Entry 2018: Boot Hill

[digress]

Screen capture but it seems to be picking up my microphone too.

 

 

How are you recording those videos? It looks crisp like an emulator, but I'm hearing background sounds like if you were filming a TV.

[Steve Jones]

looking good, one tiny suggestion, on the menu screen instead of Z-mode can you say Zombie Mode,

just slightly more obvious for new players.

[DZ-Jay]

Any update on Boot Hill?

[digress]

I haven't looked at it lately. I was a bit concerned with the poaching that had happened to artrags project being sold by that guy renaming it to gyrus. I was expecting any day to see something named "Snow Boot Hill" or something show up.

 

That's not cool. It's very discouraging when people do things like that.

 

I'll work on it some more soon. I had a few more things to do. Might put in some intellivoice . Most things I intended are done already though.

 

Any update on Boot Hill?

[DZ-Jay]

I haven't looked at it lately. I was a bit concerned with the poaching that had happened to artrags project being sold by that guy renaming it to gyrus. I was expecting any day to see something named "Snow Boot Hill" or something show up.

 

That's not cool. It's very discouraging when people do things like that.

 

I'll work on it some more soon. I had a few more things to do. Might put in some intellivoice . Most things I intended are done already though.

 

I understand. It's a shame really. May I suggest then just posting textual progress reports and perhaps a game-play video or two.

 

That way we can all keep abreast of your progress, and you do not have to feel like someone will steal your still-undercooked game.

 

In any case, I encourage everyone to share their progress and perhaps work-in-progress ROMs; and to ignore the "Dino Yachayas" of the world. Our community is small and tight, and a few bad apples shouldn't spoil the fun for the rest of us.

 

dZ.

[digress]

Here is a rom. for testing only.

 

known problems

-don't set the speed to slow

-occasional bg graphical glitch on zombies level

 

Happy Canada Day & in 3 days Happy Independence Day.

boothill.rom

[mthompson]

Thanks for the update. I've recently put MAME on my Raspberry Pi and have been playing the original '77 Boot Hill game with the backdrop art in place. Your Intv version captures the flavor of the original and adds neat updates. Here are my suggestions:

 

• Pressing zero toggles the music on/off at the menu, but pressing zero during the game only turns it off. I'd expect to be able to turn it back on. Great music, BTW.

• Those robotic, unintelligible Intellivoice phonemes really don't fit the game. After "Let's play," it's just incomprehensible noise. Sorry, but I'd eliminate the voice, or just have it say "Draw" and then stop talking.

• The colon after "Time" during the game seems odd; normally it would be used between the minutes and seconds.

• I finally figured out the aim & shoot mechanic with the side buttons, so that made it more enjoyable as well. Until there's a manual to give directions, after pressing 1 to start the game, maybe the screen could briefly say "Use side buttons to aim high, low, or straight."

• One time when playing in zombie mode (no other options changed) I shot straight to the right while pressing right, and the game went back to the options menu. I pressed 1 to restart and the game screen came up with music and timer, but no zombies appeared. I had to reset the game. I couldn't reproduce the problem, though.

• I think the zombies could be more aggressive. It's too easy to walk right up to them and plug 'em.

• The two gunfighter figures on the options menu still seem randomly placed. You could eliminate the copyright info on that screen and put them near the bottom, maybe with the wagon or some other graphic between them. Would be a nice compliment to the great title screen.

 

This has really come along nicely. Thanks again for letting us try it out.

[digress]

if you press 9 on the keypad you can end the game early. That's probably what happened. I put it in there for a soft reset while play testing options.

 

The inttelivoice is not great . So i agree with that too.

 

Yeah I had the shoot mechanics different before where you would hold aim and push up or down or across

now its using the 3 buttons with each one shooting and aiming up down or across.

 

"• I think the zombies could be more aggressive. It's too easy to walk right up to them and plug 'em."

this is a good change. I usually hear I've made the game too hard. I was going for pleasant and not too hard. So i'll put in a increase in speed and perhaps some dodging after round 4 or 5.

 

it's good suggestion for the options screen. I'll probably do that.

[Steve Jones]

Hey here's a thought, for the shooting, upwards, straight or downwards, would you be able to map those to the keypad, like in tron deadly discs?

 

so 1 would be up left, 4 would be straight left, 7 down left, and 3,6,9 the corresponding shots to the right?

 

I have no idea what that would entail programming-wise, just that it might be a bit more intuitive.

 

Enjoying the game regardless.

 

Cheers, Steve

[digress]

I can map it to both so you can use it either way. Sure i'll do that. 1,4,7 or 3,6,9.

 

I'm running this in an emulator btw. I havn't been able to test it on real hardware yet. Can canyone tell me if the 3 buttons for shoot up across and down make sense.

 

 

Hey here's a thought, for the shooting, upwards, straight or downwards, would you be able to map those to the keypad, like in tron deadly discs?

 

so 1 would be up left, 4 would be straight left, 7 down left, and 3,6,9 the corresponding shots to the right?

 

I have no idea what that would entail programming-wise, just that it might be a bit more intuitive.

 

Enjoying the game regardless.

 

Cheers, Steve

[mthompson]

You're kind of between a rock and a hard place with this game. The arcade had two joysticks and you're stuck with mapping the same function to a single controller. The side buttons are natural for shooting, but with an appropriate overlay the keypad would make sense, too. The only problem then is that you can't use the disc and the keypad simultaneously. I hate that shooting limitation in Night Stalker.

 

I can imagine that needing to press separate keys to shoot left or right could be a pain as well. If I'm facing right and press 4, does the bullet go to the left?

 

That said, I don't see anything wrong with giving a player more than one way to shoot. I'm also a fan of taking advantage of the keypad when it's appropriate. I think you'll just have to see what feels right for your game.

[Steve Jones]

or what about just keys that shoot up, straight or down, in whatever direction you are facing.

i just find it a little unintuitive using the side buttons on the controller, since there's only 2 on each side,

I honestly don't remember which button shoots which way and I just played it yesterday.

 

any one of 123 could be shoot up, 456 shoot straight, 789 shoot down,

I'm right-handed, the way i hold the controller I use my right thumb on the disc and use my left thumb/fingers for side buttons and keypad.

[digress]

I previously had it as you hold aim then press up to aim up,down or across. release the aim button and it'll stay aimed in that direction til you want to re-aim. I may put that back in too.

[+nanochess]

I previously had it as you hold aim then press up to aim up,down or across. release the aim button and it'll stay aimed in that direction til you want to re-aim. I may put that back in too.

You could put it as a controller option.

[mthompson]

Maybe the 2, 5, and 8 keys would be good for shooting up, down, or straight in either direction.

[digress]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GftR4KXmPtQ&feature=youtu.be

 

-increased speed of zombies

-increased max # of zombies

added changes to game select screen working on final stats .

Still not counting zombie hits correctly yet

[digress]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfANRFeQ_mQ&feature=youtu.be

 

added some new scenes

added a more colourful environment later on.

fixed some issues.added 2 ways to aim

-3 buttons each button shoots with up down or straight acrosss

- or 1 button shoot and another button you hold down when you want to change to aim angle

now with up to 10 zombies and 1 bad guys eventually if you survive long enough. Should be much tougher now.

 

I have attached the rom for review/testing purposes only.

boothill.rom

[DZ-Jay]

This last revision won't run on my computer. It just shows a blank screen in pink, that after a few seconds changes to green.

 

A few seconds later, it flickers with some garbage and goes back to full green. Eventually, the game program crashes by sending the CPU off into the weeds.

 

-dZ.

[artrag]

Same here with jzintv4droid, black screen

[mthompson]

I had the same result as DZ, and no luck on real hardware either.

[Kiwi]

It didn't boot in JZINTV. I also tried booting it with BlueMSX just in case you posted the Colecovision version by accident. No dice.

[digress]

Weird. If i run it using the sdk intyrun it runs but not if I try to run it using a bat file jzintv. I'll fix it. I never noticed because I was always running it directly in the sdk command line intyrun

[DZ-Jay]

Weird. If i run it using the sdk intyrun it runs but not if I try to run it using a bat file jzintv. I'll fix it. I never noticed because I was always running it directly in the sdk command line intyrun

 

Let me take a look. The IntyBASIC SDK uses a particular command line.

 

UPDATE: It does work when run from the IntyBASIC SDK "intyrun" command. The actual command line is:

jzintv -e miniexec.bin -g minigrom.bin --displaysize=3 -v1 -q 'bin/boothill.rom'

The only difference I see is that the EXEC ROMs are the "mini" versions. Do you suppose that it's failing on the "regular" ROMs?

[digress]

i tried the older rom above and that works fine from a batch file launch but not this newest rom. perhaps this mini grom was using less memory as i have increased the size of the program a fair amount since. i'm within the ram for max 8 bit & 16 bit variables. wouldn't have compiled if not.

[+nanochess]

i tried the older rom above and that works fine from a batch file launch but not this newest rom. perhaps this mini grom was using less memory as i have increased the size of the program a fair amount since. i'm within the ram for max 8 bit & 16 bit variables. wouldn't have compiled if not.

It's because you wrote over the $7000 area, the standard Intellivision EXEC believes it's an extension and jumps directly to $7000, crashing immediately.

 

I've used the rom2bin utility included with jzintv:

 

Decoded 49737 bytes
Preloaded memory ranges:
    $2100 - $23FF (3 pages)
    $4800 - $4BFF (4 pages)
    $5000 - $9BFF (76 pages)
    $A000 - $A8FF (9 pages)
    $C000 - $C4FF (5 pages)
Readable memory ranges:
    $2100 - $23FF (3 pages)
    $4800 - $4BFF (4 pages)
    $5000 - $9BFF (76 pages)
    $A000 - $A8FF (9 pages)
    $C000 - $C4FF (5 pages)
Writeable memory ranges:
Narrow (8-bit wide) memory ranges:
Bank-switched memory ranges:
Config file: boothill.cfg
BIN file:    boothill.bin

The allowed areas are:

 

$2100-$2fff
$4810-$4fff
$5000-$6fff (IntyBASIC start)
$7100-$7fff
$a000-$bfff
$C100-$ffff

Note how the areas $2000-$20ff and $7000-$70ff are avoided.