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Sporny's Wrecking Ball [homebrew - Atari STE]


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Hello,

 

I have just released an ALPHA version of my little summer project : a breakout style game written in assembly 68k for the Atari STE.

 

This alpha release may work on other STs as I do not use the blitter and the DMA sound yet. It is functionnaly complete (no menu screen, only the game that start over after 3 balls) and is played with a joystick. Press any key on the keyboard to quit.

 

The link above to the release give access to the prg file.

 

The project page is there : https://github.com/sporniket/sporny-wrecking-ball

 

Regards, and have fun.

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, Sporny Kun said:

Hello, the game has reached alpha-2 release .

 

And after recharging my camera, here is a video capture

Cool and fast!

You could modify the angle of the ball when it bounces on the pad.

If the ball touches the center of the pad -> then vertical bounce

if it touches the right part of the pad, then bounce to the right

the same for left

So you can direct the ball!

 

Guillaume.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 9/1/2020 at 4:18 AM, tjlazer said:

Will there be mouse support?  

Oops, forgot to answer this question. So busy with life and fixing nasty blitter bugs and code refactoring.

 

So, no mouse support planned. On the other hand, the speed of the ball will stay constant, and no moving obstacles to require going accross the screen at the last tenth of seconds. So I guess that playing with gamepad will not be so daunting.

 

And I also plan to alleviate the sheer number of bricks to break. There's a visual of what is to come in this 3rd alpha version : variable length bricks, and some special bricks.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I like it - smooth movement, cool sounds - ASM rulez. Made only quick test, and can say that missing mouse control. All breakout type games I seen are with mouse control, maybe by some can select joystick/keyboard.

Mouse control is really no big deal, should be able doing it in short time. I can give some help, if want. Btw. what blitter bugs ?

 

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Hello, thanks for the feedback.

 

I accept help for a mouse handler and ikbd command setup with pleasure.

 

I worked around 2 glitches with the blitter :

  1. I cannot move more than 320 words (4 full lines). Each 320 words, I get a the source address and destination address miss an increment step. I have to write a test case to either illustrate the problem or find the flaw in my code. Postponed because workaround is splitting the blitting in two and wanted to advance. (I do not happen to move more than 8 full lines for now) I have tested in hog mode in case of some interruption causing the problem, but no effect.
  2. When blitting the full lines in my transition effects, there is a column of pixels that are not fully overwritten. workaround is to clear the screen first.

For both I need little time to write test case (direct addressing of blitter vs my blitter routine) and look for possible root cause. After doing my homework I will ask for help if needed.

 

Compounded with the fact that I use emulator only, but I'm working on getting a real STe.

 

 

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Well, I asked about blitter bugs because did not hear that it exists. Then suspect was emulator you using ?

It seems that it's solved now. You need to apologize to Atari ?

I will look your joystick read code in sources, and compose src code for mouse and keyboard control. Switching between them is your task.

Btw. what ASM you using exactly ?  Can it optimize binary code ? Here is what I saw:  movea.l #$FFFF8A00,a4 . It can be with shorter address form (sign extended will be)  movea.w #$8A00,a4  or some  ASM may expect movea.w #$FFFF8A00,a4 - but resulting code will be 2 bytes less because not 4, just 2 bytes for address. Even more save is with  lea $8A00.w,a4 - well, here in source file couple bytes less.

Devpac 3 has lot of optimizations for cases like this. And it can reduce binary code size for some 5% - not something really relevant, but it costs really little time to set them, and then no need to edit all those commands in src.

 

 

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I was pretty sure that the bugs comes from me, but didn't rule out something else without writing proper test. ==> «I hereby deeply apologize to Atari»

 

The handler for joystick is in «_master.s» file, label "OnJoystickSysEvent"

 

I'm using vasm, with devpac-ish syntax and behaviour activated. I recently activated branch optimisation.

 

Thanks for the tip with short address form, it is supported on vasm too.

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  • 2 months later...

Hello, I wish you all a nice end of the year. I did another alpha version for this time : https://github.com/sporniket/sporny-wrecking-ball/releases/tag/1.0.0-alpha-5.

 

All the game mechanics are implemented, so I started to do some levels. The game is not finished though, but if bugs and rage do not kill you, you have around 14 levels to play with.

 

And a little preview video :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGdVeBq0Ow

 

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