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Draconian (2600)


SpiceWare

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Work started on the BUS driver for Harmony/Melody last weekend. Provided that pans out Draconian will be rebooted to use it.

 

Sadly, it hasn't panned out. While the results are very impressive, BUS doesn't consistently work on some Juniors (or some 7800s). So cd-w and I have created CDF, a new bankswitch scheme that takes ideas from DPC+ and things we learned creating the BUS. CDF doesn't have as many features as DPC+, but is significantly more flexible (rather like the 2600 in that regard!) and better suited to projects that utilize the ARM in the Harmony/Melody.

 

We progressed far enough with it that I've already begun the Draconian reboot as part of testing it. It's non-playable at this time, so builds are only available in my blog. Two additional updates have been posted since the reboot, in those I've rewritten the menu and score routines to use CDF.

 

At this time those builds only work on a Harmony Cart. I'm adding support to Stella, but it's not yet in a publicly available build. However, I foresee it becoming available in one of the 5.0 pre builds in the near future so keep an eye on this topic. On that note, if you haven't already, I highly recommend you download the latest test build of Stella from there so as to provide feedback on the new TIA core - the more eyes looking for bugs the better!

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Of all the new homebrews in development I think I'm looking forward to this one the most. Progress shots are looking amazing, as usual. This is one of those sleeper arcade hits that you never hear a lot about but is a lot of fun. Good replay value too as you're always working towards a specific goal. Great work guys!

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This has been a long time coming!

The CDF build of Draconian now has feature parity with the last DPC+ build. As such, you can now fly around, blow up stations, and be shot at!

As a reminder, the difficulty switches control the following:

  • Left: A = display VB and OS time remaining (only meaningful on real hardware), B = display score
  • Right: A = freeze screen (used to review the graphics and animation sequences), B = fly around

Also the enemy formation flying around in a test pattern cannot be destroyed, though they will destroy your ship if you run into them.

post-3056-0-14744300-1496101702.png

 

For Harmony or Stella (requires Stella 5.0.0-pre8 or newer)

draconian_20170529.bin

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This has been a long time coming!

 

The CDF build of Draconian now has feature parity with the last DPC+ build. As such, you can now fly around, blow up stations, and be shot at!

 

As a reminder, the difficulty switches control the following:

  • Left: A = display VB and OS time remaining (only meaningful on real hardware), B = display score
  • Right: A = freeze screen (used to review the graphics and animation sequences), B = fly around

Also the enemy formation flying around in a test pattern cannot be destroyed, though they will destroy your ship if you run into them.

attachicon.gifdraconian20170529.png

 

For Harmony or Stella (requires Stella 5.0.0-pre8 or newer)

attachicon.gifdraconian20170529.bin

it doesn't seem to work on Stella 5.0.0 pre9...........

post-2652-0-93389100-1496106258.jpg

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That's odd, works here. Possibly it's a Windows issue. I've pinged stephena about it.

attachicon.gifScreen Shot 2017-05-29 at 8.22.06 PM.png

I guess I forgot to state that the rainbow colors appear after I hit the fire button and/or F2 to play the game........... I do get this main screen: (with the "2600 11d329" blinking colors)

post-2652-0-30553200-1496108553.jpg

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Hmm, the 2600 and 11d329 are diagnostic info that shows up instead of START if Left Difficulty = A. The default's supposed to be B when loading a new game.

 

Maybe try changing the difficulty switches and color/black & white setting before trying to start a game.

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:!: Just noticed the filename in your screenshot - it ends with 0502, the build from the start of the month which only has the menu with the rainbow screen as a placeholder for the game screen. You need to load 0529.

 

What threw me off is there is a rainbow screen in the current build - it's a splash screen that's only shown for 1 frame, so I initially thought it was getting stuck on the splash screen. By timing 1 frame we can tell if the console you're using is NTSC, PAL or even SECAM. Eventually the splash screen will show up longer and have the AA logo on it instead of the rainbow, just haven't gotten to it yet.

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