accousticguitar Posted May 6, 2012 Share Posted May 6, 2012 As usual you are way ahead of me. I kind of liked the slow rotation myself. This game is really turning out nice! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinMos3 Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 It's looking very nice. I'm glad you are making the option for either vector or solid, as I've always preferred the solid shapes over the arcade's vectors. Probably because that's what I grew up with. Maybe the animated solid shapes would look even better if some texturing were added... just a little bit on about 1/4 to 1/3 of a rock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted May 7, 2012 Author Share Posted May 7, 2012 Maybe the animated solid shapes would look even better if some texturing were added... just a little bit on about 1/4 to 1/3 of a rock. Maybe, but that would break my Vector Sprite tools, thus double the workload for Nathan. The other potential issue is putting holes inside the solid asteroid will play havoc with the pixel perfect collision detection - ie: a shot could pass right thru an asteroid if it ends up in a texture opening. The Solid and Vector images have the exact same shape because the solid image is always used to detect collisions, regardless of which image is displayed onscreen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted May 12, 2012 Author Share Posted May 12, 2012 Wow - just realized a major bug in the 2 versions posted here. It's only using player 1 to draw everything in the game area: I had disabled the player 0 routines at one point, in order to test a change, and forgot to re-enable them when I was done. This is what the game should look like in debug color mode: Tomorrow's update will have a lot less flicker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted May 14, 2012 Author Share Posted May 14, 2012 Both sprites used to draw screen, so there's less flicker Fixed problem where ship could be invisible for 4 seconds after coming out of hyperspace ship takes longer to slow to a stop fixed problem where ship could start moving left/right by itself a number of revisions to asteroid movement Note: if Left Difficulty is set to A the score will show diagnostic info ROMs - Harmony or Stella1 spacerocks20120513_NTSC.bin spacerocks20120513_PAL.bin 1 Requires Stella ver 3.5 or later. See first post for instructions on how to reduce flicker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted May 14, 2012 Share Posted May 14, 2012 Both sprites used to draw screen, so there's less flicker Fixed problem where ship could be invisible for 4 seconds after coming out of hyperspace ship takes longer to slow to a stop fixed problem where ship could start moving left/right by itself a number of revisions to asteroid movement Note: if Left Difficulty is set to A the score will show diagnostic info ROMs - Harmony or Stella1 spacerocks20120513_NTSC.bin spacerocks20120513_PAL.bin 1 Requires Stella ver 3.5 or later. See first post for instructions on how to reduce flicker. Impressive! Perhaps ship's explosion sound should be louder. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted May 14, 2012 Author Share Posted May 14, 2012 Impressive! Perhaps ship's explosion sound should be louder. Thanks! At this point all the sound effects are just placeholders, mostly borrowed from Frantic, as I was tired of testing a silent game. There's no thrust sound yet because my sound routines don't allow for a sound effect that can last for an undefined length of time. When I add support for that I'll be revamping all the sound effects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
accousticguitar Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 There's hardly any flicker now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted May 16, 2012 Author Share Posted May 16, 2012 level option enabled kids - asteroids 1/2 speed of easy, joystick down set to unlimited shields1 easy - base asteroid speed starts at 0 normal - base asteroid speed starts at 2 hard - base asteroid speed starts at 4 [*]revised ship movement [*]revised asteroid starting positions ROMs - Harmony or Stella2 spacerocks20120515_NTSC.bin spacerocks20120515_PAL.bin 1 in non-kids games using the shields for too long will result in the ship exploding 2 Requires Stella ver 3.5 or later. See first post for instructions on how to reduce flicker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 10, 2012 Author Share Posted June 10, 2012 2 player mode (alternating only at this time) new asteroid color menu option multi color white blue green [*]new "vectorize" routine1 Menu revisions Player 1 is about to start Player 2 is about to start ROMs - Harmony or Stella2 spacerocks20120609_NTSC.bin spacerocks20120609_PAL.bin 1 if you're seeing half vector and half solid asteroids then you need to update to Stella version 3.7.1 2 Requires Stella ver 3.7.1 or later. See first post for instructions on how to reduce flicker. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 14, 2012 Author Share Posted June 14, 2012 revised ship physics ship thrust sound effect multiple revisions to menu graphics ships, saucers and score bars now follow selected color theme 2-player co-op mode - each player gets 2 of the 4 shots Co-op ROMs - Harmony or Stella1 spacerocks20120613_NTSC.bin spacerocks20120613_PAL.bin 1 Requires Stella ver 3.7.1 or later. See first post for instructions on how to reduce flicker. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrekMD Posted June 14, 2012 Share Posted June 14, 2012 This game just keeps getting better and better! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 14, 2012 Author Share Posted June 14, 2012 (edited) Thanks! I did notice something last night I need to check into - it looked like an asteroid passed through the bottom edge of the ship without triggering a collision. I may have been seeing things, or possibly the collision detection routine is off by one when it calculates how many scan lines that the sprites rectangles overlap. After that is tethering. At the moment I've no idea on how to implement that. Edited June 14, 2012 by SpiceWare Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted June 15, 2012 Share Posted June 15, 2012 2 player mode (alternating only at this time) new asteroid color menu option multi color white blue green [*]new "vectorize" routine1 1 if you're seeing half vector and half solid asteroids then you need to update to Stella version 3.7.1 2 Requires Stella ver 3.7.1 or later. See first post for instructions on how to reduce flicker. I don't know what you did the latest version of space rocks, but the June 9 ver had half vector/solid, now the June 13 has all vectors. I finally got the excellent explusalpha to include ARM emulation in the iOS Jailbreak app 2600.emu: 2600: Updated core to Stella 3.6.1, with ARM Thumb emulation for DPC+ games (Happy dance!) So at least on the iPad I can't update Stella, but thought I'd mention I see no problems even though I'm at Stella 3.6.1. It's best to play Space Rocks on real hardware with Starplex button controller, but Atari on iPad / iPhone with bluetooth wii remotes and wii classic controller is pretty close to heaven! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 15, 2012 Author Share Posted June 15, 2012 I didn't do anything in SR that would have changed it. The 9th build added the "vectorize" routine. What that routine does is take the solid images, of the ship and medium sized asteroids, vectorize them and store the results in some left over space of the 4K Display Data RAM. Doing that saved over 1K of ROM space. There was a bug in Stella's DPC+ emulation that caused it to run the vectorize routine twice. During the first run it toggled off the inner pixels. During the second run it toggled them back on. The ARM emulation is tied into the DPC+ emulation, so when explusalpha added ARM support he probably got the latest version of DPC+, which would have fixed the double-run bug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 16, 2012 Author Share Posted June 16, 2012 I did notice something last night I need to check into - it looked like an asteroid passed through the bottom edge of the ship without triggering a collision. I may have been seeing things, or possibly the collision detection routine is off by one when it calculates how many scan lines that the sprites rectangles overlap. Well, I wasn't seeing things. I figured out what's wrong, now to figure out how to fix it. For those that are interested, the tech details will be in the next blog entry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omegamatrix Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 I was playing this morning and found a bug. My ship disappeared and never re-appeared, but I was able to fire and move around while still invisible. I was playing in B&W mode. Here is a save state file (Stella 3.7.2): spacerocks20120616_NTSC.bin.zip Is there a delay between the final death and the title screen on the todo list Darrell? I found I died and the next game started unintentionally since my firebutton was still being pressed. IMHO the single colored shots looked better then the multi-colored shots. I think this is because I am color blind and find the multi-colored shots hard to follow. I do love the multi-colored asteroids though! I was going to put all this in your blog, but I didn't see a way to add attachments. Is there a way to add attachments in the comments? Keep up the good work, Darrell!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 17, 2012 Author Share Posted June 17, 2012 (edited) I was playing this morning and found a bug. That's an interesting bug, thanks for the saved state file, it helped me figure it out! At first I thought the SpriteState was turned off as that would prevent it from displaying the sprite. However, it would also make the collision detection routines ignore it - and that's not the case because if you don't do anything with the joystick an asteroid collides with the ship about 6 seconds after loading the state. That tells me the ship is drawn, but colored black. I went into the debugger, changed COLUBK (background color) and stepped forward one frame - sure enough, there's a black ship: The bug's caused by the new immunity feature. To visually reinforce that you have temporary immunity, it cycles the luminance of the ship. I forgot to have it restore the ship to it's original luminance when it's done cycling, so the last luminance used is what you get for the duration of that life. Here's 2 examples of the ship after immunity ran out - one ship is quite a bit brighter than the other! When playing in B&W mode the ship will be invisible 1/8th the time. I've already fixed it, but don't know when the next build will be posted. Until then, you can use the blue or green variation - though I'm not sure how easy that is for you to tell. Would it help if I put a single character (M, W, B, G) just before the sample colored asteroids? Is there a delay between the final death and the title screen on the todo list Darrell? It is now. IMHO the single colored shots looked better then the multi-colored shots. Yeah, if only the missiles had their own color register. Is there a way to add attachments in the comments? Not that I'm aware of, it would be nice though. If it's in my blog I just add it to the blog entry and mention it in the comment. If it's in somebody else's I just upload it to my web site and provide a link. Edited June 17, 2012 by SpiceWare Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 17, 2012 Author Share Posted June 17, 2012 I've already fixed it, but don't know when the next build will be posted. I posted a build with revised 2x vector images. This fix is in it as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omegamatrix Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Would it help if I put a single character (M, W, B, G) just before the sample colored asteroids? It's okay. I'm red-green color blind, which is to say some shades of color look like other colors to me. But I can tell all those colors are far apart. I like to play in the multi-color mode, and was just trying out the other modes when I found the bug. I can live with the multi-color shots, but that was the one thing I found hard to keep my eye on. It's fine though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 23, 2012 Author Share Posted June 23, 2012 New large asteroids in place. They're shiny! 2 player competitive mode. Select FIGHT under PLAYERS. 500 points if you shoot the other player If you die and the other player has lives remaining, you will respawn even if you have 0 lives remaining. If you're dead because the other player had 0 lives remaining, you will respawn if they earn a bonus ship. [*]Fixed a bug with collision detection that sometimes let objects safely pass thru the bottom of the ship. [*]When ships respawn they can now appear in 1 of 5 locations. [*]Ship has temporary immunity when it respawns. Ship will cycle it's luminance while immunity is active. [*]revised asteroid spawn routines. [*]Fixed invisible ship bug when playing in black & white mode. [*]revised COLORS menu option to be clearer. New large asteroids: When FIGHT is selected, ships start in opposing corners: New COLORS option for multicolor: COLORS option for white, blue, green: ROMs - Harmony or Stella1 spacerocks20120622_NTSC.bin spacerocks20120622_PAL.bin 1 Requires Stella ver 3.7.1 or later. See first post for instructions on how to reduce flicker. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 29, 2012 Author Share Posted June 29, 2012 New saucer and UFO graphics new medium asteroid graphics revisions to ship handling faster acceleration more inertia (takes longer to stop) hyperspace momentum tied to friction. If friction is on, you will stop moving when you come out of hyperspace. If friction is off, you will keep moving. new "implosion" effect when coming out of hyperspace. Makes it easier to find your ship [*]improvements to top/bottom screen wrap of objects [*]initial number of asteroids tied to LEVEL. Kids = 2 asteroids, easy = 3, normal = 4, hard = 5. [*]2 second delay after final death before returning to main menu [*]menu revisions [*]demo mode [*]if you eXceed 9 lives, the lives display will show an X. ROMs - Harmony or Stella1 spacerocks20120628_NTSC.bin spacerocks20120628_PAL.bin 1 Requires Stella ver 3.7.1 or later. See first post for instructions on how to reduce flicker. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omegamatrix Posted June 30, 2012 Share Posted June 30, 2012 This game keeps getting better and better. I feel the speed the asteroids are moving at is much better now. The rotation animation is very good, but the UFO graphics are amazing. I love them!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 30, 2012 Author Share Posted June 30, 2012 Thanks! Here's a teaser of what's coming in the next build: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted August 6, 2012 Author Share Posted August 6, 2012 ship's thrust exhaust now visible asteroid speed slowed down a little bit (but still faster than before - I split the difference) sound effects are now quieter in demo mode UFO now targets asteroids when it's not targeting a player various updates/fixes for respawning asteroids now start at edges of the screen new explosion and small asteroid graphics explosions now continue moving along the object's original trajectory score lines and the score itself follow the selected color ROMs - Harmony or Stella1 spacerocks20120805b_NTSC.bin spacerocks20120805b_PAL.bin 1 Requires Stella ver 3.7.1 or later. See first post for instructions on how to reduce flicker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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