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Chaotic Grill (BurgerTime remake) in progress


splendidnut

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Very nice improvements there! The background music is now correct on both voices. This time I also had no hiccups (other than the enemies sometimes turning around when you don't expect it). However, there are still some things that could be improved about the music:

- The starting tune is mostly correct, but the last note on the high channel is wrong. You could also revisit the note durations in some places

- The dying tune isn't quite correct, especially not both voices

- The level end tune is still missing, replaced by only, I think, 5 notes.

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We'll be featuring the new WIP build of Chaotic Grill LIVE on this Wednesday's ZeroPage Homebrew stream on Twitch at 11AM PT | 2PM ET | 6PM GMT! Hope everyone can watch!

 

Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.t...ropagehomebrew/

 

Games:
- Chaotic Grill (2019 WIP Update) by Philip Blackman aka splendidnut
- Flappo Bird (2014) by Thomas Hopper aka TACS Games
- You Can't Win (2011) by Chris Read aka atari2600land
- Caverns (2019) by Harold Thijssen

 

ARCHIVED STREAM (SET VIDEO TO 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY):

 

Edited by ZeroPage Homebrew
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I played the latest ROM on my Harmony equipped 2600 earlier today. I must say the game looks good. Just three things I wonder about:

Will there be a PAL version? It’s weird if the lettuce (or cheese…?) is blue…

 

Sprites are really flickery. Any chance of having less flicker? 

 

The controls seem finnicky. I seem to have to place my character pixel exact on the ladders to climb up or down. Leaving the ladder also requires quite the precision. A bit more fudging would help with gameplay I think. 

 

Very promising game!

Edited by root42
Forgot a point
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On 6/24/2019 at 2:31 PM, Kurt_Woloch said:

Very nice improvements there! The background music is now correct on both voices. This time I also had no hiccups (other than the enemies sometimes turning around when you don't expect it). However, there are still some things that could be improved about the music:

- The starting tune is mostly correct, but the last note on the high channel is wrong. You could also revisit the note durations in some places

- The dying tune isn't quite correct, especially not both voices

- The level end tune is still missing, replaced by only, I think, 5 notes.

 

For the starting tune, I struggled quite a bit to make it sound as good as it does.  The note duration's were very tricky to figure out with the swing timing that goes on, so I don't doubt that they are off a bit, but it sounds like a good approximation to me.  For the last note I think the issue is either due to the TIA being out-of-tune for that particular note or I had to substitute a different note;  I don't quite remember which it is.

 

The dying tune is definitely off...Since it needed to be transposed to a different key (TIA tuning issues), I started experimenting with different ways to play it... I will have to revisit that since it does sound a bit weird right now.   And I just never got around to doing the level end tune because of how hard it is to determine what is going on there  :)

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1 hour ago, root42 said:

The controls seem finnicky. I seem to have to place my character pixel exact on the ladders to climb up or down. Leaving the ladder also requires quite the precision. A bit more fudging would help with gameplay I think.  

What I do is point in the diagonal of the next direction I want to go.

 

Example: If I'm walking to the left and want to go down the ladder ahead of me, I'll point the joystick diagonally in the left and down direction. Works great!

Edited by ZeroPage Homebrew
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1 hour ago, root42 said:

I played the latest ROM on my Harmony equipped 2600 earlier today. I must say the game looks good. Just three things I wonder about:

Will there be a PAL version? It’s weird if the lettuce (or cheese…?) is blue…

 

Sprites are really flickery. Any chance of having less flicker? 

 

The controls seem finnicky. I seem to have to place my character pixel exact on the ladders to climb up or down. Leaving the ladder also requires quite the precision. A bit more fudging would help with gameplay I think. 

 

Very promising game!

Thanks!

 

Yes... there will probably be a PAL60 version.  I believe I started work on all the color substitutions necessary for that.  I might even have them all done.  I'll have to take a look later and see.

 

I may be able to improve/reduce the sprite flicker a bit more... But they will always flicker pretty bad when they get bunched close together (5 sprites sharing the 2 Atari player objects).  At the very start of the first level, you generally see the best case scenario for the flicker management.   The worst case occurs when the item gets shown.

 

The controls definitely are a bit finnicky... The advice from @ZeroPage Homebrew basically describes what the current control system handles best.  I just recently bought one of @Osgeld's awesome controller boards (replacement circuit board for the CX-40 joystick)... and it really shows the inadequacies of the current control system.  I will be revisiting that after finishing up my rework on the burger dropping logic (current code is the main cause of the "too many scanlines" jitter).

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13 hours ago, splendidnut said:

[...]The dying tune is definitely off...Since it needed to be transposed to a different key (TIA tuning issues), I started experimenting with different ways to play it... I will have to revisit that since it does sound a bit weird right now.   And I just never got around to doing the level end tune because of how hard it is to determine what is going on there  :)

You should give transposing to A3 a shot. (aka perceptual tuning) You'll likely save yourself some iterations, and like the overall result better.

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On 6/27/2019 at 12:36 AM, splendidnut said:

And I just never got around to doing the level end tune because of how hard it is to determine what is going on there  :)

OK, uh... would it help if I try transcribing the level end tune for you?

I read you're using TIA tracker, so I attempted to create something that resembles the level end music in it. This should at least give you a hint at what's going on... ;-)Burger Time Level End.ttt

Edited by Kurt_Woloch
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On 6/30/2019 at 5:09 PM, Kurt_Woloch said:

OK, uh... would it help if I try transcribing the level end tune for you?

I read you're using TIA tracker, so I attempted to create something that resembles the level end music in it. This should at least give you a hint at what's going on... ;-)Burger Time Level End.ttt

Nice!  I was just about to respond to you about using TIA Tracker when I saw that you went ahead and made something.  Sounds good... thanks!

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On 6/27/2019 at 1:57 AM, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Have you thought about tweaking the enemy AI, so that the sprites do not overlap vertically? Or have a tendency not to overlap?

I really haven't given much thought to manipulating the AI system to achieve flicker reduction.  This would be something that would need to be done carefully... the highest scoring move in the game is to get all the enemies onto a burger piece and send them for a ride.

 

A couple of ideas I have thought about doing:

  - detect when two enemies are on the same ladder and draw them overlapping

  - detect when one enemy is mostly/completely overlapping another and only show the top one (or showing the bottom less often than the top one)

 

The tricky part of any of those would be dealing with the interaction/influence of the current flicker management.  And I still need to try and rework my current system to take less time to switch sprites.  Currently, switching a single sprite takes 5 scanlines (size of a drawing kernel) because I still have to make sure the burgers are drawn too (they take 40 cycles to draw).  That's been the biggest pain with this whole flicker management system.  And why I wish the DPC+ driver was better equipped to handle switching out sprites during draw.  :)

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8 hours ago, splendidnut said:

I really haven't given much thought to manipulating the AI system to achieve flicker reduction.  This would be something that would need to be done carefully... the highest scoring move in the game is to get all the enemies onto a burger piece and send them for a ride.

Ah, I see. Then my suggestions would change the gameplay significantly.

 

More ideas:

  • Flicker all sprites at least with 30Hz (even if not necessary), this makes increased flicker less noticeable.
  • Use "luma boost" for flickered sprites, so that flickering sprites are not getting that much darker 
  • Alternatively, when enemies are flickering a lot, try using missiles which approximate a sprite shape.

This means, when you combine the first two ideas, use no luma boost for 30Hz flickering, one level boost for 20Hz and maybe even more levels for 15Hz and below. 

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Here's an updated version of my level end tune... I set it in the wrong key, now it's in the correct one (on both channels).

 

One suggestion about the level start tune...  the last note is off... the last note on the higher channel should be the same as the 2nd note the higher channel plays in that tune (D-5 instead of C-5).

In fact, I've now tried to recreate several of the tunes that occur in the arcade original. I hope they are usable in one way or another...

Burger starts falling without enemy.ttt Burger falls one level.ttt Bonus item appears.ttt Walk on burger.ttt Pick up extra pepper.ttt Burger Time Level Start.ttt Burger Time Level End V2.ttt

Edited by Kurt_Woloch
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8 hours ago, Kurt_Woloch said:

Here's an updated version of my level end tune... I set it in the wrong key, now it's in the correct one (on both channels).

 

One suggestion about the level start tune...  the last note is off... the last note on the higher channel should be the same as the 2nd note the higher channel plays in that tune (D-5 instead of C-5).

In fact, I've now tried to recreate several of the tunes that occur in the arcade original. I hope they are usable in one way or another...

Burger starts falling without enemy.ttt 15.09 kB · 6 downloads Burger falls one level.ttt 15.09 kB · 2 downloads Bonus item appears.ttt 13.06 kB · 2 downloads Walk on burger.ttt 14.24 kB · 2 downloads Pick up extra pepper.ttt 14.24 kB · 3 downloads Burger Time Level Start.ttt 20.96 kB · 2 downloads Burger Time Level End V2.ttt 20.94 kB · 2 downloads

Nice work!  I'll have to tweak my music engine a bit to play the start/end tunes properly.... but it'll be well worth it.

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Time for an update.  Long overdue...

 

I've done major work inside the burger logic code which mainly involved merging two "active" burger lists into one.  When I originally added the bounce effect to the burgers, I used a separate list to be able to spread the logic across two frames:  one frame dealt with the falling burgers and the next one dealt with the bouncing burgers.  This turned out to be a bad idea since this caused a few rare, odd ball bugs:  burgers getting replicated (had to patch around that) and burgers getting stuck mid-flight (very rare, yet annoying BUT it was something the burger count logic could 'magically' deal with).  It appears these have been eliminated with the list merger... So I'm hoping the burger logic is good to go now... Fingers crossed :)

 

Utilizing the TIA Tracker files provided by @Kurt_Woloch I've been able to get the musical cues very close to the arcade... and the sound effects have been improved a bit too.

 

Minor patches have been made to realign the pepper spray and to hide the "wrong sprite displayed" error that occasionally happens.... I'll have to revisit the sprite flicker management.  Related to that, I started looking at a way to do the LumaBoost suggested by @Thomas Jentzsch but I'll probably wait a bit on that since I want to work on improving the player/enemy code first.

 

Also... I've added in the ability to more easily build a PAL60 version for those who want it.  It's not complete (AA logo and title screen still have the wrong colors), but it's a start.

 

Enjoy.

chaoticGrill-2019-07-05--PAL60.bin chaoticGrill-2019-07-05--NTSC.bin

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Very impressive that there is 2 channel music with game sound effects at the same time!

(There being only 2 channels for sound, this is not usually attempted.)

 

First “Froggie” for 7800, and now “Chaotic Grill” have this. 

I can not think of any other examples that do this without hearing an obvious dropping  of one sound channel. 

 

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7 minutes ago, Nathan Strum said:

Plays great!

 

Needs some difficulty ramping though. It'd be great to have a few additional level designs, if any space remains.

 

Thanks.

 

Difficulty ramping is next on the Todo list... The burger logic rework freed up the variable space/vblank time necessary for being able to add that :)

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Thank you for posting this new version! Much improved sound there! There are still some things that occured to me about the sound:

 

- Something's wrong about the main background music. While the overall tempo is correct, the individual notes need to be played shorter, I think, with rests in between. Also there are places when they seem to get somewhat out of sync to each other.

- The start of the level end music gets drowned out by the last sound effects. Maybe you should either start it later so that it's fully played, or disable the sound effects immediately once the level is complete so that they don't prevent the level end music from playing fully.

- The sound when Peter Pepper walks over the burgers seems to be too quick in tempo. The tempo of the last version seems to have been correct though.

- The sound effect for "burger part starts falling without an enemy" at the moment also seems to play if one or more enemies are on it, in which case a different sound effect should be played. I know I didn't provide that one because it's not actual music... Basically it's kind of a sweep from high to low tone, but on both channels...

- The player death tune isn't quite correct. I know I didn't provide that one either since you didn't report having difficulties with it, but I'll do so tomorrow if I'll get to it...

- Two sound effects that are either missing or don't come close to the arcade is spraying enemies with pepper (not spraying pepper in general, but hitting enemies with it!) and squashing them with burger parts.

- Generally, I think the background music should be softer in volume, and the sound effects should be louder in comparison.

 

Sorry about nitpicking... ;-)

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20 hours ago, Kurt_Woloch said:

Thank you for posting this new version! Much improved sound there! There are still some things that occured to me about the sound:

 

- Something's wrong about the main background music. While the overall tempo is correct, the individual notes need to be played shorter, I think, with rests in between. Also there are places when they seem to get somewhat out of sync to each other.

...

- The player death tune isn't quite correct. I know I didn't provide that one either since you didn't report having difficulties with it, but I'll do so tomorrow if I'll get to it...

....

- Generally, I think the background music should be softer in volume, and the sound effects should be louder in comparison.

 

Sorry about nitpicking... ;-)

Thanks for the feedback.  I'll provide you with what I'm working off of for the Main Theme and the Player Death tune for you to playaround with.

 

Currently the music is being played at a constant volume of 6 for both channels with no volume envelope changes... If need be, I can add in the code to allow that.

burgertime.ttt burgertime_death7.ttt

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