Pat Brady

My 7800header script specifies only "supergameram." I had not noticed until now that 7800header automatically sets the "supergame bank switched" flag even though of course a 32K cartridge does not use bank switching. It does not work on Concerto. I have a bodged 128K version for that. I have not tried unsetting the bank switched flag.

Huh. Mine (again, not using BASIC) still works in a7800 5.2. 7iX-2022-03-05.a78

This has been my experience too (except my project does not use BASIC).

I have it on NES Classic, and I played through it once in that form, but subsequently played the "Final Fantasy Restored" hack. The biggest benefit of the hack is faster battles. I definitely needed a guide. I did a lot of grinding on my first run but not much in later runs. IIRC the minimal-grind strategy is: buy spells as you can afford them, and spend as little as possible on everything else. At the very very beginning you need to buy some gear and lodging, but lodging quickly becomes cheap and gear upgrades can be found in chests. As mentioned above, don't try to plow through dungeons in one go. Between the dungeons themselves and travel between towns and dungeons, you can gain enough exp and money to progress. If using a guide, then the interesting aspect of this game is choosing your party then figuring out how to use that party, which can change a bit throughout the game as you gain items. Of the sequels, so far I've only played IV (in its original North American "Final Fantasy II" guise), which was much more on-rails. I didn't enjoy it much. I intend to play at least V, VI, and VII.

I also prefer the wider sprite. It looks more imposing and differentiates boss from common enemies.

v1 is quite good, v2 is even better.

On the other thread, someone suggested toggling the color of the core when hit, with the core controlling the fill color when the ball hits an outer section. You responded that that would be unbalanced. But what if the players swapped inside <-> outside when the core is hit, so that the inner player is always the same color as the core? That would at least be balanced, though it's not totally clear what circumferential positions to give the players when swapping radial positions.

My understanding/recollection is: CX-22s without switches behave like joysticks CX-22s with joystick/trackball switches, and most CX-80s, work according to the switch A few CX-80s were modified to behave like ST mice

v3 by far for me. I like v2's square waves but not its intonation.

The title of the thread clearly states "graphics demo."

TIA is capable of very good DK music and sound, as demonstrated by @Joe Musashi's D.K. VCS. I think some of the envelopes could be improved, but it's way way better than the official 7800 port. DK on the 7800 didn't need POKEY, it needed a programmer with expertise, desire, and time to make it sound good. Same for DK Jr. and Mario Bros.

Yes, this is exactly what holey DMA is for. It's explained in the Display List List section of the Software Guide. I am confident that the 7800 can display the screen you want. What's your zone height(s) and what DMA modes are you using for each object?

800 (I've been contemplating buying an XL or XE — if I win this it may provide the motivation to pull that trigger, so I don't have to hold a piece of 12-gauge wire with my foot.)

Huh, I have completely missed this thread until now. I'd like to reserve $71,$CC for 7iX. Thanks PMP for managing this.

Huh. The attachment seems to have disappeared — not just from my post but from my list of attachments. I'm reuploading in case anybody else wants it. EDIT: Or maybe I forgot to attach it in the first place? dkjraudio.ips

Agree 100% with this, but I also think it's okay for people to have been disappointed with the 7800 (or any other system) at the time, or now, or to prefer other machines in specific ways, or in general. The 7800 is a strange system, clearly designed to be inexpensive and 2600-compatible, and some compromises had to be made. Nowadays some of the compromises are charming and make a good programming challenge, but I can easily see how an 800XL user in 1984 (or 1986) would have seen them differently. Yeah, I saw that after I posted, and deleted my post. You are correct (and I was wrong) about the resolution: it's definitely 160.

*deleted*

Ah, you're right. On all counts. 256-byte table should work but maybe not worth the ROM cost. Sorry for the wild goose chase.

I love this attitude (use extra hardware if the results justify it, and not if they don't). There's another message here, which is that making it easy to get good results is a form of power, one that sometimes gets ignored when people talk about how powerful some chip or console is. With POKEY 8-bit channels, it's a lot easier to get good results than TIA, but you still have to be careful. For this Satie piece, that conversion doesn't sound bad at all, but there are a few different ways to do it, and I think with some experimentation you might find something you like better. Let me know if you'd like me to take a more detailed look or provide more specific suggestions. Feel free to PM if you'd prefer.

I can't help with RAM, but you can save some cycles by using lookup tables. For unpack you only need a 16-byte table, and you'll save a byte of code. It saves 4 cycles per iteration in exchange for 15 bytes of ROM and clobbering Y. .ramSplit ldy Voice+32,x ;This area of RAM will be borrowed for voice lda leftshift4,y sta Voice,x ;The right nibble is stored in the left nibble of Voice. Right nibble is zero which is convenient. dex bpl .ramSplit rts ;Return, then jump to a voice bank leftshift4 ; this can go anywhere in any accessible bank .byte $00,$10,$20,$30,$40,$50,$60,$70,$80,$90,$A0,$B0,$C0,$D0,$E0,$F0 You could also set up a macro to generate the table. Ideally, ensure that the table does not cross a page boundary, since each page crossing indirect load costs an extra cycle. If you use dasm you can use my prevsamehighas macro (from attachment in this post) to confirm that at build time. For pack, the principle is the same, but you would need a full-page table, so if you're at all tight on ROM this is a tougher trade-off. There may be other optimizations. This is the one that immediately came to my mind.

Yeah, the TIA sound here is outstanding, so good that it's caused a lot of confusion.

You can do the crowd in 160A, do each boxer in 160B, everything in direct mode. That works out to ~330 MARIA cycles on the lines that have all 3, well under the limit. ROM is probably a bigger concern, but MTPO is 256K so I wouldn't feel bad at all about using, say, Bankset 2x128K. I think it's doable, and if somebody wants to do this, I'll offer to help with sound.

Where is the download? I love the short maze version! Obviously it's a compromise, but I prefer that to not always being able to see all of the ghosts/monsters. Don't know how much I'll play the RB version, but I really really like the look of the mazes with inverted colors.

My recommendation is: don't feel pressured to release.

Note that Concerto, as of the current firmware revision, cannot load the full game (or other >128k games).