Missiles use in 5th Player Mode

[José Pereira]

Hi.

The Missiles are in reality the four treated as a single Player because each one is indeed two bits of the four 8bits number.

Would it be a good idea and possible if I use the 4Missiles alone to have an Arkanoid type of game to have 3 or 4 balls (2pixels block wide) or 2balls and a double shot?

 

On the original Arkanoid for me it seems really a waste to use real Players just for the balls when A8 has so little number of hardware sprites.

(Yes, I know that they choose PF2&3 to have 2 more blocks colours but it could be other way )

 

 

P.s.- In the original Ocean game the balls are Players only or the inside of the ball is also black BAK colour register?

Edited November 6, 2013 by José Pereira

[Rybags]

"5th Player" is somewhat of a misnomer - for the purpose of discussion all the hardware does is assign the colour of PF3 to the Missiles instead of giving them the colour from the corresponding Player # (ed - also priority assignments are affected)

 

Regardless of how used, yes, the bitmap for the missiles is shared within those 128 or 256 bytes they use.

 

Regardless of 5th Player enabled or not, the Missiles still have totally independant HPositioning and you still need to set the HPOS for each one.

 

Insofar as using them or Players in any given game scenario, it's up to the programmer/designer. Using a Player for something only 1-2 pixels wide can be wasteful for sure but in some cases having the independant colour is worth it.

 

Also, Missiles don't have collision detection for Missile to Missile whereas all the other possibilities do have collision detection (of course remembering PF -> PF collisions don't happen)

Edited November 6, 2013 by Rybags

[José Pereira]

My question was more if having the 4Missiles together is a better thing for coding than have each one at different xPos?

[Rybags]

They're not together as 5P - the position offsets generally are +2 for each one, or +4 etc if size expanded.

[+JAC!]

>On the original Arkanoid for me it seems really a waste to use real Players just for the balls when A8 has so little number of hardware sprites.

They used 3 players for the up to 3 balls, esp. because the balls are not a single pixel, but a small "star", which would not have been possible with missle.

For me it looks much better that way and the Atari 8-bit version is actually quite good.

[José Pereira]

They used 3 players for the up to 3 balls, esp. because the balls are not a single pixel, but a small "star", which would not have been possible with missle.

For me it looks much better that way and the Atari 8-bit version is actually quite good.

3Players are the 3 light blues balls the 4th one it's the bonus balloons.

On these bonus it seems that the letter inside are done with the free Missile or Missiles of the balls.

That's why there's no free PMGs for our Plate and it have to change it's colour between levels.

 

But then this make me think that this way the balls VS bricks isn't and can't use hardware collision because the balls move above one or two PFs/colours that are also the same as in the bricks.

Like this the hardware collision isn't a need, right?

If this then the Missiles in 5th Player Mode/take PF3 haven't collision register (there's no collision register PFs VS PFs) and can be used.

Am I thinking right?

(but I 'shot' this 5th/Missiles Topic that it seems usefull for other future ones because at this moment, to be true, I am not also seeing that it maybe usefull for Arkanoid)

 

 

I am not saying that Arkanoid isn't well programmed on the A8 but only that because I know that the 3balls uses 3Players,... it has to be/maybe other distribution of the PMGs that maybe we can have always the same colour on all levels for our Vaus and it can even be the same engine used but another PMGs distribution.

I keep returning from time to Arkanoid and still can't find a way.

[José Pereira]

And if this:

BAK it's black and PF0 always white then I could have the balls in these two colours as software sprites. Each ball is one char and the 8ways moving means that with shifting each ball would use 4chars and 12chars the 3 (it seems possible to have them free, even on the smaller A8 128chars charset).

Lets say that this way I would invert things:

The balls are software sprites and the Vaus is PMGs (still keep bonus balloons the same)

Will the balls move slowly this way (we're still in 32Bytes wide Narrow screen)?

 

BBC it's also a 6502 and software sprites. It's version is in their 160x resolution but the screen takes 16KBs because it's in 4:1. Anyone ever played the BBC version?

[Rybags]

Ball vs bricks for Arkanoid or a Breakout type game you don't use collision registers anyway.

 

Collision is generally easy since it's a sort of grid arrangement and some simple maths can be employed.

[NRV]

Well .. you have a better example to analyze (imho )

 

 

The 3 balls, the falling bonus, the paddle and the enemies all use players and missiles just because is easier that way..

Using chars make a little more difficult to use them for balls (you need 4 free chars for every ball), but I already use the white color so it is possible..

 

Ball vs bricks for Arkanoid or a Breakout type game you don't use collision registers anyway.

Collision is generally easy since it's a sort of grid arrangement and some simple maths can be employed.

 

Yep, for collisions of balls with walls / paddles is just better to compare some limit positions. For balls against bricks is just simple math.. I just divide the ball total movement in a frame into steps smaller than the size of a brick (in the case that the ball is going too fast). For collisions between balls against enemies and the paddle against the falling bonus it could be useful to use the collision registers (I think I did it like that), but is not absolutely necessary.

 

[Creature XL]

3Players are the 3 light blues balls the 4th one it's the bonus balloons.

On these bonus it seems that the letter inside are done with the free Missile or Missiles of the balls.

That's why there's no free PMGs for our Plate and it have to change it's colour between levels.

 

But then this make me think that this way the balls VS bricks isn't and can't use hardware collision because the balls move above one or two PFs/colours that are also the same as in the bricks.

 

 

Haven't looked at the game. but why shoudln't the paddle not be the same PMG as the balls? Balls do not go "inside" teh paddle and it is at a fixed vertical position. If I am not missin ganything a DLI is all you need. Wasn't that the idea for our "Creature 2 interlude" with the kid sprite and the trampolin?

 

Second, what you may not know about teh collision registers. You can use them differently in different zones of teh screen. If you clear them in Rasterline 150 and check them in rasterline 248 you only get collisions with the paddle. However, it would be much more easily to use "simple math" given how regular the are placed.

 

 

@JAC:

Not everyone is of your opinion

 

http://youtu.be/R-jXqcCoXxY?t=1m50s

[Rybags]

Balls can go past the paddle when you lose them, but of course in such situation some multiplexing or other fudged method could be employed.

[José Pereira]

Hey what's the name of that NRV's Arkanoid clone?

I know I have it here somewhere on the computer or in one of the pens but I can't remember the name.

[José Pereira]

Found it. It's PAD and on the folder posted from NRV has the PAL and the NTSC versions.

[José Pereira]

The 3 balls, the falling bonus, the paddle and the enemies all use players and missiles just because is easier that way..

Using chars make a little more difficult to use them for balls (you need 4 free chars for every ball), but I already use the white color so it is possible..

 

 

Me again messing with this...

Arkanoid uses a 32Bytes wide narrow screen so there's many more free available cycles although it uses allmost all scanlines (232 of the possible 240scanlines).

If I really want to have the balls and enemys as soft sprites and they fit in the 1charset I would need (shifting included):

3Balls = 3x4chars = 12chars

3Enemys = 3x9chars = 27chars

 

All take 39chars and are two different sized type soft sprites.

On that 32Bytes wide although taller screen would/could we still get a good speed going with soft sprites for the moving things and PMGs on the Bonus and to add more colours on the Bricks?

 

@NRV: Where's the enemys on your PAD game? I can't get much of it and going much further on Emulator with Amiga mouse on the P.C. one. It's seems a little too hard or is it me...

[NRV]

Me again messing with this...

Arkanoid uses a 32Bytes wide narrow screen so there's many more free available cycles although it uses allmost all scanlines (232 of the possible 240scanlines).

If I really want to have the balls and enemys as soft sprites and they fit in the 1charset I would need (shifting included):

3Balls = 3x4chars = 12chars

3Enemys = 3x9chars = 27chars

 

All take 39chars and are two different sized type soft sprites.

On that 32Bytes wide although taller screen would/could we still get a good speed going with soft sprites for the moving things and PMGs on the Bonus and to add more colours on the Bricks?

 

@NRV: Where's the enemys on your PAD game? I can't get much of it and going much further on Emulator with Amiga mouse on the P.C. one. It's seems a little too hard or is it me...

 

If I think it better I probably would try to use the 3 players (that I'm using for the balls) for the enemies (maybe using one missile with each one to give more color).

With that you can use the char - software sprites for the balls (and maybe have 4 o 5 balls sometimes), and that should not take much frame time (you can use pre compiled sprite methods with sprites that small ..).

 

Using 32 bytes wide is not really required, I don't believe that you are going to be that much limited about frame time with this kind of game.

 

I forgot to mention that the last posted version of my Pad game doesn't have the enemies. I started working on them but didn't finished them at that time (that was the moment that I stopped working in most of my projects).

The idea was to use the same player that the paddle was using, to generate 3 enemies at different heights in the screen, and also use 3 missiles for every enemy to give them more color:

 

 

The enemies will never cross the paddle height in this case (the ufo like sprite is the enemy in that picture).

I only had one enemy active moving from left to right with the ball collision. I still needed the code to split the enemies at different heights and some different types of enemies (graphics, animations and behavior code).

I say this because I will clean my last version to comment this enemy test and try to post it soon, with the full source code and data if you are interested to modify it or test some ideas.

It have some other improvements (Miker's music!, other input methods..) and I have been sitting on it too much time without doing nothing x)

 

 

About the difficulty.. try setting the options of difficulty or the mouse accel step. Also I remember that Altirra had a mouse sensitivity option, I need to find it again.

I suppose that the sensitivity of your PC mouse is also a factor. I could never test this in a real Atari with an Atari or Amiga mouse so I know it could be too hard in a real machine yet.

(Maybe some of this options are only in my last version, so try to wait for that version if nothing works x) )

[José Pereira]

Hope you get time soon.

I ever wanted to post a real possible Arkanoid idea and wait to someone interested to code it.

It could be a first that maybe turn into possible later with same code we also get Revenge of Doh.

 

Of course that designing an original like you're doing it's you that gives the rules.

 

I think I am almost getting there and going for soft sprites seems not all that hard.

That's where the 32Bytes wide screen enters. And why not win many cycles with it if the area takes (original Arkanoid with my gfxs) takes only 28Bytes (1 for each side wall and 13blocks x 2Bytes wide each).

[José Pereira]

About your PAD game I played it today with Atari800Win Plus emulator and it seems that in NTSC it's less hard but still hard.

I never was a key player because all the A8 games I had were Joystick only until I bought Arkanoid.

Untill now the only two I play with keys are on A8 Arkanoid and the original P.C. DOS Tetris. I suggest you add a key option on your game: Z and X with SHIFT for shoot like on the original Arkanoid seems the best, at least for me.

[José Pereira]

Hi. My last post about this because I think I finally 'get a way to' and I intend to open a new Thread in 8-bit Forum to explain my proposal for an Arkanoid 'more arcade like':

Just want to know a last opinion:

ORIGINAL A8 VERSION:

3enemys and paddle are software sprites

3balls, shots and bonus are PMGs

MY PROPOSAL:

Enemys are still software sprites

Bonus also as before PMGs

Balls and shots now as software sprites

Vaus paddle now it's PMGs

 

What I can get with these changes is that now I have two free Players on the bricks lines that can be used to add two or three (Multicolour Mode) more bricks colours (like they can had on C64 because of its colourmap).

Whats your opinion?

Edited November 14, 2013 by José Pereira