rensoup Posted May 15, 2020 Author Share Posted May 15, 2020 55 minutes ago, Jacques said: Not really, I like more advanced sounds as an option, ran it only for a little while, but my initial impression was the game was slowing more with some movement during sounds of opening gate, etc. Hard to present it, I guess Rybags mentioned RMT player more CPU-consuming, but maybe you could compare it with FPS counter on your disposal? Well you're the only one who's seen this so far... I think I would have noticed too ? but if you can post a screenshot of a room where it happens, I'll have a closer look... (like I said the sound player is the sound player is identical for both banks) 19 minutes ago, Jacques said: I think Rybags looked for possible reason why lower menu options are not available/active: still don't see what that's got to do with basic ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacques Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 17 minutes ago, rensoup said: still don't see what that's got to do with basic ? Possibly nothing, it wasn't my idea, but we're all curious why lower menu options are not available, yet visible Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacques Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 OK, there's new Saberman's movie where one could hear sound glitches when opening gate interefere's with footsteps, let's start from 1:30: I'm not Atari coder, but it seems like it's short of CPU time, plus there are the moments where movement seems to suffer more than on 1st sound-bank. E.g. approaching the gate when running after 1:44: To me it's no problem, even if there are such slow-downs, there's a choice between two banks, but if it's not about CPU-time used by sound-player, maybe it could be fixed? 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeropolis79 Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 Looking very good.. I'm glad I opted for the memory upgrade for my 65XE while it's being fixed. What SD card floppy drive simulator would this work on? As for the CPC - the recent port of Pinball Dreams shows what it can do but I think Prince of Persia on it is quite good but I agree, it could be better. The animation is among the best the CPC has to offer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted May 15, 2020 Author Share Posted May 15, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, Jacques said: OK, there's new Saberman's movie where one could hear sound glitches when opening gate interefere's with footsteps, let's start from 1:30: It's the same as the previous release, that's how PoP works, it can only play 1 SFX at a time, I gave some of them priority over others so that it didn't sound weird. Again it should be the same as in the previous release... maybe you can verify that ? 3 hours ago, Jacques said: I'm not Atari coder, but it seems like it's short of CPU time, plus there are the moments where movement seems to suffer more than on 1st sound-bank. E.g. approaching the gate when running after 1:44: Except that he's using SFX bank 1 ? PoP is all about slowdowns, like I said in the past it's one of its trademarks ?, try the BBC/Apple2/C64 version and you'll see... It can get worse. Edited May 15, 2020 by rensoup 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted May 15, 2020 Author Share Posted May 15, 2020 1 hour ago, zeropolis79 said: Looking very good.. I'm glad I opted for the memory upgrade for my 65XE while it's being fixed. What SD card floppy drive simulator would this work on? no idea... sorry 1 hour ago, zeropolis79 said: As for the CPC - the recent port of Pinball Dreams shows what it can do but I think Prince of Persia on it is quite good but I agree, it could be better. The animation is among the best the CPC has to offer. the CPC is probably on a different league, as I understand, it's much more powerful than a A8 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted May 15, 2020 Author Share Posted May 15, 2020 6 hours ago, Jacques said: Possibly nothing, it wasn't my idea, but we're all curious why lower menu options are not available, yet visible Just for teasing you guys ? I was going to wait until the final release before revealing the cheat ? 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 POP on the Atari is playing just as well as on any platform if not better, I remember it well on on tandy and pc back in the day... this kind of performance and nice graphics are simply great for ANY of the offerings. Great work, just a few touch ups and fix ups is all. It's going to fine and we are getting something great! Thanks to the team for all their hard work! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacques Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 (edited) While it's great for CPC there was PoP for it back in the days and it was very colourful, their animation is not actually that good. I don't mean the slown-downs, which are there on every 8-bit like rensoup pointed out, but CPC's protagonist's moves have less frames in general. That said, years later, but Atari got extraordinary conversion animation- and gfx- wise, and on that ocassion, it doesn't need all the ROM memory C64 version uses on EasyFlash cartridge. Incredible! Edited May 15, 2020 by Jacques 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilheim Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 Awesome! Glad to read the game is almost finished. I tried a little and the game crashed at level 05. Here's a screenshot: Apparently, there was a write at $898C that makes a KIL instruction during a DLI interrupt. Regards! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted May 15, 2020 Share Posted May 15, 2020 3 hours ago, rensoup said: PoP is all about slowdowns, like I said in the past it's one of its trademarks ?, try the BBC/Apple2/C64 version and you'll see... It can get worse. BTW, is there any intent to use throttling? Some animations sequences seem a bit fast to me. Throttling would also make the slowdowns seem a bit less so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted May 16, 2020 Author Share Posted May 16, 2020 2 hours ago, Wilheim said: I tried a little and the game crashed at level 05. Here's a screenshot: Thanks for the screenshot, hopefully this happens 100%... I notice it's NTSC ? 2 hours ago, Wilheim said: Apparently, there was a write at $898C that makes a KIL instruction during a DLI interrupt. Not exactly, as far as I can tell it's hitting my 'Assert' where the number of DLIs triggered is wrong... possibly because the VBi takes too long in NTSC... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted May 16, 2020 Author Share Posted May 16, 2020 1 hour ago, MrFish said: BTW, is there any intent to use throttling? Some animations sequences seem a bit fast to me. Throttling would also make the slowdowns seem a bit less so. There already is... 3 frames is the minimum. Of course 3 frames mean 50/3= 17fps in PAL or 60/3=20fps in NTSC, so NTSC will feel a bit faster when there is very little going on. I could make it 3 for PAL and 4 for NTSC or an option in the menu... ? I just realized that this may have an impact on the game's clock... I'm actually subtracting the number of screen refreshes it takes to render a frame even though for a frame needing 3 refreshes and another needing 7 refreshes, the prince moved the same amount... duh... I should subtract a fixed amount... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted May 16, 2020 Author Share Posted May 16, 2020 3 hours ago, Jacques said: That said, years later, but Atari got extraordinary conversion animation- and gfx- wise, and on that ocassion, it doesn't need all the ROM memory C64 version uses on EasyFlash cartridge. Incredible! The C64 version seems very very speedy with 2 characters on screen (from the youtube video I saw)... Probably because the sprites are 100% hardware, hence requiring no shifting, no mirroring (because they're pre mirrored in ROM), no screen save/restore... just masking. The frame rate seems to tank pretty bad when background tiles move though. Of course if I used an extra 128KB I could preshift everything and get a good speedup too... no I'm not planning to do that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilheim Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 3 minutes ago, rensoup said: The C64 version seems very very speedy with 2 characters on screen (from the youtube video I saw)... Probably because the sprites are 100% hardware, hence requiring no shifting, no mirroring (because they're pre mirrored in ROM), no screen save/restore... just masking. The frame rate seems to tank pretty bad when background tiles move though. Of course if I used an extra 128KB I could preshift everything and get a good speedup too... no I'm not planning to do that! Maybe you can use cartridge bank switching to access a preshifted and save a lot of cycles. Just an idea... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeropolis79 Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 11 hours ago, rensoup said: no idea... sorry the CPC is probably on a different league, as I understand, it's much more powerful than a A8 The CPC uses a Z80 processor but despite it's pros, it's not very good when it comes to scrolling in some case. But you can get some good stuff on it. For instance, it's got a powerful word processor suite on a ROM expansion. What didn't help the CPC was when companies had the programmers do shoddy ports from the Spectrum (although some did do good ports from the Spectrum for technical reasons). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 7 hours ago, rensoup said: There already is... 3 frames is the minimum. Of course 3 frames mean 50/3= 17fps in PAL or 60/3=20fps in NTSC, so NTSC will feel a bit faster when there is very little going on. I could make it 3 for PAL and 4 for NTSC or an option in the menu... Yeah, I would at least try to make them the same (fps). A menu option is great for testing purposes though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 51 minutes ago, MrFish said: Yeah, I would at least try to make them the same (fps). A menu option is great for testing purposes though. +1 My observation: If you make a program on NTSC A8, then in 99% it will also run fine on PAL (slower, but it works). Make a program on PAL A8 and in only 50% of cases it will run fine on NTSC (in the other 50% it will crash, freeze, etc.). Maybe every A8 programmer should code new programs under NTSC environment ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted May 16, 2020 Author Share Posted May 16, 2020 10 hours ago, Wilheim said: Maybe you can use cartridge bank switching to access a preshifted and save a lot of cycles. Just an idea... Yeah that's what I meant, I was thinking a hybrid cart version in the same way XXL did, the cart is used as a disk for easy porting from XBios. And then an additional 64/128KB set of banks with sprites preshifted which can be accessed directly... Don't know if I can be bothered yet though... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted May 16, 2020 Author Share Posted May 16, 2020 (edited) 5 hours ago, zeropolis79 said: The CPC uses a Z80 processor but despite it's pros, it's not very good when it comes to scrolling in some case. But you can get some good stuff on it. For instance, it's got a powerful word processor suite on a ROM expansion. What didn't help the CPC was when companies had the programmers do shoddy ports from the Spectrum (although some did do good ports from the Spectrum for technical reasons). Too bad about crap scrolling but I understand the CPU is clocked at 4mhz and the there aren't any bitplanes (pixels color bits are packed together), that's pretty great for precompiled sprites. Edited May 16, 2020 by rensoup Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rensoup Posted May 16, 2020 Author Share Posted May 16, 2020 4 hours ago, MrFish said: Yeah, I would at least try to make them the same (fps). A menu option is great for testing purposes though. Well you can't make it the same but 50/3= 16.666fps while 60/4=15fps which is closer than 16.666fps vs 20fps I'll look into making it an option... 3 hours ago, CharlieChaplin said: +1 My observation: If you make a program on NTSC A8, then in 99% it will also run fine on PAL (slower, but it works). Make a program on PAL A8 and in only 50% of cases it will run fine on NTSC (in the other 50% it will crash, freeze, etc.). Maybe every A8 programmer should code new programs under NTSC environment ? Well that's nice but the difference in speed seems to be a lot more than the ~15% you'd expect. (probably because ANTIC still steals cycles during those extra frames?). I was lucky with Pop that the framerate is 17fps max so there's nothing to do for a NTSC conversion but for a game targeting a single VBi refresh, NTSC is just not that attractive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 Just played the demo, WOW, looking just amazing here...Love it... Brill work all around.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 3 hours ago, rensoup said: Well you can't make it the same but 50/3= 16.666fps while 60/4=15fps which is closer than 16.666fps vs 20fps I'll look into making it an option... Yes, that's what I meant -- as close as possible. IDK, might be too slow, but probably not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacques Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 (edited) Just played it a bit longer on real Atari, I have to say the combination of dynamics, graphics and sounds is possibly the best of all PoP for 8-bits (C64's is "correct" imitation of PC/Amiga, but graphically simple and boring, similiar on Sam Coupe (plus it's slooow), CPC is missing frames of player animation, therefore key-feature is gone). Sorry for earlier confusion regarding slow-downs, indeed there seem to be no difference on Emkay's bank, which is very good (congrats)! Maybe banging the wall could be a bit different, it reminds more of an explosion or gunshot, but it's a minor detail. Thanks again, Guys, coming back to my 130XE...? CPC: C64: Sam Coupe: BBC Master: Edited May 16, 2020 by Jacques 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shanti77 Posted May 16, 2020 Share Posted May 16, 2020 @Jacques Compare with BBC micro , the appearance of each version depends on which version it was modelled on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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