Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store
  • entries
    657
  • comments
    2,692
  • views
    898,712

About this blog

Atari projects, Mac mini DVR, and other things

Entries in this blog

Medieval Mayhem

Vanity, take two

I recalled reading about hitting HMOVE at weird times and had an idea on how to extend the left/right edge of the SpiceWare logo using it. It worked surprisingly well! I took the ball, make it 8 pixels wide, then positioned it to extend the right of the logo by 8 pixels. I then unrolled the graphic 48 loop and turned the ball on for the first line, off for the next. I then used a late HMOVE and shifted the ball over 56 pixels over course of 4 scanlines(yep, shifted by 14 pixels per line). I then
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

17
Medieval Mayhem

Vanity, take three

Was all set for a productive Medieval Mayhem weekend when I ending up working until 9 last night and another 6 hours today We have a "label station" at work that's hooked up to 6 Zebra printers to generate labels. Each printer is loaded with a different size label and the software I wrote accepts a work order # and prints out all the labels required to build the finished product. The computer started to "not see" the printers, but was inconsistent as to which printer it couldn't see. Tried all
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

2
Medieval Mayhem

Vanity

I spent today getting the 48 pixel graphics working so I could get my logo to show   I've had my logo for quite some time and the 48 pixel width on the Atari comes pretty close to the one I used in Alien Invaders for the C= 128 back in the 80s. http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/images/c128-1.png   I plan to add 2 more rows of pixels so it's not so squished looking, plus I'm going to try using quad-wide or oct-wide missiles to extend the left-right line so it looks
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

Uho - game's resetting

I was playing a round after splitting the menu into 2 ROM banks to make room for extra graphics and the game reset to the main menu with all the options initialized to the power-up values. It doesn't happen all the time. I just check the version from 10-14 and it did the same thing. Anybody notice this on a version prior to 10-14?   The IRQ vector points to the same place the RESET vector does, so I suspect a BRK is being hit. I haven't coded a BRK, so this would imply data is being tr
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

6
Medieval Mayhem

Trophies

I think they're much better than the "winner" messages from before. I'm sure I'll revise these graphics for the final version, but not for MGC.   Round Winner   Game Winner   Draw   Yep, with multiple fireballs everybody can die To test this I killed off 2 players, the used the stella debugger to reposition 2 fireballs so they'd hit the 2 remaining kings at the same time.
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

To Do List

I've decided I better document my To Do List as I'd forgotten some of the things I was going to do. I've reviewed the Homebrew forum and my blog from the beginning(wow reviewing all that took longer than I expected) and have come up with the following. Let me know if you recall something that I left off.   List updated October 13th   AI player improvements fireball to track logic capture-shoot fireball logic avoid fireball that got past play
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

This should capture your interest

The ROM is now 32K and preliminary fireball capture routines are now in place.   Please note these limitations, which will be addressed in a future update: Released fireball only travels in 1 of 3 directions Player 1's paddle always captures for the top-left shield, even if you selected a 1 player game in a different corner paddles will capture even if the shield is "computer controlled" Capture does work correctly for Doubles. Medieval_Mayhem.zip mm200604
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

There be Kings

Here's a test of using the SCORE setting (bit D1 of CTRLPF) to colorize playfield drawn kings. I suspect I'll want to swap the scores (1 with 4 and 2 with 3) to break up the colors in the corners a bit.   Here's the source for the current version: Medieval_Mayhem_2006_03_09.zip
Guest

Guest in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

The computer caught something

I added the beginnings of the AI catch routines. The AI players can catch the fireball, but don't really know what to do with it yet. It works out OK when there's multiple fireballs, as they'll ignore the position of the held fireball and track the others, but not so good when there's just one fireball.   I also made a change in display priority so the ball is visible over the shields. This makes the fireball flareups visible over the shields, which I think looks much better than befor
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

2
Medieval Mayhem

Strobe Light

B-52's in the background   Due to popular request, I've added routines for brick flash and king flash.   I'm going to have to revamp the main menu to add a flash control option, with values of None, Brick, King and Both. I don't want to make the letters smaller, so I'm thinking about making the list scroll up/down to show all the options. The 2 options are currently turned on until I redo the menu.   There is a quirk with the king flash - if another sound effect sta
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

2
Medieval Mayhem

Some revisions and a text question

Made a few changes fixed problem where players 1 and 3 could move too far up the screen causing the graphics to be corrupted. Maxed out the fireball speeds when all human players have died so the current round will end quicker. fixed AI Catch to release the fireball if an AI player is killed while holding the fireball. Redid the AI Catch Button routine. Old routine used ROL to shift the Catch Bit State of AI player 1 to AI player 2(and so on). New routine uses AND and
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

7
Medieval Mayhem

Some minor revisions

I fixed a couple things that annoyed me   1) the dead kings are no longer visible during screen flashes 2) the dragon can launch the fireball in more than 4 directions. No more sitting pretty on your castle's corner waiting for the round to start   I have to do some "house cleaning" on the code so this will be the last update for a while. I'm down to 2 bytes of RAM and need to free some up for the AI routines. Medieval_Mayhem.zip mm20060604NTSC.bin mm20060604PAL.bin
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

2
Medieval Mayhem

Slowly but surely

Been a busy couple weeks, sadly not much of it's been spent on Medieval Mayhem. A puppy, for my folks, was dropped off at my place on the 4th. Cute dog, but not-potty-trained teething puppies are a handful. My Grandma Lavota, who lives near San Antonio, got quite sick and was in the hospital for a week. She's been released and is currently in a nursing home for rehab. We're hoping she'll be able to return home in a few weeks. I headed out there to see her Thursday(which was also my 40th). My fol
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

1
Medieval Mayhem

Shields

The logic to show the shields is now in place. The shields are not yet tied to the paddles - they currently move around by themselves. Now that I know positioning ranges for the shields I can figure out how often the paddles need to be read, which determines the frequency I'll be able to use. In Warlords only 1 paddle is read every screen update, yielding 15 spspp(samples per second per paddle). A "smoothing" function is used to smooth out the action over 4 frames to make it look better. If I'm
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

Shield Collisions redone

I've redone the fireball collisions so the fireballs won't bounce-thru when the fireball hits the left/right* side of the shield. Font Consistancy from the To Do List has also been taken care of.   I've noticed a timing issue - the screen will start to jitter if the 2nd fireball comes out while 3 AI players are still alive. You can see this by catching the fireball and holding on to it until the 2nd fireball gets released(about 1 minute, 15 seconds into the round). I think this will be
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

Scrolling Menus

Just a quick post with the new scrolling menus. I ran out of ROM for text labels for the speeds, will try to make room for them in the next update.     mm20061011NTSC.bin mm20061011PAL.bin Medieval_Mayhem.zip
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

Score

I've decided to back-burner the AI routines to get some polish in place for the Midwest Gaming Classic.   This weekend I got the score routines in place, end of round & game messages, as well as a debounce routine. The debounce routine should eliminate the problem where a fireball occasionally gets stuck in a shield then flies off at maximum speed when you move your shield away.   For the Midwest Gaming Classic I've set the Game Winner to be determined by the first to win
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

7
Medieval Mayhem

Revised graphics

The converter seems to be working OK. I still need to add the generation of the "flipped" HMOVE table so I can fly the dragon in either direction.   I've also changed the shield graphics to make them look less blocky. mm20060521PAL.bin mm20060521NTSC.bin Medieval_Mayhem.zip
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

5
Medieval Mayhem

Research

I've decided to play Warlords in MacMAME today to get some ideas on how the game dynamics should work. An example of what I'm researching is what happens when a fireball is released:     A fireball is only released perfectly straight (up or sideways) when you are nearest an edge of the screen. When you're at the corner of your castle you'll release at 45 degrees. Anything between will be released at a different angle depending on how far you are from the edge. I still need t
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

12
Medieval Mayhem

Rearranging ROM

Had a full weekend so not too much happened with Medieval Mayhem. I did find a bug while playtesting with some friends, only 1 fireball could be captured at a time. This has been fixed.   I've also rearranged code so the Dragon Kernel will be in it's own banks. Yep, plural. I've set aside 2 banks of ROM for Nathan that should support up to 32 frames of animation for the dragon, plus an additional 8 frames for smoothly scrolling on/off the screen. I'll be utilizing the HMOVE blanks to h
Medieval Mayhem

Paddles moving Shields

The paddles now move the shields.   The fireball speed/direction tables were taking up too much room so there's now seperate NTSC and PAL BINs.   I'm off to a cook-out, so type to y'all later!   Source Medieval_Mayhem.zip   NTSC BINmmNTSC.bin   PAL BIN mmPAL.bin
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

Paddle reading is done

I've redone the dragon routines so only 1 fireball is visible while the dragon's onscreen. I've not yet written the "dragon not there" code, but that should be pretty easy.   With this change I was able to keep the dragon routine with 2 double wide sprites at single line resolution w/single line shifting and still squeeze in enough time to read 2 paddles every other scanline on each frame. The following macros are used to read the paddles. The value of Paddles2Read is either 0 or 1. Du
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

6
Medieval Mayhem

Out o' the Way

The move out of the way routines are now working for when the fireball gets past a computer player. The current AI players are pretty fast(at least for NTSC games). I'll tweek the performance over time. Each player can have their own performance, plus I plan to make it change depending on the max-speed of the fireball.   I plan to start the "which fireball to track" routines next so the AI players will stop freaking out when the 2nd fireball comes into play.   I've also fixed
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

New Limited Catch feature

Per supercat's request - catch now has a new option. Besides Yes and No there's now Limited. Limited catch will only let you catch a fireball if it did not hit the back of your shield.   Also added back in the overshoot-compensation that removes the jitter from the faster AI players. Medieval_Mayhem.zip mm20061001NTSC.bin mm20061001PAL.bin
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

4
AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2023 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...