Megaoids - Blasteroids type Game comming to cartridge.

[atx4us]

FIle -> Open Image and make sure the ATR is in the folder. Make sure the right OS and hardware is selected. Like some versions of DOS will not run on a 400/800.

Pete,

 

Thanks for the reply. I tried various configurations and cannot get the 360K .atr image to boot. It keeps on crashing Altirra. Can you please download the image and try on your setup?

[Keatah]

How do you run it once you do get it to boot?

[peteym5]

Is this "360k.ATR" something posted on this thread. I only posted "PetesGames.zip" and "PetesGames3.zip" that boot up MYDOS. Did you try booting up a known working MYDOS image as drive 1 and mount this 360K.ATR as drive 2 and see if you can access a directory?

 

These images contain TurboBasic XL source code for several of my old games. An Assembly version of Megaoids for cartridge is being made almost from scratch and that will be cartridge only, no floppy or no pay per download version will be available. Price is usually $39.95 USD. Features will include alien space crafts, power ups, and other stuff entering the play area to throw new challenges at you.

 

PetesGames3.zip

[flashjazzcat]

Is this "360k.ATR" something posted on this thread.

The first copy of "PetesGames3.atr" is 360KB in size and thus a 360KB ATR. DUP was broken so typing DOS caused a crash. It's fixed in the version you just uploaded.

[+CharlieChaplin]

How do you run it once you do get it to boot?

 

 

Here is a 90k ATR, I created from the files on the 360k disk-image - it will autoboot. I even used my non-existing programming skills to create a short Gr. 2 title (Autorun.BAS) that will display after TB XL has loaded (while the Megaoids.TUR program loads). Hopefully I did not forget to include a file, but if so, you can simply copy it over from the 360k image using MyDOS 4.5x...

Megaoids.atr

Edited December 23, 2015 by CharlieChaplin

[atx4us]

Is this "360k.ATR" something posted on this thread. I only posted "PetesGames.zip" and "PetesGames3.zip" that boot up MYDOS. Did you try booting up a known working MYDOS image as drive 1 and mount this 360K.ATR as drive 2 and see if you can access a directory?

 

These images contain TurboBasic XL source code for several of my old games. An Assembly version of Megaoids for cartridge is being made almost from scratch and that will be cartridge only, no floppy or no pay per download version will be available. Price is usually $39.95 USD. Features will include alien space crafts, power ups, and other stuff entering the play area to throw new challenges at you.

 

Pete,

 

Thanks for the re-post. Your newly posted file works as it should straight out of the box! I'm just glad to know that it wasn't something that I did

[peteym5]

I am looking into the possibility of doing animated rotating asteroids using alternating fonts. However please understand that this game is intended to fit onto a 16K EPROM cartridge and I already did some tests to see how far 4 fonts can be compressed down into. I am going to complete the game with simple non-rotating character mode Asteroids first and see how much room is remaining. I do not want to put this game into a larger more expensive EPROM image and risk it not selling well. If anything is going to happen, it will end up requiring the 32K of RAM between $0000 to $7FFF. I like to keep it using less than 16K RAM because of the possibility of porting to the 5200. I know there are 32K ROM available for the 5200, but very few of the PCBs are available at the present time.

[peteym5]

One feature that had been requested on other games was supporting the Driving Controller. I had been reluctant in the past simple because these are very rare. 99.5% of the people on here want to play on real hardware with a joystick. Having this option, it makes it playable with a trackball controller also, the same piece of code works for both. The issue is I don't have either a trackball or driving controller, and I can only test with the mouse in the emulator. I may need someone to beta test the routine for me, provided they agree not to share it, they will receive an incomplete and feature disabled version of a game. If I am doing multiple controller options, I might as well make it able to play with the paddle or from keyboard because a much larger percentage of people have those.

 

These driving controllers are the ones sold with the Atari 2600 game "Indy 500" and are a rare find. Only 1 was available on Ebay at the time of this posting. Looks like they take awhile to be sold.

 

I am making progress with this game. There may not be enough enough room on the 16K cartridge to do animated Asteroids, I would like to keep the final price at $40 with free shipping. I am working on some other animated features that will just be as exciting to see and play.

[Rybags]

I should think the trakball and mouse are way more sensitive than the driving controller.

 

Driving controller has 16 positional representations for 360 degrees of movement (verification needed?)

16 positional changes on a mouse axis doesn't represent very much movement. Even the old chunky DPI mouse as per ST/Amiga would be way too fast.

Trakball, I think is probably less resolution than a mouse but probably a good deal more than a driving controller.

 

Then there's adaptors which allow a modern mouse to be used. The problem there is if a DPI reduction scheme isn't available it can be too fast to the point of being unusable.

 

Also, the more DPI, the more samples per second needed for accurate representation.

 

What I'd do - support driving controller, support ST and Amiga mouse - the bitstreams from each are different so would need manipulation to allow processing with the same code. Not much work needed though.

Edited January 13, 2016 by Rybags

[peteym5]

I am using a 2 bit grey code subroutine that everyone is telling me does work on the driving controller, trackball, and mouse. I believe there is more than one type of trackball controller out there, one type using grey code, the other is simply counting up and down between 0 and 3. KJMANN12 had me modify a Centipede game that used one version of the trackball code and I modified it to use the greycode version.

[gozar]

Search for "indy 500 atari" and you'll find the controllers on eBay. I counted 10 before I stopped (although some were listed out some crazy prices :-).

[Joey Z]

I am using a 2 bit grey code subroutine that everyone is telling me does work on the driving controller, trackball, and mouse. I believe there is more than one type of trackball controller out there, one type using grey code, the other is simply counting up and down between 0 and 3. KJMANN12 had me modify a Centipede game that used one version of the trackball code and I modified it to use the greycode version.

the two types of trakballs are as follows:

The first operates similarly to an ST mouse. It uses 'quadrature encoders' which will have a sequence like '00 01 11 10 00' or the reverse depending on direction.

 

The second operates a bit differently. One pin means direction, and the other indicates motion. one direction will look like '00 01 00 01 00' and the other will look like '10 11 10 11 10'

 

That is how I understand it.

 

The driving controller, I am unsure about. It may use all 4 joystick lines, in which case it counts up from 0 ($0) to 15 ($F) then rolls over. counts up or down depending on direction.

[Rybags]

Driving controller only uses the lowest 2 bits (Grey Code), and from what I just searched through it's 16 changes per rotation. It was also mentioned in places that more than one sample per scanline is desirable.

Trakball - there are at least 2 modes with these. There's joystick emulation which is just that, movement will emulate a joystick which will require no extra software processing. There's also a movement code mode where a directional delta is generated for H/V such that the bitpair meanings are

00=no movement

11=move left

10=move right

Trakball in mouse mode (verification needed) - does this exist? I was just about sure Missile Command works equally with an ST mouse or right sort of trakball.

Edited January 14, 2016 by Rybags

[peteym5]

Here are some teaser screen shots for Megaoids. Development is still progressing slowly with this game. I have been taking a little extra time to work and debug this game myself since Video61 is in the process with the labels and manual for Amokbots that was completed late last year. I hope to have this one up for sale by the Spring, but I cannot quote an exact release date yet.

[+Stephen]

Looks cool. I see there is a controller option. Is there an option for "driving" controller?

[Synthpopalooza]

Looks very nice! Super IRG for the asteroids? I noticed a lot of colors in there ...

Edited February 5, 2016 by Synthpopalooza

[peteym5]

I am experimenting with SuperIRG, but setting this one up in a way that the graphics don't get messed up for those HDTV displays that causes the graphic get viewed as interlaced, 480i, or those PC TV tuner cards that only do 30 frames per second.

 

I am working on having the joystick as the default option. But testing paddle, driving/trackball, or keyboard.

 

I am trying to track down an issue with the keyboard. There seems to be something disabling the IRQs somewhere during the game. Checked the diagnostics and the IRQEN is still set for the keyboard, but is being ignored. The IRQ vector at $FFFE did not change either since this game does not do anything with RAM under OS because it is meant to run on any Atari 8-bit computer.

[Synthpopalooza]

I wonder if alternating character sets on each char line might be a solution. Don't checkerboard (use full frame) but change the charsets out alternately each char line. It will look bad on a CRT but might improve the situation on an HDTV. Also give the user the option of turning off the flicker if it gets to looking too bad.

[peteym5]

There should not be any issues with SuperIRG with this game because I made the game originally with one font. I added the alternate font once the game was almost complete after seeing how much memory was available. The primary color of the asteroid are pixels that do not flicker. It just changes 2 or 3 pixels per character on the asteroids for those little spots. It does not do anything with the Star background.

 

The keyboard issue is something I am trying to track down right now.

[kenjennings]

Driving controller only uses the lowest 2 bits (Grey Code), and from what I just searched through it's 16 changes per rotation. It was also mentioned in places that more than one sample per scanline is desirable.

Trakball - there are at least 2 modes with these. There's joystick emulation which is just that, movement will emulate a joystick which will require no extra software processing. There's also a movement code mode where a directional delta is generated for H/V such that the bitpair meanings are

00=no movement

11=move left

10=move right

Trakball in mouse mode (verification needed) - does this exist? I was just about sure Missile Command works equally with an ST mouse or right sort of trakball.

 

I thought the driving controller needs more than one sample per frame not scan line. Similar to what a mouse requires as it is (in simple terms) just one axis of a mouse controller.

[_The Doctor__]

don't try anything that 'will look bad' on a crt.... a great number of us Atari enthusiasts use crt's for a multitude of reasons!

 

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea someone even suggested such a thing....

Edited February 8, 2016 by _The Doctor__

[Defender II]

Looks nice, can't wait to order a couple carts. Please don't do anything that makes it look worse on the CRT, I agree with _The Doctor__ on that.

don't try anything that 'will look bad' on a crt.... a great number of us Atari enthusiasts use crt's for a multitude of reasons!

 

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea someone even suggested such a thing....

Edited February 8, 2016 by Defender II

[peteym5]

It is geared toward CRT type displays and works just fine. It is these S-Video to HDMI hookups and PC TV tuner cards that have been creating artifacts and color shifting with using Super-IRG. This makes the game not look like it is intended to. I am trying to track down a TV-tuner card that does 60 frames per-second instead of 30.

 

I resolved the Keyboard interrupt issue. Had something going on with CLI and SEI instructions within the VBI routine.

[peteym5]

 

I have an early teaser video put together. The game development is an ongoing work in progress along with additional beta testing is now being performed. Not release date has been set yet.

[peteym5]

I considered "Megaoids VBXE" on a separate cartridge, maybe 64K or 128K because even compressing the VBXE graphics would require lots of room. I can probably have it do rotating asteroids there also with only the need to draw 1/4th of the rotation because VBXE can flip the sprite images. It would be a question of how big the VBXE market is now and how fast its expanding.

 

I had given thought about putting Megaoids onto a multicart with LaserBlast, Delta Space Arena, and AmokBots. However from the reports about the past history of anything packaged together, sales do very poor.

 

I changed the marketing title to "Megaoids 2016" to so people know this is NOT the same program I made with TurboBasic back in the 1990s. This was all done in assembly from the ground up. I only copied the 1K FONT, saved it in a separate file and updated it for the cartridge game. Wanted something to have some homage to the original game. The Font had to be adapted for Antic 3 scoreboard and credit screen, all the lower case characters had to be shifted down two bytes and descenders. I like using Antic 3 because I can make characters full height with 2 pixels between each row.

 

What was done for a "Super IRG" effect was the rocks have a few pixels that alternate with the 2 fonts at 60 frames/sec (50 PAL). If people run the game through VGA monitor/flat screen converters that cause an interlace effect, they will just see the game as 480i. My PCs TV tuner card shows the game at 30 frames/sec so I am only seeing half the frames. It is set up so that it will look great does not matter what display you have your Atari hooked to.

Edited May 19, 2016 by peteym5