Draconian (2600)

[+SpiceWare]

Are you trying to kill Al?

One of the benefits of Melody boards is Al can build all the carts, then flash the programs on them later. I'm hopeful this is the last bug fix, though the worst case scenario is he makes me flash all the carts in Portland (I get there Wednesday evening)

[mmervine]

Just spent some time playing RC5...no new issues for me...other than my wrist hurts!

[Albert]

Just spent some time playing RC5...no new issues for me...other than my wrist hurts!

 

lol

[+SpiceWare]

After playing a bunch of games on HARD I've made one last change to how the Spy Ship launches.

 

The Spawning routine for I-Type, P-Type picks a random side to come in on. For the Spy Ship it picks the side in front of you. Once a side is picked, a random # from 0-127 generated, then centered on that side.

 

If you're flying diagonally it will randomly pick one of the two sides in front of your ship. Problem was if the spy ship was positioned at either of these spots:

 

condition red would happen almost immediately as the spy ship would end up offscreen.

 

So what I've done is make the random # from 0-63 if you're flying diagonally, then centered so the spy ship appears closer to the center of the selected side.

 

 

For Harmony or Stella (requires Stella 5.0.2 or newer)

draconian_20171013_RC6.bin

[Andromeda Stardust]

Man this is geeting good...

[Keatah]

It's the attention to detail. The iterative testing and organic feedback where everyone gets together. And not stopping till everything has been hashed and rehashed.

[+Tarzilla]

I've played for a few hours on and off today, tried to do weird things, crashing into things on purpose etc., rather than playing. Haven't seen anything yet and while there is always a possibility of things like score rollover bugs that I'll never be able to test, this is one awesome game!

[+Nathan Strum]

Playing RC6 on real hardware - no issues that I can find. Having a lot of fun "testing" though.

 

[alex_79]

Playing RC6 on real hardware - no issues that I can find. Having a lot of fun "testing" though.

Same here, altough I'm not that good (yet!)

[David Alexander]

Very excited at the progress of this game. My Buddy Captain Bob is picking me up a copy at PRGE Will go great with my Spiceware collection Medieval Mayhem, Space Rocks and Stay Frosty 2

[roryjr]

Haven't yet played beyond RC4. Never noticed the continue before. What does it do? You can already pick where you start, right?

[+Nathan Strum]

Haven't yet played beyond RC4. Never noticed the continue before. What does it do? You can already pick where you start, right?

 

 

You can pick only from the first 16 levels to start. Continue lets you start your next game from exactly where your previous game ended (except for your score) - like the arcade game does.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

 

You can pick only from the first 16 levels to start. Continue lets you start your next game from exactly where your previous game ended (except for your score) - like the arcade game does.

So it's no longer possible to start on level 256? Probably a good thing, LOL!

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/225044-draconian-2600/page-10?do=findComment&comment=3811339

[roryjr]

Ok. So I don't need it yet. I've managed 102,000 from RC4, but I don't think I've made it past the first 16 levels.

[mmervine]

Just spent some time playing RC6...no new bugs...this is a really awesome game!

[roryjr]

 

Seemed to have a couple "Spy ship sighted" and then "Red alert" but not sure. Maybe I was just too into playing and missed the first "Spy ship sighted".

[+SpiceWare]

condition red can also occur if you linger on a level too long.

[roryjr]

Ok. Didn't know that. That seems like it's likely what caused it. I'll work faster next time.

[+SpiceWare]

Specifics are you have to destroy a pod or a station within a certain amount of time to prevent it. The amount of time is controlled by the difficulty level

[Andromeda Stardust]

Specifics are you have to destroy a pod or a station within a certain amount of time to prevent it. The amount of time is controlled by the difficulty level

Yeah I remeber just wandering aimlessly in the beginning and would try to blow up asteroids and mines, or space stations when I stumbled upon them. I got a ton of red alerts from farting around until I learned to read the map. Once I figured out how to plow through levels, the red alerts became infrequent.

[eegad]

Was just playing RC6 for 2 hours via Harmony. Wow. Truly amazing game, easily one of the best on 2600. Didn't come across any bugs/glitches.

 

(how the heck did you get digitized voice WHILE all the other gameplay is going on? I thought it was necessary to blank the screen while playing digitized sound....both on 2600, which I never did any programming with; and on the 8-bit computers, which I did dabble with programming back in the day)

Edited October 16, 2017 by eegad

[+SpiceWare]

Thanks!

It's the same technique used by Pitfall 2 to generate 3 voice music - use a coprocesser. The one I'm using for Draconian is known as CDF.

 

The secret to3 voice music and digitized samples is you must update the volume of one of the audio channels once per scanline - every single one of them even during the overscan, vertical blank, and vertical sync. Its difficult to do that without a coprocessor so the few games that have used digitized speech in the past used a special routine which didn't do anything except play back a sample.

 

If you're interested in more detail check out the Draconian category in my blog as it contains the more technical info about the project, such as this one which talks about CDF. Also see this one which talks the kernel rewrite that allowed me to squeeze in 5 cycles for the samples as well as a last-minute addition to CDF, the fast jump feature, which allowed me to also add diagonal shots, fancy rotating station cores, and other things.

[mmervine]

Spent some more time testing RC6 last night...again, no issues...I think you are all set for the release this weekend!

[+Trebor]

Just my humble 2 cents, mentioning I haven't come across any bugs via Harmony Encore on my Woody and no issues via Stella either with RC6, as well as a brief comment...

 

What really grabs me (You know, besides everything about this game) is not just the way the graphics were ported over for the system, the very accurate scanner/map, wonderful sound effects and speech, the plethora of options, but also the depth of field feeling effect.

 

The flickering stars truly appear to be off in the background distance, while the layer of sprites appear to be in a very close foreground. I know it is just an illusion of sorts, but it is pulled off so well there is a pseudo-3D effect that is uncanny. I'm trying my best to think (Or better yet play), any other 2600 game where this effect comes across as prominent, but nothing else comes close.

 

The way the screen appears to scroll is truly remarkable. I still find myself going "wow", every time I play.

[AtariBrian]

I have not played this game and have only seen the videos shown . I have to say I am amazed by this game . Hell of a job Mr Spice and I can't wait to get a copy .