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BLOKZ - Abbuc 2021 software compo game


popmilo

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14 hours ago, foft said:

Would it be possible to set the dmactl bit 6 and 7 to zero please? I have some extended 2x and 4x dot clock modes in the FPGA cores on these bits.

Sure, sorry for that, don't know why those bits were not zero :) It's some init code I keep copy pasting last ten years I think :)

 

blokz_dmactl_67_zero.xex

 

ps. I've tried fixing that scroll buffer bug fixed, but ntsc timing is so tight I can't do it by simply adjusting scroll buffer height... Gonna need some looking into it.
There's of course no reason why ntsc shouldn't be able to scroll such a simple looking screen... Pal just made me lazy...

 

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Thanks for making this change. I reported the problem to foft after hearing about it at Atari-Forum. While I hope my XEGS has a long life, the FPGA MiST is my long-term backup since I cannot solder to make repairs. 
 

The updated version plays great on the MiST and, I assume, on the XEGS. 
 

Bob C

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Looks like I may have found a bug in the new version, it happened shortly into the game where a completed area didn't disappear and became a wall of blocks that I couldn't see under when I shot at the area.

 

I've attached a savestate from Altirra 4.00 if that helps.

 

- James

 

image.thumb.png.b0a6ef86224c0d0824b8ffde94a39f5d.png

blokz-20211123.atstate2

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13 hours ago, popmilo said:

Sure, sorry for that, don't know why those bits were not zero :) It's some init code I keep copy pasting last ten years I think :)

 

have fun going back through your back library of software and fixing them all     :)

 

as to all of the 'bug finders' remember to use real hardware and if emulation is involved at some point, use firmware, roms, and full or precise emulation settings for all parts of the emu.

 

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On 11/24/2021 at 1:04 AM, _The Doctor__ said:

have fun going back through your back library of software and fixing them all     :)

 

as to all of the 'bug finders' remember to use real hardware and if emulation is involved at some point, use firmware, roms, and full or precise emulation settings for all parts of the emu.

 

I do use my two 800xl (one normal and other with memory expansion) for testing. Who would think about someone using some extra bits in custom fpga cores ? ;) 

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15 hours ago, Yautja said:

Any chance to add music to the title screen as originally planned?

 

- Y -

Sure. I have to do it anyway as I'm writing my own player routine for my other projects that in theory can play multichannel tracks made from simple note sequences. For blokz I took ripped songs from gameboy and nes versions and experimented with it... Problem was my parser of ripped tracker files produced some extra notes or just wrong octaves or similar so it sounded like crap at 22h in the evening of deadline :)

 

I took this "use code to create music approach" as I'm like 99% music clueless so please forgive me ;)

ps. And RMT is a pain in but sometimes so I try to stay away from it lately as much as I can... Shame there isn't much alternative to it imho.

 

 

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12 hours ago, Mathy said:

What makes RMT a pain to use?

Well, mostly me using Kickassembler as asm compiler :)

 

RMT always felt like a black magic box. I get rmt from musician, I copy past some asm, include some binary, call couple functions and it magically works. But I have to guess what zp location it uses, must not touch any byte inside some mem range... And then on top of that based on rmt song, it uses different amount of cpu cycles, sometimes jumping wildly in some frames.

 

These days, I just wanna write totally new music routine that would look-feel more like Pico8 audio part. I've seen my 5 year old kid making noise using it and it's crazy simple but effective... Of course it's hard to do same thing pico8 does with pokey, but I'm still optimistic :)

Maybe it won't be top-noth pokey music, but for couple simple music channels and some sfx stuff it should be more then enough.

 

 

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55 minutes ago, popmilo said:

Well, mostly me using Kickassembler as asm compiler :)

 

RMT always felt like a black magic box. I get rmt from musician, I copy past some asm, include some binary, call couple functions and it magically works. But I have to guess what zp location it uses, must not touch any byte inside some mem range... And then on top of that based on rmt song, it uses different amount of cpu cycles, sometimes jumping wildly in some frames.

 

These days, I just wanna write totally new music routine that would look-feel more like Pico8 audio part. I've seen my 5 year old kid making noise using it and it's crazy simple but effective... Of course it's hard to do same thing pico8 does with pokey, but I'm still optimistic :)

Maybe it won't be top-noth pokey music, but for couple simple music channels and some sfx stuff it should be more then enough.

 

 

all documented in the source code mate... ;-)

what makes RMT a pain is indeed those cycle burning on some instruments and/or using stereo... ZP usage is defined in the provided ASM.... base is 203...

unfortunately the source code is nearly incompatible to most other assemblers except MADS with it's *= usage for VARs and mem blocks all over...

 

 

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On 11/26/2021 at 1:54 PM, Heaven/TQA said:

all documented in the source code mate... ;-)

Well yeah of course :) I just need to swallow my pride and at least convert it to something kickasm could understand. There's nothing in mads that can't be done in kickass so I should do that.
Problem is that, for me it's much much much more fun to think of brand new way to play tunes on pokey :)

 

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On 11/22/2021 at 4:32 PM, foft said:

Would it be possible to set the dmactl bit 6 and 7 to zero please? I have some extended 2x and 4x dot clock modes in the FPGA cores on these bits.

Hi Mark,

 

IMHO you should "fix" the core and not expect software that runs fine on real hardware to be patched or modified. I realize it is not exactly a bug in the core, that's why I'm using "fix" with quotes. I think there should be a config option to disable any extension that might produce some kind of incompatibility with real hardware. Or the option already exists but some users don't realize that might be the problem?

 

Edited by ijor
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