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Atari Lynx 30th Birthday Programming Competition


Igor

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Nutmeg is finished, I'm only waiting  a final test on a sd cart.

 

On a real lynx there are a couple of slowdown in the intro scenes. I'm not happy to release a game not perfect, but for the moment I don't have time to work on it. I'll release a fix soon or later.

 

Now working on 4Ttude. The single player mode (vs CPU) and all the menu are completed. Hope to finish the multiplayer mode this week than I'll have another week for testing and tune the game.

 

I'd like to add some music's, but at the moment I have only a tune (nothing special) for the menu screen.

 

At least solved all the bugs.

 

If a music composer want to join the project an compose some music's for the game in few days, it's the right moment to do it ?

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My game "Sky Raider" is almost finished, but as usual the last 10% takes more time than the first 90% :)

 

I also need to compose a very short tune for the title / start. Something "stirring" similar to Apocalyse Now / Voyage of the Valkyries, or Star Wars, but shorter and simpler.

 

Also still need to test/fix on real hardware, and do some optimisation/tweaking/polishing...

 

Don't know if I will get it to 100% done before submitting. But I know if I submit it now, I will stop working on it... :)

 

Here's the title screen sprite:

 

sky_raider_title.png

Edited by jum
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Awesome developments! I'll be emailing all teams in the next day or two as well. If anyone wants to send in early submissions please so, I'd like to get some screenshots together for an article in Engadget. I'd also like to start putting in all of the game database entries so if you have name changes, let me know.

 

If people are worried about small bugs that need fixing and are running out of time, I will allow updated/fixed submissions for another week (will see what SainT says) after the 1st of September. Since winners won't be announced until PRGE (18-20 October) I think that's fair enough and it gives people something to play on the 1st of September. You do need to submit something that's at least initially playable though. ?

 

enthusi - thanks for writing that!

Edited by necrocia
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4 minutes ago, necrocia said:

Awesome developments! I'll be emailing all teams in the next day or two as well. If anyone wants to send in early submissions please so, I'd like to get some screenshots together for an article in Engadget. I'd also like to start putting in all of the game database entries so if you have name changes, let me know.

 

If people are worried about small bugs that need fixing and are running out of time, I will allow updated/fixed submissions for another week (will see what SainT says) after the 1st of September. Since winners won't be announced until PRGE (18-20 October) I think that's fair enough and it gives people something to play on the 1st of September. You do need to submit something that's at least initially playable though. ?

 

enthusi - thanks for writing that!

Sounds good to me, initial entry in, then "tinkering time". If there's no further submission during the final bug fixing phase, then the entered version will be judged. 

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During lunch, I just added one line to the code :

while joystick();

 

And the game crashes now...

I guess I'm really short on memory :D

It's time to make another size-optimisation pass on code.

 

I will send another version of the game before the deadline, but you can use the previous I sent in july if you want to make screenshots, there should not be graphical changes (maybe some pixels, in order to gain some octets :D) apart in pause screen.

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It's the same for everyone of us..

 

Yesterday wanted to make a small optimization in the code, just one more condition in a If block, and the code didn't compile for missing 10 bytes.

 

I'll have to shrink images and tunes to gain the missing bytes, but decided that the game is good enough as it is for the moment.

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On 8/19/2019 at 3:00 PM, Cyprian_K said:

what is amiga vibe? never heard that before

I was thinking of the distinct British/European art style that developed on the Amiga / Atari ST in the late 80s / early 90s. For example Bitmap Brothers and Psygnosis games would be good examples. As enthusi said the palette was a part of it. I think they used more greys, blues and browns "than expected" in video games. I don't know where they took the inspiration for that. Perhaps from the c64 palette or traditional painting (I don't know). Another treat I've noticed in the artwork is the rounded square-ish characters in loading screens etc. 

https://images.app.goo.gl/CGC5WVEut4rmZuvM9

https://images.app.goo.gl/4gDnSZu9i9LJieSu7

 

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I got a question on the ROM file format. I'm using the Visual Studio set-up through NMAKE / cc65 and get a *.LNX output file. Allegedly, it contains a 64-byte header and may not be "actual ROM" - whatever that means.

 

It runs fine on emulator - Handy and supposedly also runs via SD card - straight without any conversions.

 

Is that format OK for a final submission?

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7 minutes ago, VladR said:

I got a question on the ROM file format. I'm using the Visual Studio set-up through NMAKE / cc65 and get a *.LNX output file. Allegedly, it contains a 64-byte header and may not be "actual ROM" - whatever that means.

 

It runs fine on emulator - Handy and supposedly also runs via SD card - straight without any conversions.

 

Is that format OK for a final submission?

Yes. The 64 bit header just contains info about the game.

	.import __BLOCKSIZE__

; ------------------------------------------------------------------------
; EXE header
	.segment "EXEHDR"
	.byte	'L','Y','N','X'				; magic
	.word	__BLOCKSIZE__				; bank 0 page size
	.word	0					; bank 1 page size
	.word	1					; version number
	.asciiz	"On Duty                        " ; 32 bytes cart name
	.asciiz "Zemlasoft      "		  ; 16 bytes manufacturer name
	.byte	0					; rotation 1=left
							; rotation 2=right
	.byte	0					; aud bits 1=in use for addressing
	.byte	$40					; eeprom
							; eeprom [2:0] -
							; 0 - no eeprom
							; 1 - 93c46 16 bit mode (used in Ttris, SIMIS, Alpine Games, ..., MegaPak I at least)
							; 2        56
							; 3 - 93c66 16 bit mode
							; 4        76
							; 5 - 93c86 16 bit mode
							; (remark: size in bits is 2^(value+9) -- (please recheck!)
							; eeprom [3-5] - reserved - keep it to 0 for further usage
							; eeprom [6] - 0 - real eeprom, 1 - eeprom as a file in /saves/flappy.hi on SD cart
							; eeprom [7] - 0 - 16 bit mode, 1 - 8 bit mode
	.byte	0,0,0					; spare

 

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8 hours ago, VladR said:

I got a question on the ROM file format. I'm using the Visual Studio set-up through NMAKE / cc65 and get a *.LNX output file. Allegedly, it contains a 64-byte header and may not be "actual ROM" - whatever that means.

 

It runs fine on emulator - Handy and supposedly also runs via SD card - straight without any conversions.

 

Is that format OK for a final submission?

You should really set up your compiler to output the LNX header from your sources...

 

Here is what the fields look like in Synalyze...

361377603_ScreenShot2019-08-20at3_56_13PM.thumb.png.b04a99f8feee5e8190961354a307b257.png

 

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11 hours ago, VladR said:

I got a question on the ROM file format. I'm using the Visual Studio set-up through NMAKE / cc65 and get a *.LNX output file. Allegedly, it contains a 64-byte header and may not be "actual ROM" - whatever that means.

 

It runs fine on emulator - Handy and supposedly also runs via SD card - straight without any conversions.

 

Is that format OK for a final submission?

 

That's fine. LNX (with the header is preferred, especially if you fill out the header). A LYX file (headless) is also fine. Pretty much as long as it will run on an emulator you can submit whatever format you like.

 

Here's how I populated the header for Eggsavier - https://github.com/ikromin/atarilynx/blob/master/eggsavier/src/asm/lnxhdr.s

 

Hope that helps.

 

bhall408 - I am starting to think more and more that I need to make an online LNX header viewer/editor!

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19 minutes ago, necrocia said:

bhall408 - I am starting to think more and more that I need to make an online LNX header viewer/editor!

I think that would be a great idea. Sort of like JSONLint.com.

 

I'd imagine you could have all the fields represented, with popups for the enums, and then that would output to your choice of hex, a struct, etc.

 

On a related note, I'd really love it if you went through all the files that you host at AtariGamer and sanitize/normalize/correct all the mistakes in the headers.

 

Which is why we are ignoring it for side loaded files in our own emulator and will be populating it from a database instead.

 

My own observation (for LNX files you'd find in the wild) was that the title field was all but useless. Manufacturer field was passable 90-95% of the time, and the rotation field (for rotated games) had a significant number of cases of wrong data (1/3 to 1/2 of the rotated games you would find in the wild as I recall). Seems that EEPROM fields are correct in the wild -- have yet to find a bad one of those.


 

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I'll add that to my TO-DO list. What may be better is to not update the files, but rather fix the header when/if the ROM is downloaded - this way if the database changes, new downloads will have new information.

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