The official DEEP ZONE thread - Artrag/IntellivisionRevolution

[mthompson]

1 hour ago, Peripheral said:

I hadn't realized until poking into the sources a bit,

that the game uses Intellivoice!  So now I throw -v1

when invoking jzintv.

Artrag is a bit of a sorcerer. The game has voices without needing an Intellivoice. With ECS enabled (-s1) they sound even better.

 

P.S. There's no harm in keeping Intellivoice enabled all the time. You never know what you might hear.

[Rickster8]

7 hours ago, Peripheral said:

Thanks to this thread I took a look back into this game.

 

My copy came from the 2018 IntyBasic programming contest,

from which the zip file included the game's source files.

 

I hadn't realized until poking into the sources a bit,

that the game uses Intellivoice!  So now I throw -v1

when invoking jzintv.

 

I used to play the Gorf arcade game back in my college days,

and distinctly remember the computerized voice.

 

The title screen has an option to play all the sound effects.

Would be neat if there was an option to play all

the voice effects.

Yeah that's the cool thing about all these threads even if they go back years, you can still resurrect them...... 👍

[wolfy62]

So I am having the game of my life and found some sort of invincibility power up in level 10 or 11.

I reach level 16 and the game pretty much just ends.

You can move and shoot,but there are no enemies,ways to die or lose your man.I was able to increase my final score a little by detonating my last bomb.

So I guess I beat the game!👍😄

Edited November 6, 2023 by wolfy62

[wolfy62]

Well,I was wrong the game must have malfunctioned somehow on Level 16,because now I made it to level 17.

I have a very definite strategy now on how to excel at the game.

[Peripheral]

23 hours ago, mthompson said:

Artrag is a bit of a sorcerer. The game has voices without needing an Intellivoice. With ECS enabled (-s1) they sound even better.

 

P.S. There's no harm in keeping Intellivoice enabled all the time. You never know what you might hear.

Interesting!

 

I guess I was thrown off by the sources including a directory named "voice",

and the make.bat including "-v1" when it invokes jzintv.

 

But I see nothing else in the source that uses IntyBasic VOICE commands,

nor any inline assembly that might.  I suppose it could be creatively

buried in various DATA declarations, but that's quite a stretch.

 

Thanks for the clarification!

[wolfy62]

Rick's latest high score

And my latest,mine being the top picture. 

Rick will pass that score next time he plays!😄

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by wolfy62

[Rickster8]

5 hours ago, wolfy62 said:

Rick's latest high score

And my latest,mine being the top picture. 

Rick will pass that score next time he plays!😄

 

Lol, nah, we both wanted to get over 20k and we both did so I think I'm good....  

 

The game is alot of fun, but you can only get a high score like this if you get the continuous invincibility pod. If you can keep riding that storm you can rack up the points, but the game doesn't always afford you that luxury.... So you could play 10 games before you see that again..... Also starting over is SOOOOOOOOO SLLLLLOOOOOWWWWW!!!!! 😒

Edited November 7, 2023 by Rickster8
Wording

[artrag]

Probably I should have betatested it a bit more... sorry for the inconvenience.

About voices, I have decomposed the speech in tones and encoded them in data. Usually 3 tones are sufficient to get intelligible voice, but if Ecs is active, 6 tones per  frame are used.

 

[wolfy62]

4 hours ago, artrag said:

Probably I should have betatested it a bit more... sorry for the inconvenience.

About voices, I have decomposed the speech in tones and encoded them in data. Usually 3 tones are sufficient to get intelligible voice, but if Ecs is active, 6 tones per  frame are used.

 

No,not at all!

It's a great game and you did an amazing job on it. Thank you!👍👏😊

[artrag]

About invisible objects,  the problem is that the game does sprite multiplexing to increase the number of bullets and items on the screen.

On emulation, all frames appear correctly and all objects are visible.

On real HW, some digital TV sets do not display odd or even frames, because they implement interlacing removal. The result is that some object does not appear or appear only in horizontal stripes.

In this case try changing the settings of the TV in order to avoid interlacing removal. By trial and error I had some improvement on my Sony TV set.

 

[Rickster8]

13 hours ago, artrag said:

About invisible objects,  the problem is that the game does sprite multiplexing to increase the number of bullets and items on the screen.

On emulation, all frames appear correctly and all objects are visible.

On real HW, some digital TV sets do not display odd or even frames, because they implement interlacing removal. The result is that some object does not appear or appear only in horizontal stripes.

In this case try changing the settings of the TV in order to avoid interlacing removal. By trial and error I had some improvement on my Sony TV set.

 

Yeah when I play this in emulation I am using the HDMI hookup which gives a clear TV picture. When I played it on Original Hardware I was using an AV hookup which is NOT as clear. I do have an RGB hookup for Original Hardware which I will try out tonight. I'm betting that's a pretty clear picture as well which will afford me a better score..... 👍