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Post by fruktodlaren on Nov 1, 2023 16:02:55 GMT -5
Vecfever has got a few shall we say frontends or loaders for existing original or homebrew games. I thought that was mostly for adding persistent highscore and "info card" with credits to the author and such. All of those "VF enhanced" games reside in the main menu of VF. Games binaries you put in the games folder (and started from the file browser) will behave just like on any other flash cart.
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Post by playvectrex on Nov 1, 2023 17:32:54 GMT -5
A related question, which I ask out of curiosity, but which could also be relevant for tournaments: Do cartridges like VecFever, Vextreme, Vectrex32 etc. give you the ability to save the current state of a game at any time during gameplay, and then later resume that game from that saved state (for as many times as you like)? It is not that I distrust anyone in Vector War. Such a feature would come in very handy for development and debugging purposes, and that is why I am interested. PiTrex can save/reload gamestate. VF and VEXTREME do not. VF and VEXTREME do save/load high scores though. For this reason (and similar reasons with VecFlash/Multi), taking pictures on the GAME OVER screens is preferred! But sometimes these screens don't last long. But if all of your scores are submitted on the boot screens... some people might get angry  Please try harder to take a picture of the GAME OVER screen VEXTREME and VecFlash/Multi are the only flash carts I know of that do not emulate or modify games at all. VecMulti does have some kind of patcher system that helps it fix things that make the games crash on VM, but I don't know if those patches would allow for any advantage. Probably not. I'm most concerned with not allowing the sped up (emulated) versions of games that are available on Vecfever and PiTrex. If you want to cheat, you don't need an emulator at all... so we pride ourselves on honesty and integrity. But obviously emulated / modified games can give an unfair advantage, even if you don't intend on having one. Also being able to spot a game glitch is key to integrity... so if you see your score glitch out and go up way too high, we would expect you to not submit that score. Many original GCE games have these types of bugs. |
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Post by D-Type on Nov 2, 2023 19:46:46 GMT -5
A related question, which I ask out of curiosity, but which could also be relevant for tournaments: Do cartridges like VecFever, Vextreme, Vectrex32 etc. give you the ability to save the current state of a game at any time during gameplay, and then later resume that game from that saved state (for as many times as you like)? It is not that I distrust anyone in Vector War. Such a feature would come in very handy for development and debugging purposes, and that is why I am interested. <SNIP> VEXTREME and VecFlash/Multi are the only flash carts I know of that do not emulate or modify games at all. VecMulti does have some kind of patcher system that helps it fix things that make the games crash on VM, but I don't know if those patches would allow for any advantage. Probably not. I'm most concerned with not allowing the sped up (emulated) versions of games that are available on Vecfever and PiTrex.I've completely missed this discussion until now. AFAIK, VF doesn't emulate or otherwise speed up any of the original GCE games, and especially when you supply the binary, it's just simulating an EPROM like VEXTREME does. playvectrex What makes you think VF does speed up games (I'm thinking about the GCE titles, for example)? Has Thomas mentioned it in his VF blog? |
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Post by playvectrex on Nov 2, 2023 20:47:40 GMT -5
<SNIP> VEXTREME and VecFlash/Multi are the only flash carts I know of that do not emulate or modify games at all. VecMulti does have some kind of patcher system that helps it fix things that make the games crash on VM, but I don't know if those patches would allow for any advantage. Probably not. I'm most concerned with not allowing the sped up (emulated) versions of games that are available on Vecfever and PiTrex.I've completely missed this discussion until now. AFAIK, VF doesn't emulate or otherwise speed up any of the original GCE games, and especially when you supply the binary, it's just simulating an EPROM like VEXTREME does. playvectrex What makes you think VF does speed up games (I'm thinking about the GCE titles, for example)? Has Thomas mentioned it in his VF blog? If you play them, it's obvious. The built-in games on VecFever in the Main Menu are heavily modified... so much so that games like Spike are completely broken and look terrible for me. Speech doesn't work. Web Wars runs so fast it's comical. Playing these games from user files section seems normal though, but they do get the high score table patched in. I just can't say for sure if anything else is changed. Clearly modified with the Main Menu though. They all tend to run way faster than normal. |
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Post by D-Type on Nov 3, 2023 2:26:48 GMT -5
I've completely missed this discussion until now. AFAIK, VF doesn't emulate or otherwise speed up any of the original GCE games, and especially when you supply the binary, it's just simulating an EPROM like VEXTREME does. playvectrex What makes you think VF does speed up games (I'm thinking about the GCE titles, for example)? Has Thomas mentioned it in his VF blog? If you play them, it's obvious. The built-in games on VecFever in the Main Menu are heavily modified... so much so that games like Spike are completely broken and look terrible for me. Speech doesn't work. Web Wars runs so fast it's comical. Playing these games from user files section seems normal though, but they do get the high score table patched in. I just can't say for sure if anything else is changed. Clearly modified with the Main Menu though. They all tend to run way faster than normal. OK, good to know, must be in a newer version of the firmware than I have, the only built-in games mine has are the homebrew that Thomas created...unless I never noticed them, I only ever use VF for dev and once a year for VW. I have a VF still on 1.x firmware, with the wobbly menu text! I guess he saw the cool PiTrex Speedy Vectrex feature and added it to VecFever. Clearly these versions shouldn't be played in VW and, if they don't play as expected, doesn't seem like a lot of fun anyway. The score patching was there long ago, just after it was a dev cart only. |
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Post by nexus6 on Nov 3, 2023 8:19:13 GMT -5
OK, good to know, must be in a newer version of the firmware than I have, the only built-in games mine has are the homebrew that Thomas created...unless I never noticed them, I only ever use VF for dev and once a year for VW. I have a VF still on 1.x firmware, with the wobbly menu text! I guess he saw the cool PiTrex Speedy Vectrex feature and added it to VecFever. Clearly these versions shouldn't be played in VW and, if they don't play as expected, doesn't seem like a lot of fun anyway. The score patching was there long ago, just after it was a dev cart only. You should take a look at the updates. You can play vector-arcadegames and there are even some vectorized versions of pixelgraphic-arcadegames now. |
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Post by playvectrex on Nov 3, 2023 10:28:57 GMT -5
There are some older v1.x versions that cannot be updated unless they are sent back to Thomas. If it's an early one, it would be worth sending back I think. You also might need to enable the games in the Main Menu. They do not show up by default after a reset/calibration sequence. In fact, for some reason the entire Main Menu isn't visible unless you enable Advanced/Expert Mode after a reset/cal.
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Please try harder to take a picture of the GAME OVER screen 
