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7iX [WIP]


Pat Brady

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10 hours ago, bizarrostormy said:

Yeah, it’s hard to compare, especially without knowing how much cart RAM it uses.

Qix on the NES...

-256x240 is the entire raw output.

-158x158 borderless or 160x160 with border for the actual gamefield.

-The game program ROM is 128KB.

-It is utilized on the PCB layout NES-SNROM-05 (Also used for Zelda, Metroid, FF), which provides 8KB Working RAM & 8KB Video RAM, added to the base console's hardware (2KB Working RAM & 2KB Video RAM).

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  • 2 weeks later...
2 hours ago, Jaden (JRH) said:

I've been kinda wondering myself. I don't want to rush development at all, but an update of some kind would be nice.

It has not even  been a month from the time he said he was going to start making the game. Is this major delay in your mind driving you insane? ?

 

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1 hour ago, Jinks said:

It has not even  been a month from the time he said he was going to start making the game. Is this major delay in your mind driving you insane? ?

 

 

Nope, I was just looking for anything at all to show that it's real and actually in progress. By this standard I could say I've got a WIP for Crysis in my head for the 7800 :P;)

 

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I am actively working on it, getting a little bit done almost every day, but am not yet at the point of having something to share. Sorry if the WIP implied more than that.

How much detail do people want? I spent a while figuring out a memory map and have worked out most of the algorithms. The display code is hopefully mostly done and, if my counting is correct, will scale to the necessary number of objects with many cycles to spare. The logic code is still very very early, at the point of just moving the marker around the screen.

I plan to post something when I have line drawing and filling working. I do not want to promise a date for that. I am not very good at predicting how long things will take.

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I'm fascinated by how you will accomplish this.   

The standard Maria bitmap engine does not seem like it will to work for you.   

It feels like you need  to access the raw bitmap data and/or poke directly into display memory.
Good luck.  I'm pulling for you.    

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27 minutes ago, fultonbot said:

I'm fascinated by how you will accomplish this.   

The standard Maria bitmap engine does not seem like it will to work for you.   

It feels like you need  to access the raw bitmap data and/or poke directly into display memory.
Good luck.  I'm pulling for you.    

Thanks. I feel pretty good about it, but it’s entirely possible I have overlooked something important.

 

There are too many possible line-and-fill combinations to put those bitmaps in ROM. They have to go into RAM. 4K is enough for a decent resolution, and they don’t need holey DMA. The issues are fragmentation and lack of space for other data beyond the bitmaps, DLs, and DLL. I think I have figured that out.

 

The other tricky thing is drawing qix. I have a plan for that, but there are several other things to implement first.

 

I will share more details after I have more working code.

 

I may eventually use cart/XM RAM, but that’s even further away.

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On 4/27/2020 at 4:26 PM, fultonbot said:

Personally, I'd start with a "Kid Grid" style game, which is (seemingly) easier to accomplish with bitmaps just to get the game mechanics down, and then go for the Full Monty of Draw and Fill.  But then I like to take the easy way out.  Good luck!

 

Kid Grid on the 7800 would be warmly welcomed for sure :)

 

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Hey gang. I’ve got the line-drawing code mostly working. There are a few glitches, hopefully to be cleaned up tonight or tomorrow. I’ll try to post some screenshots over the weekend. Without fill or enemies (or collisions), it feels a lot like a low-stakes one-player version of Surround / Light Cycles.

 

Up next is the area claim (i.e. fill) code, which I expect will the meatiest part of the game, from a coding standpoint. Doing rectangles is easy enough but more complex shapes can get tricky.

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Screenshots of line drawing. It doesn’t yet turn drawn lines into walls (I consider that a part of the fill process), so you’re either drawing or traveling around the edge. IOW it doesn’t really feel like Qix yet. But most of the movement code is in there.

 

The numbers and timer bar are hard-coded.

 

For now, the playfield is 95x149, which is about as much as I can squeeze (along with the display lists and game state) into 4K. But I may soon assume extra RAM and go to 127x191. I may need extra RAM for filling anyway. Hopefully hi-res eventually, but that’s a ways away.

ss1.png

ss2.png

ss3.png

ss4.png

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On 5/10/2020 at 2:34 AM, bizarrostormy said:

. But I may soon assume extra RAM and go to 127x191. I may need extra RAM for filling anyway. Hopefully hi-res eventually, but that’s a ways away.

Is that an option?  I didn't know the 7800 could utilize RAM on the cartridge for increasing the resolution of the display.

 

Do any other 7800 carts have onboard RAM?

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30 minutes ago, christo930 said:

Is that an option?  I didn't know the 7800 could utilize RAM on the cartridge for increasing the resolution of the display.

 

Do any other 7800 carts have onboard RAM?

 

To be clear, the 7800’s display resolution is either 160x192 or 320x192. This game stores the walls and fills in RAM, and 95x149 (or something like 111x127 which would look very oblong) is the most I can fit in onboard RAM. You can see all the unused space in the screenshots. Extra RAM will not increase the 7800’s display resolution but hopefully will allow this particular game to use more screen space.

 

A few 7800 carts have extra RAM. According to the bankswitching guide, the officially released ones are: Impossible Mission, Jinks, Summer Games, and Winter Games.

 

I haven’t made much progress this week due to mundane real-world obligations. I think I have figured out a fill algorithm and hope to resume coding this weekend.

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