Rob 'n' Banks: Weekly Development Log

[BIGHMW]

I like the way it's progressing, the movement is very smooth, especially with my Best-modded CX24 7800 stick used through Redemption 5200 7800 Edition, great job so far keep it up, will await the next build, and just like I followed Intellidiscs, I will keep following this thread too, as well as this game and its builds along the way, but great start to it so far.  

[+sramirez2008]

1 hour ago, Ryan Witmer said:

I spent some time fixing up the movement code and playing around with it on my 5200.  It seems pretty good to me, might need a few adjustments here and there.

 

Here's a movement test build for anyone that wants to try it out.  As is the custom, there's a build ID string 256 bytes from the end of the ROM that says Movement test, 6/30/2021.

 

You can wander around the maze.  The side tunnels work so you can play with those too. 

robnbanks.bin 32 kB · 5 downloads

Broke out the 4-port (with Best Electronics Gold Lifetime CX52) for a "proper" test. Nothing but the best for you Ryan. The movement is silky smooth and I like that you have the ability (a la Pac-Man) to 'telegraph' your moves around corners. I tried the top/bottom doors and doing so currently brakes the player movement. Once you take a door, you're be able to go through walls. Looks great...love the progress and thanks for the ROM? 

 

[+Ryan Witmer]

31 minutes ago, sramirez2008 said:

I like that you have the ability (a la Pac-Man) to 'telegraph' your moves around corners.

This is something I was specifically trying to do.  The area that might need some more work is when you press a diagonal.  One of the two directions has to take priority over the other and right now it's the horizontal.  I'm not sure if this is the way I want to handle that in the long term.

 

33 minutes ago, sramirez2008 said:

I tried the top/bottom doors and doing so currently brakes the player movement. Once you take a door, you're be able to go through walls.

Leaving through the escape doors will cause the game to lose track of your location and I expect everything to get nuts at that point.  In the longer term, leaving through those door will trigger the end of stage sequence, of course.

 

This weekend I'll probably start looking at coin pickups.  The logic for this is going to be a little weird, but I have a feeling that it will be simpler than I think once I actually start working on it.

 

Thanks for the testing, glad everything is looking good.

[+Ryan Witmer]

Got some good stuff done this weekend, I think this video pretty much says it all:

 

 

[+sramirez2008]

2 hours ago, Ryan Witmer said:

Got some good stuff done this weekend, I think this video pretty much says it all:

 

 

Looking good.  Thanks for the update.

[BIGHMW]

2 hours ago, Ryan Witmer said:

Got some good stuff done this weekend, I think this video pretty much says it all:

 

 

Got a ROM handy so we can try this build out by any chance? I love the progress you're making, great work.  

Edited July 4, 2021 by BIGHMW

[+Ryan Witmer]

On 7/4/2021 at 4:11 PM, BIGHMW said:

Got a ROM handy so we can try this build out by any chance? I love the progress you're making, great work.  

I think it's a little too soon for that.  I'd like to get some more gameplay stuff in there before I do any more releases, don't want too many early versions floating around to confuse people.

 

That being said, I did get some cool stuff done.  First, I added the beginning sequence where you enter the bank and the door closes behind you.

 

I also closed off one of the side tunnels.  The tunnel that closes changes as you play the game, but I'm still trying to figure out the pattern.  I thought it changed every stage, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  More research is needed.

 

I also got the coin counter set up and open the escape doors once you've collected them all:

 

That's supposed to say "OUT" like the arcade game, but the resolution is really tight.  Right now you can just go out the doors and into the mysterious void beyond.

[Greg2600]

Looks cool so far!

[phuzaxeman]

I played this today. Pretty fun. 

[knievel1]

Looks great!

Been on a Lock N' Chase kick lately, playing the Intellivision / Coleco / Arcade & Atari 2600 versions. 

The 2600 version is quite different but one could argue it's the most fun....

Very much looking forward to this & thanks for your dedication. 

 

[+Cafeman]

I have never seen Lock n Chase in an arcade. Enjoyed the 2600 port.

[+Ryan Witmer]

12 hours ago, Cafeman said:

I have never seen Lock n Chase in an arcade. Enjoyed the 2600 port.

I don't think I've ever seen the physical arcade machine, but I've had it on Mame for years.  Grew up with both the 2600 and Intellivision versions.  They each have their merits.

[+Ryan Witmer]

I started working on the green gates today.

 

There are four of them in total.  Two always show up in the same place in the center of the maze, the other two wander around.  At first I thought the wandering ones were random, but after some observation of the arcade game I see that they actually follow a pattern.

 

I started with the center gates, since they're the simplest and never move.  I got a basic system in place for them.

 

 

While working on this, I realized a bunch of problems with it, but the basic idea I'm using for this seems OK.  I might spend the rest of the day trying to work out the details and might have the other two gates in place at some point.  I need to spend more time watching the arcade game to figure out the pattern.

 

A lot of what I'm doing here will be reused for the player's locked doors, once I get to doing those.

[BIGHMW]

Hi @Ryan Witmer, how are things going on Rob 'n' Banks? We haven't heard anything in quite a while, it's ben about a week since your last post, thanks.  

[+Ryan Witmer]

I got the two "wandering gates" working this weekend.  I spent some time studying the pattern the follow in the arcade game and was able to recreate it.

 

 

The gates don't actually stop you yet, that's the next thing I need to work on.  I was able to do this in a way that will allow me to reuse a lot of the logic for the player created doors, once I get around to doing those.

[+Ryan Witmer]

This morning I got gate collision working, at least in a simple way.  There might be more to this, I need to spend some more time goofing around with the arcade game, but the foundation is there.

 

Here's another test build.  This one has the string "Green gate test, 7/31/2021" 256 bytes from the end.

 

In this test, the green gates do their thing, the escape doors open when you collect all the coins, and there's still no end of stage detection so if you wander out of the maze you're on your own.

 

Next up is trying to get the player's locked doors to work.  This is going to require quite a lot of planning, so I might not write much more code this weekend.  I also need to figure out the different ways the player's doors interact with the green gates.  Lots of details to explore.

robnbanks.bin

[BIGHMW]

Nicely done @Ryan Witmer!!! I dig the way this is progressing, you, are a programming genius, and I also love that you decided to study the arcade version so you could replicate the exact same elements in this classic, when will we see the cops make their appearance who would be chasing our robber???

[+sramirez2008]

Thanks for the latest bin. Played the arcade coin-op last night (The Game Preserve - NASA “Space City Houston” area).

[+Ryan Witmer]

Unfortunately, I just don't have time to work on this this weekend.  Been thinking about the doors though, and I might have a plan starting to come together.

[+sramirez2008]

16 minutes ago, Ryan Witmer said:

Unfortunately, I just don't have time to work on this this weekend.  Been thinking about the doors though, and I might have a plan starting to come together.

No worries and please keep first things, first.  I still need to play around with your last build (July 31st) and I expect to get to it tomorrow.

[+sramirez2008]

On 7/31/2021 at 1:48 PM, Ryan Witmer said:

 

In this test, the green gates do their thing,

Confirmed.

On 7/31/2021 at 1:48 PM, Ryan Witmer said:

the escape doors open when you collect all the coins,

Confirmed. Doors change to “Out” as expected.

On 7/31/2021 at 1:48 PM, Ryan Witmer said:

there's still no end of stage detection so if you wander out of the maze you're on your own.

Confirmed. You wander about. 

 

 

[+Ryan Witmer]

I got started on implementing the player's doors this weekend.  This first step in this is to track where the door should show up, the last "door junction" that the player passed.

 

I came up with a plan for detecting and storing this information, and got it done for the vertical doors.  I'm doing these ones first because they won't interact with the green gates, and the horizontal doors are much more complicated because of that.  I don't actually have the doors in place yet, but I got the location detection working.

 

Next step is to actually make some doors appear.

[+Ryan Witmer]

So here's the first look at a player's locked door:

 

 

This is still really buggy, but my plan is working out.  The vertical doors turned out to be simpler than I thought they would be.  Time to start ironing out all the bugs.

[+Ryan Witmer]

Got a video and a test ROM this weekend!

 

Here's another developer diary video showing off some of the stuff I got done and discussing some of the bugs I know about:

 

 

Also, here's a new test build for anyone that wants play around with the locked doors.  Only the vertical doors work right now, as explained in the video, and there are still a few small glitches with them.  This build's ID is "Vertical door test, 8/28/2021", 256 bytes from the end of the file as always.

 

robnbanks.bin

[+Ryan Witmer]

Today I went back and redid the code that detects where the locked doors should go.  I realized that I was doing it a bit wrong, and spent some more time studying the arcade game to get this right.  I'm pretty confident that it's correct now, and I also had to do a bunch of the work for the horizontal doors in order to get this working right.

 

I still haven't done the horizontal doors, but the foundation is there and I'm now at the point where I can start studying the arcade game to figure out how they should behave around the green gates.  This is probably where I stop for the weekend, I have some stuff going on tomorrow, but this is actually a really big step in getting this game working so I'm pretty happy with it.