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Dragon's Descent - Action/Roguelike for the 7800 (ported from the 2600)


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2 hours ago, gambler172 said:

Where can i get Dragons Havoc?

I have a forum thread on it here, but keep in mind I'm just doing some tech tests at the moment, all I've released so far is a series of scrolling/multisprite demos:

I plan on releasing another demo for the Dragon's Havoc soon, although I've been wary of it distracting from Dragon's Descent and Dragon's Cache, since both are basically finished, and Havoc still has a way to go...

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15 hours ago, Revontuli said:

New build: 

The main change is a sprite revision of the Janus enemy (too many valid comments of it looking like a foodstuff :P ) 

Bread be gone...

:-D

JANUSv2-4.PNG.8d89170b021545dcd8a9bdf845a233b2.PNG

 

JANUSv2-3.PNG.95c0db7ed2b62a48320e1e8e5006e392.PNG

 

JANUSv2-2.PNG.b1ebfceb29ded3eef6e6e3d45c7920be.PNG

 

JANUSv2-1.PNG.b5458dbc2c64bf7bc287dcf5443bf2c0.PNG

 

Seriously, great job! 

 

I should be able to give the high score update a spin sometime during the weekend.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

With a Concerto, I can finally test the game with an AtariVox.  To be honest, the reason I originally supported an AtariVox was that it came as a package deal with the high score code packaged with 7800 Basic.  Saving scores without any extra code...why not?  I still feel a little bad about that "support" being kind of a technicality for my games so far, but having grown up in the 8-bit NES/SMS era with no easy way to save high scores, I felt this game in particular deserved a chance to have a player's scores saved for posterity...

 

...but...

 

...now that I *have* an AtariVox, and I have roughly 1-2 kilobytes left on my ROM, realize I can potentially add a number of spoken phrases pretty easily...it feels weird fitting a speech phrase into a few dozen bytes by typing out a phoenetic phrase!

 

It's too late to add such chattiness to Dragon's Cache, and I probably won't have space on Dragon's Havoc, but having a gravely synth voice taunting you seems especially appropriate for *this* game.  The Dragon Molobros might try his best Evil Otto impersonation as you travel through the passages.  He's an imprisoned elder wyrm, it feels right he should heckle you as you descend the Labyrinth...?

 

I'm still playing with the functionality, and have a few questions (I took a quick look on the forums, but didn't find many specifics...)  Currently I'm on a Windows 10 machine with no good serial adapter, so I have to build a ROM ->run on Concerto to see how certain phrases sound, unless there's a better way to test, I'll likely be doing that:

 

-"set avoxvoice on" - The game seems to work fine on the Concerto even when the AtariVox isn't plugged in - do I need to add any code to "opt out" for when the user *doesn't* have an AtariVox?

-The ranges for pitch and speed are 0-255, correct?  I'm been trying a number of values to get the voice resembling "belligerent gravel-y voice from the deep" instead of the classic "snooty speak n' spell," and I think I might have something...

-so many ways to say "dragon," especially with that last vowel.  Just about any will work (with "o" weirdly being the most "off" for the 'Vox) - Dragen?  Dragin?  Dragun?  Dragan?  

-any advice is welcome, especially as this seems especially niche, and it sounds like just about everyone is still experimenting with this fun little peripheral...

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You don't have to worry about whether an AtariVox is plugged in or not. The commands will be sent to the controller port regardless and it doesn't matter if something is plugged in to receive them.

 

The range for pitch is indeed 0 to 255 (with a default value of 88), but volume and speed range from 0 to 127 with 96 and 114 as their respective defaults not that there's any need to change the volume.

 

Writing phrases for the AtarVox is a bit like learning to draw where you can easily make something that represents the what you want like a stick figure, but you have to look / listen at what it is you're basing it off to get something more realistic and there are hundreds of ways to get something that works.

I listen to myself saying what I want the AtariVox to say and try to replicate that though it means it picks up on my accent a bit.

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2 hours ago, Revontuli said:

I'm still playing with the functionality, and have a few questions (I took a quick look on the forums, but didn't find many specifics...)  Currently I'm on a Windows 10 machine with no good serial adapter, so I have to build a ROM ->run on Concerto to see how certain phrases sound, unless there's a better way to test, I'll likely be doing that:

You can get a Stella-daptor II and put an AVOX firmware compatible on it. You can then use the Stella-Daptor to connect the AVox directly to your PC to speed up testing. At least, that's my understanding from researching the various threads and the Stella-Daptor webpage.

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35 minutes ago, Muddyfunster said:

You can get a Stella-daptor II and put an AVOX firmware compatible on it. You can then use the Stella-Daptor to connect the AVox directly to your PC to speed up testing. At least, that's my understanding from researching the various threads and the Stella-Daptor webpage.

Yes, this how I've done it myself. However, there aren't any 7800 emulators that support the Stelladaptor, so I had to do my testing with Stella and a 2600 test ROM, then copy the data to my 7800 project in raw mode. 

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5 hours ago, SmittyB said:

I listen to myself saying what I want the AtariVox to say and try to replicate that though it means it picks up on my accent a bit.

 

I'm sure any corporation would attempt to eradicate any such artifact. But I think the idea of AtariVox mimicking the programmer's accent has a lot of charm.

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I think this might be an appropriate time to plug Voxolotl, the tool I made for my own use to help develop for the AtariVox. 

There's 2 versions for the 7800, the original using a 2 button controller and the second using a keypad, then there's the Windows version that can output to the AtariVox over USB using an adaptor.

They're buggy and require having the SpeakJet reference sheet to hand, but it's a lot easier to get a good result than trial and error.

 

 

 

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  • 5 months later...

I took way too long to get around to posting a test build with full AtariVox audio - While adding it to the code is pretty easy, it's surprisingly hard to write a script that consists of just a few little phrases!  

 

A lot of fun, though.  I'll probably revise this and play with the voices some more, but I wanted to post a tentative build for the few people with the AtariVox and a way to play ROMs to try out.

 

You'll get some talking when start the game, when you collect a gem, when change the difficultly to "Hard" (and back), and a few other places...

 

DragonsDescent_7_31_2021_VOX.bas.a78

DragonsDescent_7_31_2021_VOX.bas.bin

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10 hours ago, Revontuli said:

I took way too long to get around to posting a test build with full AtariVox audio - While adding it to the code is pretty easy, it's surprisingly hard to write a script that consists of just a few little phrases!  

 

A lot of fun, though.  I'll probably revise this and play with the voices some more, but I wanted to post a tentative build for the few people with the AtariVox and a way to play ROMs to try out.

 

You'll get some talking when start the game, when you collect a gem, when change the difficultly to "Hard" (and back), and a few other places...

 

DragonsDescent_7_31_2021_VOX.bas.a78 48.13 kB · 3 downloads

DragonsDescent_7_31_2021_VOX.bas.bin 48 kB · 2 downloads

Hi Rev

checked it with my Dragonfly and Atarivox.

Most speach sound s really good ?

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  • 2 weeks later...

ZeroPage Homebrew is playing Dragon's Descent on tomorrow's (Tue Aug 10, 2021) stream LIVE on Twitch at 6PM PT | 9PM ET | 1AM GMT+1Day!

 

Games:

 

(SET TO 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY!)

 

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  • 4 months later...

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