[kick asm bug?]

On 9/19/2022 at 9:46 PM, popmilo said:

I've been using it for couple years now, and it's not a bug, it's a feature

Thanks, I think I you mentioned somewhere that you used it (downloaded some source code you posted).

 

It seems pretty clean, just wondering what advantages you found compared to other assemblers ?

[ASMA - Atari Sound Music Archive on asma.atari.org]

1 hour ago, Synthpopalooza said:

And yes, looks like ASAP handles all my two tone stuff well.  Apologies ... I'm more used to the (until recently) dodgy POKEY emulation on the 7800 platform.

Actually I don't think ASAP supports 2Tone ?

 

1 hour ago, Synthpopalooza said:

Which begs another question:  I wonder how possible it would be to SAP a 7800 binary.  I did a couple of game tunes once which used POKEY plus TIA percussion.

That would require adding TIA emulation...

[Cybernoid WIP]

16 hours ago, mariuszw said:

I did some planning for Cybernoid 2 by myself, so here are my random thoughts:

Interesting stuff but why would you choose the ZX version since it's a much bigger job even with a complete disassembly ?

 

17 hours ago, popmilo said:

Here are tiles 2x2 that Charpad detected in first level:

Aren't there duplicates there ? just on that first line ?

 

8 hours ago, popmilo said:

This starts to sound like a good example for somebody to test drawing xor-sprites on simulated bitmap mode screen

XOR looks ok but I think regular masked sprites are doable on the A8.

 

I'm guessing that's why the palette for software sprites is a gradient on the C64, so that the XOR plot doesn't look too messed up.

[Unicorns season: Prince of Persia for the A8!]

16 hours ago, mr-atari said:

Complete misunderstanding about sram being used as extended memory v.s. how to load the game from a different bank-switched cartridges.

That's cool, maybe that means that XE cartridges are possible too ?

[Cybernoid WIP]

2 hours ago, JAC! said:

There's no double buffering on the C64, it would consume too much space and conflict with the EOR software sprites. And while it's nice to read all this, you also need to know that many (even large) screen elements are animated, too. Therefore using static screen maps to the do char count will never be fully correct.

The idea is that anything moving would go into the unassigned charset pool, so once destroyed it would free its space allowing it to be replaced with explosion debris for instance.

[ASMA - Atari Sound Music Archive on asma.atari.org]

2 hours ago, JAC! said:

Done, see amove.

That SAP is plain SAP file with no standard RMT module included. Where do you see it was done by EnderDude? And of course all songs will be added when provided. The rule is that composers need 3 songs in the archive to get an own folder.

Ooops...

 

It looks like I tried to extract a non existing RMT from that file... and I already had a monty on the run.rmt from Enderdude in that folder 

 

Here are 3 quality tunes from him, I think he deserves his own folder 

 

 

 

 

[Cybernoid WIP]

14 hours ago, popmilo said:

You were close
it's 44 max with 6 sets. And that's on image with those eyes in background.

Nice... The blue turret partially animates I think so it wouldn't be part of the background, so that'd be 2 chars less for some charsets...

 

6 charsets = 6KB + 2 charmaps = 8KB for double buffered empty space, that's really good actually! Even 8 charsets is good.

 

Of course there would need to be an intermediate map required to generate those charsets costing a bit of space too.

 

53 minutes ago, José Pereira said:

P.s.- Talking of double buffering means that on C64 bitmap mode is screen ~8KBs is also 2x so it's using 16KBs?

Potentially no. Like you said, static sprites are charsets until they move and then use hardware sprites which don't require double buffering. It's hard to say for sure.

 

On the A8, all moving objects would require software sprites.

 

 

[Altirra 4.00 released]

Any chance of having a breakpoint summary window ? with the ability to enable/disable them. It's difficult to keep track of them right now as you have to use a command line.

[Cybernoid WIP]

16 hours ago, popmilo said:

But why would we try to convert 1:1 "simple 2d flip screen shooter" ?
Ok if it's easy, go for it, but if original game (like Cybernoid) uses bitmap with 3 colors per tile, soft sprites for effects and weapons, plus hw sprites, I say (gently) "avoid it"

 

I'm not working on Cybernoid, I was just answering Youxia in the PoP thread 

 

JP' mockup is very interesting and a good startup point for brainstorming. That said, it doesn't look impossible!

 

16 hours ago, popmilo said:

Take the main idea about gameplay, but execute it with A8 methods. Make sprites 8 pixels wide (2 chars) so players can be used for them, use dli to change colors per scanline, make some enemies move more vertically to reuse same player for multiple enemies arranged in vertical direction etc... Don't take this as a gospel, I'm just brainstorming with morning coffee next to me. Have fun

I doubt that it would be less work in the end... It would be less time spent on pushing the hardware though. 

 

Perhaps I'll try a graphics test in the future 

 

11 hours ago, popmilo said:

Ok. So I've fixed python script and it says this for first screen:

 

That's actually lower than I thought...

 

11 hours ago, popmilo said:

So I don't see obstacle to use 4 charset inteleaved mode for separate screens, char count is bellow 64 which leaves plenty of space for >20 soft sprites. A8 can not draw more than that in any respectable framerate anyway

Indeed!

 

4 charsets + 1 charmap = 5KB if I recall, x2 for double buffer. That's actually really low... I'm wondering if there would be even more savings if you used a few more charsets and only double buffered the empty space ?

 

Could you try to run that first pic with 6 charsets and see if it goes down to about 40 for each ?

 

Perhaps mode4 isn't that useless... 

 

 

 

[ASMA - Atari Sound Music Archive on asma.atari.org]

I was listening to this tune: http://asma.atari.org/asma/Composers/Szpilowski_Michal/Monty_on_the_Run_Ingame.sap

 

it say it's by Miker but when I extracted the RMT, it's actually by @EnderDude. I also noticed that he doesn't have a folder while he's done a bunch of great tunes

[Cybernoid WIP]

16 hours ago, popmilo said:

Imho "plus" side of interleaved charsets is:

- You get 5th color which is really nice.

5th color has nothing to with interleaved charsets though ?

 

8 hours ago, José Pereira said:

For Cybernoid the interleaved charsets will not work because there's too too much chars.

Static/gfxs things are in [2x2]chars tiles and a screen is 20chars high so 2,4,5,10,20charsets would go but no way (but 5 isn't a multiple of the tiles 2chars high).

Interesting examples but can you post a screenshot with a single charset ? It seems really odd that this game would have more than 256 chars... 

 

Perhaps a bug, either with the tool or with the source picture which contains the same chars but with slightly different colors thus counting them as different chars ?

 

Can you post a few screenshots with a single charset where the source picture is one single screen of the game (like the start screen, the screen with the big plant, and the screen with the tall monster on the left wall ) ?

 

8 hours ago, José Pereira said:

77 + 8 + 12 = 97chars;

31chars free per charset / per 2charlines maybe enough...

Now just add double buffer requirements

 

The problem is that you have to keep an awful lot of free space which isn't used most of the time. Really wasteful and would probably push the mem requirements above 64KB

 

Mode4 is a letdown again...

[kick asm bug?]

15 hours ago, baktra said:

Isn't it because the kick asm uses the PETSCII character encoding as default. 

What is the actual value and what is the expected value?

Not sure, for 

.byte 'a'

 

kick asm produce $01 instead of $61. Like I said, upper case chars are ok.

[Cybernoid WIP]

18 hours ago, Steril707 said:

The way I understand it, you have to have a copy of all chars used in that screen in each of the individual charsets, isn't it?

That plus all the objects and animations seem to make a tight space in there.

I've not used it myself, I prefer modeE but I would think you'd only copy the chars needed for each line where the charset is used on the screen,

 

so 

 

line0: charset0

line1: charset1

line2: charset2

line3: charset0

...

 

charset0 would only contain the chars used on line 0/3/... which could be the whole charset indeed if you're unlucky. Plus some empty space for the soft sprites... 

 

soft sprites worst case would be space ship + 8 explosions + missiles, 2 mines + mine trails + enemies + projectiles, potentially 3 + 8*2 + ?*3 + 2*3 +  ?*2  + ?*3 + ?*2 = a lot! potentially half of the charset ? 

[kick asm bug?]

 

Anyone using kick asm ?

 

It seems when using .byte 'A','a' the lower case 'a' doesn't get converted to the right value... I'm using 5.23...

 

Its author seems to be using a FB group for all things related to it, which I'm not a fan of... could anyone submit the bug ?

[The A8 mockup thread (for arcade ports and others)]

17 hours ago, Steril707 said:

The idea of this thread is not about port wishing, nor "hacks" like them threads you cited.

 

you should not apply for a Mod position 

 

17 hours ago, Steril707 said:

It's more about the talented graphic dudes (like @José Pereira and @TIX for instance) we have in the A8 scene putting out their ideas for how a port could be tackled, and coders weighing in on the feasibility. 

 

There is a similar thread on Lemon64 about this, and it was always great fun and a source of lots of banter and interesting technical discussions between the creative and productive people of the scene.

The posts I mentioned are exactly about that, those were example pictures by MrFish displayed on the A8, not mockups, which I found inspiring. 

 

I didn't mean to imply your thread was useless, it's pretty nice to have a "Greatest Hits + new stuff" thread from time to time 

 

15 hours ago, Steril707 said:

Well, then good we have a dedicated thread for this, isn't it?

Quote

Boys, chill...

[Cybernoid WIP]

8 hours ago, José Pereira said:

To prevent this we have it using P0 (2nd P1) that is red then Oring PF0 (2nd red) and PF1 white (or a pink if Oring this).

Ah right...

 

8 hours ago, José Pereira said:

The game is in C64 Bitmap Multicolour mode

I didn't remember much of the game (played it on the ST) so I checked it and there's a lot of sprites when there are explosions... not sure Mode4 can cope with that (CPU and Memory). Probably better suited for ModeE

 

[Pushing the A8 games/effects,more colours,demo effects leading to games]

16 hours ago, popmilo said:

I've tried that other visualization with Ctrl+f8, but didn't see anything useful there either

 

Sure it is, it shows PF as grey and PMGs as colors (orange green blue pink)  

[The A8 mockup thread (for arcade ports and others)]

 

 

There's probably a bunch more by MrFish and JP

[Cybernoid WIP]

5 hours ago, José Pereira said:

These colours using priority_0 can then be Ored to accordingly PMGs (Missiles will allways be in quadruple width):

P0 & P1: red (24) will Oring PF0 & PF1: (26) & (2E) for the two add-ons ship balls;

PM2 and PM3 in quadruple width will be distributed along the screen for the grouns pale green and/or green plant, brown towers... (dark and Oring PF2/PF3);

M0&M1 red will then covers the playing area sides:

That's a pretty good use of Prior0... I had only seen that single screenshot I think.

 

I don't know if it would work for all the screens though...

 

One thing that would potentially look buggy is the color clashes between the ship and the background because you're using PF2 (or PF3 ?) on the ship and background. 

The ship should only use BK, PF0 & PF1

 

Seems a little wasteful to use PM0/1 just for those red mines (and borders). perhaps it would be possible to make the red part smaller ? 

 

like this ? (just make the inner part red)

 

 

Then you could use PM0+ M0 for the 2 balls and PM0/1 to give the ship its own color

[Pushing the A8 games/effects,more colours,demo effects leading to games]

3 hours ago, popmilo said:

Shift+F8

Yeah I always mix up Shift+ F8 and Ctrl+ F8 

 

Yeah I understand now, I wasn't sure about the PMG width. I used the same repositioning technique in the princess room in PoP

[Battle of the Ports]

A bit of a missed opportunity indeed... the A8 port is not included in any comparison video because it came so late.

 

Would have been nice.

[Unicorns season: Prince of Persia for the A8!]

6 hours ago, Yautja said:

What about completing this project?

meh

 

6 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

Niiice!

 

Was there ever an executable available for the above Beta WIP at the time?  Would love to see it running other than on YouTube. 

 

A good few Atari games have used 2 colour hi res mode to great effect. (Chimera, Amaurote, Artefakt przodków, Kult, Attack of the PESCII Robort, and many others). And of course on NTSC games we have had artefacted colours for many decades.

I'm not a fan of hires except for a few spectrum ports (Manic miner,...) 

 

JP's cybernoid mockup looks pretty good in midres:

 

 

 

same with Tezz's Chimera+

 

 

 

[Unicorns season: Prince of Persia for the A8!]

23 hours ago, Stephen said:

Any ideas on the next project?

I dropped clues a while back but converting Z80 code to a high level language is really boring, I've got about 5% done 😑

 

I may change course for a bit and try a port that doesn't require perfect accuracy... (hence less peripheral work)

[Pushing the A8 games/effects,more colours,demo effects leading to games]

3 hours ago, popmilo said:

So each scanline I set P0,P1 to the most left position, Antic takes gfx data for them and missiles from memory.

Just as raster beam passes P0,P1 I change their XPOS to most right place, and then load data from second part in memory and store it in GRAFP0,1 registers. Everything is cycle exact, so we get an added pair of Players on right side.

I understand the repositioning but not sure about the rest...

 

Could you post an Altirra screenshot with Shift+F8, perhaps that'll make it clearer... 

 

You're saying you're using the PMGs as underlays, are they 4x width too ?

[Pushing the A8 games/effects,more colours,demo effects leading to games]

17 hours ago, Steril707 said:

Boys, chill...

Just trying to dispell myths... some like to boast that the PoP C64 version is better because it uses only 64KB of RAM.

 

If anybody came to you saying that Hyperblaster is great but it's even better on the NeoGeo because it only uses 150KB of RAM while the Amiga version uses xx MBytes, I'm guessing you'd qualify them as clueless.