Unicorns season: Prince of Persia for the A8!

[Franco Catrin]

13 hours ago, rensoup said:

And speaking of your test, I believe your sprite routine may be faster as well as taking half the memory. I'm probably going to use it but if you're interested in tweaking it for Pop (clipping code mostly) I'd be happy to include it in the game (and credit you of course).

 

If I decided to stick to 4 colors, the game would be done and wouldn't require the extra cycles. But adding PMGs, although seemingly a simple task, is quite the challenge. I've had a taste with the torches and the potions.

 

Additionnally I'm running out of mem in the base 64KB, so you may have made my life a whole lot easier ?

 

Of course I can do the changes that you might need!

I'll send you a PM!

 

[Gunstar]

I 

1 hour ago, Lastic said:

Just as information PAL 130XE with U1MB, Stock RAM config, HSIO drivers, SIO2SD, 20 seconds for the red line to show, 56 sec in total to get to the PoP screen.

And I prefer tapes so my patience runs up to 16 minutes

It's all relative anyway; games on my modern consoles and PC take as long or longer to load than games on my vintage computers, even some on tape! For example, on the Xbox 360, from powering it up, through boot-strapping, connecting to XBOX live, then going to the games menu and loading a game until it starts, all takes about 5 minutes. I can have most stuff on my 8-bit Atari up and running in about 1 min. or less, even from 1`x speed floppy. If people can wait for modern systems to load up games then why all the fuss about older systems? It's not about how much K or G the game uses, it's about waiting to play the game, whether it is 64K or 64G, and it's all the same. 

 

My Atari can be boot-strapped and SDX and my HDD partitions all loaded and then load a program from SDX, and ready to use while my Winows PC is still loading windows. People who complain about load times are not living in reality, IMHO; I never see/hear people complain about load times on PC's, Playstation 3/4's or Xbox 360/One's. They just accept it there, but not with vintage equipment! It's all relative...

Edited December 1, 2019 by Gunstar

[patjomki]

2 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said:

if one does not have 1m20s time to wait for loading, I wonder why he is turning the real Atari on.

I am waiting for a conversion of Prince of Persia for decades so what was a little bit more than a minute to at least play the first level? ?

[miker]

@rensoup it was question for @xxl regarding loading times, please disregard this.

@xxl to be clear fro this post http://atarionline.pl/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=5142&page=2#Item_50 on.

@CharlieChaplin why not tape version, just for you.

@emkay just STFU, mkay?

[emkay]

24 minutes ago, miker said:

 

@emkay just STFU, mkay?

 

Ladies first

 

 

[miker]

So go on.

[Heaven/TQA]

my 2 cents regarding loading time... when doing the 7800 demo and the STNICCC Demo all running from bank switched carts I am glad that Wrathchild showed me the ease of use of Bank switched carts... after using those all loading through SIO wether real drives or modern flash like ones I got a big fan of carts... so simple instant to use up to 1mb with my old AtariMax flashcard.... but yeah not sure if PoP can be spread across those 8k or 16k windows.

 

but that’s a task for Mark etc  not yours.

[emkay]

47 minutes ago, miker said:

So go on.

So that's the way you're talking to Ladies?

[emkay]

rensoup , sorry for the derailing  , but this is an old thing here on Atariage. 

They don't listen, fall, and blame me for falling. 

Actually, in the other "Prince of Persia" Thread they blamed me "stopping" any development. But even after I didn't write into that thread for about 6 years, nothing really happened. 

In a coincidence, you did something righteous, taking the BBC Version, doing a lot things that I was proposing back then.  

I hope they will stay silent now. But , I'm not sure if they learned their lesson.

 

Please keep up the great work with this project. 

 

 

[rensoup]

3 hours ago, Heaven/TQA said:

my 2 cents regarding loading time... when doing the 7800 demo and the STNICCC Demo all running from bank switched carts I am glad that Wrathchild showed me the ease of use of Bank switched carts... after using those all loading through SIO wether real drives or modern flash like ones I got a big fan of carts... so simple instant to use up to 1mb with my old AtariMax flashcard.... but yeah not sure if PoP can be spread across those 8k or 16k windows.

 

but that’s a task for Mark etc  not yours.

Well I don't know anything about carts and where the window to access it is but if it can be laid on top of the screen buffers while antic/gtia are still able to access them it shouldn't be too bad but let's leave that for later (possibly ?)

 

Mark?

Edited December 1, 2019 by rensoup

[rensoup]

...I'm not getting into an argument ?

[+Stephen]

57 minutes ago, rensoup said:

...I'm not getting into an argument ?

Everyone ignore emkay, stick to coding, and we'll be just fine, and get a killer new game conversion.

[kiwilove]

I haven't run .atr disks off an Atarimax 8mbit cart before - so I don't have a clear idea how to run this?

 

It comes up with the following screen:

 

xB4.3    BUF       INI       RUN      I/O

$0A00   $0980   $02E2   $02E0   $0CCC

 

        1. ORE    OBxjib

        2, D->@DDDDDDDD        D=diamond

 

Device: $01                             Ultrapeed: $00

 

Pressing 1 then fire button seems to go through a loading process (blank screen).

Same with Pressing 2 then fire.

 

But nothing happens at the end - you're back to the above screen.

 

Tried Shift + Control 1, etc but it does the same as above.

 

I'm using a 800XL 64K computer.

 

Harvey

[pedgarcia]

Good job! I've played the level for 1hr or so, and I suck at it  ... I faced one crash at some point, but the animation and controllers were working fine using Atari800MacX.

 

 

[adam242]

1 hour ago, kiwilove said:

I haven't run .atr disks off an Atarimax 8mbit cart before - so I don't have a clear idea how to run this?

 

It comes up with the following screen:

 

xB4.3    BUF       INI       RUN      I/O

$0A00   $0980   $02E2   $02E0   $0CCC

 

        1. ORE    OBxjib

        2, D->@DDDDDDDD        D=diamond

 

Device: $01                             Ultrapeed: $00

 

Pressing 1 then fire button seems to go through a loading process (blank screen).

Same with Pressing 2 then fire.

 

But nothing happens at the end - you're back to the above screen.

 

Tried Shift + Control 1, etc but it does the same as above.

 

I'm using a 800XL 64K computer.

 

Harvey

 

I get the same result when I tried loading it from the CF card in my Incognito 800.. XL/XE mode, 64K, 320K or 576K memory configurations.

[xxl]

1 hour ago, kiwilove said:

I'm using a 800XL 64K computer.

-The target is a stock Atari 130XE (128KB of RAM) on a single 128KB floppy.

 

11 minutes ago, adam242 said:

loading it from the CF card in my Incognito 800

you must have a device connected to the atari via peripheral socket. such as floppy disk drive, sio2pc, sio2sd, sio2bt, sio2wifi and similar

[kiwilove]

Yeah, I wondered why it didn't run - running Altirra.

But setting it's memory to 128K - it works fine!

 

Harvey

[Heaven/TQA]

8 hours ago, rensoup said:

Well I don't know anything about carts and where the window to access it is but if it can be laid on top of the screen buffers while antic/gtia are still able to access them it shouldn't be too bad but let's leave that for later (possibly ?)

 

Mark?

the thing will be that banks are at 8000-bfff banked in (or 8000-9fff).

 

and be careful regarding the 130xe feature of separate access antic and cpu as some memory expansions are not 130xe compatible (with different access).

 

i personally have not cared back coding Arsantica 2 as I aimed for stock 130xe and the machine has that feature. But a lot ppl have ram expansions esp the 256+ ones which doesn’t have that feature of separate access Of ANTIC and CPU.

[rensoup]

8 hours ago, pedgarcia said:

Good job! I've played the level for 1hr or so, and I suck at it  ... I faced one crash at some point, but the animation and controllers were working fine using Atari800MacX.

 

 

crash ? hmm... I don't how accurate the A800Mac emu is, probably accurate enough though. Is there a way to use Altirra with a windows emu on Macs ? Because it's a lot easier to analyze bugs by tracking CPU history.

[rensoup]

2 hours ago, Heaven/TQA said:

the thing will be that banks are at 8000-bfff banked in (or 8000-9fff).

 

and be careful regarding the 130xe feature of separate access antic and cpu as some memory expansions are not 130xe compatible (with different access).

 

i personally have not cared back coding Arsantica 2 as I aimed for stock 130xe and the machine has that feature. But a lot ppl have ram expansions esp the 256+ ones which doesn’t have that feature of separate access Of ANTIC and CPU.

Yes I avoided using that 130XE feature, from what I understood it allowed antic/gtia to access data from the currently used extended bank instead of the one in the base 64KB... which I didn't think was very useful anyway.

[Mq.]

I think I found some bug maybe. I don't know if there is a bug, but I report it to you, because maybe it will be help.
I tested first level in Altirra.
There is shortcut trick in original version of POP. Here is that trick explanation:

 

In the Atari version when you wait for guard and he is near you enough, then when you go left then the game crashes on screen changing.

Try to do the trick, and you will see what I mean.

[Mclaneinc]

Lets remember this is more of a WIP demo and early on, days ago there was just LOTS of data and sprites...I think its amazing and we should expect crashes here and there 

 

Good to get the reports in though..Every bit helps

 

And as Stephen says, ignore Emkay, its become standard practice for him to pick holes in every thread he comes to, most people have him on ignore until he stops this odd behaviour.

Edited December 2, 2019 by Mclaneinc
dreadful spalling

[rensoup]

1 hour ago, Mq. said:

Try to do the trick, and you will see what I mean.

I've just tried 3 times with that exact build Altira 3.20.19 and was able to complete the level each time. I didn't even know that trick ?

 

is it 100%? Could anyone else try this ?

12 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

Lets remember this is more of a WIP demo and early on, days ago there was just LOTS of data and sprites...I think its amazing and we should expect crashes here and there 

 

Good to get the reports in though..Every bit helps

Well actually there shouldn't be any crash there ?... and indeed, thanks for the report!

[Mclaneinc]

You sir have incredibly high standards of coding

 

Again, I think for a game that was mainly data extraction up to only a very short time ago its stunning...May all the crashes be banned

 

Thank you..

[xxl]

8 minutes ago, rensoup said:

I didn't even know that tric

4427: C0 F1     CPY #$F1
4429: 90 01     BCC $442C
442B: 00        BRK                 < ------------------------- 
442C: B9 F2 1F  LDA $1FF2,Y
442F: 85 03     STA $03     ;CASINI+1
4431: B9 00 1F  LDA $1F00,Y
4434: 60        RTS