Chaotic Grill (BurgerTime remake) in progress

[Marcos Moutta]

16 hours ago, splendidnut said:

Soon maybe...

 

I basically took an unannounced break from it.  And then ended up working on other projects...

 

The game is currently stuck in the "almost complete" state.  It really just needs a few things (better title screen, menu, etc.).   There's also some under-the-covers work that I want to get done (tweaks here and there).  I do have a new title screen in progress that I've worked on occasionally.

 

Finishing this project has been in the back of mind a lot recently.  Being as a few other people have also made references/proddings to this project recently... It might be time to try to finish it up. 

I wish you'd just finish up the gameplay and work on the title screen later so that I can enjoy the game right now! I mean, it's atari, who needs title screens lol

[+splendidnut]

25 minutes ago, Marcos Moutta said:

I wish you'd just finish up the gameplay and work on the title screen later so that I can enjoy the game right now! I mean, it's atari, who needs title screens lol

Gameplay is pretty much finished... according to how the arcade works.  The only big difference with my game is the bonus item is on a timer instead of being based on burger building progress.  I have some ideas for adding my own little twists which I'll allow to be turned on/off and adding some more level layouts.  That's part of the drive behind implementing a menu system.  While there already is a title screen implemented, NostAlgae37 provided some extra graphics which I'm incorporating into a new title screen.

 

You can enjoy the game right now using Stella... The download links for the latest work-in-progress release are in the first post.

[Marcos Moutta]

SMILING SAUSAGE????

[NostAlgae37]

2 hours ago, Marcos Moutta said:

SMILING SAUSAGE????

 

Yeah, he does that in the arcade version, too (check out a sprite sheet sometime if you don't believe me).  I consider it a sinister grin. 

 

[StephenJ]

Sooo glad this is moving forward!

 

[Marcos Moutta]

After getting completely addicted and playing more than I should, I'm back to report some stuff.

 

Bugs(?) I found:

Sometimes the flicker got so heavy the chef disappeared for a good three quarters of a second

Sometimes I was able to send the burgers down with monsters on top by touching the monsters instead of trapping them

 

Things I like

The graphics and music

The speed of the game (my god is it better than the mattel port) (wait was it mattel or coleco IDK)

The fun factor (which is higher than River Raid tbh)

 

Things I don't like

Too easy

The pepper on a timer

 

This is like, incredible stuff man. Please finish! (can't guarantee I'll get the cart but I will ask santa for one that's for sure)

Like for real thanks for this. Just a few tweaks and this will be one of my top 10 atari games.

 

Also, a question: does this use the enhancing chip that the champ games uses? Because mappy has like a quadrillion characters on the screen and this is limited to 4 monsters I think.

Edited May 17, 2020 by Marcos Moutta
I don't remember who made the original game :P

[Prizrak]

I do believe Mattel did the original cart for the 2600 and this game uses DPC+ bank switching so it would use a melody board on a real cart, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

[+splendidnut]

Yes, Mattel did do the original 2600 port.

 

Yes, this uses DPC+ bankswitching, so does require the Harmony/Melody hardware.  However, unlike other DPC+ games, this one DOES NOT use any custom ARM code, only the DPC+ driver.  So, it could easily run on other hardware if that hardware provides a DPC+ driver.

 

By avoiding custom ARM code, I'm also somewhat limited in what can be accomplished.  That's why the number of enemies is currently limited (both a memory constraint and a timing constraint).

[Albert]

1 minute ago, splendidnut said:

By avoiding custom ARM code, I'm also somewhat limited in what can be accomplished.  That's why the number of enemies is currently limited (both a memory constraint and a timing constraint).

Just curious why you're avoiding using custom ARM code since the game already requires the use of a Melody board/Harmony cart?

 

 ..Al

[+splendidnut]

I've avoiding ARM programming, partially because I just wanted to program in 6502 assembly language.  I also wanted to explore within the constraints of the theoretical DPC+ bankswitching scheme.  This project originally started without any inkling of what bankswitching scheme it was going to use.  Then I moved to playing around with DPC, and almost ending up sticking with that.  But at some point, mainly when trying to figure out how to do the burgers, I was attracted to the "Fast Fetch' feature of DPC+.  I never moved into the ARM programming aspect as (A) the documented toolchain required the setup and use of Linux and (B) I didn't really see any project using DPC+ as originally thought up.  It seemed that once the idea of being able to call custom ARM code was realized, that became the defacto way of using DPC+.  So really, I'm trying to explore some weird kind of middle ground of unexplored territory

[Albert]

Thanks for the explanation. 

 

 ..Al

[Marcos Moutta]

2 hours ago, splendidnut said:

I've avoiding ARM programming, partially because I just wanted to program in 6502 assembly language.  I also wanted to explore within the constraints of the theoretical DPC+ bankswitching scheme.  This project originally started without any inkling of what bankswitching scheme it was going to use.  Then I moved to playing around with DPC, and almost ending up sticking with that.  But at some point, mainly when trying to figure out how to do the burgers, I was attracted to the "Fast Fetch' feature of DPC+.  I never moved into the ARM programming aspect as (A) the documented toolchain required the setup and use of Linux and (B) I didn't really see any project using DPC+ as originally thought up.  It seemed that once the idea of being able to call custom ARM code was realized, that became the defacto way of using DPC+.  So really, I'm trying to explore some weird kind of middle ground of unexplored territory

Didn't uncle ben teach you anything? With great power comes great responsability. You're basically an ASM wizard at this point, just get around that fancy arm processor already and let me kill 6 sausages at once. >:-B

(also this is a joke by the way)

[Linndrum]

Just got around to playing this, nice work! This is awesome and it makes me hate the original version more than I did as a kid..    I get all excited when I hear someone contemplating using the DPC+   It doesn't get used enough.

[+splendidnut]

While starting to look thru the code again, I thought I would share some stats for those who are curious (As of February 2020?):
    19 source code files (6502 assembly)
    3 outside header files (vcs.h and the DPC+ headers)
    ~12,700 lines of code

[+splendidnut]

And here's something fun, a screenshot of FridgeGrid showing all the fun joys I had with squeezing everything into the display kernels:

 

 

I don't think it's quite up-to-date, but it gives the general idea

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

25 minutes ago, splendidnut said:

And here's something fun, a screenshot of FridgeGrid showing all the fun joys I had with squeezing everything into the display kernels:

I don't think it's quite up-to-date, but it gives the general idea

 

Very cool! This is the first time I've seen a full screen kernel shown like this. Great for learning.

 

- James

[christo930]

On 5/16/2020 at 11:41 AM, splendidnut said:

Gameplay is pretty much finished... according to how the arcade works.  The only big difference with my game is the bonus item is on a timer instead of being based on burger building progress.  I have some ideas for adding my own little twists which I'll allow to be turned on/off and adding some more level layouts.  That's part of the drive behind implementing a menu system.  While there already is a title screen implemented, NostAlgae37 provided some extra graphics which I'm incorporating into a new title screen.

 

You can enjoy the game right now using Stella... The download links for the latest work-in-progress release are in the first post.

Just an FYI, the bonus item thing is broken.  It wraps around at FF and goes back to zero (if you don't want to add another bit, maybe just stick at ff) and it is way too easy.

I got well over a hundred k (might have been over 200k. I just remember it was really high) on my first real go at it and I basically quit with a bunch of peppers (and that was after losing the first 16) and extra men (iirc, it's been a few months).  My HS on the Colecovision version is only a little over a hundred k.  I seem to recall a couple of bugs in it, but I cannot remember for the life of me what they were.  The game looks fantastic though. Just needs a little tweaking on the difficulty.

[+splendidnut]

6 hours ago, christo930 said:

Just an FYI, the bonus item thing is broken.  It wraps around at FF and goes back to zero (if you don't want to add another bit, maybe just stick at ff) and it is way too easy.

Yeah, I agree.  The current implementation (free-running timer with high bit signalling active state) was a quick and dirty way to get the bonus item working.  Nice for testing purposes, but too easy for general gameplay.  So, I'll switch the bonus item to utilize the burger count instead of the timer... when I look at the code again.

 

Currently, I have a bunch of changes sitting on my computer that I need to finish up/clean up.  One of the changes being a pretty major overhaul of the burger dropping system, which should take care of the really oddball bugs which occurred when dropping burgers.  I still need to fix some  scheduling issues with the burger logic so that I can get my scanline count stable again.  That may be the only thing that's stopping me from releasing another build.  I'm not sure, as I haven't looked at the code in a few months... and currently, I've been focused on getting more done with Paint The City.  But I might take a look in the near future... Despite the appearance of being almost done, there's still quite a bit I want to do with ChaoticGrill.

[+D Train]

1 hour ago, splendidnut said:

scheduling issues with the burger logic

probably not a lot of industries where you get to use terminology like that.  other than fast food, of course.  this would also double as an all purpose excuse for being late:  "Holiday traffic on the LIE was terrible, and then we had scheduling issues with the burger logic.  We're lucky we made it at all!

 

1 hour ago, splendidnut said:

there's still quite a bit I want to do with ChaoticGrill.

WOOOOO!

 

enjoy working on paint the city and then maybe picking this up again will be easier.  I haven't done any programming in a *long* time (and even then it wasn't very good or sophisticated), but I know what it's like to need to put something down and walk away from it until it's fun or rewarding again.

 

[BladeJunker]

Just tried it out and it seems great. Lol, I don't mind it being a little easier, I'm rubbish at the game.

[StephenJ]

This game is turning out to be better than I hoped...really great!

Splendidnut,
Is it possible to make the music loop seamlessly (i.e. no noticeable end...and restarting)?

 

Looking forward to the final product!,

Stephen

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

ZeroPage Homebrew is playing Chaotic Grill on tomorrow's (Fri Jul 23, 2021) stream LIVE on Twitch at 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 7PM GMT!

 

ZPH Twitch Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

We will be playing it as part of ZPH's most anticipated unreleased/unfinished games playthrough and catching up to the current status of the game to see where it's at! Hope everyone can watch!

 

Games:

• Chaotic Grill (2019 WIP) by Philip Blackman @splendidnut
• Spies in the Night 2 (2019) by Jared Gray West @graywest
• RoboMechanik (2019 WIP) by Krzysztof Kluczek @KK/Altair
• Paranoid (2020 WIP) by eshu @eshu

(SET TO 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY!)

 

[mickmuze]

Hey Splendidnut, just wanted to say that this is such a great game and incredibly cool to have running this well on the Atari! To me, this is a very memorable project. I hope you do keep going with it, not sure if you’re feeling stuck, or burnt out but stick with it! I remember playing a lot of burger time as a kid at my cousin’s house on her NES and this version you are developing is spot on 

[Silvio Mogno]

On 5/18/2020 at 1:53 AM, splendidnut said:

I've avoiding ARM programming, partially because I just wanted to program in 6502 assembly language.  I also wanted to explore within the constraints of the theoretical DPC+ bankswitching scheme.  This project originally started without any inkling of what bankswitching scheme it was going to use.  Then I moved to playing around with DPC, and almost ending up sticking with that.  But at some point, mainly when trying to figure out how to do the burgers, I was attracted to the "Fast Fetch' feature of DPC+.  I never moved into the ARM programming aspect as (A) the documented toolchain required the setup and use of Linux and (B) I didn't really see any project using DPC+ as originally thought up.  It seemed that once the idea of being able to call custom ARM code was realized, that became the defacto way of using DPC+.  So really, I'm trying to explore some weird kind of middle ground of unexplored territory

You really don't need to use Linux. You can also work on Windows with GCC compiler.

[StephenJ]

On 11/4/2021 at 12:19 AM, mickmuze said:

Hey Splendidnut, just wanted to say that this is such a great game and incredibly cool to have running this well on the Atari! To me, this is a very memorable project. I hope you do keep going with it, not sure if you’re feeling stuck, or burnt out but stick with it! I remember playing a lot of burger time as a kid at my cousin’s house on her NES and this version you are developing is spot on 

My thoughts Exactly!!