Sprybug Posted June 1, 2013 Author Share Posted June 1, 2013 yeah, it was act 2 that auto scrolled. I love the Bridge Zone music too. It wasn't something I considered because I was thinking of the Genesis Sonic the entire time. It would require a special separate routine to program in to do it. Hmm. Here's what I'll do. I'll keep making the levels scroll as you go and if it looks like there'll be some room leftover in ROM to be able to do something like that I'll consider doing it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 Any chance for 4-way scrolling? i.e. scrolling in all four directions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted June 3, 2013 Author Share Posted June 3, 2013 Any chance for 4-way scrolling? i.e. scrolling in all four directions? Not with the different heights on the playfield and the method I'm using to store the playfield graphics and calling them up to be displayed, which is allowing me for large levels. Sure, I could change the heights of the playfield on the fly, but then I'd have to totally figure out a new method on the playfield graphics being pre-stored and just being called up because they are defined to take up a 4x11 section of the playfield screen. Modifying this to make a 4 way scroll would eat up way too much cycle time and I've hit my limit on one drawscreen already. I don't want go beyond 2 drawscreens per game loop because the gameplay would be too slow at that point. The scroll and playfield plotting has already taken more than half of my cycles for one drawscreen. However there are 2 portions to one level. An upper and a lower. You get to the upper by jumping on a springboard. You get back to the lower portion by falling off the bottom of the screen. These levels are about 8 times larger than a Princess Rescue level, and more than that when you combine the two portions of the level and the level data takes up a little LESS than the PR level data did! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian O Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 Very cool! Thought Princess Rescue was a feat. You might actually outdo yourself if you're able to pull this off. -B Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 I bet Legend of Zelda is next. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFzpdl1nwLI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted June 3, 2013 Author Share Posted June 3, 2013 I bet Legend of Zelda is next. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFzpdl1nwLI Oh god, is that blood coming out of my ears? Actually the Atari wouldn't be able to even produce that musical score like that. Was someone playing this on a BBS and had to wait for the screen to load at 2400 baud? The poor Atari 2600. The bad rep it gets. It could actually do a Zelda type game actually pretty well, and with Savekey or AtariVox you would actually be able to save progress. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr SQL Posted June 3, 2013 Share Posted June 3, 2013 LOL RT, that looks like the Fairchild Channel F! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted July 15, 2013 Author Share Posted July 15, 2013 Just an update. Almost finished with a demo of level 1. I'm really happy with how it's all turning out. Cleaning up some bugs at the moment, especially this one that crashes the system on the second half of the upper level. I probably added something in my level design that the program doesn't like. I'll be sure to take a look at my level in my custom made level editor to see if I put an object init that doesn't work in the spot that it is crashing. That seems to be the likely issue. Still need to add a few more sound effects, a routine to go to your next life after you die (it just starts over right now) and some dressing on the level ending. There's still a few collision detection bugs with the playfield, and when you see how this is all done, you'll probably see why there's a lot of potential for playfield collision bugs! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 Sprybug, what happens when an Atari program crashes? Do you get vertical bars? Because as many times as I've had my NES crash, I haven't witnessed the Atari do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 Depends on the type of crash, I'd imagine. Some are in the form of an endless loop (for whatever reason, the program cannot proceed beyond a given point due to a routine or an individual branch/jump leading back to an earlier point). Others are attributed to faulty bankswitch or data table positioning that accidentally trips a bankswitch hotspot. Or some are just plain broken or unfinished programs...no longer executing program code, but trying to execute anything which follows (such as data tables). Whether or not vertical bars appear would depend on if the hardware registers contain (or are mistakenly given) display data when the crash occurs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gemintronic Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 Sprybug is using batari BASIC so it may bug out differently than your traditional straight assembly program. For me, bB will usually seem to reset the game when it gets "bugged out". Basically going back to the first bank and running like nothing happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 Sprybug is using batari BASIC so it may bug out differently than your traditional straight assembly program. For me, bB will usually seem to reset the game when it gets "bugged out". Basically going back to the first bank and running like nothing happened. Kinda like a soft reset then... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted July 16, 2013 Author Share Posted July 16, 2013 Yeah, you guys are on the ball. Theloon is right. In Stella when it crashes it just soft resets itself. On a rare occasion it will crash like a regular Atari would with some weird lines and a buzzing sound. I always try to work all the bugs out before I put it on my Harmony cart and test it on the real deal, so I don't know exactly what it would do on the real machine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted July 16, 2013 Author Share Posted July 16, 2013 Depends on the type of crash, I'd imagine. Some are in the form of an endless loop (for whatever reason, the program cannot proceed beyond a given point due to a routine or an individual branch/jump leading back to an earlier point). Others are attributed to faulty bankswitch or data table positioning that accidentally trips a bankswitch hotspot. Or some are just plain broken or unfinished programs...no longer executing program code, but trying to execute anything which follows (such as data tables). Whether or not vertical bars appear would depend on if the hardware registers contain (or are mistakenly given) display data when the crash occurs. One of my favorites is when you exceed your stack and watch the craziness ensue. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
waterMELONE Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 Hey where's the full version. The demo is awesome tro to add some soundtrack and some background. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted April 19, 2015 Share Posted April 19, 2015 Hey where's the full version. The demo is awesome tro to add some soundtrack and some background. See also: Zippy the Porcipine. You realise this thread is 2 years old? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 (edited) Bug report from Quinn - Zippy got stuck. Edited July 26, 2015 by SpiceWare 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 Bug report from Quinn - Zippy got stuck. image.jpg Hmmm. It appears by the way the photo took that Zippy is in motion. I can see two faint ghosts above Sonic but no motion blur in the playfield objects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted July 27, 2015 Share Posted July 27, 2015 Bug report from Quinn - Zippy got stuck. image.jpg I kind of I doubt that it will get any kind of fixes. He reported it as being done and submitted for publishing a long time ago. He is really close to being a one man operation doing the artwork programming sounds and box art all by himself with AtariAge as the publisher and Marc as the box maker. But you've got to admit his first two projects show how talented he is using the limited original batari Basic kernel and making something far beyond what you expect to see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted July 27, 2015 Share Posted July 27, 2015 Hmmm. It appears by the way the photo took that Zippy is in motion. I can see two faint ghosts above Sonic but no motion blur in the playfield objects. He was - if I remember correctly, Zippy was rapidly alternating between the two positions. That kid also found an odd bug in Bentley Bear's Crystal Ques, but I didn't post a photo as Bob was handy so I had Quinn demonstrate the bug to him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 (edited) Bug or not, Zippy is a day one purchase for me. Hopefully no C&D issued this time. Fingers crossed. Sprybug doesn't appear to pop in the forum that often anymore. He left a pretty good legacy for his two Batari games though. If he does ever make additional games, PR and Zippy would be tough acts to follow. Edited July 28, 2015 by stardust4ever Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted July 28, 2015 Share Posted July 28, 2015 He had said his 3rd game would be original. Maybe then he will see some big sales numbers. Whether or not he has been working on it I do not know. He did plan to eventually release the Zippy source code like he did with P.R. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprybug Posted July 29, 2015 Author Share Posted July 29, 2015 That bug you found is hard to duplicate. I think I know how it happened, but it's rare when it does. It really all depends on how you land on that elevator platform and the way you landed on it doesn't happen that often. It's something that I was aware of, but not having this result. Most of the time you land on the elevator platform by walking on it and it operates normally. However if you land on it by falling on it and you happen to touch the outer edge while the screen is scrolling, only a portion of the elevator lifts and the other part stays put. Looks like you did it in such a way that it automatically put him into the wall. I never had that happen before. Hopefully this stays a rarity. My next game is an original. It's called "Robot Zed" and will incorporate everything I learned, plus some added elements. It's a platformer like all the others. You play a robot that can gain the power of the enemies that he faces, like Mega Man, except you do it with the enemies you encounter on the way, like Kirby, to the boss and you use these powers to get through a level. The new mechanic I am employing in this game is something I played around a little when I altered my Princess Rescue engine for the game "Legends". Once you reached the end of one zone in a level, it'd auto scroll you over to the next zone. I did this to expand the size of a level and I liked the effect. So, now in every level you will have screens that will scroll left to right, right to left and will have a few static screens that don't scroll where you have to exit to get to the next part by reaching the exit point. For example in my introduction level where you learn the game mechanics, it starts off scrolling from left to right like PR. Once you reached the end of that part, it auto scrolls you on to a static screen where you exit by reaching the upper right where you'll jump out of it and enter the next screen which auto scrolls from bottom to top. BTW, the first static screen has moving platforms. This next screen you are on, is another static screen with moving platforms that you exit on the left side which auto scrolls you to the next part that becomes a scroll again, but this time from right to left and so on and so on. That's just half of the level too. I can't wait to get this level done, which will be the demo. I'm about 1/3 of the way into it. I haven't had much time this year to work on it with all of my other projects going on, but that's where it is at. I also check in from time to time here. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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