GroovyBee Posted June 30, 2012 Share Posted June 30, 2012 Just tried it on Atari800Win and Altirra and it still doesn't seem very fluid. It looks good but the scrolling doesn't seem right at all. The player status area at the top of the screen disappears when you play a sample in both emulators and the player's diagonal shots seem to start quite a distance away. I admit that I don't have any way to try it on real hardware so it could all be emulation issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted June 30, 2012 Author Share Posted June 30, 2012 Yes, the top portion of the screen disapears because of the sound sample playback and the display list interupt. It was either the top or the bottom. I'll look into the diagonal shots issue. The scrolling is what it is. Due to ram constraints the playfield is made up of 8x16 blocks and the built in scrolling only handles 4x8 lines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted June 30, 2012 Share Posted June 30, 2012 Yes, the top portion of the screen disapears because of the sound sample playback and the display list interupt. Can you play the sample on a POKEY interrupt? The scrolling is what it is. Due to ram constraints the playfield is made up of 8x16 blocks and the built in scrolling only handles 4x8 lines. How about extending it by an extra block in each direction? Then you'd see half the block scroll on at a time during scrolling. So instead of 20 blocks wide you'd handle 21. Then when the left most column of blocks are half off the screen the hidden 21st column of blocks would be half on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted June 30, 2012 Share Posted June 30, 2012 You can't even hear what the samples are trying to say. Understandable, Rom space is scarce even if you use 64K. You'd probably be better off without them or at least reduce to 1 or 2 decent quality ones. If you're using Timer IRQs you could do it in 16 KHz mode (AUDCTL=01) to give scanline accuracy and also prevent clash with the DLI. Having a DLI going isn't going to ruin the samples if it's kept short. That scrolling though - it's as if the player moves a full cell or two then it's decided the screen needs to scroll. Really, the screen should scroll while the player is moving to keep things smooth. The title screen seemed not right too. The colour rainbow moves way too quick, maybe that's a Pal/NTSC issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted June 30, 2012 Author Share Posted June 30, 2012 Playing during the pokey interupt causes corruption with playing sound effects. The scrolling method you describe is outside the contraints of the display hardware. I draw the scrolling lines on another displaylist memory, then once the scrolling reaches the limit I switch to that displaylist memory that has the new playfield drawn. Drawing the whole map and then displaying a window to it was out, the playfield would require all 16k of the ram. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted June 30, 2012 Author Share Posted June 30, 2012 The digitized sounds sound fine to me on the real thing. I am using them for the door open noise, the going down the exit, the ouch and the welcome. There are only 4. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted June 30, 2012 Author Share Posted June 30, 2012 If any of you want to offer up some assembler code with a better scrolling method and a digitized sound player that doesn't confilct with currently playing sounds or display list interupts, I'm all ears. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King_Salamon Posted June 30, 2012 Share Posted June 30, 2012 Possibly post a quick video for us to see it operating on the real hardware? I would love to see a sample video Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted June 30, 2012 Share Posted June 30, 2012 Plenty of info here on scrolling :- http://www.atariarchives.org/agagd/chapter7.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted July 1, 2012 Author Share Posted July 1, 2012 Yep, already implemented as written. Has nothing to do with that, has to do with drawing the new section map every time it scrolls. I spent a lot of time on the scrolling. Some of it is also due to the way the character moves, since the character is a sprite and the background is character. The sprite has to mimic movement on the same grid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted July 1, 2012 Share Posted July 1, 2012 Yep, already implemented as written. Has nothing to do with that, has to do with drawing the new section map every time it scrolls. Could you post your scrolling source code? Maybe that will help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted July 1, 2012 Share Posted July 1, 2012 put me down for two! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jetset Posted July 1, 2012 Share Posted July 1, 2012 I'd definitely want one, please put me on the list! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted July 2, 2012 Author Share Posted July 2, 2012 I did some more digging. Nothing more can be done about the scrolling without re-writing the game. Re-Writing the game will still cause me to make the same decision about using 2x2 character blocks due to CPU cycles and ram usage. The map is drawn out of 2x2 character blocks and scrolls in 2x2 character blocks. 8x16 pixels. Beyond the ability of the built in scroller due to there having to be a center point to be able to scroll all four directions. What I have now is better than the dandy code uses, which is no scrolling at all, just redrawing of the map every time you move. I cannot draw the map on half character increments either due to the way they are stored and translated into 2x2s. The demo is here to play, if you don't like the scrolling as it sits, please do not buy it, it will not be better in the release. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted July 2, 2012 Share Posted July 2, 2012 My $0.02. I can see some real progress over the original 8bit release. This would've been well received on the 5200 if released during its heyday. I like the sounds and only found 2 things which I hope could be corrected. I started as the Wizard and it seemed there was a 'stagger' to his movement - like he would pause after firing and couldnt move for a moment The other odd thing was I had 2 Ghosts on me (North and West) - I killed the 'West' Ghost but couldnt move - I was not able to move West until I shot the 'North' Ghost. Im not sure if the arcade was this way or not. Other than that it sounded and played well. If I ever played my 5200 I would've ordered a cart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted July 2, 2012 Share Posted July 2, 2012 Why not make the screen buffer bigger, ie a few extra characters on all sides. Have data preloaded in all directions so the character can move without needing to wait for stuff to be moved. As it is, you can also see the screen scroll with empty space added then later filled. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie_ Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 I started as the Wizard and it seemed there was a 'stagger' to his movement - like he would pause after firing and couldnt move for a moment From what I can tell, your character can not move while his shot is still "in the air". I hope this gets fixed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted July 3, 2012 Author Share Posted July 3, 2012 You character cannot move and shoot at the same time. This is a original gauntlet feature. I notice the delay when you stop shooting is a little long, i'll fix that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted July 3, 2012 Author Share Posted July 3, 2012 Why not make the screen buffer bigger, ie a few extra characters on all sides. Have data preloaded in all directions so the character can move without needing to wait for stuff to be moved. As it is, you can also see the screen scroll with empty space added then later filled. Scrolling in this graphics mode doesnt allow me to draw characters off screen with which to scroll to. The original 8 bit drew one character line at a time, I draw two, therefore dividing my memory and cpu cycle requirements effectively by 4. Which is barely enough to keep up with the generators. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie_ Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 You character cannot move and shoot at the same time. This is a original gauntlet feature. I notice the delay when you stop shooting is a little long, i'll fix that. Not what I said. Yes, your character will stop to shoot. In fact, holding the button to shoot in many different directions from the same spot is important to Gauntlets game play. However, the player can fire off a shot and should still be able to move while the missile is traveling, if the button is released. I could be wrong, but it seemed in the demo here, that if a players missile is "in flight" the character is stuck, unable to move. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted July 3, 2012 Author Share Posted July 3, 2012 I notice the delay when you stop shooting is a little long, i'll fix that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggystar Posted July 3, 2012 Author Share Posted July 3, 2012 This should fix the moving-shooting issue. G.BIN Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 Much better - the movement issues I saw before have been fixed. Nice work Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg2600 Posted July 3, 2012 Share Posted July 3, 2012 Folks, the game runs perfectly on MESS, I use that for 5200 all the time. Just to confirm, the music stops shortly after the level begins? Scrolling is incredible for the 5200, as are the animations. The enemies tend to get a little choppy, but for what you're doing, it's impressive. Ziggy, you may want to replace the BIN file on the first post, to avoid confusion. In addition, I wasn't able to select Valkyrie on that version, but your update allows it. Great work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted July 4, 2012 Share Posted July 4, 2012 Much better - the movement issues I saw before have been fixed. Nice work agreed, this newest file is much more fluid and playable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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