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Blinky Goes Up (formerly GIANA BROS)


Jan Hermanns

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  • 4 weeks later...

It took a lot longer than expected to get access to some decent internet, but finally, here it is. This is a video of me playing a perfect game on real hardware. There were a few screen rolls during the game, but the capture card didn't really pick them up. Jan, you might want to check scanline counts or something before making carts because the rolls can cause you to die if they catch you at the wrong time.

 

Anyway, fun game and without further ado:

 

http://youtu.be/PM2mMozcvBs

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From the video it looks like it's rolling when the screens switch at the end of the levels.

 

ALT-L will give you a scanline count in Stella, and it is very easy to notice little bounces with it on. I have it on 99% of the time when I am programming, except when I need to check the area that it is covering up. ALT-L is extremely useful when you want to detect the scanline count producing too few scanlines.

 

 

For the "too many" scanlines scenario you can also set a break condition in the debugger:

 

breakif _scan>#262

 

This is good for NTSC games, if they are going over 262 lines.

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It took a lot longer than expected to get access to some decent internet, but finally, here it is. This is a video of me playing a perfect game on real hardware. There were a few screen rolls during the game, but the capture card didn't really pick them up. Jan, you might want to check scanline counts or something before making carts because the rolls can cause you to die if they catch you at the wrong time.

 

Anyway, fun game and without further ado:

 

http://youtu.be/PM2mMozcvBs

If its truly a full roll, Jan, but you might want to switch to using "bpl" for the INTIM checks rather than "bne" to minimize the effect of going slightly over time. (best to track it down, though)

From the video it looks like it's rolling when the screens switch at the end of the levels.

 

ALT-L will give you a scanline count in Stella, and it is very easy to notice little bounces with it on. I have it on 99% of the time when I am programming, except when I need to check the area that it is covering up. ALT-L is extremely useful when you want to detect the scanline count producing too few scanlines.

 

 

For the "too many" scanlines scenario you can also set a break condition in the debugger:

 

breakif _scan>#262

 

This is good for NTSC games, if they are going over 262 lines.

 

 

 

Hi guys,

 

I know about the rolls. After you finish a level there will be 2 bad frames.

The first one just before the "NEXT LEVEL" screen is shown; the second one when

the "NEXT LEVEL" screen disappeared (just before the new level starts). The

reason is an optimization hack, because I ran out of ROM space - e.g. the PAL

version has only 14 free bytes of ROM left (sadly not even in a single chunk).

 

Damn, I thought nobody would recognize this ;-)

 

BTW, during gameplay the framerate is always stable.

So I don't consider this a serious bug, or should I?

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I wouldn't consider rolls between stages a problem. However, I did have some rolls during gameplay that caused me to die a couple of times. They happened when I was in the middle of a jump, which made me let go of the button and fall to my death. I kinda conditioned myself to ignore the rolls for the recording.

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It looks like the NTSC game occasionally hits 263 lines when blinky is jumping and other stuff is going on. Some TVs won't see that, others will.

 

I was able to avoid the bump by giving vblank a couple more lines by setting TIM64T to #$2D instead of #$2B, within stella. Probably better to tackle the issue at the heart, but going to 264 lines isn't a bad band-aid either.

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Great suggestion, RevEng!

If you can change one value and have a stable line count I think it is worth it, because a TV will roll and a Projector will lose sync [Jr. Pac Man blanks my projector at the beginning of each life, usually causing me to die as the game is playing but I can't see it] so that's one I have to play on the tube TV.

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I wouldn't consider rolls between stages a problem. However, I did have some rolls during gameplay that caused me to die a couple of times. They happened when I was in the middle of a jump, which made me let go of the button and fall to my death. I kinda conditioned myself to ignore the rolls for the recording.

It looks like the NTSC game occasionally hits 263 lines when blinky is jumping and other stuff is going on. Some TVs won't see that, others will.

 

I was able to avoid the bump by giving vblank a couple more lines by setting TIM64T to #$2D instead of #$2B, within stella. Probably better to tackle the issue at the heart, but going to 264 lines isn't a bad band-aid either.

 

So embarrassed!

You guys were absolutely right about the screen rolls during gameplay...

@RevEng the 264 scanline trick is a very nice hack! But I decided to fix the real problem - that's a question of honor ;-)

 

I'll let you know, when the problem is fixed...

 

Thank you!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well done; I had a similar roll found in Mean Santa by my testers.

It's annoying at first, and then you realize that they're right.

And then from there, it takes a lot of guts to dive back in and refactor code.

 

I'm very glad you did it; adding that little polish makes a lot of difference.

 

-John

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Well done; I had a similar roll found in Mean Santa by my testers.

It's annoying at first, and then you realize that they're right.

And then from there, it takes a lot of guts to dive back in and refactor code.

 

I'm very glad you did it; adding that little polish makes a lot of difference.

 

-John

 

Thank you John! I really appreciate your feedback!

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  • 2 weeks later...

This one's a little too short and simple for my taste, I'm afraid. Perhaps you could add something extra, such as randomized enemy placement or an "endless" mode with a steadily increasing difficulty level? As it is, this feels more like a tech demo than a complete game to me. :|

Edited by Segataritensoftii
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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Nice work - you have produced a very neat little game. Have you any plans for a) an expanded version b) a cart release in the AA store?

 

Chris

 

Thank you!

 

a) I'm thinking about that - I have a ton of ideas for an expanded version, but I'm not sure if this will be my next project. Maybe I'll do something on the Commodore Plus4 or the Commodore 64...

 

b) Yes, Albert is currently working on that. If you like you can send me an email to blinky at gmx dot info, so I can inform you, when the cartridge version is available.


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