PeteE Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 PeteE... your Bounce N Pounce game is fun to play! After the contest is over do you have any plans to 'extend it out past 4K' with extras? Thanks! See 4 posts above I need to make some more progress on Legend of Tilda before Fest West. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ti99iuc Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 Hello Pete, please read my PM sent in this morning, i showed about some strange screens playing your game Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteE Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 Hello Pete, please read my PM sent in this morning, i showed about some strange screens playing your game Hi Ciro, Sorry I didn't read it until now. Those screens are normal, you won the game! There is no room in the 4K to add a victory screen so after running out of track data, the game will glitch and eventually scribble all over VDP memory until you reset the system. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ti99iuc Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 Yes i saw that you still didn't read for this left a message here anyway ok, i understand about the game. I just thinking that the 4k game was a loop in true so i was surprised thank you for the explaination. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 Thanks! See 4 posts above I need to make some more progress on Legend of Tilda before Fest West. Mmmmm, yeah... exactly one month left until Fest West! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
senior_falcon Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 Very cool! One tiny suggestion would be to change the REM in the BASIC loader program From: 10 REM 4K Short-n-Sweet Loader-H. Wilhelm To something like: 10 REM Bounce'n'Pounce by PeteE - loader by H. Wilhelm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
senior_falcon Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 (edited) PeteE's mention of compression led me to an idea for squeezing extra code into a 4K program and still comply with the rules. Since the use of the VDP ram is OK, in principle one could have 6K or more assembly code that gets compressed to under 4K and put into the minimemory. When first run, a short routine could uncompress it and copy it over to VDP ram. There would be 2 or more pages of code which could be copied as needed into the minimemory RAM and run as a normal assembly program. The paging process would probably be too large a performance hit for a fast paced game but something a little more sedate might be fine. Also, you could probably compress a TI BASIC program, load to minimemory. Then uncompress, copy to VDP, set up the proper pointers and then run the program. I don't know how much compression is possible - zipped and compressed folders are way smaller in windows, but the code to uncompress could be pretty big. If the code to uncompress used 3K this would be useless. The RLE compression I am familiar with is very easy and compact and would lead to some savings but probably not a lot. Too late for this competition, but it might be of interest if there is a similar competition next year. Edited March 28, 2018 by senior_falcon 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 Very interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteE Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 PeteE's mention of compression led me to an idea for squeezing extra code into a 4K program and still comply with the rules. Since the use of the VDP ram is OK, in principle one could have 6K or more assembly code that gets compressed to under 4K and put into the minimemory. When first run, a short routine could uncompress it and copy it over to VDP ram. ... This is, in fact, exactly what I did: The code, data tables and sprite patterns total 6260 bytes, compress down to 3780 bytes (60%) and the decompress function is 218 bytes, plus 88 bytes initialization, coming in at a total 4086 bytes. D'oh! I had 10 bytes left over. I didn't need paging, but I do have to read some data from the VDP (the track and segment tables) at runtime, but it had minimal performance impact. Credit goes to NewColeco for the DAN2 compression routine; it is really impressive. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 I also posted a decompressor on page 6 - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/273371-4k-shortnsweet-game-contest/?p=3951142 This decompresses the LZ4 format from https://lz4.github.io/lz4/, and the unpacker is 88 bytes. I didn't check how it compares to Dan's compressor, but it does do a pretty good job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 Impressive, now I've compared. On HeroX cartridge version, lz4 takes the file from 4096 bytes to 3464 bytes. With 88 bytes to decompress, that's a savings of 544 bytes. DAN2 is impressive - it took the same file from 4096 bytes to 2760 bytes. With 218+88 bytes to decompress, that's a savings of 1030 bytes! I wonder if we can optimize the unpacker? 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted March 28, 2018 Share Posted March 28, 2018 Spoken like a true hacker Tursi! Almost sounds like a challenge has been declared. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted March 31, 2018 Author Share Posted March 31, 2018 Great to see that more entries are still coming in. We have 9 games now. The competition will close for submission in about 26 hours. At that time OLD CS1 will lock the submissions thread, move it into the main forum, and post the voting link. We will use SurveyMonkey for the voting because AtariAge's polling system doesn't allow entries to be ranked. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 Borzork OMG! I've wanted a TI Berzerk Clone for quite literally YEARS! This is a great start! I don't remember Evil Otto coming out quite so early though. It works on the FG99 just fine, I'm very sorry to hear about your TI dying. Do you plan on continuing development after the contest with sound and joystick support? If so, please send me a PM with your PayPal address and I'll send you a few bucks toward a replacement TI. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 Great to see that more entries are still coming in. We have 9 games now. The competition will close for submission in about 26 hours. At that time OLD CS1 will lock the submissions thread, move it into the main forum, and post the voting link. We will use SurveyMonkey for the voting because AtariAge's polling system doesn't allow entries to be ranked. It is going to be a tough choice between some of the entries. I am bewildered by the talent here. Just wow! Perhaps it would be helpful to have the survey address several aspects of each entry with a total tally as the final score such as: Graphics and sound Playability Fun factor Technical prowess? (that one could be tricky depending on how familiar the person taking the survey is with programming) Other? Thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted March 31, 2018 Author Share Posted March 31, 2018 It is going to be a tough choice between some of the entries. I am bewildered by the talent here. Just wow! Perhaps it would be helpful to have the survey address several aspects of each entry with a total tally as the final score such as: Graphics and sound Playability Fun factor Technical prowess? (that one could be tricky depending on how familiar the person taking the survey is with programming) Other? Thoughts? I think it would be a very bad idea to change the rules this late in the competition. The rules we have agreed to are "The poll will not divide the games into further categories, and will not ask voters to take development language or development tools into consideration.". 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
senior_falcon Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 Rasmus is right. But those are good ideas. I am hoping there is a similar competition next year and that would be a good time to discuss them. We are just scratching the surface of what can be done in 4K! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ti99iuc Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 [...] Graphics and sound Playability Fun factor Technical prowess? (that one could be tricky depending on how familiar the person taking the survey is with programming) Other? [...] I think that for the final choice of the winners it is the right way instead. I usually do this thing also for reviews on my website. For each game i consider some factors, this is an example of the little table i use to do, and it is very similar to some methods that in eighties was used from computer magazines. I think that this is not a Rules change but only a method for help to choice the winners in this competition. example: The average score of each grade will be the final score obtained with your game. Of course it should need a little jury of people in this case. Otherwise will be easier to create a Poll here on AA and all can vote the preferred game 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 My criteria are very simple... if it has the *cool* factor, and if I would play it more than once, its in the running. From there, with the remaining candidates, it comes down to user interface. If it is easy to control and I feel like I have the power and command of my player character, that gets me excited. Graphics and sound are really just bonuses for me. Though sound is kind of a fringe case, because sometimes sound can make you feel *in control* of your character and improve UI. So far, its a tough choice. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Vorticon Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 I think it would be a very bad idea to change the rules this late in the competition. The rules we have agreed to are "The poll will not divide the games into further categories, and will not ask voters to take development language or development tools into consideration.". You do realize of course that people do judge the quality of any game based on such criteria, whether stated on not. You're just not making the process transparent. Having judging categories will help users think more objectively about each game, and eventually choose the top 3 entries. I frankly fail to see how that is against the spirit of the rules since the outcome is still exactly the same. That said, your contest, your rules... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 People do provide their own internal criteria for judgement for all sorts of things, but they still can answer a "what is your favorite" question. For many reasons I favor Worcestershire but I still like "A1 Sauce" and "Heinz 57." Ad nauseum. If the outcome will not be any different then I see nothing compelling to change the voting, at least for this first contest, at least since the method has been in place since very early on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+nanochess Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 OMG! I've wanted a TI Berzerk Clone for quite literally YEARS! This is a great start! I don't remember Evil Otto coming out quite so early though. It works on the FG99 just fine, I'm very sorry to hear about your TI dying. Do you plan on continuing development after the contest with sound and joystick support? If so, please send me a PM with your PayPal address and I'll send you a few bucks toward a replacement TI. I've updated the game with adjustments to Otto timing to make it more like arcade, also the number of robots in rooms is now random, plus a bug solved. Thanks for letting me know it works in real hardware! Yep, I want to add sound and at least the "Coins detected in pocket" message . Joystick shouldn't be too difficult also. I'll try first to repair my new TI99, maybe is something simple. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 @nanochess: are you planning to use original arcade game speech samples? Looks like people have been using BlueWizard with great results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+nanochess Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 @nanochess: are you planning to use original arcade game speech samples? Looks like people have been using BlueWizard with great results. I would like to try it myself it would be awesome 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 I would like to try it myself it would be awesome Do it! I have around here somewhere where I ran the Sinistar files through BlueWizard and QBoxPro . I have the voice samples from Berzerk, which I think came from MAME, but not converted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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