less than a week until my folks move in. I'd moved the contents of my three closets into the family room and have been working on it over the past few weeks. I decided to also empty the bookshelf in the guest room so they could use it for storage. My family room currently looks like this:
The right side where the books are piled up used to be stacked with boxes so high you couldn't sit on the right futon and see the TV screen.
In the midst of this project, I also was given 2 addit
thrust exhaust now visible
asteroid speed slowed down a little bit. It was originally 3->9 (in steps of .4) and was changed to 5->11. After watching keilbaca play, I decided to split the difference and it's now 4->10.
sound effects are now quieter in demo mode
UFO now targets asteroids when it's not targeting a player
respawn no longer occurs when UFO is onscreen
asteroids now start at edges of the screen
Thrust exhaust
ROMs for Harmony or Stella 3.7.1 or la
hyperspace momentum tied to menu option FRICTION
"implosion" effect when coming out of hyperspace to make it easier to find your ship
initial asteroid count tied to LEVEL. Kids level starts with 2, Easy 3, Normal 4, and Hard 5
2 second delay before returning to menu after final death
If you have 9+ lives the lives digit will display X for eXceeds 9
beginnings of a demo mode
last scores removed from main menu
ROMs for Harmony or Stella 3.7.1 or later
spacerocks20120628_
As mentioned earlier this month, I've been busy with my "closet consolidation project" in preparation for my folks moving in. It's been going quite well, my dining room table is full of things to take to Good Will, the guest closet is empty, and the garbage men are probably wondering what's going on. Garbage pickup is twice a week here and I normally only put a single trashcan out every 2nd or 3rd time. I've been putting out both trashcans twice a week since starting on the project!
Whil
New saucer and UFO graphics
new medium asteroids using 24 frames of rotation (so it matches the large asteroids)
Ships accelerate faster than before
Ships have more inertia
speed of asteroids increased. The prior sixteen speeds were 3 -> 9 in steps of .4, they're now 5 -> 11 in steps of .4
rebuilt the shot offset tables so shots now start at the ship's nose instead of in the middle of the ship
revised the vertical wrap-around logic. Before all objects would wrap using a
both large asteroids graphics are in place. They're shiny.
Shield color cycling now matches the selected color theme.
2 player fight mode finished. If a player dies they will always respawn, even if they have no ships left, provided the other player has any reserve lives. If the other player has 0 reserve lives, the player will come back if the other player earns a bonus life.
Note: if you trigger the easter egg, just hit SELECT or RESET to get out of it. While you can trigg
Nathan's sent in a test of one of the large asteroids with line-by-line shifting. It's purdy!
Beginnings of a 2-player competitive mode. It's functional, but there's still more work to be done.
Revised init wave routines so asteroids shouldn't start on top of the player's ships
Revised respawn routine, there's now 5 different locations a player can respawn at - this was added because of the new 2 player mode.
New temporary immunity when ships respawn. The ships will cycle their lu
2 player co-op now works, each player gets 2 of the 4 shots. Menu also lets you select tethered, but it plays exactly like co-op right now.
the 1 and 2 digits for PLAYERS, and 5K for Bonus Life have been updated to match the rest of the menu font
redid the Bonus Live 10K and 20K text, no more itty bitty characters.
Bonus Live default is now 10K
ROMs for Harmony or Stella 3.7.1 or later
spacerocks20120613_NTSC.bin
spacerocks20120613_PAL.bin
Source
spacerocks201206
ship physics revised
shots now travel slightly faster than ship's maximum speed
thrust sound is in place
revised Color option's image so its meaning is clearer
ship, saucer and score bars now follow color setting
revised "player 1" and "player 2" message in 2 player game
multicolor selected
blue selected
game with Color = blue
ROMs 1
spacerocks20120611_NTSC.bin
spacerocks20120611_PAL.bin
Source
spacerocks20120611.zip
1 if you're not using a Harmo
2 player mode. Only alternating at this time
in 2 player mode, PLAYER 1 or PLAYER 2 will scroll across the screen when a player starts his turn
each player has their own set of asteroids
both players last score now shows in menu
new asteroid color menu option. Choices are multi-color, white, blue, and green
new ROM saving routine that "vectorizes" some of the asteroids into Display Data RAM when the game first starts1
Revisions to main menu
Player 1 about to start
I've received some of the graphics from Nathan, they're quite nice
new large asteroids
new medium asteroids
new ship with 32 rotation angles
prep work for 2 player support
For testing, set Left Difficulty to A to make the asteroids rotate in place. Note that "next wave" detection requires the asteroids to be moving, so switch back to B if you've shot all the stationary asteroids.
ROMs
spacerocks20120528_NTSC.bin
spacerocks20120528_PAL.bin
Source
spacerocks20120528
Omegamatrix posted this preliminary kernel that simulates seven-segment displays to support two 6-digit displays and two 1-digit displays. It does this by drawing figure 8s using player 0, player 1, missile 0 and missile 1.
Once this is drawn on screen, the playfield is colored black and set to have priority over the other objects. Playfield pixels are turned on to hide (and thus "turn off") individual segments. Since the digits cannot be colored, I added a couple of colored playfield s
I've got an iPad 2, which does not have the best of cameras(the blog software has scaled down the image, original can be viewed here):
I saw an article today that mentioned Cortex Camera App and thought it was worth checking into. It works by taking a few second of video and deriving the picture from 100 frames to get this (original photo here):
The Cortex Camera app works on the iPhone 4S, iPad 2, or newer.
I've been updating Space Rocks to add 2 player support. Since I plan to support cooperative (and possibly competitive) gameplay, it'd be best if I display both scores on-screen at the same time.
It'd also be nice to graphically display lives remaining, as well as have each player's info displayed in the proper color.
An easy solution would be to flicker two 48 pixel displays, and utilize a 3-pixel characters (like those on the main menu) to show the score and lives within the 48 pixels.
Enemy targeting logic in place, tied into difficulty level and enemy type (Saucer is the larger enemy, UFO smaller). If the accuracy value (in list below) is greater than a random number (0-63) then the enemy shoots at the ship, otherwise it selects a random direction. Looking at the list, a UFO on normal should shoot towards the ship 25% of the time Saucer UFO Accuracy/64
kids 0 0 0 0
easy 4 8 6.25% 12.50%
normal 8 16 12.50% 25.00%
hard 12 24 18.75% 37.50%
level option enabled
kids - asteroids 1/2 speed of easy, down = unlimited shields
easy - base asteroid speed starts at 0
normal - base asteroid speed starts at 2
hard - base asteroid speed starts at 4
[*]revised ship acceleration/deceleration
[*]revised asteroid starting positions to be a little further out from the center
[*]improved two-color 48 pixel routine
ROMs
spacerocks20120515_NTSC.bin
spacerocks20120515_PAL.bin
Source
spacerocks20120515.zip
I di
Display kernel was only using one player due to some test code I forgot to remove. Both players are used again, so there should be a lot less flicker.
When using hyperspace the "age" bug could occur causing the ship to come out of hyperspace and be invisible for 4 seconds. It's fixed.
Tweaked the ship inertia - it now takes longer to slow to a complete stop.
Noticed the ship would occasionally start to move in the X direction by itself. It looks like my global C variables ran into th
Here's a few videos and a few photos from this year's parade to whet your appetite. 300+ photos can be found here.
Mr Green is a walking machine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTW6Tz_VbAI
B & B DoubleHeader Art Car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL3yLoFFFCY
The Car With Ping Pong Balls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJGs2-tRe4A
The sprite tool for creating 2x sized sprites with HMOVE shifting is ready. http://www.spiceware...ri/vector2x.php
To use it, enter a GIF image that's available online via URL
Tell it which color is the background color, color numbers are in the top-right, and an image using those numbers is at the bottom. (Tip: click CHANGE COLORS if screen color conflicts with any sprite color) Pairs of pixels are grouped inside of braces {} to show how it'll convert 2 pixels in the image into as sing
animation in place
2 "styles" for each asteroid size.
2 distinct styles for larger asteroids, but only 2 frames1 of animation for each
small & medium styles are just mirror images, but have 4 frames of animation each
[*]each asteroid has an independent rotation direction and speed.
[*]Animated saucer
[*]new UFO after 7000 points. At the moment it's just a smaller target that shoots more frequently. There's no targeting AI yet for either enemy.
[*]Fixed the ship invisible bug2
I've made a variation of my sprite converter tool that will convert a sprite AND create a vector version at the same time. This will make it much easier for me to process all the forthcoming images.
http://www.spiceware...ari/vector8.php
To use it, enter a GIF image that's available online via URL
Tell it which color is the background color, color numbers are in the top-right, and an image using those numbers is at the bottom. (Tip: click CHANGE COLORS if screen color conflicts w
Preliminary menu is in place
Players (disabled): 1, 2, co-op and possibly tethered (like Space Duel)
Style: selects vector or solid sprite set
Level (disabled): kids, beginner, normal or advance
Down (joystick): nothing, shields, hyperspace or 180(flip)
Friction: yes, no (controls if ship slows to a stop by itself)
Bonus Life: no, 5K, 10K or 20K
[*]fixed a bug that made double-sized sprites in the top-left corner show up in the wrong X position.
ROM
spacerocks20
initial sound support is in place
doubled time between saucer attacks
explosion routines
revised asteroid starting position routine
revised respawn routine
TV Type and Left Difficulty control joystick-down function. You can currently change this at any time during the game. Once the menu's in place you'll only be able to change it in the menu.
Color LD-A = no function
Color LD-B = shields
B&W LD-A = hyperspace
B&W LD-B = 180
various explosions
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord