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D.K. VCS


Joe Musashi

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It would probably be most fun to have a hammer. A T-shaped hammer is not possible, but maybe I could pick up iesposta's idea and just draw a stick (missile).

What if you started the missile in quad width and switched to double width after drawing the head? Something like this:

 

<pre>
XX
XXXX
XXXX
XXXX
XX
XX
XX
XX
XX
XX

</pre>

 

(Edit: it seemed to me that there was a bit of the handle protruding from the top of the hammer in the arcade game, so I put it in here too. Sorry if my attempts at HTML are in vain.)

Edited by raindog
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I would suggest that the oil barrel probably can be sacrificed. Just my opinion. :)

Perhaps the oild barrel could be drawn using playfield sprites? I know it would just be a square block, but it would be better than deleting it entirely.

 

Another thought; both Joe Musashi and Iesposta have been concurrently working on separate versions of Donkey Kong. It's probably too late to pool resources at this point, but I like both equally much. They are different but both have their strengths and weaknesses. Iesposta, have you any more updates to your version? Your last blog post was in 2012.

Edited by stardust4ever
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:D It's a "ruler / yardstick." He is a carpenter. :)

 

Now that would sound cool in the manual.

 

...
STEP 3: Yardstick Away!
If mario jumps up and grabs the yardstick, he can face the
barrels and hit them for extra points. But if the yardstick misses
and the barrel hits Mario, he's eliminated! And remember - he
can't climb ladders with the yardstick, and the yardstick disappears
in a few seconds
...

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What if you started the missile in quad width and switched to double width after drawing the head? Something like this:

 

<pre>
XX
XXXX
XXXX
XXXX
XX
XX
XX
XX
XX
XX

</pre>

 

(Edit: it seemed to me that there was a bit of the handle protruding from the top of the hammer in the arcade game, so I put it in here too. Sorry if my attempts at HTML are in vain.)

 

That would be too costly as I have only 6 spare cycles left. The best I could do would be:

 

; Accumulator contains COLUP1 | ENA in bit 0
asl ; 2
sta ENAM1 ; 3

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That would be too costly as I have only 6 spare cycles left. The best I could do would be:

 

; Accumulator contains COLUP1 | ENA in bit 0
asl ; 2
sta ENAM1 ; 3

 

Even if you put the head of the hammer above the highest scanline Mario can jump? You'd just have to hit NUSIZ1 twice, once on the scanline where you start drawing the head, and again on the last scanline before Mario's highest jumping point.

 

I mean, you could also draw the head with playfield graphics since you're not doing sloped girders, but I figured the "missile as fake player" trick was fewer cycles.

 

Which doesn't solve the problem of what happens when the player actually gets the hammer, but right up to that point I'd think you'd be golden ;-)

 

Edit: I just realized I was still looking at iesposta's mockups, which have a shorter Mario and taller gaps between floors. But I'd also think that making the gaps between floors wider would be doable, without having looked at your source.

Edited by raindog
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Edit: I just realized I was still looking at iesposta's mockups, which have a shorter Mario and taller gaps between floors. But I'd also think that making the gaps between floors wider would be doable, without having looked at your source.

 

Unfortunately, each floor has to be 32 lines high for various internal reasons. But even if that could be changed, there would still be the problem that Mario can climb, and more importantly that the hammer also needs to be drawn in front of Mario.

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Do yourself a huge favor and buy a harmony cart!

 

Well, thanks for the advice.

My Harmony cartridge arrived in time for this weekend. And I finally got to play D.K. VCS and all I can say is WOW.

I am absolutely marveled at this amazing creation. (oh, yeah, I'm talking about the game here, although the Harmony cartridge also impressed the hell out of me too.

 

(and btw can someone provide me a link to Rom Hunters "definitive" package for the Harmony cart? I found one link in a search, but it was a dead link. It would save me a ton of time.)

 

Anyhow, I played the hell out of the game. With careful jumps you can pass the elevator stage (even though it has no lifts) and so I was able to see all 4 screens. Just amazing this game. As soon as the pre-order is open, put me down for a cart.

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Well, thanks for the advice.

My Harmony cartridge arrived in time for this weekend. And I finally got to play D.K. VCS and all I can say is WOW.

I am absolutely marveled at this amazing creation. (oh, yeah, I'm talking about the game here, although the Harmony cartridge also impressed the hell out of me too.

 

(and btw can someone provide me a link to Rom Hunters "definitive" package for the Harmony cart? I found one link in a search, but it was a dead link. It would save me a ton of time.)

 

Anyhow, I played the hell out of the game. With careful jumps you can pass the elevator stage (even though it has no lifts) and so I was able to see all 4 screens. Just amazing this game. As soon as the pre-order is open, put me down for a cart.

Glad you enjoyed your Harmony cart. It's really a great piece of tech, and in addition to nearly every bank-switching scheme, it also supports the Sara RAM, Pitfall II audio, and DSP+ enhanced homebrews. The Boulderdash public demo and Stella's Stocking are the only homebrew ROMs I know of that don't work on it. Sadly it doesn't support Melody saves because there's no way to write the save back to the SD card. Edited by stardust4ever
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Seems when using flickering, a single missile is not so bad for drawing a hammer :-D . It's even multi-colored and fits with the overall look.

 

post-27536-0-15968300-1368393545_thumb.pngpost-27536-0-24548300-1368393535_thumb.png

 

However, this is just a display kernel test. Really making this work would require quite some effort. So, this is low priority, I would only try it once all enemies are done.

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Seems when using flickering, a single missile is not so bad for drawing a hammer :-D . It's even multi-colored and fits with the overall look.

 

post-27536-0-15968300-1368393545_thumb.pngpost-27536-0-24548300-1368393535_thumb.png

 

However, this is just a display kernel test. Really making this work would require quite some effort. So, this is low priority, I would only try it once all enemies are done.

 

You're doing God's work.

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This is really impressive. I would LOVE to see an arcade perfect VCS version, so I am not detracting from any effort to make this arcade perfect. However, I remember that part of the VCS charm was making the games compliment the limitations of the system. In this demo's state, I would prefer this over the original version. The original is impressive to me, as I am not completely familiar with the VCS concepts, like cycles and the limits that come with that. If I am to understand correctly, these cycles are also an advantage (allowing more colors than one would have expected, in a time that multi-colored "sprites" were not common place).

 

My understanding is that the original version, due to the memory limitations of the time (price and probably Coleco not wanting any chance of upping their quirky port), the ramped (angled) girders were quite a feat. The sound is nowhere near as bad as the original 7800 version, and It's challenging withing the limits of the port.

 

My point is that a few minor tweaks would make this more presentable than the original. We gave up ramps for multicolor. There's not even a fireball on the original ramps port. I'd be happy with two barrels and that fireball. For the converyors, I'd be happy making the pies go all the way across and wrap around. I would be fine with no moving elevators (if restrictions come about). Maybe just make the spring bounce and repeat. The firefoxes could move back and forth like the original VCS version.

 

I am not suggesting to drop it and not even try. I am just saying that those above tweaks would still make the game about 4x more fun and playable than the original... It looks WAY better, Mario jumps backwards, it has intermissions. Anything beyond this demo is just more icing on an already GREAT cake. This is amazing given today's standards, but this is unconcievable if one were to truly put this into a historical context. I can't help but think about how I would have reacted back in the 80's. Would I have just taken it for granted at the time? Would I have complained about the limitations, disappointed it wasn't exact? Or, would this have been as unbelievable as the idea that I would be playing Atari games from my phone someday (let alone MAME!)..

Edited by darryl1970
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Just played this in Stella. I am blown away how like the arcade this is!

 

I have a suggestion for reducing flicker ... don't know if it will work on the 2600, but on the Atari XL, there is a similar mode called Super IRG that flickers in character mode. It reduces flickering by alternating colors in a checkerboard pattern. So for instance, on Donkey Kong's sprite, instead of a full screen flicker, maybe you could alternate the colors in a checkerboard pattern on alternate frames?

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No, sorry. I misinterpreted the problem. As a side, are collision maps not possible/reasonable on the 2600 due to the limited cycles?

 

It probably depends on the complexity of a level. For example, for the ladders I'm using a simple list per floor, where I check each entry (see line 2048) sequentially. This is ok because there are never more than four ladders.

 

If there were more, it may be better to use some sort of bitmap aproach. But that requires code to find the repective map entry that corresponds to Mario's position, which I want to avoid if possible.

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Just played this in Stella. I am blown away how like the arcade this is!

 

I have a suggestion for reducing flicker ... don't know if it will work on the 2600, but on the Atari XL, there is a similar mode called Super IRG that flickers in character mode. It reduces flickering by alternating colors in a checkerboard pattern. So for instance, on Donkey Kong's sprite, instead of a full screen flicker, maybe you could alternate the colors in a checkerboard pattern on alternate frames?

 

Yes, this is also a common technique on the 2600. I'm using it already for wide text display.

 

post-27536-0-19756900-1368652984_thumb.png

 

I would not like it so much for Kong, however, because the stripe pattern becomes very visible on a TV. But I cannot do it anyway because I would have to update two sprite colors (COLUP0, COLUP1) each line for which I don't have the cycles as I also need to update the background graphics to draw the white teeth and eyes.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Here comes another update with lots of new features. This time we have:

  • Complete set of enemies and AI in stages 2, 3, and 4.
  • Mario can now ride the elevator.
  • Jumping over enemies awards 100 points.
  • Press select on the title screen to chose between US and Japanese screen order.
    (Japanese order is default for now to make testing easier. I will probably change that later and make the US order default.)
  • The left and right difficulty switches work similar to the arcade DIP switches.
    Left switch: 3 lives (B), 1 life (A).
    Right switch: Extra Mario at 10,000 points (B), Extra Mario at 20,000 points.
  • Kong animation fixes.
  • And for the first time there is now also a PAL60 version.

How high can you try ? :D

 

 

 

post-27536-0-32295000-1371505410_thumb.pngpost-27536-0-08503500-1371505421_thumb.png

post-27536-0-13643100-1371505428_thumb.pngpost-27536-0-21018500-1371505436_thumb.png

 

D.K.VCS_130617_NTSC.bin

D.K.VCS_130617_PAL60.bin

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