Restless II - game released

[sometimes99er]

Original release:

restc.bin

Instructions:
restless.ii.instructions.onepage.pdf

Request. Aliens have colors:
rest.color.c.bin

Request. Stars in the background take a break.
rest.ciro.c.bin

 

 

- - - - -

Below is an early XB game, also now known as "Restless I". Thread goes ahead and develops "Restless II", a game written in Assembly and released as a binary for cartridge.

Move your ship left and right using the joystick. Shoot by pushing joystick up.
 

100 CALL CLEAR::CALL SCREEN(2)::CALL MAGNIFY(3)
110 CALL CHAR(64,"01010103070F001B376FDF00D47F1F03808080C0A0D000B8B4DADD0055FEF8C")
120 CALL CHAR(68,"0043AF19193F3F78073B72637339100001C2F42828F4F43AE0DCCEC6CE9C08")
130 CALL CHAR(72,"0103030301010101010100010100000180C0C0C08080800080808080008")
140 CALL CHAR(76,"000000107C3828000703117D39280000000020F8701040E0FCF8F0B01")
150 CALL COLOR(6,5,1)::FOR X=1 TO 20::CALL HCHAR(X,RND*32,76)::NEXT X
160 CALL SPRITE(#1,64,16,170,96,#2,68,16,10,96,2,0,#3,72,10,200,256)
170 CALL JOYST(1,X,Y)::IF X THEN CALL MOTION(#1,0,X*4)
180 IF Y=0 THEN IF RND>.8 THEN CALL MOTION(#2,1,RND*32-16)
190 IF Y THEN CALL POSITION(#1,Y,X)::CALL SPRITE(#3,72,10,154,X,-16,0)
200 CALL POSITION(#3,Y,X)::IF Y>154 THEN CALL DELSPRITE(#3)
210 CALL POSITION(#2,Y,X)::IF Y>154 THEN CALL DELSPRITE(#3)::Y=1::GOTO 230
220 CALL COINC(ALL,X)::IF X=0 THEN 170 ELSE Y=2
230 CALL MOTION(#1,0,0,#2,0,0,#3,0,0)::FOR X=3 TO 16::CALL COLOR(#Y,X)::CALL SOUND(-300,-6,(X*2)-6)::NEXT X
240 CALL PATTERN(#Y,76)::FOR X=3 TO 16 STEP .2::CALL COLOR(#Y,X)::NEXT X::GOTO 160
 

 

Edited June 12, 2021 by sometimes99er

[Willsy]

Ha that is lovely! That would have blown peoples minds if it was published as a snippet in C&VG in 1984

[sometimes99er]

On 10/17/2011 at 12:18 PM, Willsy said:

That would have blown peoples minds if it was published as a snippet in C&VG in 1984 

Which I think is exactly what this retro thing is about, whether it being making a programming language, an emulator, hardware, a demo or a game - mimicking what could have been, what YOU could have done whilst enjoying yourself.

 

👍

Edited May 4 by sometimes99er

[unhuman]

I need to check this out - just to compare it with :

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/159498-ssgc-submission-inaccurate-invaders-now-with-less-inaccuracy

[idflyfish]

Looks great man! Your demos always get me pumped up. Man I need to find some time to do more TI coding.

[unhuman]

wow - so much goodness in so little code!!!

[sometimes99er]

Just for a bit of fun. Should play in Web browsers that have the Flash plug-in installed (only version 10 required).

Much the same as the XB version. Move your ship left and right using the arrow keys. However use Q or Tabulator to shoot.

[media=544,416]http://sometimes.planet-99.net/pic/restless.swf[/media]

Quit (Fctn + = or rather AltGr + something) returns to the titlescreen. TI Basic really does nothing.

Tested on Win7 with Chrome and Firefox, both at a smooth 60 fps.

[+Vorticon]

Works nicely I should look at this Java programming thing some day

[sometimes99er]

Been taking a stroll down nostalgia lane looking through a few old magazines. The front of Compute's Gazette, February 1983, has ...

Think it's about time to go from one alien saucer to many alien saucers. Not unlike Space Invaders, but perhaps even more like Galaga ...

Edited May 4 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

Think we'll need a title screen, and this font may work well.

Edited May 4 by sometimes99er

[+Ksarul]

That is a wonderful font. It would work well on a cartridge label as well!

[sometimes99er]

Thanks for feedback and likes.

 

The title, RESTLESS II, has it's good share of characters reused, something that could help with a "smaller footprint".

 

I fiddled around, trying to stay mono-spaced and reuse characters, which seems so obvious in this case, - yet I settled for something totally disregarding the reuse of character patterns. It simply looks a bit better.

Zooming in ...

Taking a closer look at the color gradient (white, gray, light blue and dark blue).

And finally a look at how precious space is wasted.

Not many character patterns to reuse - in fact I'll use it internally as a "bitmap" (much as Parsec did).

Edited May 4 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

Okay, so here's a look at the font to use for score, different messages etc. Reusing the prior color gradient.

Might have to add a bit of punctuation there.

Did try out green, red and yellow gradients for the text, but it didn't seem to work as well, overall, with the title. I'll keep things calm for now.

Edited May 4 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

Okay, so I think most of the graphics are more or less done. The font has been modified and some punctuation added. The player, plasma, aliens, explosions and stars, are now animated. All in a somewhat minimalistic style with intent of staying below an 8 KB marker.

The storyboard will be something like this:

1. Intro screen
2. Prologue and options
3. Waves of aliens
4. Player is hit or

6. Player has killed all aliens
7. Epilogue

[Willsy]

Looking forward to seeing it!!

[PeBo]

my first thought is the countless hours I spent, back in the day, typing in several pages of code from the back of Compute! magazine, never resulting in anything quite so impressive as your elegant 14 lines.

 

(my second thought is just how much I loathe typing hexcode, proving that some things just don't become more fun with age)

[sometimes99er]

On 1/24/2015 at 2:56 PM, Ksarul said:

That is a wonderful font. It would work well on a cartridge label as well!

Yes, I think it would work.

 

Edited May 4 by sometimes99er

[sometimes99er]

my first thought is the countless hours I spent, back in the day, typing in several pages of code from the back of Compute! magazine, never resulting in anything quite so impressive as your elegant 14 lines.

Thanks. Now is another time and age, but still we can dream. Debugging and correcting typos was probably the best time spent, as hundreds of program lines really didn't give you much of a wow effect - maybe we didn't give it the time of day.

 

(my second thought is just how much I loathe typing hexcode, proving that some things just don't become more fun with age)

I think I had a book with 27 games for the TI. Didn't type in that many. Think the last part was a big text adventure. Anyway, 2 years on I had the C64 and didn't do type-in programs. And was it 3 years further down the line when I had the Amiga 2000. Then you would make or have tools for all that old hexcode stuff. Happy days.

 

Just checked. When I got back into the TI in 2004, the 5th demo that year had me using high level languages for manipulating the bits and hence avoiding typing hexcode.

[sometimes99er]

Looking forward to seeing it!!

Thanks for all your support and interest. Think we just had an anniversary. 10 years of nose-picking must count for something.

[Willsy]

I think we're in our 11th year of knowing each other, as far as I can remember. One day, we might even meet!

[+Ksarul]

I like that label!

[sometimes99er]

Many sprites on a horizontal line
As the hardware only allows for 4 sprites per horizontal raster-line, we’ll compensate a bit by making the shuttle and the plasma part of the “background” character graphics - also known as using software sprites.

Bitmap mode

As indicated in post #12 we’ll use the enhanced video of the 9918A. Since we’re going to end up using more than 8 hardware sprites at a time, we’ll have to use the full bitmap mode and not any of the “masked” ones to avoid the hardware bug with sprites becoming “unstable”.

Surprisingly many Atarisoft titles used full bitmap mode.

 

Edited May 4 by sometimes99er

[Retrospect]

When a sprite is a software sprite, char graphics, would it have the same colour limitation as the ZX Spectrum with it's s.sprites, that being colour-clash due to the attributes of the character cells?

[sometimes99er]

When a sprite is a software sprite, char graphics, would it have the same colour limitation as the ZX Spectrum with it's s.sprites, that being colour-clash due to the attributes of the character cells?

 

Yes.

 

The bitmap mode of the TI could have up to 8 times more colors in a single software sprite than its ZX counterpart.

 

I'm avoiding clashes between the shuttle and the plasma. The shuttle only moves left and right at the bottom of the screen. The plasma fires up from the position of the shuttle and there will be no overlap.

[sometimes99er]

I've been wandering about with different related topics, getting new ideas, but perhaps mostly on approaches to "collision detection".

ref.: developer.mozilla.org/../2D_collision_detection

 

Even if you try and go for pixel-perfect collision detection, then if any object moves with more than 1 pixel per frame, then the on screen pixels may, from time to time, jump more than 1 pixel a frame (which will then be 2 or more pixels), which could lead to a square ball perceived as passing through the corner of a brick situation. There will be pros, cons, trial and error.

ref.: codeincomplete.com/../collision_detection..

 

- In the case of Breakout and the 9918A, the ball "just" has to look at the characters (bricks, walls etc.) at its position and there about.

 

With this game (Restless II) I think I'll get away with the box detection (it has different names). And I may have to split the shuttle into two "boxes". Hitboxes will be handled internally, though you will indeed experience the consequences.

 

Edited May 4 by sometimes99er