+Gemintronic Posted February 18, 2013 Share Posted February 18, 2013 If there really must be a crash-car sprite can you asm hack the player0 sprite pointer to code? UPDATE: Doing this worked just fine! player0pointerhi = rand player0: %11011011 %11111111 %11011011 %00011000 %00011000 %01011010 %01111110 %01011010 end player0x = 30 player0y = 30 main if joy0left then player0x = player0x - 1 if joy0right then player0x = player0x + 1 if joy0up then player0y = player0y - 1 if joy0down then player0y = player0y + 1 COLUP0 = $2E player0pointerhi = rand drawscreen goto main UPDATE 2: Er, this works on Stella. Sometimes accessing RAM/ROM in weird ways doesn't work on real hardware Not tested on real 2600. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted February 18, 2013 Share Posted February 18, 2013 Glad that someone else is attempting a 2k game with bB, even though my best time is 10 seconds. I think the controls should be more like Grand Prix than the way they are now, with the car being all wobbly and hard to control. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 18, 2013 Author Share Posted February 18, 2013 Glad that someone else is attempting a 2k game with bB, even though my best time is 10 seconds. I think the controls should be more like Grand Prix than the way they are now, with the car being all wobbly and hard to control. Thanks for your feedback. You are the king of 2k games on this forum, so I'd love to hear about specific things you've done to free up space. Have you made any modifications to the standard asm files? I'm experimenting with that now. bB is challenging in 2k, I know there's a bunch of extra code that could be eliminated, but it's hard to figure out what. My favorite small game is Thomas' Cave 1k from years ago. It's a fun game, and amazing what he accomplished in 1k. Something like that is impossible in bB I think. I like the controls, but I know not everyone will. My last update includes an option to turn it off, but it makes the game too easy IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted February 18, 2013 Share Posted February 18, 2013 Here comes the 2k crew doing things that you can't dobiting bytes and balking banksOnly two in their ranks! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 18, 2013 Author Share Posted February 18, 2013 Here comes the 2k crew doing things that you can't dobiting bytes and balking banksOnly two in their ranks! Ha. To slightly misquote Monty python, "every byte is sacred". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 18, 2013 Author Share Posted February 18, 2013 My best time with the current version is 51.0 seconds (with the oil slick and velocity controls turned on).. I need to make it harder, I was going for the activision dragster experience with this game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybearg Posted February 18, 2013 Share Posted February 18, 2013 Balance it however you like, of course. Just keep in mind the careful tight walk between frustratingly challenging and frustratingly unplayable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 18, 2013 Author Share Posted February 18, 2013 Balance it however you like, of course. Just keep in mind the careful tight walk between frustratingly challenging and frustratingly unplayable. Yep, I understand. When you make a game and play it constantly, you get pretty good at it. Ramping the difficulty down a notch or two is usually a good idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bogax Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 crap Ever look back at a bit of code and say what the hell was I thinking !? Presumably you had the wits to ignore this if joy0right || joy0left then direction = direction ^ 1 : goto skip for this if joy0right then direction = 1 if joy0left then direction = 0 If not please do so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 Thanks for your feedback. You are the king of 2k games on this forum, so I'd love to hear about specific things you've done to free up space. Have you made any modifications to the standard asm files? I'm experimenting with that now. For my Explosive Diarrhea game, I went in to the default.inc file and remmed pf_drawing.asm, pf_scrolling.asm, and std_routines.asm. With this setup, you can still make changes to the playfield, but it has to be done with the playfield: command (you can't use pfhline, pfvline or pfpixel, though.) You need pfscrolling in this game, so remming pf_scrolling.asm would probably not work. In asm, putting a ; next to code makes it not do anything, so it acts just like rem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybearg Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 But would the amount of space saved by that kernel be more than the amount of space it would take to write all that stuff directly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 Looking back, I didn't rem std_routines.asm I need that file. In reply to Cybearg, yes it would because if I removed the semicolon, it wouldn't compile (-351 bytes left as opposed to 3 bytes left.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 19, 2013 Author Share Posted February 19, 2013 I made some changes to pf_drawing.asm, pf_scrolling.asm, std_kernel.asm, and std_overscan.asm. The game now reports 137 bytes free rather than 16 bytes free with the unmodified includes. I've playtested this version for a while this morning and it seems fine, but my changes introduced one strange little bug. It happens very rarely, but occassionally there will be a pixel missing (or a pixel added) to the scrolling barrier. It doesn't hurt anything and in some cases adds a bit more challenge if it happens to appear in the normal gate opening. Not sure if I want to leave that in there as a "feature" or just go back to the unmodified includes. That's the only issue I've found so far. I'd really like to keep those 137 bytes! My new high score is now 1:27.8. EDIT: I didn't keep very good track of my changes, in most cases I was just removing items that I know I'm not using. I removed options for scrolling L/R, paddle controls, etc. I should have commented them out rather than just deleting. custom_includes.zip GateRacer9.bin GateRacer9.txt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybearg Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 Here's an idea... Maybe instead of causing an instant loss, the oil slick should jolt the player to either side, so it's not a certain loss if you're very good and lucky and can correct from it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 19, 2013 Author Share Posted February 19, 2013 Here's an idea... Maybe instead of causing an instant loss, the oil slick should jolt the player to either side, so it's not a certain loss if you're very good and lucky and can correct from it. Pretty good idea. If I decide to keep that new "feature" in the game that I just described there'd be plenty of space for that change. I was also thinking of a "powerup" that would make you temporarily invincible but would be risky to try and grab. That would take a lot of space, though. Right now I'm thinking I'd like to use most of that extra space for a proper title screen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybearg Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 I dunno if the powerup would take that much space. You randomize the location of the pfline, right? Just make sure that the item's placement is always proportionately away from the gate, so take the number used to calculate the farthest pfpixel of the gate and subtract it from the total number of pfpixels and there you've got your x location for the powerup. And as for how it works, just swap the player's color and ignore playfield collisions for a few cycles. That would just take an if statement and a counter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
purduecrum Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 Has anyone come up with a nice retro label yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 20, 2013 Author Share Posted February 20, 2013 Here's the latest update. I'll probably still make a few more changes before I call it done. This version changes the oil slick so it causes you to slide back and forth rather than causing instant death, it removes the ability to disable the oil slick (needed to free up some space), adds a sprite on the titlescreen so the game doesn't start up with just a blank screen, and adds a powerup (a white block) that will randomly appear. The power up block will give you temporary invincibility for about three gate passes. It's possible there may be a bug in the powerup code, I haven't done much playtesting yet (busy day today). The addition of the powerup used up most of the extra space that I freed up by modifying the standard include files. There's 1 byte free in this revision. gateracer10.bin GateRacer10.txt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 I don't know how much space you have left, but maybe for the title screen you can have the car in the game move back and forth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 20, 2013 Author Share Posted February 20, 2013 I don't know how much space you have left, but maybe for the title screen you can have the car in the game move back and forth. There's only 1 byte free right now. I would like a better title screen, I'm going to be spending some more time looking at code optimization to try and fit it in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybearg Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 Just so you know, you CAN upload .inc files for post attachments now. Also, it would be kinda nice if that little bug with the random small gap could get sorted. It does look a big buggy rather than intentional. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 21, 2013 Author Share Posted February 21, 2013 Just so you know, you CAN upload .inc files for post attachments now. Also, it would be kinda nice if that little bug with the random small gap could get sorted. It does look a big buggy rather than intentional. Thanks for the update about posting .inc files, didn't know that. As far as the little pfpixel bug, in all honestly I'm probably not going to be able to fix that. The bug was created by making random changes to the standard include files and while I'd love to say I knew exactly what I was doing, I really didn't. I'll see if I can work around it though. The final "perfect" version is going to be the version 7 build, at this point I'm just seeing what extras I can squeeze in with that little bug still in there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 21, 2013 Author Share Posted February 21, 2013 Has anyone come up with a nice retro label yet? Not that I know of. If you're artistically inclined and want to make one, I'd love to see it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Atarius Maximus Posted February 21, 2013 Author Share Posted February 21, 2013 For many years the first thing I've typed in to a new bB project is 'set romsize 32kSC'. This has been quite a challenge, there's so many things I've tried to do that just won't fit in 2k. I know there's lots of bloat using bB that's proven by the few things I've removed from the standard includes, but I've definitely gained a new respect for all those original 2600 programmers from the late 70's. I'll likely start working on an expanded version for fun soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piggles Posted February 21, 2013 Share Posted February 21, 2013 I'm still loving it! I can't beat your score, Maximus. I like the hum of the engine. Forgive me if this sounds a little corny, but it's soothing. I just chill, then after a couple passes at the gates I get excited until I crash. Back to the soothing calm start again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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