Draconian (2600)

[Albert]

We are working on a larger Melody board (at least 64K).

 

..Al

[+SpiceWare]

I couldn't hold fire, left and up to move and fire. The other 7 direction allowed me to hold fire and steer, just the left, up and fire. But if I steer up and left and let go, and fire. It works. I don't know if that the limitation of the controller, my keyboard, or a bug.

Works here so that'd be a rollover limitation with your keyboard. FIRE in Stella is mapped to SPACE and LEFT-CONTROL, so try both of them. I can't use LEFT-CONTROL myself as CONTROL+ARROW switches which virtual desktop I'm on. There's 8 on my main display

 

and 4 on my secondary:

 

oops, almost revealed the Draconian artwork ahead of time. Sorry, no screenshot for the secondary monitor oh, it has been revealed

[+SpiceWare]

We are working on a larger Melody board (at least 64K).

 

..Al

 

 

Awesome! I'm hoping to pick up an Encore at PRGE, if not I'll order one before I reboot Frantic.

[+stephena]

Works here so that'd be a rollover limitation with your keyboard.

 

Yep, I was going to suggest it might be that: keyboards are evil.

[+SpiceWare]

Plan to double-check station shots,etc. while I'm at it.

 

 

Glad I didn't remove the targeting diagnostic code as yes, there are issues at wrap-around points. The line of shots from the station denotes direction of fire from the closest pod while the white pod denotes 2nd closest (which can also fire). This station's firing correctly:

 

This station's firing from the wrong pods, but the right direction:

 

This station's firing from the wrong pods, and in the wrong direction:

[+SpiceWare]

5 hours remain on the voting. I've received votes from 5 people so far, which is not quite enough to select the 16 ∆ sectors.

[Keatah]

I couldn't hold fire, left and up to move and fire. The other 7 direction allowed me to hold fire and steer, just the left, up and fire. But if I steer up and left and let go, and fire. It works. I don't know if that the limitation of the controller, my keyboard, or a bug.

 

I don't have that problem. All 8 directions can fire, or not. I can "also" orbit a station in either direction while firing. Spin in place, fire or not. Or enter into "orbit" about a station from any of the 8 cardinal directions, again fire or not. Flipping 180, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, works firing or not. I also tried to initiate fire during the middle (mash all 3 keys at the same time) of the maneuvers, no issue. Tested both continuous (hold the fire key down) and jamming on it manually.

 

This tested on the latest builds of Stella and the game. So I'm satisfied it's alright.

 

---

 

I was able to make the ship partly non-responsive by holding down two opposing directional keys, releasing one, and then the held key became non-responsive until I released it.

 

But that appears to be a quirk of this specific keyboard because the TSR-style software keyclicker isn't indicating a keypress is being fed despite it being held. I verified the same thing in Missile Command. So it isn't a Draconian problem. I tried it in notepad with one of my walls-of-text, and the same thing happened. So it isn't a Stella issue either. And Stella was set to allow only one direction at a time. When setting to all all directions/buttons at once, that problem goes away strangely enough.

 

---

 

Is there any possibility my hardware is so good (yes!!) that it's masking the problem reported by kiwi? Dunno. Maybe it's a clash between N-Key Rollover and/or how the OS + keyboard drivers work.

[+SpiceWare]

2- Any possibility of getting the rumble sound (placeholder in earlier test versions) as the station explosion sound? Available space is an issue, isn't it?

 

While reviewing the sound effects I realized the station's using the mine explosion. Do you recall which build you heard that in?

[Keatah]

The sound I'm referring to is the sound the orange rocks/asteroids make when blowing up. The rumble-style sound used this version:

draconian_20170730.bin

 

If you were thinking I meant a station-specific sound. No. I just think the stations should blow with little more than a pop.

 

Maybe a combination? Play the regular mine explosion and then the orange explosion.

Edited October 8, 2017 by Keatah

[+SpiceWare]

1 hour left, still in need of votes to finalize the 16 ∆ sectors.

[+SpiceWare]

The sound I'm referring to is the sound the orange rocks/asteroids make when blowing up. The rumble-style sound used this version:

Turns out that was the Small Asteroid explosion from Space Rocks. I opted to go with the Large Asteroid Explosion.

[Kiwi]

 

Yep, I was going to suggest it might be that: keyboards are evil.

Yup. I'll have a priest over to dispel of it evilness.

 

Left cntl let me move and fire in all direction.

[+SpiceWare]

Left cntl let me move and fire in all direction.

 

 

 

Great! and congrats on 1st ∆

[+SpiceWare]

• New game startup tune in place
• Fixed the various wrap-around issues
• Fixed issue where if the looping condition red sound effect was playing and you took out the last station, the condition red sound would play concurrently with the round cleared tune making it unrecognizeable.
• Changed the station explosion sound effect.
• Winning ∆ sectors are in place.

This is the Release Candidate. Please play it as much as you can over the next few days and report any bugs right away.

 

For Harmony or Stella (requires Stella 5.0.2 or newer)

draconian_20171008_RC1.bin

[Keatah]

No bug reports in this post. Didn't play more than a few min tonight. Tomorrow though.

 

Suggestion:

I kinda got the feeling the last note in the opening tune prior to game start (not the AA jingle), should be about 25% less in duration it seems. IDK. Maybe it's exactly like the arcade and should be left that way..

 

Praise:

The game sounds good. I prefer it over the arcade, despite the arcade's more complex mixing and the VCS' limited capabilities. The arcade is screeching and grating and sonically unpleasant to me. Too busy. This is much smoother. Or I can play it louder for longer. And the stations go BOOM! now too!

 

It's not unlike the Space Invaders gig. Many people said they prefer the VCS version over the arcade version. Reasons like better interpretation of the game mechanics, color, more visually appealing, less strain with aiming the shots, "magic grooves" when you can hit one invader after another after another.

 

And the difficulty levels and variations, that's real important because if a game is too hard it could turn people off from even getting involved in it. Space Invaders and Missile Command had like kids levels and I desperately needed them back then. Now, today, the hard settings are "more like it!"

 

And I think the decision to include random levels on "E" was a good one.

 

Question:

If it has been mentioned, I missed it and can't find it. What sort of support for saving hi-scores is present in Emulator Stella for Draconian? Does Stella need to be updated to handle the "Melody-style" hi-score saving? Will it?

[cd-w]

We are working on a larger Melody board (at least 64K).

..Al

 

That is good to know - will it be a Melody equivalent of the Harmony Encore internals, or a completely new design?

Chris

[Kiwi]

 

 

 

Great! and congrats on 1st ∆

Oh cool!!!

 

One bug(?) report. I played through the ∆ sectors, and got a highscore. When I switch sector, the high score for E is 71007100.

 

- animated gif of it.

[+SpiceWare]

No bug reports in this post. Didn't play more than a few min tonight. Tomorrow though.

 

Suggestion:

I'll let iesposta and/or Nathan make this determination.

 

Praise:

Thanks!

 

Question:

Nope. The change to save the High Scores per Quadrant/Level was done as a preliminary step to add SaveKey support. The driver for the SaveKey needs 109 bytes, plus additional code is required in both the 6502 and ARM code to actually use the SaveKey driver to read/write the data. At the moment this is my free space:

 ---- 117 bytes free for ARM Code, samples, & graphics
 ---- 7 bytes free for table data left
 ---- 4 bytes before FirstResbl
 ---- 42 bytes of Bank 6 left

---

just isn't room for it. Additionally when we had 4 quadrants the data perfectly fit into 1 SaveKey slot (4 quads * 4 levels * 4 bytes per score = 64). Adding the Epsilon Quadrant changed that (5 * 4 * 4 = 80 bytes).

 

Remove Epsilon Quadrant would solve both issues, ROM space and amount of data to save, but I think the inclusion of Epsilon is the better choice.

[+SpiceWare]

Oh cool!!!

 

One bug(?) report. I played through the ∆ sectors, and got a highscore. When I switch sector, the high score for E is 71007100.

 

wierdscore.gif - animated gif of it.

 

 

Great find! Looks like there will be a RC2 posted this evening.

[Keatah]

Maybe the same or an extension of the bug just found? The wife was playing and neglected to tell me till today she found a bit of corruption or one number being on top of another..

 

 

[+SpiceWare]

Same bug - the high score's for Epsilon Quadrant end up using the data found in gSpriteY. Those are short int values (2 bytes), while scores are int (4 bytes), so that ends up showing a "high score" based on:

• kids = Y locations for stations 1 and 2
• easy = Y locations for stations 3 and 4
• normal = Y locations for stations 5 and 6
• hard = Y locations for stations 7 and 8

The corruption is due to the font no longer including A,B,C,D,E, or F when compiled for release (SHOW_DIAGNOSTICS is set to 0 for the release build) so it's falls into the Playfield graphics if the score has A-F values in it.

 

The A-F isn't needed to display the scores because they're BCD values.

[pacman000]

I still think there should be a reverse Bosconian where YOU are the boss

ConianBoss.png

ConianBoss.bin

I think that was the concept of BOMB!'s Wall Defender, tho I've never played it.

 

 

EDIT: link to the current version (reply #439, 2017-10-08)

 

I started on a new project with Nathan back in March. It's now far enough along to share with the Homebrew forum.

 

draconian_25.png

 

 

Your goal is to destroy the space stations on each level. Use the radar, located at the bottom of the screen between the score and lives remaining, to find the stations (green dots) in relation to yourself (white dot). Destroy the stations by taking out all 6 pods

Destroy 6 pods.png

 

Or by hitting the occasionally exposed Energy Field.

Energy Pods.png

 

Be careful of asteroids and mines. Also beware of the enemy ships. They currently just fly around in formation and cannot yet be destroyed, but running into them is still deadly.

draconian_20140503_podtest_2.png

 

For this project I came up with a slick new kernel that gives me the ability to reposition an object (player[also known as sprite], missile or ball) on every single scanline. In Space Rocks I was limited to only repositioning the players, and only every-other scanline at that. Check out my Draconian Blog Entries if you're interested in learning more about this.

 

Menu Options:

• Level = select from 1 of 6 test levels.
• TV Type = Select NTSC, PAL or SECAM for proper colors based on your model 2600.

Controls:

• Left Difficulty - A= Diagnostic Display (time remaining in Vertical Blank and OverScan)
• Left Difficulty - B = Score Display
• Right Difficulty - A = stationary ship (used for diagnostic purposes)
• Right Difficulty - B = moving ship
• SELECT = return to menu
• START = start game
• Joystick = move around in sector
• Fire = shoot

If you're checking this out with Stella, be sure to turn on phosphor mode!

• open Draconian in Stella
• hit TAB for the in-game-menu
• select Game Properties
• Select the Display tab
• change Use Phosphor to Yes
• click OK
• select Exit Menu
• Reload the ROM (Control-R)

NOTE: this is an early version of Draconian. Use the link at top of this post to get to the reply with the latest version.

ROM

draconian_20140503.bin

 

Thank you for making this. Bosconian is one of my favorite classic games, and it's sorely overlooked.

[+SpiceWare]

Thank you for making this. Bosconian is one of my favorite classic games, and it's sorely overlooked.

 

 

Your welcome!

[+SpiceWare]

Ran into the ship you couldn't hit again. I'd removed the "turn it white" routine, but had changed MissileCollisions to look for SPS_DEADLY_TO_PLAYER or SPS_ENEMYSHIP so that eliminated my suspicion that the SPS_DEADLY_TO_PLAYER flag was somehow getting cleared.

 

So I took a closer look at the Collision() routine and realized it didn't have logic to handle world-wrap - so it's the same issue that was causing stations at the edge of the world to sometimes shoot or launch E-Type missiles in the wrong direction.

 

Ignoring the Y direction, and knowing that the world X size is 512 pixels, what this means is if the player's shot was at X=511 and the enemy ship was at X=0 they would overlap onscreen, but not according to the collision routine. So I took a look at Nathan's screenshot in hopes it had the player's position in the radar (50% chance due to it blinking):

 

Yep - player's position is such that the shot and enemy ship could be on either side of the world X wrap point. Problem could also be due to screen wrap in the Y direction, and if Nathan saw multiple shots go through the enemy ship then it's most likely he encounter Y world-wrap. The world Y size is 1024 pixels, so the enemy ship might be at Y = 1020 and the player's shot is at Y = 6. Same problem, overlap when drawn but not overlap per the collision routine.

 

So I've updated the Collision function to handle world wrap. I've also fixed the bug Kiwi and Keatah's wife found.

 

This is the new Release Candidate. Please play it as much as you can over the next few days and report any bugs right away.

 

For Harmony or Stella (requires Stella 5.0.2 or newer)

draconian_20171009_RC2.bin

[Andromeda Stardust]

And I think the decision to include random levels on "E" was a good one.

I'm honestly flabbergasted he was able to include it in the final build. It was one of those spur of the moment suggestions that I knew had like zero chance of becoming reality. Thanks Spice for proving me wrong!