TheMole

Yeah, the other cars were a quick addition I threw in and they aren't really polished yet. Now that I'm back from vacation, that's one of the things on my todo list I'm looking forward to tackling. I also don't know if the C64 let you move your men past each other when facing the same direction, something to figure out later today. Sorry for picking the wrong monitor, but it's what I had back in my day, so it's staying ;). (although I had the amber version, it's just that the TI doesn't have any good shades of amber to work with). Still planning to do the boxed release. Hopefully more news on that soon...

First, congrats to @Albert for being rewarded for his effortless work for our communities. Well deserved! Second, I'm really interested in knowing more about this (as a developer), if the entire idea is still being entertained?

Glad to hear that you find the driving to be better, but in all honesty, I haven't made any changes to that yet :). Perhaps you're starting to get used to it...? Yeah, I noticed some bugs while futzing about with it on the plane, I'm taking notes on all feedback I'm getting. I must have broken something in the vacuuming mechanic, the distance calculation is all off. As @SteveB pointed out, there's an important gameplay mechanic still missing, which can lead to massive earnings (and losses) in the second half of the game. Each ghost you catch can net you up to $900 depending on how quickly you get to the building. So, you should be able to win the game with about 15-20 successful catches. Thanks for the feedback, and glad to hear you enjoyed it so far!

Okay, this is going to be the last update for a while (probably a month or so), as I'm leaving tomorrow for what is shaping up to be a proper vacation without laptops and technology! I'd have hoped that I would've been able to finish the game before, but alas... still a few things on the todo list for me to tackle when I get back. New in this version: Account system is implement, and compatible with the old accounts from the original game (C64 and MSX only, Speccy and CPC had a slightly different algorithm). The shop is there now, as are all the items the game will support So far, the following items are properly implemented Traps Vacuum (although the car graphics do not yet reflect whether or not you've purchased the ghost vacuum) Image intensifier -> if you don't have this, the ghosts in the cathcing sequences will flicker in and out of existence, making it harder to catch them. Different cars, with different properties (speed and capacity) Boss battle is there, if you manage to finish the game with more money than you started with, you will get the opportunity to sneak past the Marshmallow man. Sneak past with two of your three men, and you win the game, fail and you lose. Two new songs, the classic theme song throughout the majority of the game. In the shop you'll get the "Main Theme" though. Still todo: Improved navigation on the map screen Karaoke-style intro Victory sequence: scrolling up the Zuul building, crossing the streams and defeating Gozer. This is just an animation though, so just some polish. Show account info after winning, so you can start with more money the next time you play. Marshmallow building destruction. Port keyboard code over to the Geneve, so no Geneve version this time around. Some other stuff... Have fun! Any and all feedback welcome, after I get back I'll work on the final version and release it officially! ghostbusters.rpk ghostbusters.bin

By "classic TI", do you mean published by Texas Instruments, or are officially released carts from back in the day that may or may not have been sanctioned by TI also part of the conversation here? If the latter: Some of the Atarisoft games: I would personally vote for Shamus, Jungle Hunt and Donkey Kong Computer War Besides those, I think Return to Pirate's Island Buck Rogers Treasure Island Eh, I'm just listing games that make the computer look good at first glance, I guess, so that those new to the system don't think it all looked like Tombstone city.

That's fair. I do disable fctn-= and most of the time don't run interrupts. I also do have headers in all banks that run code, banks 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4, as well as the last bank. The middel banks contain continuous data and I don't want to deal with the hassle of taking into account the header when copying that data to RAM or VRAM. I'm not sure if a physical reset switch is also considered a soft-reset (I would think not), but in most cases the cart should revert to bank0 at start-up just fine. If you happen to force a reset - somehow - mid "block copy", you might be out of luck though.

The at28c040 is available in an LCC package, which - as far as I understand - can be surfacemounted. I don't see anything in the datasheets that would indicate the LCC version is not TTL compatible. That's the component we're looking at, if you or anyone else has tried these before and they don't work for some reason, do let me know!

Most PCB houses will happily stuff (readily available) SMD components for a very small fee, since this process can be almost entirely automated. Doing the same with through-hole components is more expensive (and why most of us do it ourselves). I also believe (but I'm not a specialist, I have a friend helping me out with the hardware who knows this stuff way better than I do) that if you can avoid the need to drill holes, the PCBs themselves tend to be cheaper as well. *edit* The whole reason for going SMD is not cost as such though, of course it would be cheaper to go throughhole and solder them ourselves, but the goal is to not have to solder each board ourselves. We will likely build a programming jig with pogo pins connecting to pads on the PCB to flash the EPROM in situ. That way, PCBWay or JLCPCB can do the full assembly, we just pop each cart in the jig and program it with the appropriate ROM before mounting it in a shell.

Yeah, I remember @Ksarul talking about there being SN74x latches that reliable start up in either the first or last bank upon power on. But I'm looking at the possibility of perhaps drawing up an SMD version of the 512k cart design to keep manufacturing costs down.

Finished the account system, I'm glad to say that if you've ever played the game on the C64 or the MSX and ended up with a nice fat account, you'll be able to use it in this version as well. The account obfuscation algorithm is quite well documented, so it seemed like the right thing to do. Working on the shop now, although I don't think I can get this finished before I'll be traveling. I'll be away from any sort of computer for about a month. After that, it should just be some finishing touches here and there before I can officially release it. I'll be starting a poll before I leave to gauge interest for a physical release, perhaps start taking pre-orders. I've been looking at things like the boxes, manuals, getting boards manufactured (and populated), etc... haven't got a solution for shells yet, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Lastly, let me leave you all with this picture, showcasing the different cars you'll be able to choose in the game: I definitely wanted to do better than what you'd see on the MSX. The beetle was especially challenging, but comparing to the other 8 bit versions below I'm quite happy with the results: (C64, Atari 800, Amstrad CPC, IBM PCJr, Apple ][, ZX Spectrum, MSX, NES, Atari 2600, Sega Master System)

Some unrelated progress, I wanted to get working on the account and shop systems... what do you guys think, does this look work? I wanted to do something a bit more polished than the original, but still keep the teletype style feeling...

I could take a cue from Pacman. There, the direction you're not traveling in will take precedense. So if you're traveling westward and your holding the joystick in the NW direction when coming up to an intersection where North is a valid direction, Pacman will turn North. Of course, Pacman keeps moving even if you stop pressing the joystick in the current direction until he hits a wall, so some modification will be needed, but I think that would be good strategy. In watching some longplays of the C64 version, I notice the logo sometimes "cuts the corner"... I've never had that happen when I play the game. I guess it also depends on the players idiosyncratic way of using the joystick. Good thing you guys are playtesting this thing!

Fair enough, that's three votes against the movement now, I'll look at this before the final release!

Joystick only for now, @InsaneMultitasker worked on a compatibility layer to enable keyboard support on the Geneve, but I haven't implemented that yet. Final version will likely support the keyboard as a joystick alternative on the Geneve, but not on the TI

Artwork is hard... Does anyone else think the below kinda looks like what would've happened if Ray conjured up a combination of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and Michael Flatley's Riverdance as the shape of the destroyer?

I was on the fence about this as well, there's a discussion about exactly this topic a little bit earlier on in the thread, but I ultimately decided to keep the iconic look of the massive car of the original. But I do get what you're saying, I keep thinking about ways to make the road markings slightly less glitchy but haven't come up with anything yet...

Of course, AsmusR put out some awesome Spectrum ports that are definitely multiscreen puzzle platformers (Jet Set Willy comes to mind), but given that Tutankhum was never released back in the day, I would say we didn't have something like this in the old days. The "momentum" based movement is not too hard. The basic principle is that instead of the joystick affecting movement directly, it affects a set of two other variables (usually called velocity). So pressing in a certain direction adds velocity in that direction. At the end of your game loop, you simply add the velocities to the position (capped to a max velocity of course). If no joystick input is received, you reduce the velocites with a certain fixed coefficient (friction). Here's the code from Alex Kidd (in C-like pseudo code):

I messed up with the original file upload. @InsaneMultitasker sent me an update which I've attached to this post. Thanks! Ghostbusters Geneve 7-25.zip

Update time! Attached is a version of the game that supports the complete core game loop: driving around on the map, driving to buildings and vacuuming up roamers, catching ghosts at buildings, etc... Not implemented yet are: The marshmallow man appearing on the map, destroying buildings, in the second half of the game The marshmallow man "boss battle" screen and end-sequence The shop (you start with 3 traps, the hearse, vacuum and image intensifier, you're left with $1500 at the start of the game) The account system Probably a whole host of other bits and pieces you need to call this a final polished game... The game will end abruptly when the PK Energy level reaches 9999 and show you one of the two end screens that were used in the previous demo, depending on whether you managed to earn more than $10 000 or not. I've also tweaked quite a few of the game parameters, such as the game speed, PK energy penalties, ghost catching earnings, some of the physics in the ghost catching section, etc... I think it feels quite authentic now. @InsaneMultitasker was also kind enough to help out with a Geneve loader (and was incredibly helpful and patient with real-hardware testing and debugging!), so this time around our Geneve-weilding brethren can also take a stab at running the game. On the Geneve, this is completely unoptimized for size, so you do need a configuration with enough memory (384k mod, 512k memory card or Genmod). The Geneve version is a zip file with a bunch of TIFILES uhm... files... that you need to somehow get onto the computer. There's a document that tells you how to run it (and how to quit the game). I'm very much considering giving this the full release treatment, cartrdige(TI)/disk(Geneve), box, manual etc... if there's enough interest. If that's something you'd like, please let me know. I will also release the rom image and source code for free as well, I have no intention of making this a for-profit venture, but I reckon it would be cool to do a physical release as well for those who want one. Anyhoo, here's the latest version: TI: ghostbusters.rpk, ghostbusters.bin Geneve: (see a few post down)

This looks AMAZING. I love the graphics, and especially the type of gameplay that you're building here. We don't have many of those multi-screen puzzle/platformers on the TI (I can't really come up with any right now, so this might even be a first?) while I think it's a type of the game the platform is extremely well suited for. I hope you make this an epic adventure, with a big number of levels to explore, I could see myself losing a lot of time playing a game like this. As in, playing it for real, not just because it's a cool new game on the TI. I hope I'm conveying how impressed I am :). If I can give up two super small potential improvements for your consideration: Consider blanking the VDP output when switching screens, that way you don't see the new screen painting in. Super minor thing, but also dead easy to implement... This one is maybe a bit trickier, but when the sphere is not flying, you may want to consider adding some momentum to the controls (so you don't go from a dead stop to full speed and vice versa) by using things like gravity, friction and velocities. I think it may make it feel nicer to play. In my experience, it also makes the jumps feel a bit more natural. Oh, and I also love that this seems to be a completely original idea and not a port of something existing! Again, GREAT work so far, please consider making a boxed cartridge version of this, I'll be first in line to order one ;).

Close, but not really :). I decided to add new renditions instead of ripping from existing games, so my girlfriend has re-created the main themesong in Deflemask, which I've now succesfully converted to Tursi's soundblock format.

Oh, I just figured it out, the command line arguments are location sensitive. The -sn needs to come first or the -forcechan argument isn't picked up... So, vgmcomp2 -sn -forcechan 2 infile outfile works, vgmcomp2 -forcechan 2 -sn infile outfile doesn't :).

I love the vibe, please do post the kickstarter info once you've set it up!

Oh yeah, the tools are awesome for sure. I am a bit hampered on my side because I haven't gone through the effort of porting the testplayer to SDL or something similar to allow it to run on my Mac, but that's entirely my problem. It does make it harder to 'debug' the process, but by and large everything always works first time for me, so I don't often have the need either. This was actually the first time that I got a result markedly different from what I was expecting, and it coincided with the first time I tried to use Deflemask instead of just ripping the music from another game...

It is for me. I didn't have loud cracks, but more kind of low thumps so it was never really annoying for me. But those low thumps seem to be gone now.