leech Posted March 8, 2020 Share Posted March 8, 2020 I always thought with the XE in the title this would not work on the 800. but I managed to get a slightly hightler rank this time because I stabbed the dragons! I should read the manual so I know why it plays music on certain screens. I love this game though ha. Would love a full physical copy when it releases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tep392 Posted March 8, 2020 Share Posted March 8, 2020 1 hour ago, leech said: I always thought with the XE in the title this would not work on the 800. but I managed to get a slightly hightler rank this time because I stabbed the dragons! I should read the manual so I know why it plays music on certain screens. I love this game though ha. Would love a full physical copy when it releases. It's been a while since I did the conversion from the 5200 version, but I think it requires minimum 32k of RAM to run. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted March 10, 2020 Author Share Posted March 10, 2020 On 3/8/2020 at 4:12 PM, tep392 said: It's been a while since I did the conversion from the 5200 version, but I think it requires minimum 32k of RAM to run. Nearly 10 years ago - my notes say October 2010. And I thought the game required 48K minimum. You'd think as the programmer I'd know, but I still treat this game as a 5200 in a lot of way - RAM to me is Zero Page and the rest - basically $0000-$3FFF. Then code starts at $4000-$BFFF same as 5200 version (basically 32K ROM) but with some extra banks - a bank for the AtariAge logo, a bank for the new FONT charset, a bank for the sounds engine and data ... Getting back to point I wonder if anyone's Atari has 32k RAM , as opposed to the usual 16K (the 400) or 48k (800) or 64k (XL/some XE's) sizes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tep392 Posted March 10, 2020 Share Posted March 10, 2020 43 minutes ago, Cafeman said: Nearly 10 years ago - my notes say October 2010. And I thought the game required 48K minimum. You'd think as the programmer I'd know, but I still treat this game as a 5200 in a lot of way - RAM to me is Zero Page and the rest - basically $0000-$3FFF. Then code starts at $4000-$BFFF same as 5200 version (basically 32K ROM) but with some extra banks - a bank for the AtariAge logo, a bank for the new FONT charset, a bank for the sounds engine and data ... Getting back to point I wonder if anyone's Atari has 32k RAM , as opposed to the usual 16K (the 400) or 48k (800) or 64k (XL/some XE's) sizes. I can't stand how quickly time flies. I'm thinking about it some more and now I remember I made both Atarimax cart and XEGS cart versions. The XEGS cart has ROM banks at $8000 and $A000 and would only need 32k RAM. The Atarimax cart only has ROM at $A000, so it might be that I copy code into RAM at $8000 so require a 48k system for that cart. It's been a long time since I've looked at the code. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted March 10, 2020 Share Posted March 10, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, tep392 said: I can't stand how quickly time flies. I'm thinking about it some more and now I remember I made both Atarimax cart and XEGS cart versions. The XEGS cart has ROM banks at $8000 and $A000 and would only need 32k RAM. The Atarimax cart only has ROM at $A000, so it might be that I copy code into RAM at $8000 so require a 48k system for that cart. It's been a long time since I've looked at the code. So another 10 years for an Atari ST port? (Runs and hides) Edited March 10, 2020 by leech Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tep392 Posted March 11, 2020 Share Posted March 11, 2020 I confirmed on my 800 that the Atarimax cart version does need 48k. I configured the machine for 32k and it would make it through the Atariage screen then crash. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted March 11, 2020 Author Share Posted March 11, 2020 I was never sure why AtariMax and XEGS cart settings had different banking schemes but basically the code at 8000 and A000 are reversed between the two formats in the game's code. Using .ORG statement and IF ELSE statements. Are you saying the XEGS pcb allows only 32k RAM to work because the other 16K is still stored on ROM? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tep392 Posted March 11, 2020 Share Posted March 11, 2020 The XEGS cart has a fixed 8k bank a banked 8k. The Atarimax is all banked 8k. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted March 16, 2020 Author Share Posted March 16, 2020 Here is an update on what's going on with this project. - I'm working with AA member livinabin on the manual text, he is working on the manual layout with some new artwork. - KEYS - I tweaked their colors (more precisely, lowered their brightness levels) and gave each key its own bitmap image. The keys will glow every few seconds which is still necessary to see them at times depending on what background color they are overtop. - Rankings - there are 16 rankings in total now - I added 2 more this past week. There are Bad Rankings and Good Rankings and a couple Special Rankings. For example, if you are eaten too much you will likely be ranked _________ . (this is true of the current demo rankings too). New ranking logic: If you kill ___ dragons in a game or more, you will likely be ranked _________. I think most people will fall into playing habits and tend to see the same couple of rankings all the time, and thus you'd have to mess around to see the others. Again, there are 16 in the game to find and you'll only see them all by playing as different Icons and accomplishing (or failing to accomplish) different things as represented by the end-game Stats. - Balancing - after all the testing I've been doing playing AdvII on my XEGS - I felt I made the game too easy. So I made the Advanced and Special levels a little harder ( similar to the settings of the 5200 version now, although not turned up quite as high) and I tweaked the rules for how you achieve the best 2 rankings so that it is more challenging. bottom line , to get the top 2 rankings you cannot be devoured , not even once. After you get used to the game a bit, it isn't hard to avoid getting devoured when on Beginner and Intermediate, usually. But it is challenging on Advanced/Special, especially if the dragons are chasing you and you have no sword. Run until they give up! - Glitches - it alarmed me that a new glitch started to occur after my rankings tweaks. I did not really understand how it was happening but somehow it was caused by a change in timing of execution of code. Description of glitch: the screen rolled when you beat the game, between the final castle screen and the rankings screen! I had never seen my game roll the screen before ( evidently it is easier to cause on 2600 games). It didn't roll on Altirra , so I had to examine the code, make a hypothesis, make the code change, load up my Atarimax cart, and play and beat a game on real hardware over and over - after 4 or 5 times, I fixed the problem! The Adventure II dragons are Frugle, Sithel, and Brundel. I need to play test the current code for a couple of days then will release a new DEMO version. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 Keys look great - I dont think there will be an issue with these now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted March 18, 2020 Author Share Posted March 18, 2020 Made a new trailer for the current build. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari Nut Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 Very nice Cafeman. I'm really looking forward to this! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TIX Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 beautiful ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TIX Posted March 26, 2020 Share Posted March 26, 2020 (edited) hey @Cafeman, doodling around, this funny sneezing/attacking dragon came to be I put it here just for laughs ! looking forward for the final product ! Edited March 26, 2020 by TIX 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjlazer Posted March 29, 2020 Share Posted March 29, 2020 Were you able to fix the getting stuck on objects when moving close to them bug? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted March 30, 2020 Author Share Posted March 30, 2020 I wrote about that, check earlier posts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjlazer Posted April 1, 2020 Share Posted April 1, 2020 Ok didn’t know about the Revive button. That helps from endlessly dying and not able to restart the game because your so fat you get stuck on a shrub! LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted April 2, 2020 Author Share Posted April 2, 2020 On 3/5/2020 at 12:31 PM, Cafeman said: Collision issue / getting stuck at bottom of a Kingdom1 plant - I can duplicate this too so I'll fix it. I believe I've only seen it happen with the Helmet Knight icon, due to his helmet tassle/graphics and having both left/right images - when he is bounced back after a collision, I think the engine reverse the image too, causing you to get stuck in the graphics more easily. ==> 03/05/2020 9:30 PM - FIXED! @tjlazerAlso however, I did put in a programming fix as well, based on your bug report. After the fix, I wasn't getting stuck on plants any more when using the knight helmet. It's still possible to get stuck somewhere I'm sure .. then you can hit Revive button to go back to a checkpoint. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted April 22, 2020 Author Share Posted April 22, 2020 In the spirit of the original "Ye Olde Adventure II Contest" from 2006-2007 back when Adventure II for Atari 5200 was being created .... Thy newe and briefe Adventure II XE Contest ! The only prize here is that your artistic creation could get included into the final version of Adventure II XE! And a reference in the Manual! This contest ends May 5 2020 at 11:59 PM -- 2 weeks from today. Since I have some time and some free memory left, I recently fooled around with different graphical images on the game's castle tapestries. My plan is to only replace the center tapestry (which always shows a duck dragon, currently) in the various Green, Fire, and Ice Castle Tapestries rooms, just for a surprise and some variety. But I am not a gifted artist! Here are the specifications: The shield portion backdrop (red in the attached example) is made of 15 total tiles -- 3 tiles horizontally by 5 tiles vertically. Character tiles are 4 pixels wide (double-width) by 8 pixels vertically each. But due to the borders of the image, the image can only be 10 double-width pixels horizontally and about 30 max pixels on the vertical plane. Keep within the red borders as you see in the pictures. The image should be all black pixels over top the red background. You can also use the 2nd color which is gold in the example shown, or a mix of black and gold pixels (like the sword/key tapestry shown). The actual colors change with every Tapestries screen so that is why I'd prefer you mostly just use the black pixels. Since I would like it to be a surprise, I won't tell you what ones I pick to put into the game. Gamers will have to discover this by playing the future version of the game and exploring. It will be some work for me to translate your images into the character hex values too, so I won't include more than 5 in the end. Food for thought ideas: castle items, kingly items, practical items .. crown, ring, castle flag, armor, various weoponry or tools, or a mug for example. Or images that might remind you of 80s gaming perhaps, Like cherries... I'm not sure if there is a nice pixel drawing utility to simplify things. I use the old "ANTIC4.EXE" utility that Calamari (Jeffry Johnson I think?) coded in the early 2000's, and I have to use DOSBOX to run it in Windows 10 which has become a pain. So if anyone wants to draw a new Tapestry image, you can post it here. It will be fun to see submissions even if they can't all be used. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TIX Posted April 22, 2020 Share Posted April 22, 2020 (edited) Ha, I've spend too much time drawing assets for Adventure since I bought the cartridge ! here is a selection of icons, the hard thing is to stop.. and in real size: Edited April 22, 2020 by TIX 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted April 22, 2020 Author Share Posted April 22, 2020 18 hours ago, Cafeman said: In the spirit of the original "Ye Olde Adventure II Contest" from 2006-2007 back when Adventure II for Atari 5200 was being created .... Thy newe and briefe Adventure II XE Contest ! The only prize here is that your artistic creation could get included into the final version of Adventure II XE! And a reference in the Manual! This contest ends May 5 2020 at 11:59 PM -- 2 weeks from today. . . . Food for thought ideas: castle items, kingly items, practical items .. crown, ring, castle flag, armor, various weoponry or tools, or a mug for example. Or images that might remind you of 80s gaming perhaps, Like cherries.. Bump for visibility, and thanks TIX for those well drawn tapestry images. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted April 24, 2020 Author Share Posted April 24, 2020 Meanwhile, another little tweak ... when playing Special Difficulty Levels, the dragons will eventually come back to life (same as 5200 version but it takes more time for them to revive) . They will now revive into a random new dragon each time now. In the 5200 version, they kind of had a zombie dragon look but now they have a distinct more unified look. Meet the Silver Dragon: - another tweak I put in recently - if you pause (via the OPTION button, or SpaceBar), you can Un-Pause with a joystick button press. - The only real final tweak I want to add will be some new tapestry images from whoever submits some ideas! After this tweak in early May, I'll post a final demo to play. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted April 27, 2020 Author Share Posted April 27, 2020 I've been playing various levels to QA test game, after making a few tweaks in April. Well, I don't understand why, but the screen-rolling glitch is sometimes back. I should dig out my Atari 800XL (I test on the XEGS) and make sure it happens on that hardware too. I've never seen an Atari 8-bit game have its screen roll before, not like 2600 games where it is far more common. For me, it sometimes happens at the end of a won game. When you bring the chalice into the Kingdom 1 castle, a little tune plays. Then it loads the end-game Rankings / Stats screen . Between these screens it sometimes rolls. I haven't really added anything recently in that area that would have adversely affected timing, and I don't think I am performing code any differently. But there it is - the screen kind of half-rolls once (and not always). This just reared its ugly head in 2020 for the first time, and I thought an extra JSR WAITVB statement fixed it. Its a mystery but there's got to be a simple reason. Other than that I don't see anything troubling in the game. There are 1 or 2 little visual sprite-clutter visual bugs that can happen (also happened on 5200 version) but these don't happen frequently, and are cleaned up as soon as you change screens, so I have lived with them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Thag Posted April 30, 2020 Share Posted April 30, 2020 On 4/27/2020 at 6:18 AM, Cafeman said: I've been playing various levels to QA test game, after making a few tweaks in April. Well, I don't understand why, but the screen-rolling glitch is sometimes back. I should dig out my Atari 800XL (I test on the XEGS) and make sure it happens on that hardware too. I've never seen an Atari 8-bit game have its screen roll before, not like 2600 games where it is far more common. For me, it sometimes happens at the end of a won game. When you bring the chalice into the Kingdom 1 castle, a little tune plays. Then it loads the end-game Rankings / Stats screen . Between these screens it sometimes rolls. I haven't really added anything recently in that area that would have adversely affected timing, and I don't think I am performing code any differently. But there it is - the screen kind of half-rolls once (and not always). This just reared its ugly head in 2020 for the first time, and I thought an extra JSR WAITVB statement fixed it. Its a mystery but there's got to be a simple reason. Other than that I don't see anything troubling in the game. There are 1 or 2 little visual sprite-clutter visual bugs that can happen (also happened on 5200 version) but these don't happen frequently, and are cleaned up as soon as you change screens, so I have lived with them. I've been away for a couple of months, and I've been diving back in to all the stuff I missed... this being the absolute top of my list (finally!). It's outstanding, by the way. Even better than the 5200 version which I played the hell out of. There have been a lot of homebrew follow-ups to classic Atari games over the years, but this one just nails the spirit of the original while evolving it in a natural way. I've played the demo on an 800xl and a 1200xl, have won it a few times. No screen rolling so far on my end, it's been rock solid, but I'll keep an eye out if I see that and let you know. Love all the little graphical tweaks and new difficulty levels. Finding one of the 'dots' with it's associated xxxxxxx was pretty cool too, I must say. Nice work man. I'll be buying a copy the second this hits the AA store. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted May 4, 2020 Author Share Posted May 4, 2020 On 4/22/2020 at 4:28 PM, Cafeman said: In the spirit of the original "Ye Olde Adventure II Contest" from 2006-2007 back when Adventure II for Atari 5200 was being created .... Thy newe and briefe Adventure II XE Contest ! The only prize here is that your artistic creation could get included into the final version of Adventure II XE! And a reference in the Manual! This contest ends May 5 2020 at 11:59 PM -- 2 weeks from today. . . . Food for thought ideas: castle items, kingly items, practical items .. crown, ring, castle flag, armor, various weoponry or tools, or a mug for example. Or images that might remind you of 80s gaming perhaps, Like cherries.. Bump for visibility, and thanks TIX for those well drawn tapestry images. Well, this idea was kind of a bust! I only got one response, so this is a bump just in case anybody is interested in drawing an image. I suppose this is another clue for me just to wrap the whole thing up and call it done! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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