Moose1900

Getting 5v to all the chips when i flip the switch and have nothing but static on the screen, i am even gettinng a wave sign coming off the tia. Retouched all of the solder joints on both boards, not sure where to go from here. Do you think it could be a bad rf modulator?

Stumped on this one. Powers on fine sometimes, next time I turn it on it getso full static as if it has no power, still have a clean 5 volts out of regulator. Seems to be really random. Cleaned power switch replaced regulator and chiclet capacitor. Getting a clean 5 volts out. Cleaned channel switch. Checked voltage to main processor, getting a good slope when power on. All three chips have been replaced. When it does power on it stays on and works fine. Any ideas? Thanks.

Does anyone have a working sample program that includes a skipdraw routine? I have seen many postings of the code for just the routine, but never a simple program that draws a sprite on the screen using skip draw. I have tried for the past few weeks, but can't seem to get it to work. I think if I saw a simple example that works, then I could see where I am going wrong. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

does anyone have a working example of a skipdraw routine? I have seen many postings of the code for just the routine, but never a simple program that draws a sprite on the screen using skip draw. I have tried for the past few weeks, but can't seem to get it to work. I think if I saw a simple example that works, then I could see where I am going wrong. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

oh, ok, so then I need to use two separate registers, one for the sprite and one for the playfield. Is that right?

Anyone have any ideas on why my sprite is messing up my playfield?

Hey guys, thanks for your help so far. I am still struggling to put all of this together. I checed out SpiceWare's tutorial and it is very well done. However, I am trying to start small and simply get a sprite on the screen along with the playfield using a two line kernel and then later I will add code for joystick and collision. I took a look at the skipdraw routine that you recommended I look at and I incorporated it in to what I am doing. I am part of the way there, but my playfield is all jacked up. I am guessing that my playfield being duplicated has something to do with the 2lk, not sure. On second look, it appears that the height of the playfield is being affected by the starting position of my sprite. I just don't understand. Could someone steer me where I am going wrong before I give up? I will post code and pic. Thanks. playfield_test.asm

Wow, that's great stuff. That really helps explain things better. Another question. Is it pretty standard practice to use a 2lk? When I am using a playfield painter app, is it expecting you to use a 2lk with the code that is generated? I am now working on getting a sprite to appear on the screen at the same time my playfield is being displayed. Having some trouble there, but I'm still plugging away at it. Do you have any tips on that? Common rookie mistakes? It seems like I could just write to the player register right after I write to the playfield register in the arena loop, but I am having problems. If you have any tips that would be great, if not then I will just keep at it until I get it figured out. Thanks guys!

I have one other question for whoever can help, in the code that I attached in the previous posts, I am doing a wsync immediately after my playfield is written for the scanline, before the bne to ArenaLoop. And then another wsync at the very beginning of the arenaLoop function. Why am I having to do this? If I don't, then the playfield is half the size of the screen. I can't make sense of it.

I increased the bitmap image by 1 additional line, or byte for p0,1,2, and it appears that I had to increase the Y loop by 4. I am guessing that this is due to the 2lk loop that we are using. I don't fully understand that loop other that it is allowing you to code accross two scan lines, so why am I having to increase the Y loop by 4 instead of just 2? Also, something I don't understand is that if we are coding across two scanlines, then whay are we not getting an image with a blank space in between each line. I know these are pretty basic questions, but I feel like I can't forward without having a full understanding of how these things work and why we are doing them. Thanks guys!

Ok, It looks like I finally got my timing right, I used the value 49 in my vertical blank instead of 44, and I used 87 for my Y loop instead of 97. I am guessing that I have to use 87 based on the height of my bitmap image, is that correct??? If I wanted to use a larger bit map image, then what would I adjust my Y loop iterations to? I am not sure about how the two correlate.

I attached my code and a screenshot of what I am getting. I don't think that I am running out of clock cycles, since I'm not really doing any other logic, but I obviously have my timing off somewhere. I have played around with the settings for a few days, trying different combinations to try and get it right, but I am simply not having any success and am becoming discouraged, so I thought that I would try reaching out to you guys. playfield_test.asm

Hey SpiceWare, I checked out your blog on collect. I really learned a lot from it (newbie) and I am just getting started programming for the Atari and understanding how to display a playfield properly. I used some of your code and stripped it down to just show a basic tank playfield like you have and it keeps chopping off the top of the screen. I have tried for several days to figure out what I am doing wrong, but I just keep going in circles. If I were to post my code and a screen shot, is there any way you could point to where I am going wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.