OldGuru

Can you start from 15, decrese it each time and when 0, change the LMS and reload it with 15 again?

From my experience you can't avoid that phase both on Atari 5200 and on the Vectrex. In my opinion, Atari 5200's emulators are way better than the ones available for the vectrex. In other words, you can get further in your emulator based development on the 5200's emulators than you can with the Vectrex ones... I believe that this is true for most of the emulators/consoles out there... Is that true? What about the 2600? OG

Both De-Re-Atari and Atari Archives have assembler and basic examples. Once you know a programming language, you'll have to learn how to apply it on the Atari 5200 itself... O.G.

Hi all, After a long self debate and consideration, I fianlly made up my mind and finalized my selection. I decided to choose Zanza's label design: In the selection process, I printed my favorite 5 entries and actually glued them on a real cartridge case. I then, showed them to close friends (that were not following the voting on the label's contest page) and asked for their opinion. The winning label was "leading" by a bit over its runner up. Since this was my choise in the original poll, I decided on it. Again, thank you all for taking the time and submitting your entries. I could never come close to this level of artwork myself. Also, I'd like to thank the comitted team of AtariAge for hosting this contest. Thank you all, OldGuru.

Hi all, First, I'd like to thank all those who sent their label design. You guys made a wonderfull work of art and I really have hard time to make my choice. Based on what I've seen here, and, in order to avoid any place for doubt, I'll make my selection without any poll or vote as originally planned. I'll announce the winner lable by the end of this coming Sunday here on the message board. Thank you for your cooperation and patience, Ronen. [ 04-09-2002: Message edited by: OldGuru ]

I tried to print some to see how they look on a real cartridge... the printed label came out larger than the original's size. Any idea why? Thanks, OG.

...I was 10 years old in 1979... It's not that I consider myself (or feel) old, it is just a nickname after all... How and why did you guys choose your nicknames?

quote No more levels are planned... Now starts the final stage in the development - final debugging... Some people say that the last 5% of a project consume 95% of the project's total duration ...I just hope it won't be true in this case tough... OldGuru.

quote Had the chance to update the www: Castle Blast web page OldGuru.

... Old enough to play Atari games as a kid... Old enough to read newsgroups and see that there are people who ask what is Atari... OG.

Thank you all for taking part in this contest! Just wanted to let you guys know that I've added a 6th level with vertical leaser beams coming down from the castle. A few other features were added as well. I'll try to update my web page tonight with some screenshots. Ronen.

Hi, Looks good calamari! Assuming I came up with some entries in the POKEDITOR program. Something basic that I miss: How do I convert the .POK file to include in the asm? Thank you, OG.

I use xemacs for windows. Works fine and highlights almost any language you may ever use... OG

Hi Charlie, Sorry to reply on other's thread, but anyway: quote Agreed. I'm in the process of addressing that issue. I must admit that it is quite annoying to shoot at the castle shield, hear the hit sound (and get a point) when nothing actually changes on the screen... quote Correct. The missiles are currently being earased off the screen a bit too early (before the HW actually detects the collision with the player). I'll have to fix that in the final polishing phase of the game. quote Great idea! Also quite easy to implement. Definitely a must! Will do. Thank you for taking the time to post your comments, OG.

The next step is to disassemble it. I've been using DIS6502. It took me a while to set it up but once done it run fine. When disassembled, you'll get a whole 32KB out of which only a very samll section is what you'll need. So how do you know what will you need? 1. SAPReader gives back Init address and Player address values when creating the bin file. 2. Use this addresses to search the code in the dissassembled code. 3. Now starts the tricky part: Most of the music files you'll extract have both code and data sections. You'll need to find these data sections (by reading and understanding the code) and convert them (within the disassembler) to data sections. This way your pointers will point to the correct data location. Also, you must pay attention to the address (RAM locations) that the original code used. It might overwrite some of your current variables or, be complete out of range. You'll have to modify the various labels of the disassembled code to fit your code. 4. Copy and Paste the routines and data into your code. Then, before the main loop, call the Init subroutine. In the main loop call the Player subroutine. 5. Convert the Atari400/800 addresses to the A5200 ones (Mostly AUDC/F registers). If everything works fine you'll hear the music. What I ususally do is take a simple "hello world" program, add the music to it first, debug it there and only then copy it to my main program. I think that it makes it simpler to see the whole context this way. Genrally, it never works for me on the first try. I then have to follow instruction by instruction and see what is going on. My suggestion, never give up, the outcome usually makes it worth the trouble. OG.

I'd say that I'm 75-80% done. There are some bug fixes and features that have to be addressed. I'm planning (can't commit though) to be ready with my game by CGE2K2. I'm planning on a boxed version but have to figure out all the details associated with that (mainly cost and timeframes). Also, looking for a graphical designer to assist with all art-work as I have no clue about that... OG.

Hi all, This post is along the same lines as the other programmer's query. I'd like to get an idea of the number of carts I should make. Therefore, if you plan on ordering a Castle Blast cart when it's ready, please send me an E-mail. Please include in the subject CastleBlast. The targeted price is unclear yet as I have to figure out how much will everything cost. My plan is to have it in the $30 range. My email is: ronen.habot2@verizon.net Thank you, OG

Has anybody looked at: http://www.myatari.net/ ? Castle Blast is up there... Does that mean that I have to finish it up by April? Has anybody here suggested Castle Blast to MyAtari.com ? OG.

Ok, so to make things a bit more complicated: If there are JMP instructions in various routines, the address will not be restored, right? So, if instead of using RTS, I'd use JMP (back to a place I'd want) the stack can overflow... Is that right? Not that I do that in my code, I just try to understand the limits... The actual reason that I posted my questions is that after adding some more features to my game, the text area on the screen gets corrupted... That happend on the real console but not on VSS (0.7)... Still have no idea why... Thanks, OG

What is the limit of nested subroutines in the 6502 on the 5200? What do I mean? In some cases, I have my main code jumping to a subroutine, this subroutine calls another one and so on... The uP has to retain the return address of each JSR. I'd assume that it stores these addresses (and what else?) in the Stack (where is the stack located on the 5200?). How many memory location does each JSR take ? Now, if the Stack is located in the memory such that it overwirtes some program variables, the code execution will be corrupted... How does that work on the emulators? Where is the stack located? Is there a "different" memory location for the JSR return address than the stack? ...and, yes, there are quite a few questions here but an answer to any of them could help... Thank you, OldGuru.

Looks promissing to me! Can't wait to play it. BTW: Are you going to have a demo ready for PhillyClassic? OldGuru.

quote: rather than having the side ship shoot a missile, why don't you simply increase the number of times the player must shoot it? At first, one shot destroys it, but eventually you will need 2 or 3 shots (and have it change colors or bitmap with every hit). Just my idea -- any thoughts about that? I like that approach. As you said, it is somehow easier to implement. I was thinking to add a feature that when the tank is hit, it will be pushed backwards (a bit) and then continue in its original direction... on top of that a shorter range horizontal missile will make the player's life very hard . Also, I was planning to add a mode (higher) level that the tank in actually invisible (only the music associated with it will be played) and thus make the player unaware of its exact location... BTW: I added the feature that when the tank or laser beam hit the player, the player looses a turn... Playing level 5 now becomes quite uneasy... I also added some more sounds to it - Laser beams associated sound and also a music that is played when the tank is on... Also, does anybody here plan to attend the NAVA meeting on Saturday? OldGuru.

quote It is not so easy to implement this feature... specially, as things are implemented now... I like the current way of the beams appear on the screen... They really make the player's life harder... quote Correct. This will require some additional coding but there is no other way around it... quote Currently, the laser beams strike follow a predefined pattern. I might change that to be random in the future... I need to implement the vertical laser beams first... quote I have it on my to-do list for a while now... Quite non-trivial thing to do the way I implemented the castle and the way I detect the player's missile hit... quote This is why I'm looking for your feedback... Thanks, OldGuru.

quote Correct. The game never ends... I'm planning to add one more level of difficulty where some additional vertical beams come down from the castle. This way the player can't just stay in the center when the diagonal beams are activated. I was also thinking to have the tank shooting at the player but that seems to be quite difficult to do... I still have not gave it a deep thought though. If anyone has ideas how to improve the game please feel free to post. I can't promise to implement them all but will consider the ones that I feel that would be reasonable to implement. quote Agreed. There are even more bugs... I'm planning to complete coding the whole features-list I have and then switch into "bug-fixing" mode which, will eventually bring me to the finish line... BTW: Indeed, the player has to shoot at the center of a brick to destroy it. It is the way I wrote the brick-hit detection routine... which I spent quite a lot of time to code... I'm not planning to change that one... quote I'm actually using both a formula (very simple one) and a table. When a collision is detected, s_CheckHits is called. This subroutine checks all the possible collisions in the game. If a collision is detected, another subroutine is called to handle that type of collision. This subroutine calculates the RAM location, changes the color of it, updates the score and set the sound flag. quote In the version you are playng, the beams are not harmful to the player. It is foreseen to have them deadly to the player if touching them... The sound was added to it as well (sounds like a thunder)... I was thinking to start the sound 1 sec. before the actual beam comes down... this will hint the player of the fact that a dangerous laser beam will appear (somewhere) soon... quote I like that idea. I'll look into implementing it (maybe in higher levels?). Definitely will add to my to-do list... Thank you all for taking the time to look into it and post your comments, OG.

quote I'm using this version of the emulator as well. I've tried it on two different PCs. On the faster one (P3, 733MHz) it sounds sometimes messed-up, but always it is very fast (same with the game-play itself). On a slower PC (P2, 166MHz) it sounds way better although sometimes it is not... I always use the -limit option. One thing that I can promise is that on the real console is really sounds great Thanks, O.G.