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Atari projects, Mac mini DVR, and other things

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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, 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

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

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

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

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

Lower castles updated

Finished updating the lower part of the screen. The screen grab catches one of the fireballs changing colors from grey to purple. That change will have to occur a bit further up the screen once the shields are added in. Another thing to note is the lower castles are in a different ROM bank so I gave them a different king shape. Due to playfield reflection, each king's shape can now be "unique".     Source and BIN Medieval_Mayhem_2006_03_22.zip   Anyhow I'm tired so
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
Medieval Mayhem

Fireball revisions

Many thanx to supercat for his even-odd suggestion and to vdub_bobby for the better positioning routine without the hiccups! With their input the "few odd things" I listed before have been resolved   The lower castles are still not rewritten, though I did add a cycling option to fireballs for flickery flamish look. I'm not sure what I think about it yet, but I do know it will be pulled if I need additional processing time to handle 3 fireballs. To enable the cycling set your Left Diffi
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
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

Bankswitching and Paddle Driven Menu

I know I'll need to bankswitch since Warlords was a packed 4KB game. So, I've spent the past few days getting the bankswitching framework set up. To test it I put the beginnings of a paddle driven menu screen in one bank and split the current routines amongst the other 3 banks. As you can see, the menu is quite primitive at the moment   However you can select the sole menu option and hit your fire button   to "start" the game   I've also set it up
SpiceWare

SpiceWare in Medieval Mayhem

0
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

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

Medieval Mayhem

I decided to roll my own Warlords instead of hacking the original so that we can have cartridges made   I spent a few hours tonight and have got the score going. The score's going to be on a single line to allow me to have a larger playing area.   The scores make more sense if you know how my players will be set up.   Player 1 = Top Left Player 2 = Bottom Right Player 3 = Top Right Player 4 = Bottom Left   Warlords has some extra logic
Guest

Guest in Medieval Mayhem

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