
  • Power Plant - shot it and robots stop moving. They can still shoot
  • Central Computer - shoot it and the robots stop shooting, plus they'll move in random directions
  • Factory - creates additional tank robots.


Sound Tool:

  • Phrase 0 is AtariVox "reset", so is silent
  • Words 0, 23, and 24 are silent (0 = reset, 23 and 24 are different pause lengths)
  • Pitch - adjusts pitch of both Phrase and Word
  • Speed - adjust speed of both Phrase and Word.
    NOTE: some of the words are at, or close to, the max speed. Due to how the AtariVox works, if the speed is increased too much it wraps to a slower speed.

 

Note: we missed a bug with Stealth mode that I'll fix next week.

Note2: reflective walls mostly work, but at times a shot can get stuck in them. This occurs for the player's shots as well as the robots'.

 

frantic_20200812.bin

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Found a tiny bug where one-a my shots got stuck in the flickering wall and seemed to "spin" around in a tiny circle - inside the wall. At least I think it was my shot. And, Seemingly, shooting it or near it again cleared the anomaly.

 

I found it twice on two different screens/rooms. Check PM for some screenies and a savestate from Stella 6.2.1 Windows32.

 

Gotta love Otto and Big Otto. Creepy in a way comparable to when I first got a whiff of the enemies in Doom way back when. I wouldn't want these coming after me in real life. And I love the creativity of the robots themselves. A nice variety of colors that look good when I turn up saturation a little.

 

Early on in the game I was hoping for faster action. But that was soon remedied and the action got quite frantic indeed.

 

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4 hours ago, Keatah said:

Found a tiny bug where one-a my shots got stuck in the flickering wall and seemed to "spin" around in a tiny circle - inside the wall. At least I think it was my shot. And, Seemingly, shooting it or near it again cleared the anomaly.

 

Thanks! It's a known bug and can happen with all shots.  I mentioned it during the stream, but forgot to add a note when posting the ROM. Note2 has been added.

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If you missed ZeroPage Homebrew's 3 hour long LIVE Developer Spotlight on Darrell Spice Jr. that includes him talking about the new build of Frantic you can check out the YouTube archive of the show here:

 

Developer Spotlight: Darrell Spice Jr. (Spiceware) (Live Video Interview!)

(SET VIDEO TO 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY)

 

 

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I popped in for a moment during the live stream although was busy so couldn't continue to watch. Had a chance last night to watch the full interview on youtube.

 

Really cool, i enjoyed watching the interview with Darrel and listening to what he has to say in person. Was looking forward to this and Darrel truly is an asset to the Atari Age community.

 

Very enjoyable! Thanks for the hard work James in regards to making this happen ?

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12 minutes ago, TwentySixHundred said:

I popped in for a moment during the live stream although was busy so couldn't continue to watch. Had a chance last night to watch the full interview on youtube.

Really cool, i enjoyed watching the interview with Darrel and listening to what he has to say in person. Was looking forward to this and Darrel truly is an asset to the Atari Age community.

Very enjoyable! Thanks for the hard work James in regards to making this happen ?

Thanks so much @TwentySixHundred, it was great to have Darrell on the stream with the debut of his updated version of Frantic! I love talking with developers about homebrew and Darrell has contributed so much in so many ways to this community, it's my honour to highlight his work on the show. ?

 

- James

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During @ZeroPage Homebrew's replay of Frantic on Tuesday there was a glitch that would periodically appear on the screen in a PF pixel above the last digit of the score:

 

346568672_ScreenShot2020-08-19at12_12_55PM.thumb.png.38c113a8abaab3659a86900f15a4f5df.png

 

Because it was only a single scanline I thought it was related to the PF0right datastream because it's unrolled and uses an increment of 1.0 while the PF1 and FP2 datastream use an increment of 0.2 which would have made the stray pixel as thick as the walls.  The PF0 datastreams are unrolled because the lower nybble is used for missile enables.

 

However, when viewing Frantic using Debug Color Mode I can see the pixels above the last digit of the score belong to PF1, so it's not related to the unrolled PF0 datastream.

 

frantic_20200818.thumb.png.306c51779342e9bd6d695e29d0ee2c3f.png

 

I then remembered that some TIA variations have slight timing differences with the playfield pixels, so using the Developer settings for TIA I found that Chip type of "Glitched Pesco":

 

256695595_ScreenShot2020-08-19at12_30_23PM.thumb.png.85b05e3484016209c556024e6f0da2b2.png

 

would recreate the stray pixels:

 

frantic_20200818_dbg_07c9715a.thumb.png.b27c3ed61a31c632be6353e731bdec53.png

 

So I think this is what we're seeing with the ZeroPage Homebrew's Atari. If so, I should be able to revise the kernels to update PF1 a little earlier.

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2 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

That could be the case. Though Nathan reported that Pesco is working on James' console without stray PF pixel.

 

 

Hmm, not sure what else it could be as I've not encountered the stray pixels on my hardware.  

 

Quote

BTW: There was a bug with the homing missile at 2:02:14.

 

I saw that - I suspect it's a related to the humanoid's animation. Between HumanoidLeft0 and HumanoidLeft1 the head moves 2 pixels to the left, which combined with the player movement would be a 3 pixel jump. That could skip over the 2 pixel wide homing missile without a collision.

 

1618618980_ScreenShot2020-08-19at1_23_02PM.thumb.png.d90c31bc43f8dcb41d86289cc24e560c.png

 

The DPC+ source includes a graphic with an 8 frame sequence for the run cycle. I think I used it in an earlier build, but took it out for some reason - probably space savings when I was experimenting with digital samples.  One of my To Do's is to put it back in place - I'm hoping it looks better and fixes this issue.

 

 a_HumanoidLeft2.thumb.gif.07c78f93f8e8942522b4e0bbbee60606.gif   a_HumanoidLeft.thumb.gif.cb6cb69376fee50ff339c2cdfa622999.gif

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1 hour ago, SpiceWare said:

So I think this is what we're seeing with the ZeroPage Homebrew's Atari. If so, I should be able to revise the kernels to update PF1 a little earlier.

That's correct. Pesco has revealed that my TIA apparently suffers stray PF pixels. ? 

 

1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

That could be the case. Though Nathan reported that Pesco is working on James' console without stray PF pixel.

I thought this was the case too, I guess he didn't play Pesco long enough to see it. ?  It took a couple of minutes before one showed up and then a couple more before the second top one showed up.

 

- James

 

image.thumb.png.a251f35ddc4a17ddce4d0631ce04c1c7.png

 

- James

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30 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

I thought this was the case too, I guess he didn't play Pesco long enough to see it. ?  It took a couple of minutes before one showed up and then a couple more before the second top one showed up.

I wasn't given any instructions for checking Pesco - just to load it up and see what it looked like.

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