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Carrot Kingdom™ - Work in Progress 32K! - New Demo 10-16-2017


Jinroh

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I'd highly suggest testing these edge cases as well, as they can cause the screen to roll between scenes.

/signed

 

If you think about this too late, you may get in trouble. E.g. when the timer (TIM64T) values for the scenarios differ, then you can hardly avoid scanline count changes when switching between scenarios. Also exiting one scenario and entering another one should always happen in the same timer block ("vertical blank" or "overscan").

 

Also, please make sure the scan line count is even, else PAL will display no colors (not even the wrong ones ;)), just grays. There is a setting in the Stella menu (Tab/Video Settings/General/PAL color loss) which emulates this.

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Interestingly, the game actually doesn't crash on my VCS, so I shot a short video showing how bad the jitter gets. The zip archive also has a second video showing the slight jump when the fireball sound is played.

attachicon.gifcarrot-kingdom-jitter.zip

 

Looks the same as my jitter/roll emulation in the later versions of Stella.

 

There are slight differences between Atari systems than can cause bugs in code to trigger problems on some systems but not others. Despite all the testing, a bug in Medieval Mayhem first showed up about a year after it was released when David Mrozek (aka Video Game Critic) was working on his review.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Thanks so much for the support! Thanks as well for the kind words Papa, I am glad you like Jinny and her escapades! :D I do too!

 

New update coming shortly, sorry for the delay!

 

UPDATE: Here we go, attached is the demo that fixes the jittering while scrolling according to Spiceware's great jittery emulation in Stella. The transitional screens have a bit of jitter, but they're on the plate for later.

Edited by Jinroh
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  • 2 weeks later...

Ah interesting, any video you can show off? What kinda mod does it have? Just curious to get some more info.

 

Anyone else having problems on any specific hardware?

 

I don't have a Vader, but the the six switch and 4-switch we tested worked ok, along with Spiceware's roll/jitter emulation in Stella.

 

Have more time to work on the core game, so I've been getting level 2 further along. :)

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The game screen's outputting 287 scanlines, which is way too many for NTSC. Some displays can handle it, like my C= 1084S, but most found in the US cannot. You need to get that down to 262.

 

post-3056-0-50409000-1469571714_thumb.png

 

That crash on real hardware that I experienced before no longer occurs :thumbsup:

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The game screen's outputting 287 scanlines, which is way too many for NTSC. Some displays can handle it, like my C= 1084S, but most found in the US cannot. You need to get that down to 262.

 

attachicon.gifScreen Shot 2016-07-26 at 5.21.36 PM.png

 

That crash on real hardware that I experienced before no longer occurs :thumbsup:

 

Ah radical, thanks Spiceware, I had it in my mind that it was 292 so I must be dyslexic or something, but that is helpful. :D I will address that. Makes sense then must just be the TVs we were testing on that didn't have any trouble.

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262 is the official NTSC standard which produces exactly 60Hz. At least +/-10 scanlines are 100% safe, so you can tailor the screen size, CPU time available and refresh rate a bit to your needs.

 

Even scanlines are not a must for NTSC but for PAL. So if you plan a PAL60 version, you should consider this.

 

Often forgotten are also the scenario transitions (e.g. from title to game and back). Keeping the scanline count constant then, requires some extra planning and careful programming.

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While play-testing today, I found a small issue.

 

I died by touching the flame, but the sound registers didn't clear.

So, I heard a grinding sound (like one note from the fire sound effect) that held throughout the "you have 2 lives remaining" screen.

Probably an easy fix (LDA #0, STA AUDV0, STA AUDV1 on the 'lives remaining' screen).

 

Thought I'd share this small thing. Will keep playing it and try to get some more feedback.

 

-John

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Just got around to playing it. I can't get around the second enemy. And it feels like I have to force the joystick right to go right. And why bother giving the player a second chance at not dying if all they're going to do is just ram into the same enemy again? And I can't jump very high. I guess I just suck at this game.

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