roland p Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 The only idea I have, is flickering the window there. But then you should make sure, that the window is always within the static sky area, not the scrolling playfield. Else it would look odd. I think the window will be too small if I put it in the sky only. But have to do some code management first, as I only have $1e4 bytes left for sprite data. I'm going to spread the kernel over 2 banks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 What about "venetian blinds"... just blank out some of every second scanline's worth of Player data where the window should be. More plausible than a see-through craft with no driver visible. If I can put the windows in it, (checkerboard part is where it gets difficult) that should be possible too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted February 22, 2009 Share Posted February 22, 2009 What about "venetian blinds"... just blank out some of every second scanline's worth of Player data where the window should be. More plausible than a see-through craft with no driver visible. If I can put the windows in it, (checkerboard part is where it gets difficult) that should be possible too. I believe the original just used a ligher and darker shade of the same rotofoil color, for the windows. The weren't translucent, at least on the Atari computer versions. I seem to remember you said that you are going to use the playfield for the plasma ball, or I was going to suggest trying to use different sized overlay BALL graphics to simulate the windows. --Selgus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted February 22, 2009 Share Posted February 22, 2009 What about "venetian blinds"... just blank out some of every second scanline's worth of Player data where the window should be. More plausible than a see-through craft with no driver visible. I'm picturing this in my head, and it looks bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted February 23, 2009 Share Posted February 23, 2009 (edited) I believe the original just used a ligher and darker shade of the same rotofoil color, for the windows. The weren't translucent, at least on the Atari computer versions. I seem to remember you said that you are going to use the playfield for the plasma ball, or I was going to suggest trying to use different sized overlay BALL graphics to simulate the windows.--Selgus I'm not sure yet. To make a fancy window, it really has to be in the sky part. So the window would be very small. I've now chosen to free up as much memory as possible for sprite templates. Every other line of the checkerboard kernel was an unrolled routine for the sprites. Now I've changed it into JSR/RTS for reuse of code, saving about $700 bytes. I think this is at least a way to get the drones (back/front/side) and goals in it. The sky part is now 1 time critical kernel too, saving another few bytes, and making the sprite routine cleaner. You can see that when you zoom in too much. In this version I've used 'venetian blinds' for the window. It is a very big window, because this way it doesn't use extra cycles. A mid-roof window would need an extra creation of that window and xor it out of the original drone. ballblazer_venetian_blinds.bin Edited February 23, 2009 by roland p 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 23, 2009 Share Posted February 23, 2009 That looks OK... could it be done with single-scanline rez for the blinds? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted February 23, 2009 Share Posted February 23, 2009 That looks OK... could it be done with single-scanline rez for the blinds? Thanks. The blinds can't be single-scanline res since sprite updates are on every other scanline, so it can be turned on on scanline 0 and turned off on scanline 2 etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted February 23, 2009 Share Posted February 23, 2009 If you wanted to get REALLY fancy, you could animate the window "blinds" so they appeared to be a reflection of the grid itself. But there's probably not enough free time/RAM to do that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted February 23, 2009 Share Posted February 23, 2009 If you wanted to get REALLY fancy, you could animate the window "blinds" so they appeared to be a reflection of the grid itself. But there's probably not enough free time/RAM to do that. LOL, or maybe I should render some clouds in the window Btw. venetian blind glasses were funny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted February 23, 2009 Share Posted February 23, 2009 LOL, or maybe I should render some clouds in the window I should clarify that I meant horizontal lines only. EG-- instead of a fixed every-other-line fill pattern, a vaguely perspective-looking set of lines that animate up/down as the rotofoil moves back and forth on the grid. Again, probably not possible. But in general it's the sort of effect that elevates a graphical approach from "we had to do it that way" to "we meant to do it that way". Much like many of the design decisions in the original Ballblazer itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted February 24, 2009 Share Posted February 24, 2009 What about "venetian blinds"... just blank out some of every second scanline's worth of Player data where the window should be. More plausible than a see-through craft with no driver visible. I'm picturing this in my head, and it looks bad. LOL! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted February 24, 2009 Share Posted February 24, 2009 (edited) If you wanted to get REALLY fancy, you could animate the window "blinds" so they appeared to be a reflection of the grid itself. But there's probably not enough free time/RAM to do that. LOL, or maybe I should render some clouds in the window hehehe... Actually, it looks pretty good, but who the hell's driving the damn thing (midget?)?? hahaha Edited February 24, 2009 by MrFish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 24, 2009 Share Posted February 24, 2009 +1 on the funny. Maybe animated blinds would be worth a shot. Or, maybe some moving LEDs like the original Kitt from Knight Rider. (the first one was serious, second obviously a joke) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted February 28, 2009 Share Posted February 28, 2009 I just went through this thread and downloaded all the binaries. It's amazing how this thing came together. As one not being totally familiar with the 2600's capabilities, I have a question. Is it possible for the areas outside the checkerboard to be solid colors? I think the sky and boarder areas looked better solid... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Posted February 28, 2009 Share Posted February 28, 2009 In this version I've used 'venetian blinds' for the window. It is a very big window, because this way it doesn't use extra cycles. A mid-roof window would need an extra creation of that window and xor it out of the original drone. That is simply amazing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 New update: - Side views of rotofoil are now included, move your drone with Y,G,H,J (Stella) (Warning, the bin can crash if you run into a rotofoil) - Black bars are now reduced, as the tile code is now included in the sky-kernel. Some black lines are still visible due to horizontal sprite positioning and rotofoil sprite decision logic. - I've used some masking to mask out the top of the rotofoil. This mask is also used for generating side views of the rotofoil, some distortion can be seen in the center of the rotofoil when it is viewed from the side. ballblazer_rotofoil_test.bin source.zip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrekMD Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 Impressive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 New update: - Side views of rotofoil are now included, move your drone with Y,G,H,J (Stella) (Warning, the bin can crash if you run into a rotofoil) - Black bars are now reduced, as the tile code is now included in the sky-kernel. Some black lines are still visible due to horizontal sprite positioning and rotofoil sprite decision logic. - I've used some masking to mask out the top of the rotofoil. This mask is also used for generating side views of the rotofoil, some distortion can be seen in the center of the rotofoil when it is viewed from the side. Is this crash an emulator thing caused by Stella, or is it something you're doing in your code? If it's a Stella thing, I would appreciate a bug report and a sequence of events that will reliably duplicate this behaviour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+selgus Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 Is this crash an emulator thing caused by Stella, or is it something you're doing in your code? If it's a Stella thing, I would appreciate a bug report and a sequence of events that will reliably duplicate this behaviour. It didn't crash for me running stella 2.7.3 under Linux, so it might be something specific to the Win32 version (if that was the version showing the crash). --Selgus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 Yes, the rotofoils look good... only their logic is a bit illogical. But I'm confident things are going to improve even further... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted March 1, 2009 Share Posted March 1, 2009 (edited) Is this crash an emulator thing caused by Stella, or is it something you're doing in your code? If it's a Stella thing, I would appreciate a bug report and a sequence of events that will reliably duplicate this behaviour. Well, this version happens not to crash. But the versions that did crash, probably crashed due to jmps to nowhere land, or read of an address that causes a bankswitch when it's not intended. If I find a stella bug, I'll definitly try to track it down and report it to you. Edited March 1, 2009 by roland p Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted March 2, 2009 Share Posted March 2, 2009 Is this crash an emulator thing caused by Stella, or is it something you're doing in your code? If it's a Stella thing, I would appreciate a bug report and a sequence of events that will reliably duplicate this behaviour. Well, this version happens not to crash. But the versions that did crash, probably crashed due to jmps to nowhere land, or read of an address that causes a bankswitch when it's not intended. If I find a stella bug, I'll definitly try to track it down and report it to you. OK, thanks in advance for any reports. And just to be clear to everyone, a game doing weird things (like the examples you mentioned above) should never cause Stella to crash. It may cause the ROM to stop working, or lock up in the debugger, but the Stella application itself should never lock up or fail to respond to input. If it does, then it's definitely a bug. Put another way, even if a ROM did weird/illegal things on a real system, it would never cause the console to power down or explode, or anything like that This is the equivalent to Stella crashing with a ROM; it should just never happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted March 6, 2009 Share Posted March 6, 2009 I was not able to get stella 2.7.3a to crash on my winxpsp2 machine.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted March 8, 2009 Share Posted March 8, 2009 very impressive for a 1977 beast... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindog Posted March 11, 2009 Share Posted March 11, 2009 (edited) This already looks so much better than I ever expected my own version to look. Great job. Now if only I could get the AtariAge homebrew forum as a mailing list so I might have heard about it before today. Edited March 11, 2009 by raindog Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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