I refreshed the code back to version 0.010 and redid the modifications to the code to make things work. The weird problems didn't restart and I even fixed up the code a little better this time to make sure no jumping of scanlines was occuring when P0 or P1 was touching or crossing over the top of the gamefield. (too much time taken - in each of hte lines where I updated P0 or P1 via a modified Skipdraw.)

Then I tried altering the playfield again and noticed the exact same funkiness return. This time it only took me a couple of seconds to realize what was likely the problem.

It's been so long since I touched the main display that I had forgotten that I use the playfield color to help enable the player. And to help save more time in the kernel I simply hit ENAP1 (I think) every scanline during the player lines. I can avoid testing etc that way. So if bit 1 was 0 on any of those lines the missile triggered by it would turn off. The playfield is striped, so...

Bah. Remembering that a week ago would have saved me some time, but at least everything is working now. I may have to add one more line to the In-Between zone however as we still have the hmove bar for the last player positioning visible.

But do I take it from the status field or do I take it from the status bar. I'd prefer to take it from the status bar. I need to consider if I REALLY need to prefix the bars with a letter to indicate what it is. If I were to support a B/W mode it'd probably be necessary, but I'm not going to. Their color should suffice for a player to tell them apart. Red for health, purple or something for the magic. Should be fine... This would let me make them thinner too, which may make it easier to finally unlock the magic bar so it would have it's own meter values.

I'll still need a modified cycle 74 hmove to pull that off efficiently tho.