Memoirs of an X register - Screen Tests!

RSS Bot · June 10, 2006

I am slowly progressing. I have the first DLI routine set in place to set the colors. Had to use a chain of routines each modifying the DLI vector at the end of each pass. Because I had to make four distinct color changes, I decided to hard-code them into the routine, so that I could minimise the number of cycles being done. I will be modifying the look of the screen layout from here, but now I have something i can work with and mould to look the way I want it to look.

You may have noticed I used a narrow playfield. I did this to be more in line with the aspect ratio of the original game, as well as to give me more cycles per line to do color palette changes. I am glad the idea I had worked. I just need to tweak the colors, maybe make them brighter, and perhaps play with the top score line a bit. I wanted to keep it nice and readable, but if I want color, I'll probably have to use an antic mode 4 line there too, I just wish I could have a border around the whole thing..but I guess that's out of the question....

I have hardcoded and filled the screen with invaders right now, just so i can get a sense of the space of the screen, there will not be this many invaders on screen at once, I know they need space to breathe and move around....

The only real bug I had, was that I had one too few DLI instructions defined in the display list, so the interrupt vectors were being cycled through, one less than should be, giving an interesting stair-step effect, whoops :-D