Trebor Posted September 14, 2018 Share Posted September 14, 2018 Bob...9 days ago you stated you were done. 3 days ago you stated you're "an idiot"... ... Done for the night. Added: - Ball serve, movement, gravity (currently hard-coded, but I might make it a configurable value - not sure yet) - Left table edge and Right table edge boundary check (the easy part) - made the ball reverse direction and lose half it's horizontal momentum. - 'Special Thanks' screen which replaced the 'Point Value' screen - Moved the Tunnel Speed and Fruit indicators to the bottom of the table, and made them tiles instead of sprites. - Fixed PAL colors - Fixed garbage that appeared when 'bumping' the table in PAL mode - Moved ball bitmap to Attract Mode graphics block, to free up $A000 to $AFFF .. ...All I have to state is: 9 days ago you failed to mention it ain't over until the fat lady sings. And 3 days ago you spelled "brilliant" wrong. 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted September 14, 2018 Share Posted September 14, 2018 Hey Bob this game is really looking amazing!! It just might be my most favorite 7800 homebrew of all time.. , but I am a bit jaded as I love Baby Pac Man. I don't know if you or Albert were considering doing anything special for this game in regards to packaging, limited edition boxes or swag like key chains or T shirts, but if you were thinking of doing anything special, I am on board for any of it. Owning the real game, I consistently am blown away about how console pushing this game will be... I mean hey.. it shouldn't exist, but there it is.. defying all logic.. Keep up the great work guys, this is one to write home about. Glad youhaven't abandoned all hope. Sometimes when I tackle a problem that seems unsurmountable, I sleep on it. Give the mind a chance to rest, then when you least expect it, the solution appears! Bob...9 days ago you stated you were done. 3 days ago you stated you're "an idiot"... ...All I have to state is: 9 days ago you failed to mention it ain't over until the fat lady sings. And 3 days ago you spelled "brilliant" wrong. Well said. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Kai Posted September 14, 2018 Share Posted September 14, 2018 Glad youhaven't abandoned all hope. Sometimes when I tackle a problem that seems unsurmountable, I sleep on it. Give the mind a chance to rest, then when you least expect it, the solution appears! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted September 14, 2018 Author Share Posted September 14, 2018 You guys are incredible. Thank you. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted September 14, 2018 Share Posted September 14, 2018 You guys are incredible. Thank you. No you! 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted September 14, 2018 Author Share Posted September 14, 2018 <tangent> I probably shouldn't have used the word 'Incredible' above, as that was the title of a very special song I was writing for someone who is now no longer in my life. Once I read it back, it put me immediately in a sad mood. It looks like my 'other issues' that I'm dealing with worked their way into my 'passions' (i.e. game development) which is most likely why I called myself an 'idiot' the other day. </tangent> Anyway, thanks go out to Kurt for the gravity, ball collision formula (God, it's involved!), and explanation in code comments. This project would have stalled otherwise. 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted September 14, 2018 Share Posted September 14, 2018 Flux-Schematic.jpg Great Scott! I really need to find one of those flux capacitors, btw, or a blueprint to build one. I did a Gogle patent search but was unsuccessful. <tangent> I probably shouldn't have used the word 'Incredible' above, as that was the title of a very special song I was writing for someone who is now no longer in my life. Once I read it back, it put me immediately in a sad mood. It looks like my 'other issues' that I'm dealing with worked their way into my 'passions' (i.e. game development) which is most likely why I called myself an 'idiot' the other day. </tangent> Anyway, thanks go out to Kurt for the gravity, ball collision formula (God, it's involved!), and explanation in code comments. This project would have stalled otherwise. You are far from an idiot, my friend. You, sir, are a genius. Glad you had help of the physics aspect of it, and this project is on the greenlight again. My condolences to your special someone, whomever that might be. I'm sure they are watching. Do you think they have Ataris in heaven? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted September 14, 2018 Author Share Posted September 14, 2018 (edited) Thank you - I was purposely being vague, because I didn't want to say much about it, but yet explain my actions. So this is the last I will say about what I mentioned above: It's not from someone passing, it was her choice. Edited September 14, 2018 by PacManPlus 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cobra Kai Posted September 14, 2018 Share Posted September 14, 2018 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted September 14, 2018 Share Posted September 14, 2018 OK, uh... some answers to what has been written here: As for gravity, I was considering doing different gravity schemes, depending on if the ball is rolling on the table or against a lane, in which case the gravity would be weaker, but slanted according to the slant of the lane. Which would maybe solve the problem of the transition between bouncing off from an obstacle and rolling against the side of it. The ball serve, as I implemented it, wasn't the final planned version, instead it was coded in a way that the ball was at least sometimes hitting the only coded obstacle (the right side of the left bumper) at different points. Actually, @Imstarryeyed, since you own the real game, I'd like to have an input from you here on which way the ball actually gets served on the real machine... does it prefer one direction or is there a range of directions it might come out in? Does it always have the same power, or does that vary as well? I think the left and right edge boundary checks are slightly wrong... if the ball loses half of its horizontal momentum, it should lose half of its vertical momentum as well, otherwise it would come out at a different angle than it goes in. In Pool Billards this doesn't happen... the balls always come out at the same angle they go in, so why should this be different at Pinball? And that direction change routine for the boundary checks could be reused for other vertical obstacles, i.e. the inner boundaries of the outer lanes and the lanes leading to the curves (NOT the lanes to the back of the bumpers, because they are just 7 pixels wide so that the ball just fits in... no room for left and right movements there!) I'm still considering how to do the curves at the top, actually. The problem there is that they are not circles, but rather ovals. And the left and right curves even have different radii. Therefore I was thinking of maybe breaking them up into sections. But we'll see... I have to apologize for not advancing quicker on this. It's still summer, and I went swimming with my father (who just lost his wife about 6 months ago) nearly every day for the last week. I put about 6 hours into this project last week, but that already caused me to fall behind with my other projects, so I'm trying to catch up since then. Looking forward to your next binary! Thank you. Done for the night. Added: - Ball serve, movement, gravity (currently hard-coded, but I might make it a configurable value - not sure yet) - Left table edge and Right table edge boundary check (the easy part) - made the ball reverse direction and lose half it's horizontal momentum. - 'Special Thanks' screen which replaced the 'Point Value' screen - Moved the Tunnel Speed and Fruit indicators to the bottom of the table, and made them tiles instead of sprites. - Fixed PAL colors - Fixed garbage that appeared when 'bumping' the table in PAL mode - Moved ball bitmap to Attract Mode graphics block, to free up $A000 to $AFFF I guess I just needed a kick start to get me going again. Still need Kurt for the curves at the top of the screen though... Those are the other things I am having a problem understanding. Will post a binary soon. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted September 14, 2018 Author Share Posted September 14, 2018 Hey Kurt: - Awesome idea about the gravity. Trying to think of how that would get implemented... - The ball serve: That's funny; I thought you did that purposely, as in every video I've seen, the ball serves to the left (like you implemented) at varying angles and speeds. That seemed accurate to me. - Horizontal momentum: How much do you think the ball should lose upon collision with a vertical object? It seems to lose a lot from the videos I've watched. Maybe a third? That would require a subtraction routine instead of just RORs - The curves at the top: I know they don't look circular in my approximation, but I believe they are on the actual game. I don't have the play field in front of me at the moment. We can make them *act* circular; there's enough space around the ball where it won't look to cross over a boundary. Thank you for taking the time to do this. I'm just trying to implement what I can; we can always tweak it later. Thank you, Bob 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted September 14, 2018 Share Posted September 14, 2018 Well, I did think a bit more about the gravity... the correct amount of general acceleration would be proportional to the sinus of the angle at which the ball is going down. But that includes the left/right acceleration. The correct amount of down force would then be the (sinus of that angle) squared... which is equal to the sinus of (double the angle minus 90 degrees) + 0.5 (so always between 0 and 100% of gravity). The correct amount of left/right acceleration then would be the sinus of double the angle, with the maximum being 50% of total gravity at 45 degrees. Also I was going to take down the gravity by two "ticks" (2 sub-pixels per frame) if the ball is going down vs. if it's going up. The ball serve: I did do that purposely, I just don't know if it's really correct or if the ball does sometimes serve to the right as well. That's why I asked. But that's exactly why I chose the LEFT bumper first, not the right one. I just think the serve on the original machine doesn't ever go as high as in my version. I did that so that the ball is sometimes able to reach the upper portion of the bumper (in order to better test the line detection). Horizontal momentum: Well, actually half would actually look right to me, I just think it should lose half of the vertical momentum as well. Also, it might actually differ depending on the material... maybe if it hits something which in the original game is only made of rubber, it should only lose a quarter of its momentum (pretty easy... shift right twice and subtract that from the original value). But those are not the vertical streaks. Yes, I believe the curves at the top are circular on the actual game as well. This will probably be some trial and error to me... whatever looks good. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted September 15, 2018 Author Share Posted September 15, 2018 (edited) The new 'thanks' screen in the Attract Mode: (I just hope I didn't miss anybody... I don't think so)... Edited September 15, 2018 by PacManPlus 20 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gambler172 Posted September 16, 2018 Share Posted September 16, 2018 Hi Bob great news....cannot wait to see a new bin 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted September 16, 2018 Share Posted September 16, 2018 The new 'thanks' screen in the Attract Mode: 0012.png (I just hope I didn't miss anybody... I don't think so)... I'm in the credits. Totally flattered right now... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted September 17, 2018 Share Posted September 17, 2018 (edited) I'm in the credits. Totally flattered right now... All without using your dremel!! Edited September 17, 2018 by Jinks 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+groundtrooper Posted September 17, 2018 Share Posted September 17, 2018 All without using your dremel!! Speaking of... when do we get a new BIN? I need to drop it on my Concerto! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
legeek Posted September 17, 2018 Share Posted September 17, 2018 (I just hope I didn't miss anybody... I don't think so)... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy2600 Posted September 17, 2018 Share Posted September 17, 2018 How seen you wanted me to sent you the larger image file for the label? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted September 17, 2018 Share Posted September 17, 2018 Well, the problem about the binary is that Bob said we shouldn't post any binary before we have anything to show... and what's been improved so far isn't really playable. The current binary on my side, in fact, is even a step back because I'm in the middle of implementing the reflection matrix. I think I've now coded all of it, but it usually takes about just as long to get it to work correctly. Right now, you could serve the ball, and sometimes it would hit the right bumper and then fly away at a crazy speed because that speed isn't calculated correctly yet. If the ball hits any other object, it goes right through it because the collision detection for all other objects except for the right surface of the left bumper hasn't been implemented yet. We do make improvements, but it's still slow going. Most of the changes I'm doing are "under the hood", so they don't make the pinball part playable yet. Meanwhile Bob is doing different changes (and implementing the changes I did before that), so he might have yet another binary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted September 17, 2018 Share Posted September 17, 2018 Don't worry about posting bins when you're not ready for show and tell. People will just helpfully point out problems that you're already aware of. Wait until it's ready... or maybe use this as a model of how to treat us, if we get out of line asking for stuff. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted September 17, 2018 Share Posted September 17, 2018 (edited) Howard Stern used to play that Orson Wells audio. As I listened again I thought to myself, “my that sounds like the cartoon Pinky & the Brain!” Then I saw it, there below the Orson Wells video. This gem: Edited September 17, 2018 by iesposta 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 All without using your dremel!! Not one of my shining achievements. We won't go there... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JrPac Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 (edited) I haven't been this excited for a homebrew in years! Glad to see you're still at it PMP (and great work Kurt!) Edited September 18, 2018 by JrPac Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+frankodragon Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 I was reading about Albert Einstein. You know, that guy who flunked math? His theory of gravity expands from Newton's which states that "two objects travelling along their parallel paths will never meet." However, they will meet. According to Einstein, gravity is a "curve in space-time," not a "force." So the objects are traveling in a straight line but instead of a plane, they're traveling along a spherical path due to a "distortion in space-time." Those straight paths will end in a single point. Then there's also a theory in which gravitons are used. My theory? It's like playing on the surface of a CRT positioned horizontally. I'm also reminded of that Tiny Toons cartoon in which Plucky Duck wanted to be "smart" for a math test and he wanted Albert Einstein to be "inside" him. You probably know the outcome of that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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