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Post by christophertumber on Oct 20, 2014 22:20:55 GMT -5
This is not a new project! Because I'm not starting new projects until WIPs are done... This is a continuation of the sprite engine in Panic Attack! For Incursion, and other games, I need to support different varieties of enemy movement (ie; not so much scrolling in an arena shooter). Since I decided Panic Attack was going to be a game in and of itself, I didn't want to do a bunch of additional work that may not be used in that game - This game will incorporate a bunch more attack and wave patterns &etc that aren't needed in Panic Attack! And I've really, really wanted to do a bullet hell type game on the Vectrex for years. This demo can display up to 40 sprites (including the player) plus the player's shots at 40fps. That sprite limitation is due to ROM constraints. It can actually do 45+ but ROM size would need 64K bankswitched. I'm currently not setup for convenient hardware testing of 64K ROMS which is partially why I'm posting all these updates. The 64K issue looks to be resolved soon, but a bit of a natural break here. There's some different movement going on than Panic Attack! and enemies shoot but everything is still pretty rudimentary.  Attachments:Bullet.bin (31.14 KB)
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Post by cNp on Oct 21, 2014 4:34:23 GMT -5
Loving this one, it just feels like it plays well, I played for about 5 minutes actually even when it became single ships to pick off.
I found the 2 ship types too, one bigger and slower... could be a nice mechanic to change between the two where one is slower and more powerful.
cNp
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Post by christophertumber on Oct 21, 2014 7:29:41 GMT -5
I found the 2 ship types too, one bigger and slower... could be a nice mechanic to change between the two where one is slower and more powerful. Slower ship = more firepower (4 shots on screen instead of 2). But the extra shots are disabled at the moment to conserve some ROM space. |
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Post by christophertumber on Oct 21, 2014 22:07:32 GMT -5
Emulator (MESS) video:
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Post by VectorX on Oct 21, 2014 22:42:55 GMT -5
Can't say you've seen anything like that on a Vectrex before  |
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Post by Mayhem on Oct 22, 2014 4:44:15 GMT -5
Very impressed with the number of objects moving about (I tried the ROMs on ParaJVE). Is it partly possible due to the fact you only use a couple of different shapes, or would it work equally as well if every object was a different shape?
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Post by binarystar on Oct 22, 2014 7:28:47 GMT -5
Incredible number of objects on screen! Kudos!
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Post by 50tbrd on Oct 22, 2014 7:37:59 GMT -5
I'll be looking forward to more on this game.
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Post by christophertumber on Oct 22, 2014 7:55:13 GMT -5
it work equally as well if every object was a different shape? This. Though 40 different vector sets would eat up about 8k of ROM (ballpark, depends on level of detail (number of vectors) and number of animation frames) so that's not a trivial consideration. |
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Post by christophertumber on Oct 22, 2014 8:05:11 GMT -5
Incredible number of objects on screen! Kudos! Thanks! I actually thought of a major improvement last night to squeeze out more performance by better use of Direct mode addressing. At the moment, each sprite is defined by 7 bytes in RAM: Y - 2 bytes X - 2 bytes Type - Determines what vector set to use and what movement behaviour Status - Determines what frame of animation to draw which also defines direction in chasers Speed - Should be obvious I could simplify this, particularly by removing speed as a variable. So speed would be determined by Type but I really want to keep that flexibility. So @ 50 sprites that's 350 bytes RAM and 40 sprites is 280. This means I can only use Direct addressing in a limited manner. However, it just occurred to me that 35 sprites would be 245 bytes of RAM. So if instead I had two groups of 35 sprites (probably can't actually display 70 sprites) I could fully use Direct addressing on each group. Just need different routines. So now I know what I'm doing this week-end. Rewriting everything! |
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Post by Mayhem on Oct 22, 2014 10:10:28 GMT -5
Wow... maybe Robotron/Geometry Wars is truly possible on a monumental scale  |
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Post by xefned on Oct 22, 2014 20:35:53 GMT -5
Another reason Vectrex ownership is better now than at any time in the last 30 years. This breakthrough is kind of a big deal.
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Post by VECTREXER on Oct 23, 2014 14:03:52 GMT -5
With all of the objects on the screen perhaps a revisit of Missile Lords?
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Post by christophertumber on Oct 24, 2014 23:18:15 GMT -5
With all of the objects on the screen perhaps a revisit of Missile Lords? Wow, somebody has a good memory! |
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Post by christophertumber on Oct 25, 2014 1:46:21 GMT -5
UBH - Oct 25.bin (64 KB) Current Status: 64K ROM (Bankswitched) 16 Enemy Shot Sprites 30 Ship Sprites (including player) (may be used for additional Enemy Shots, just not as efficient) 2-4 Player Shots
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