Lynx 3D Experimenting

[+bhall408]

On 8/11/2019 at 3:02 AM, karri said:

I get the speed by space debris. Here is a small build of the intro. You can turn to see the debris move.

Reminds me of a mix of star raiders (arcade part) and Galactic Empire (trading/conquest part)...

 

 

[VladR]

2 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

It goes without saying that there absolutely are others (Jag creatures) genuinely interested in checking out whatever builds you have in the Jag area and not solely to trash any WIP you post or intentionally find a way to get the thread closed (what good would that do anyway)

What good ? Clearly, they get enjoyment out of it. I didn't understand that specific behavior it at that time, so I was actually naively attempting to have a rational debate. Yeah, I know 

I have no problem admitting that was incredibly stupid of me. You live, you learn.

Every.Single.Psychology book recommends that the only way how to "win" over them is not get entangled with them in an argument in the first place. Can't really argue with that logic as it has been proven time and over again across multiple closed threads in Jag subforums.

 

I think it would just be easier to announce that you don't intend to share most of these builds or sources publicly instead of avoiding/ignoring/sidestepping those willing to volunteer their time to test a file for you on real hardware, in this case the Lynx.

Wait, what ? You didn't read this thread. There's several Lynx builds that are publicly available right here. Anybody can download it and either try it on emulator or Lynx.

 

If anything, posting a current WIP build (or even video) to the Jag area would reinforce the idea that you're actually progressing and no, not just to trash talk you. When progress is moving at a glacial pace, you need thick skin.
 

I'm repeating myself, again and again and again. There's 2 scenarios: Either I post a video of my jag game and people will bitch about it or I don't post a video and people will bitch about it. Can't make everybody happy. I simply waste less energy if I don't post a video of my current jaguar build.

[VladR]

5 hours ago, karri said:

This obviously sucks.

 

How about designing the movements as projected trajectories on a flat canvas?

I mean to tie the objects to fixed coordinates and just move them around convincing arcs? Perhaps creating typical flight paths as splines with spawn and exit points using splines. The size would be minimum at the end points and maximum half way.

 

For fights the spacecraft could follow a few pseudo-random attack patterns and the distance would be the only thing you can affect by your own steering.

 

This would also solve my desire for the flying paths :). I just let the trajectory width be thicker or smaller depending on your distance to the target. I could also draw the object with polygons to maintain the illusion of 3D.

 

OMG! This is so simple comparing to the 3D nightmare.

I am not sure I follow. How does that fix the Z-range issue for you ? BTW, splines are expensive. Not sure you'd get the full effect of them in that super low Lynx resolution, especially considering their performance cost...

[+karri]

The Z-range problem is fixed by forcing every object to fly close to you at some point of their trajectory. You are inside a sphere heading somewhere. The enemy craft will make a fly-by starting at some point in the sphere flying to another point in the sphere (usually on the opposite side of the sphere). In the middle of the trajectory the past track grows to max level to vanish again as the craft moves away.

 

In case of encounter I just swap the normal flying trajectory to some pseudo random fight trajectory that loops around your vessel with small variations in the range only. Always keeping the craft fairly large.

 

I thought that the trajectory could be set up by 2 or 3 splines to avoid sharp corners. When you get to the end of the spline you pick the next pseudo random spline. So you would have a few maneuvers for the enemy to avoid your fire and trying to get behind you. The splines would start relative to the current enemy position so the flight paths vary in relation to the background all the time.

 

The past track would only cover the last 2-4 seconds of the flight slowly fading to black.

 

There is no 3D space. Only trajectories and crafts projected to the sphere around you.

 

[Clint Thompson]

3 hours ago, VladR said:

Wait, what ? You didn't read this thread. There's several Lynx builds that are publicly available right here. Anybody can download it and either try it on emulator or Lynx.

 

I'm repeating myself, again and again and again. There's 2 scenarios: Either I post a video of my jag game and people will bitch about it or I don't post a video and people will bitch about it. Can't make everybody happy. I simply waste less energy if I don't post a video of my current jaguar build.

No, I read the thread and saw a few early postings of the demo stuff you uploaded for the Lynx when you had the counters or whatever going on but not the most recent tunnel build photo you posted unless it was edited from one of the earlier posts and/or I missed it somehow. *I just went back but didn't see it. What the others are asking about checking out here more recently on real hardware...

 

Less people are likely to bitch about a progress video than not of one. If you'd like to send over the latest and greatest, I'll waste my time making the video and then everyone can bitch at you from both sides AND you actually make everybody happy, at the same time lol - see, full of win!

[+karri]

3 hours ago, bhall408 said:

Reminds me of a mix of star raiders (arcade part) and Galactic Empire (trading/conquest part)...

 

 

The game started as Elite. It has trading, galactic map, lots of randomly generated planets and attributes. All are not currently active in the intro build.

 

So far the game has a mission engine that tries to tell a story. You start as a trader/pirate whatever and at every docking you get a news broadcast that tells about problems emerging. A little like a growing imperium in Star Wars.

 

At some missions the space physics get different (eg. black hole). Some missions are rescue missions, smuggling stuff. You may join the bad guys or the rebellion during the game and it affects where the news go.

 

There is also a superior race hiding on a stealth planet. You will be rescued by them once. What happens after that depends on what kind of player you were.

 

So I try to create a story with multiple endings and a decent number of missions. Perhaps 20 or 30 missions.

 

[philipj]

Ok... I can't believe I missed this. This is great. The Lynx is very capable little system with the math co-processors on it. Congrats VR!

[VladR]

5 hours ago, karri said:

The Z-range problem is fixed by forcing every object to fly close to you at some point of their trajectory. You are inside a sphere heading somewhere. The enemy craft will make a fly-by starting at some point in the sphere flying to another point in the sphere (usually on the opposite side of the sphere). In the middle of the trajectory the past track grows to max level to vanish again as the craft moves away.

 

In case of encounter I just swap the normal flying trajectory to some pseudo random fight trajectory that loops around your vessel with small variations in the range only. Always keeping the craft fairly large.

 

I thought that the trajectory could be set up by 2 or 3 splines to avoid sharp corners. When you get to the end of the spline you pick the next pseudo random spline. So you would have a few maneuvers for the enemy to avoid your fire and trying to get behind you. The splines would start relative to the current enemy position so the flight paths vary in relation to the background all the time.

 

The past track would only cover the last 2-4 seconds of the flight slowly fading to black.

 

There is no 3D space. Only trajectories and crafts projected to the sphere around you.

 

OK, now I understand. So, basically you would be completely ditching the generic 3D WorldSpace and remapping the 3D WorldSpace into 2D ScreenSpace at offline process (or, at worst, load-time initialization). But, given the 1,024 KB carts, there's no need to do that and you can author all such content off-line yourself and merely load it from ROM at load-time.

 

Since even in 3D you would have to pre-create the trajectories somehow anyway (e.g. at the very least 2 waypoints) because AI needs to choose randomly between them, that particular run-time decision [amongst the trajectories] cost stays the same (regardless of what the trajectory computation itself entails).

 

You don't need any 3D transformation for this, either. Just used scaled sprites based on distance. And you get to manually decide each and every pixel in the sprite sheet, which is something you don't have a control over with a 3D engine. So, you can have a really nice ship sprites.

 

I don't see a reason why it wouldn't run at 60 fps, given it's just couple table look-ups and a simple lerp interpolation for the waypoint navigation (or, not even that, as we have 1,024 KB of ROM data). Though, lerp would probably be faster than looking up the trajectory from within ROM each frame. Would need to see the exact final code to decide on that. Not that the lerp is expensive - it's just couple adds and 2-cycle bitshifts using ZP variables anyway.

 

Another advantage of pre-selected paths is that you don't need to draw the exhaust engine past tracks using a generic algorithm, but can pre-compute them offline too and just load the endpoints from ROM. Hell, I can imagine you could even generate a full unrolled code for each of those splines and just cache it run-time, completely avoiding any line algo (be it Bresenham, FixedPoint or DDA).

[VladR]

karri - since you're going to the PGRE anyway, and I know for sure that you have the full equipment to burn carts - would you be willing to burn about 20-25 carts of my game for me ? I could paypal you (or wire transfer, as I still keep my EU account) whatever it costs.

 

It would be an interesting first-hand experiment for me to know if it sells over there. Because of the super-low volume, even if I sold everything, it wouldn't make a dent into my income tax (which was the reason for me postponing my jag game).

 

Perhaps I could sell your game on my stand too ? I would need to work on the creditcard  payment provider in the meantime and get it operational, of course.

 

I could haul the game boxes (for your and my game) from whichever U.S. company we'd choose to print them, so you'd only haul the small carts (though, having flown across Atlantic many times, it's a problem given the hard 23 KG limit). Worst-case scenario, paying for the second luggage. Is it still 50 EUR, or is it 100 EUR now for 2nd bag?

 

Just something to think about. I'm sure we could work something out.

[phoenixdownita]

8 minutes ago, VladR said:

... Because of the super-low volume, even if I sold everything, it wouldn't make a dent into my income tax (which was the reason for me postponing my jag game)....

Do you mind explaining what this even mean?

Unless you live on subsidies, taxes in the US have a ladder approach, so you get to pay the same amount as anyone else on the first X dollars, then the next Y dollars get to pay an increased bracket, then again if you reach Z and so on .... in the end if you stay within a certain boundary you pay the same taxes as anyone else pays on that amount ... I really don't get the logic but I don't know your situation.

[+karri]

Sounds ok for me. I will grab with me a programmer and lots of blank carts. Most likely I do the programming at the hotel a few hundred meters from the PRGE as I did not bother to get AC power to the stand. All my demos are on battery driven Lynx hardware. I stay at Hotel Eastlund from Thursday night to Monday morning. So we could have a burning session on Friday to get the labels on the carts and burn them.

 

Quote

But, given the 1,024 KB carts

Yep. I also have a 2MB working prototype cart with 64k EEPROM space. So there is little risk in running out of space in Stardreamer.

 

I also ordered a A2 printed sign for my stand. Is has a cut-out for a 10" battery powered HDMI and VGA monitor. So I can run my Raspberry Pi powered OpenGL Wurlizer application (moving record picker and platter. Real scratch sounds. Flickering lamps. Just like the real thing.) I also bought a small numeric USB keypad to glue on the sign for selecting the next song.

 

The same monitor is also connected to a McWill VGA enabled Lynx so you can play all my games at the stand.

 

I will grab with me a small number of unsold games to PRGE like "Flappy bird testing", "Always winter, never Christmas + Reiko's Robot Run", "Shaken, not stirred + Sylvester", "On Duty + mystery title to be revealed later"

[VladR]

1 minute ago, phoenixdownita said:

Do you mind explaining what this even mean?

Unless you live on subsidies, taxes in the US have a ladder approach, so you get to pay the same amount as anyone else on the first X dollars, then the next Y dollars get to pay an increased bracket, then again if you reach Z and so on .... in the end if you stay within a certain boundary you pay the same taxes as anyone else pays on that amount ... I really don't get the logic but I don't know your situation.

I've been doing my taxes my whole life by myself across both continents and under a great number of different schemes, as after the Iron Curtain fell, my country kept doing pretty radical tax reform every 2 years (not the miniscule cosmetic changes that are done in U.S.).

 

Problem is that any additional income amount will increase your taxes for the income that already happened. It's purely academic debate whether you account that into the new income  source or spread over the ones that already happened. The final tax amount is non-negotiable. So, I would be paying additional tax on top of what was already accounted for. But in 2020, unlike this year, selling games will be my only income.

 

We're talking about a difference of 3-4 months, as given the 60-day pre-order period, I would register the income around September-October, instead of January (e.g. 3 months later).

 

If you can come up with a valid reason why I should voluntarily throw gobs of money at IRS, I'm all ears. But I don't think you can. I ran about a dozen scenarios in excel, and no matter how you look at it, it makes no sense to pay more to IRS.

 

But this ? If I sell 25 Lynx copies at $40-$50, that's what - a $1,000 ? That won't make a dent. But, I would get very valuable data as to the sales during the retro convention, as a first-time vendor.

[enthusi]

Karri, you are about to invent a WingCommander engine it seems? :) That'd be cool in fact.

[+karri]

3 minutes ago, enthusi said:

Karri, you are about to invent a WingCommander engine it seems? That'd be cool in fact.

Yep. I did play Wing Commander a lot on my AmigaCD. It was a very nice game with large graphics.

[VladR]

15 minutes ago, karri said:

Sounds ok for me. I will grab with me a programmer and lots of blank carts. Most likely I do the programming at the hotel a few hundred meters from the PRGE as I did not bother to get AC power to the stand. All my demos are on battery driven Lynx hardware. I stay at Hotel Eastlund from Thursday night to Monday morning. So we could have a burning session on Friday to get the labels on the carts and burn them.

Awesome ! Wait, do you actually also have a vendor stand there, for yourself ?

 

 I stay at Hotel Eastlund from Thursday night to Monday morning. So we could have a burning session on Friday to get the labels on the carts and burn them.

When does your flight land ? I could probably pick you up from airport. Given that a trip to PRGE will be over 3,000 miles, driving to airport would seem like a drive to a fastfood

On Friday morning I gotta start prepping the stand as the hall opens around noon.

Yep. I also have a 2MB working prototype cart with 64k EEPROM space. So there is little risk in running out of space in Stardreamer

2 MB ? Damn, that's a lot of data for 6502. That beats even U1MB. Although, you can bankswitch over there...

I also ordered a A2 printed sign for my stand. Is has a cut-out for a 10" battery powered HDMI and VGA monitor. So I can run my Raspberry Pi powered OpenGL Wurlizer application (moving record picker and platter. Real scratch sounds. Flickering lamps. Just like the real thing.) I also bought a small numeric USB keypad to glue on the sign for selecting the next song

So, it's like an interactive poster and jukebox in one ? Damn, that's a dope idea !

The same monitor is also connected to a McWill VGA enabled Lynx so you can play all my games at the stand.

 

I will grab with me a small number of unsold games to PRGE like "Flappy bird testing", "Always winter, never Christmas + Reiko's Robot Run", "Shaken, not stirred + Sylvester", "On Duty + mystery title to be revealed later"

 

I will have a Lynx by the time PRGE hits, just not sure about McWill.

So you already made 4 Lynx games ? You've been busy

 

 

[+karri]

2 minutes ago, VladR said:

Awesome ! Wait, do you actually also have a vendor stand there, for yourself ?

 

When does your flight land ? I could probably pick you up from airport. Given that a trip to PRGE will be over 3,000 miles, driving to airport would seem like a drive to a fastfood

On Friday morning I gotta start prepping the stand as the hall opens around noon.

2 MB ? Damn, that's a lot of data for 6502. That beats even U1MB. Although, you can bankswitch over there...

So, it's like an interactive poster and jukebox in one ? Damn, that's a dope idea !

I will have a Lynx by the time PRGE hits, just not sure about McWill.

So you already made 4 Lynx games ? You've been busy

 

 

Yep, I decided to get a half size stand with a tiny table and a chair. It is not in the main vendor hall as it was full. So they put my in a cupboard or under the chairs like Harry Potter.

 

My flight lands Thursday at 17:55 from Iceland. I was actually planning to land on Friday. But to my surprise the damn earth rotates! So I arrive at the same time I left from Iceland. What a surprise! I thought the earth was flat.

I have not really made 4 games.

"Flappy" was made by tomna. I just fixed the sounds there and made the carts.

"Always winter, never Christmas" was coded in Google Scratch with a Visual novel extension created by Haroldo from Brazil. It creates an XML tree of the game which I translated to cc65 using Python.
"Reiko''s Robot Run" was created by Turbo Laser Lynx from Vaasa, Finland.
"Shaken, not stirred" was my bamboo cart release last year. I have too much bamboo at home still...

"Sylvester" was Turbo's mini game to go on the same cart.

"On Duty" is the 30-year anniversary release.

 

[VladR]

8 minutes ago, karri said:

Yep, I decided to get a half size stand with a tiny table and a chair. It is not in the main vendor hall as it was full. So they put my in a cupboard or under the chairs like Harry Potter.

That's funny. It's my exact situation as I was late in ordering the stand, so they could only give me the half-stand too

 

My flight lands Thursday at 17:55 from Iceland. I was actually planning to land on Friday. But to my surprise the damn earth rotates! So I arrive at the same time I left from Iceland. What a surprise! I thought the earth was flat.

Of course it's flat ! That's how gravity works - it flats everything naturally into a flat plane. You don't believe those NASA conspiracies and published handcrafted renders, now do you !

So I arrive at the same time I left from Iceland.

If only you felt the same upon arrival as when you departed I had a flight from Denver to London earlier this year and was wishing the plane would explode in the air last two hours and end the misery

 

 

[VladR]

I spent last 2 days doing some most basic gameplay (though it could be argued it's still an engine thing) : lasershots with collision detection and placement of first enemy (repeated every couple track chunks).

 

I was about to record the vid of the track fly-through but Fraps doesn't want to do that. I installed 2 different versions but still, no capture - not even the framerate counter shows up (and I messed with all settings, restarts, eetc.). I did some search on forums here but nothing came up.

 

So, is there any known Win-7 version of fraps that will record from Handy ? Or do you guys use something else to capture it ?

[+karri]

Mednafen has an option to record gameplay by itself.

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

3 hours ago, karri said:

My flight lands Thursday at 17:55 from Iceland. I was actually planning to land on Friday. But to my surprise the damn earth rotates! So I arrive at the same time I left from Iceland. What a surprise! I thought the earth was flat. 

??

[VladR]

3 hours ago, karri said:

Mednafen has an option to record gameplay by itself.

Thanks. I will try that approximately next week.

 

I'll be offline for about a week as in an hour I'm going to pick up a moving truck, fill it up and in the evening move to North Dakota. No idea how soon I will get the internet installed in a new place but when I checked the place out last month, I didn't get the data coverage via my cell phone provider, as it's in the middle of the nowhere. Just the way I like it

 

I should hopefully resume coding on Saturday, if all goes well...

[+karri]

On 8/13/2019 at 9:22 AM, VladR said:

would you be willing to burn about 20-25 carts of my game for me ?

I found a nice photo shop that prints good looking labels. The starting fee is €4 and one 15x20cm "picture" is €4. As the labels are 56mm by 36mm you end up with 10 labels per sheet.

 

If you want to take this route and create a jpg image with high enough res for a label I could get 3 sheets printed. You need scissors to cut the labels.