KevKelley

So I think I got the scanline issue under control by getting rid of my numerous redundant checks for the asteroids, I wound up checking the coordinates 6 times. I added a few gotos to skip over the checks not needed and no more scanline issue. The next thing I need to figure out is fine tuning the collision as for some reason when I try to skip over the detection for each asteroid it kind of has a stop and go effect. I also need to figure out how to get the second player shooting in without using too much but I think this is well on track.

I will definitely use some of your tips. A lot of time I kind of program real quick on my lunches and test it fast and then spend the rest of my day trying to figure it out. Part of me thought the scanline issue was a result of collision detection between missile0 and player1 and since all the sprites are copies this may be resulting in a lot of unnecessary checks occurring simultaneously… or at least that’s my guess. But every little cycle saver helps. Some things I never changed in the past only because I never needed it. But this explains some of the code I had copied when learning.

Thanks! I will have to see if I can either record my system or find an emulator and record longer gameplay. I could only find the videos that are like 20 seconds so I want to make sure if there are more gameplay elements that I need to account for. I did wonder, by slower, do you mean accessing the stack takes more cycles? I wasn’t sure if it did or not but I initially used the stack after reading posts from @Sprybug that I thought it may be something of use for this game. I kind of did something similar but with variables for my Red Light Green Light game, where I saved and read variables to alternate sprite positions. Starting this game I didn’t know how many variables I may use and my initial thought had each asteroid using 5 variables so I didn’t want to box myself in a corner. I also didn’t know if pushing multiple things to the stack at once saved any cycles or was more of a benefit. I do use the w variable for my timer and currently use it to switch which group of asteroids and player is loaded. If I fix my collision detection and make some of the improvements you mention I can’t imagine this game requiring much more. I had been looking at the code to see how I can simplify things more. I felt reusing player0 and the five virtual sprites made things a little more manageable. I had thought about using missile0 for both ship lasers to save more as well but once I get the asteroid code done I’ll try to figure out the player movement. I think having everything moving around will be exciting and offer some frantic gameplay. I was just happy I got all the asteroids moving independently.

Whenever I watch @ZeroPage Homebrew I always love when James tries to guess what sprite is what. I like to do the same as it is fun to see how programmers use what the Atari has to offer. I will state what is what in this spoiler in case anyone was curious.

Game Title: Beyond Parsec Gameplay: This is a port of the 1988 Texas Instruments 99/4a game by John Phillips that I wanted to try making for sometime. As some may know the TI 99/4a was my first computer. I never had this game but had played it a couple years ago when I bought a FinalGROM cartridge and thought it was awesome. I had also tried to figure out how to make this work and originally thought about simplifying gameplay but eventually landed on using DPC+ and after reading in the forums (I think it was a Robot Zed thread) I decided to experiment using the DPC+ stack. The basic idea is that there are ten asteroids and two spaceships. Each player controls a spaceship and can move back or forth and fire. You can fire at the asteroids to make them accelerate or decelerate in either direction, shoot the opposing player, or crash into the opposing player, all while dodging asteroids. Here is a quick video of the gameplay test where I have all the asteroids moving: CLICK HERE This game is not finished. Right now I have preliminary code for the asteroid movement but I notice that the scanlines jump to 263 every once and a while when the laser is fired but I noticed when I remove one collision statement detecting the laser hitting the asteroid I don't have an issue apart from the asteroids moving really slowly. There are some tweaks I need to make before I continue, as right now the player just has to be on the same y-coordinates as the asteroid and fire but I want to make the collision more precise, and this kind of ties in with the first issue I am having. I am still trying to hammer out those details but it is exciting to see all the moving parts. I also need to program the city at the bottom of the screen, the second player firing, and the spaceship collisions. Those shouldn't be too hard once I get the movement worked out and hope I can figure them out in the next week or two. If I get all that taken care of I want to try to add a little bit of a twist to this game, maybe by adding either more obstacles, gun turrets at the bottom of the screen, teleporters, or random enemy spaceships. I am including the .bin and the .bas in case anyone wants to peak under the hood. BP_2023_03_21_10AST.bas BP_2023_03_23_8AST.bas BP_2023_03_23_8AST.bas.bin BP_2023_04_01_8AST_b.bas.bin BP_2023_07_29_8AST_g.bas.bin BP_2023_09_25_8AST_g.bas.bin

It has been a while since I worked this game but I think I used PF0 for the sides and I remember having an issue with the top line being a different color. I think it had something to do with my kernel settings using of colors and then doing something like setting the COLUPF or COLUBK in addition to each line. It was some weird combo if I am right and my solution was make a border which I liked as it combined with the color behind the score.

Crossbow 7800 for the win!

Cool. Kind of reminds me a little of Parsec 2 on the TI99/4a.

I was kind of thinking that as well.

So a friend of mine posted online a vague memory of an Atari game. The only information to go off of is that you pick a character - man, woman, or child - and that you walk across several environments. And there is a volcano. It came on a cartridge and played with a joystick. They had ruled out Pitfall, Montezuma’s Revenge, Survival Island, and Crossbow, which they said didn’t look as detailed as they remember. I was coming up blank. Any ideas?

Is this related to the issue you are experiencing?

I believe DPC+ needs more space between sprites.

I had made a border in my game Lawn Boy. Is something like this what you are looking to do?

Out of curiosity, would doing this result in some space saved? Less cycles?

I think I did something similar in trying to make acceleration in one game where I would do something like if joy0right then b=b+25 and then I would do something like if b=100 then a=a+1:b=0 There are probably other ways to do this but it seemed to work for this purpose.

I suppose I didn’t notice a difference in my current projects because as you can see in this one there was virtually no room left in the first bank. Even my other game was a 4k game and had just 5 bytes remaining.

Great! I know I had thrown included for other stuff into my project directories but never really messed with the score. Now I will do that whenever I have a need. I didn’t really think about it too much before because I usually use the same font but I changed up the font recently on one project without thinking.

Okay. So before I pull out my old laptop and test on it I decided to just test and see if I copy a different score_graphics from one of my backup folders into the folder if it would make a difference. So when I tried to compile yesterday I got this message: segment: 1fd4 eqm vs current org: 1ff2 free ram: 0 DPC free RAM= 603 -30 bytes of ROM space left in bank 1 C:\Users\User\Desktop\GAME PROJECTS\LINE MAN\LINE MAN\LM_2023_01_25.bas.asm (1427): error: Origin Reverse-indexed. Errors were encountered during assembly. And with the copied score_graphics I got this: --- Unresolved Symbol List splash.asm 0000 ???? (R ) scoretable 0000 ???? (R ) free ram: 0 DPC free RAM= 603 17 bytes of ROM space left in bank 1 714 bytes of ROM space left in bank 2 1300 bytes of ROM space left in bank 3 455 bytes of ROM space left in bank 4 3289 bytes of ROM space left in bank 5 3919 bytes of ROM space left in bank 6 1956 bytes of ROM space left in graphics bank so since I saw a change I downloaded the score_graphics from the github and compiled again and got this: free ram: 0 DPC free RAM= 603 17 bytes of ROM space left in bank 1 714 bytes of ROM space left in bank 2 1300 bytes of ROM space left in bank 3 455 bytes of ROM space left in bank 4 3289 bytes of ROM space left in bank 5 3919 bytes of ROM space left in bank 6 1956 bytes of ROM space left in graphics bank Everything worked! I think what happened is that when I was testing a custom score font for a program I accidentally copied the wrong file and screwed it up also screwing with my backup file at the same time! Thank you @bogax and @Karl G. I always try to solve these things before coming to the forums. Right at the end of my break yesterday I went to show a coworker these files and I got slapped with this error with two minutes to kind of figure it out. The only change that I remembered making that was not game specific was the score but on the off chance someone more skilled in this had a quicker fix. I spent a few hours stressing over this while I finished my shift and by the time I finished up I was too tired to think about it. lol So now I gotta try to safeguard my games in the future from my screwups. If I include the score_graphics file in the project folder would the game then use that one?

I have had that happen before in the past when I may have added one little line and it goes over. In this instance I literally opened up the game and compiled and it failed. The only thing I could think of is I messed with the score for another game. So if I revert that file back to the original and it still doesn’t work I’ll have a better idea. And to check I loaded up numerous saves and not just the last one from December and they all had issues. I think I had one work that was a real early version and was not as large. I am going to copy the .bas over to another computer and check to see if it works. If not I’ll post some

I hadn’t updated bB and as far as I know it doesn’t update automatically . My last file was from December when it last worked but I think this last month the only thing I think I did was mess with the score on another program. My understanding was that score graphics go in last bank but I saw in the files that there is a bit of code in front of the score sprites which made me wonder. I am gonna try to figure it out tonight or tomorrow to see if I can get it to revert and maybe post a file or screenshot or even try it on my laptop that I had not used in a month.

The only thing I could think of is maybe I did something to the Score file by accident that added extra code to the first bank?

So I was working on some games today and I decided to load up a couple old projects, both of which are either done completely or almost done and worked last time I ran them. One a standard kernel bB with no blank lines and the other DPC+. To my surprise when I tried to compile both of them they failed saying there were -43 and -30 bytes free in Bank 1. I am trying to figure out what exactly caused this change from the last time I worked on them. I need to try to dig deeper on this but I ran out of time on my break so I am pushing this to the forums to see if anyone has an idea as to what might be the cause. Luckily I had already compiled and have a finished .bin of one but what has me confused is the DPC+ one only had a goto, a couple variables, and a couple dims and constant definitions in it so how could that go over?!

And to answer your topic question I usually play and if something breaks I go to the part of code where that is supposed to happen and I see what the issue is. Over time I have gotten better at figuring out what went wrong, like if I did something like use the wrong variable or had a syntax error that wasn’t picked up before compiling. like I mention before I had this issue when I missed a return. I also experienced something similar when I forgot a “:”. Hopefully you find what is wrong.

I have had similar issues that were the result of missing a return otherbank.

Cool. I love the question mark shrinking while waiting for an answer. I had made a similar program a while back designed to be a substitute for the buzzer systems used in College Quiz Bowl tournaments called Quiztari Buzzer Program. I similarly used paddles but utilized the Quadtari to allow for 8 players or the option for two joysticks to be used with each direction for a players buzzer. Also had moderator reset and timers. But when ZeroPage Homebrew tested it my code for multiple players didn’t work and I hadn’t really revisited it. What made you decide to make this? Did you play quiz bowl or are just a fan of trivia?