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Coastal Chaos V0.05


TROGDOR

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Blog is not dead which can eternal lie. My blog has been dormant for over 6 months, but I'm finally doing more Atari development.

 

cchaos05zj6.png

Incoming!

 

Use the fire button to fire the cannon.

 

cchaos05.zip

 

Features:

cchaos03

- Added on-screen positioning of both ship sprites.

- HMOVE every line to prevent comb-effect.

- Reduced size of island by removing 6th row of castle.

cchaos04

- Added demo cannon ball in ball graphics that moves down middle of screen.

- Implemented pseudo 3D cannonball effect by making the ball larger as it flies higher.

- Split main kernel into left-side and right side, based on ShipX. Only right side is implemented.

cchaos05

- Cleaned up ship display to properly align both sprites. (Or so I thought. See issues below.)

- Added sound engine, splash sound, and cannon fire sound.

- Added Joystick button support.

- Added preliminary AI to move the pirate ship.

 

To Do:

- Add cannon rotation angles.

- Add cannonball trajectory angles.

- Add whistle when cannonball is falling (similar to bomb sound in The Battle of Midway.)

- Design a 3D physics engine to properly calculate the x,y, and z coordinates of the cannon ball.

 

Known Issues:

- The cannon ball starts well below the cannon. I need to update the coastal rendering kernel to support the cannon ball. Also, 2 scanlines of ocean are used to position the ship. This needs to also support the cannonball. It may require 2 different kernels; one when the ship is on the left side of the screen, and one when the ship is on the right.

 

- I've run into a major issue with the emulators. The display is different between Z26V2.13 and Stella 2.3.5. The game runs as expected in Stella. In Z26, the second player sprite, used to draw the cannons and sails on the pirate ship, doesn't align correctly with the bottom of the ship. Normally I would try to clean this up before posting, but I figured it would be more useful to the Atari community to demonstrate a clear emulation discrepancy between these two emulator versions. I'd also be interested to know which one is "right", as in which one matches the actual hardware.

 

Development Notes:

Another thing I'm wondering about is how to properly read the scanline count in Stella. It starts on scanline "0", and when I press the back-tick to pause the game, it says it's on scanline 261. Does this mean there are 262 scanlines? When I run with -n in Z26 (the only reason I use Z26, other than to cross check against another emu,) Z26 says there are only 261 scanlines.

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Z26 is very realiable on such things, so I'd better fix the display.

 

Where have you been so long, I had already unpinned your blog? :) ;)

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Yay more TROGGames. How about starting a Cthulhu 2600 game? ;)

 

Actually, yes you need to finish a game. They are good stuff. The way you are going, you might finish them all at the same time and cause a glut! :)

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It's like an artist looking at a painting they did in high-school, and knowing all the things they could have done better.

Or even looking at something I finished a week ago, knowing all the things I could've done better. :)

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Yes, the trick is to declare something finished at one point, else you will never finish anything.

 

Though, who am I to tell (Thrust, Thrust DC+, Thrust Platinum...). :)

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I'm surprised that Z26 would be more accurate, although I've heard it's often used as the gold standard of 2600 emulation. Given that development of Stella is still on-going, and that the emu is so mature, I would have expected Stella to be at least as reliable as Z26.

I think most of the on-going development in Stella over the past couple of years has been (G)UI stuff. There are several TIA/RIOT issues that have been known for a while now.

 

EDIT: Oh, and: I'm also very glad to see you back. :) I also wish you would finish/release MoA, I love that game. ;) I've also spent probably hours playing your Hunt The Wumpus almost-game; it's just a lot of fun. ;)

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