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Atari projects, Mac mini DVR, and other things

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Medieval Mayhem

4 International Kings

There's now 4 kings, plus PAL support! Set TV Type to Color for NTSC and Black & White for PAL. I tried to keep the colors as close as possible for the 2 TV systems.   Here's the bin. For those with Superchargers, Cuttle or Krok Carts I'd appreciate any feedback on how this fits on your TVs as I'm attempting to use 200 scan lines for the displayed area. mm_2006_03_11.bin   Version with Green brightened up mm_green_changed.bin   Updated sour
Guest

Guest in Medieval Mayhem

19
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

Main Menu

Oh well, I thought the Main Menu was pretty much done; but, in reviewing my blog entry I noticed I left out an e in medieval I'm going to post this anyway as a friend's going to be in Houston this week so there won't be any updates for a while. Update: Got home earlier than expected so I fixed the missing e. I also added just the BIN down below Update2: graphic revisions   Use your paddle to highlight the option. Either tap or hold down your fire button to
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

16
Medieval Mayhem

Attractive

Attract Mode is now in place. I've set it to start after 20 seconds of idle time on the menu(button not pressed, mouse not moving). It currently returns to the menu after 75 seconds(utilitizing the 2nd fireball's launch timer). You can also return by hitting Game Select or by pressing and then releasing Paddle Button 1(the button release is required else options will inadvertently be modified). Hitting Game Reset during attract mode will start a new game. I'm debating making it play a full round
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

15
Medieval Mayhem

A couple of fat kings

I spent a couple hours revamping the lower castles' kernel to support 5 pixel wide kings.     I also added a priority to the king-death sound sequence so it will no longer be aborted by brick or shield sound effects. Medieval_Mayhem.zip mm20060601NTSC.bin mm20060601PAL.bin
Medieval Mayhem

flap flap

I've got a preliminary graphic converter working in PHP. Right now I have to hard-code the URL for the image to convert, I plan to make it user-selectable at a later date.   It's also forcing the leftmost pixel of each row to be "on" which can cause some alignment issues. I need to make it smart enough to "shift" the bits if needed when the rightmost pixel is blank.   Revised shields   Revised Score routines   Revised 3 and Round winner graphic
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

Fixed the jitter

Before the fix, when three AI players were alive, INTIM would have 1 +/- remaining at the end of VB when one fireball was in the air. When the second fireball was released there would often be insufficient time and the screen would jitter.   After the fix, with three AI players alive, INTIM has 7 +/- remaining when one fireball is in the air, 5 +/- when two are in the air and 3 +/- when three are in the air.   What's amazing is this was accomplished by commenting out a single
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

12
Medieval Mayhem

3 fireballs

I now have the 3 fireballs bouncing around most of the playfield. I haven't rewritten the lower castle routines so the fireballs disappear while they traverse the lower 1/4th of the screen.     I also made the left castles have a checkerboard pattern to make sure my updates to PF0 and PF1 are happening when they should. As you can tell by the purple castle, the original code wasn't quite up to spec   There's also a few things odd with the fireballs X position
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

11
Medieval Mayhem

Music

Title Screen/Attract Mode Music, Druid Chip by moderntimes99. Easter Egg(works, but is not finished) Minor fix to prevent captured fireballs from wrapping around the screen I'm using Paul Slocum's Music Kit 2.0 for the background music. To get it to work, I stripped out the visual display from songmain.asm(attached) to figure out the RAM requirements. Only 3 bytes are required to be preserved between calls to the music routines. Another 4 bytes are used as temp variables and c
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

10
Medieval Mayhem

MGC Placard

Al needs a placard for the Midwest Gaming Classic. This is what I've come up with - any comments/suggestions?     Medieval Mayhem War has broken out between the kingdoms. A well respected knight, you've been called forth to defend your King and Castle.   Atari Console Switches Hit GAME SELECT at any time to return to the Main Menu.   Hit GAME RESET at any time to start a new game.   TV TYPE and DIFFICULTY switches are not used.
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

8
Medieval Mayhem

Demo Message

Added a DEMO message that blinks during Attract mode. I had to also flicker the message due to fireballs disappearing when they travelled beneath the HMOVE lines.       I also reviewed the AI routines and don't see anything that would cause the game to be easier than before. Has anybody else noticed this, or is Jacob just getting really good at dishing out some Mayhem?   If nobody sees anything issues tonight then I'll give this version to Al as the version fo
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

8
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

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

Castle Texture, take 2

I had two issues with the original brick pattern: the impact on game play - While I liked the "jagged edge" appearance, it was causing an increase in "double brick bounces"(taking out 2 bricks at the same time) it looked too busy I've done the upper castles using a different texture that addresses both of these issues.   Any feedback on the revision? Medieval_Mayhem.zip mm20061021NTSC.bin mm20061021PAL.bin
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

7
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

Directional Release

Released fireballs will now travel in a direction that's based on how far from the edge of the screen you are as shown in this picture from my blog entry titled Research.     I also found and fixed a bug that was causing the fireball to occasionally pass through the lower shields as well as fixed a couple sound-effect glitches caused by using LDA SoundEffect instead of LDA #SoundEffect   Note - I replaced the BINs with an update that adds back the "english" bouncin
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

6
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

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

MGC Candidate

I've got the dragon flying back and forth and am posting this as a candidate to be demoed at the Midwest Gaming Classic. I'd appreciate any feedback if you see any problems.   Thanx!     Minor updates - fixed problem where fireballs were always launched downward, and fixed yellow for PAL's dragon wings. Medieval_Mayhem.zip mm20060529NTSC.bin mm20060529PAL.bin mm20060529NTSCb.bin mm20060529PALb.bin
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

5
Medieval Mayhem

Follow the Bouncing Ball

Fireball that is. Very primitive AI routines are in place. Currently they only know how to track 1 fireball, so they act a bit strange when 2 or 3 fireballs are flying around. They don't know how to catch the ball, and they don't know how to get out of the way if the ball gets past them so they often kill themselves off. Also the fireball can get stuck in a pattern. This will be fixed when I add english to the shield bounce routines.   Also a 2nd fireball* will be launched about 1 minu
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

5
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
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