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Post by christophertumber on May 11, 2014 21:04:30 GMT -5
SPECTER.BIN (27.73 KB) Figured I'd start a new thread for anyone who didn't realize the purpose of the original. Bunch of progress, especially adding multiple Specters on a level and "moving" walls (thanks centaura!) which have a ton of potential and I'm really happy with. They're not really "animated" and I can't really see doing smooth scrolling "islands" or anything. More like doors opening and closing. You'll see it on the current first level (Rome/Coliseum). I'm probably not going to post future level designs in order to avoid spoilers. Just technical updates. I have been playing with the drawing routines a bit. So some things don't align quite perfectly at the moment. Particularly "sprites" aren't necessarily centered in their "lanes". Not that it matters to anyone else, but, I wrote a little Excel spreadsheet to create my level data tables. Which is a huge pain to do manually as there are three tables - one from drawing vectors, one for wall collision detection and one for dots. The vectors table in particular was horrible to do by hand so I'm quite happy to have this, moreso because I'm pretty terrible at Excel and it's semi-complicated. BTW, the BIOS checksum on the both Vectrex I have setup for testing and the one that has problems displaying the grid layout is B796 for both. Not that it could have been the BIOS since I'm not using it for drawing  but no real indication there of design revisions. Change log: Vector conversion Excel spreadsheet General vector drawing routines Multiple Specters Moving walls Colliding with explosions no longer kills you To do list: Non-looping layout change Fractional and variable enemy speeds (defined by level) Specter shots Explosion when player dies Pause when player restarts after dying Collision detection seems buggy Level intro screens Title screen Sound Music Level designs
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Post by 50tbrd on May 11, 2014 22:50:56 GMT -5
Looking good. The logo is really nice. Will it be 2 player as well?
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Post by christophertumber on May 12, 2014 11:39:43 GMT -5
Will it be 2 player as well? Hrm, maybe? Balancing for 2 players seems like an issue. It also adds another 2 elements to the screen (player and shot) which is always a consideration. I'll keep it in mind but are there that many people who play 2 player games? (Maybe I'll start a poll in the main forum). |
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Post by vectrexmad on May 12, 2014 19:16:54 GMT -5
Chris, on my Vectrex the game doesn't get past the start screen. Pressing button 4 results in screen darkness?
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Post by christophertumber on May 12, 2014 21:39:15 GMT -5
Chris, on my Vectrex the game doesn't get past the start screen. Pressing button 4 results in screen darkness? Hrm, this is the machine that it worked on before? Maybe try downloading it again? I've reattached. Ok, this is really weird - It's now running ok on the machine that wasn't displaying it properly. I did play around with some of the timings on the grid display routines but I don't think it should make that much of a difference. And it shouldn't affect things like the player or enemies. Huh. Anybody else having a problem running it? Attachments:SPECTER.BIN (27.73 KB)
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Post by vectrexmad on May 14, 2014 17:19:30 GMT -5
Chris, on my Vectrex the game doesn't get past the start screen. Pressing button 4 results in screen darkness? Hrm, this is the machine that it worked on before? Maybe try downloading it again? I've reattached. Ok, this is really weird - It's now running ok on the machine that wasn't displaying it properly. I did play around with some of the timings on the grid display routines but I don't think it should make that much of a difference. And it shouldn't affect things like the player or enemies. Huh. Anybody else having a problem running it? Yes, it was the same machine as before. And actually I had tried it on my 2nd machine and same problem. But today I just downloaded your re-uploaded file and it works! |
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Post by vectrexmad on May 14, 2014 17:32:51 GMT -5
With the latest version, when playing there occasionally seems to be a bug on my Vectrex. Suddenly, your spare ships multiply, and there is a lot of flashing in the top right hand corner.
This also happens every now and then if you run the game and don't touch the controller.
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Post by christophertumber on May 14, 2014 21:54:37 GMT -5
With the latest version, when playing there occasionally seems to be a bug on my Vectrex. Suddenly, your spare ships multiply, and there is a lot of flashing in the top right hand corner. This also happens every now and then if you run the game and don't touch the controller. Yes, it's because the game doesn't really end properly yet. In particular, even though the game is "over" it's still doing the collision detection so eventually you die again and lives left becomes -1 which is the same as 255 so it's trying to draw 255 lives left. Is problem... |
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Post by christophertumber on May 14, 2014 21:56:29 GMT -5
Yes, it was the same machine as before. And actually I had tried it on my 2nd machine and same problem. But today I just downloaded your re-uploaded file and it works! Then I'm going to go with either the download was corrupted our it was corrupted somehow when loaded onto your flash cart. Or somewhere in between and not worry about it (unless it happens again or someone else reports it) |
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Post by 50tbrd on May 15, 2014 15:03:33 GMT -5
The file works on ParaJVE but not on my Vectrex with JFMateos Multi-cart.
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Post by centaura on May 30, 2014 13:24:50 GMT -5
I like the walls dance  Really it open a lot of possibilities.. When add sound, you could put a kind of warning sound, maybe seconds before the walls change.. it always get oneself nervous! Finally I could play calmly, and test it over different vectrexs. I think too there is something strange with the B796 rom. I saw the misaligned grid in two vex (Hong Kong & Taiwan each) having both B796 rom Likewise, the grid was perfect in others two vex with 7931 rom I wish I could help, but I´m afraid I am not a killer programmer. 50tbrd, I test it from the JFMateos multicart (4 memory banks) and running fine. |
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Post by jfmateos on May 31, 2014 14:15:57 GMT -5
Dear Christopher,
I have tested in my two vectrex... it works properly in one of them, but in the other I see the (beautiful) intro screen, and when I press the 4 button, the screen just goes black.
May I ask: are you developing battle zone for the Vectrex?
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Post by christophertumber on Jun 11, 2014 22:42:41 GMT -5
Barring an epiphany, I think the core game engine is all here. What's left is UI polish (needs a lot of that) and level design (a lot of that too) and sound. Currently the following level variables are supported: Player's starting position Number of regular enemies Number of Specters (7 max total regular+Specters) Enemy starting positions Enemy starting direction Chance enemy turns at an intersection vs continuing straight Wall layout (up to 5 layouts per level) Length of time between changes in wall layout Length of time before enemies all speed-up Positions of dots (limited to 9x9 in center of screen) I may try to squeeze in additional enemies. I'm not really sure how many cycles I have free per frame. I'll probably leave this and see how things look once there's sound and music (not that it's huge overhead but slightly important). Two things are missing from that list. Nobody shoots back. I'm not sure this is really necessary particularly with good level design and if I can get more enemies. I might wind up adding it at the expense of an (additional) enemy. I'll reassess later. Also, speed is fixed at regular and fast. No variable speed and no sub-pixel speed. Adding this would require substantial rewrite and I did it this way because it's really fast. So possibility of a lot of work for nothing if it winds up too slow. Meh. I've considered procedurally created levels, but, each level is almost 1K of data so not much chance of shoving all that in RAM (well, I currently have about 400 bytes free though I can probably get some back by optimizing local variables). But that's because each wall section is 1 byte and then each "square" (if you consider the playfield like a chess board) has a 1 byte mask for collision detection. I could reduce that by a factor of 8 (a little less actually due to inconvenient sizing) by packing into bits, but that would add a bunch of overhead unpacking it. Gaa! Unpacking can't be done in real time, would have to be done before drawing each row/column of walls. But if I can unpack it into a buffer in under 80 cycles I might be able to squeeze it in during a wait state. Collision detection is a different problem but isn't as time sensitive and a dozen extra cycles for each check may not be the end of the world. I'm looking at about 200 bytes of packed data and buffer so it's possible. Hmmm.... So glad we had this talk! Attachments:SPECTER.BIN (16.82 KB)
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Post by christophertumber on Jun 11, 2014 22:44:47 GMT -5
I think too there is something strange with the B796 rom. I saw the misaligned grid in two vex (Hong Kong & Taiwan each) having both B796 rom Try using buttons 3 and 4 to adjust the calibration and see if it helps. |
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Post by christophertumber on Jun 11, 2014 22:52:11 GMT -5
Dear Christopher, I have tested in my two vectrex... it works properly in one of them, but in the other I see the (beautiful) intro screen, and when I press the 4 button, the screen just goes black. Hrm, there's quite a bit of people now who seem to sometimes have problems like this. If they persist, once this matures I'll impose of some of you guys to do some testing to try and isolate the problem(s). May I ask: are you developing battle zone for the Vectrex? I'm currently working on Specter. My goal is to have it completed around the end of summer (that might be a little optimistic depending on whether I make some of the changes mentioned in the above post). After that, I have another Vectrex project lined up that I hope to have done by early next year. I previously worked on a tank game called UTG but I haven't touched it in years and I can't say if or when I'll revive it. |
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but no real indication there of design revisions.
