+karri Posted February 12, 2022 Share Posted February 12, 2022 55 minutes ago, Songbird said: Guess what feature I just added yesterday? eeprom for saving scores 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted February 12, 2022 Author Share Posted February 12, 2022 Good guess, but no. That will be one of the last things I add. Right now, it's all about the visuals... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fadest Posted February 12, 2022 Share Posted February 12, 2022 (edited) Zooming for ennemy waves incoming ? Edited February 12, 2022 by Fadest 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted February 12, 2022 Author Share Posted February 12, 2022 We have a winner! Sprite scaling now fully implemented for invader waves entering the screen. 7 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColecoGamer Posted February 12, 2022 Share Posted February 12, 2022 (edited) On 2/9/2022 at 12:51 PM, jgkspsx said: Holy crow! Amazing work @agradeneu! It would be nice if “Lexis Mode” were an easter egg that could be unlocked for old time’s sake, though The new art style looks incredible! Nothing beats a talented pixel artist! Edit: Congrats!!! Edited February 12, 2022 by ColecoGamer 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted February 15, 2022 Author Share Posted February 15, 2022 Latest challenge: I've noticed that the invaders start moving a bit slow when the screen is filled with them (which is the default behavior for the secret game in Lexis, by the way). Yet this shouldn't really be a problem, because the Lynx has no problem pushing out 50-100 sprites per frame. So what's the deal? Glad you asked! Turns out the RNG in Microvaders is a very slow multi-iteration process. I used Handy to clock it a few times, and it recorded 7,000 CPU cycles to generate one random number. The scale of this number doesn't really make sense, as the 65SC02 CPU is only running around 4MHz (4,000 cycles per second), so I think Handy is not properly counting clocks per instruction. To confirm, I stepped through a few simple instructions one by one, and sure enough Handy is recording 3x or even 4x the clocks for a single assembly line of code. That's something that would be nice to fix just for debugging purposes. But still, keep the 7,000 cycles in mind. I started poking around to see how to generate proper RNGs on a 8-bit CPU, and found very good and compact examples all written in assembly. Dropped a new implementation in place of the old, and got it down to 279 cycles. That's more than a 20x improvement! Plus it still seems to generate RNGs just fine. Now I can fill the screen with invaders, and no slow down! 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sramirez2008 Posted February 15, 2022 Share Posted February 15, 2022 Please provide a small snippet of this running when you think it appropriate.? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted February 15, 2022 Author Share Posted February 15, 2022 Definitely! But first I want to get some tiny features implemented and some gameplay tweaks too. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted February 17, 2022 Author Share Posted February 17, 2022 9 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr_Wiggles Posted February 17, 2022 Share Posted February 17, 2022 Awesome! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Dangerous Posted February 17, 2022 Share Posted February 17, 2022 Very excited for this one! Who doesn't like Galaga? 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leonard Smith Posted February 17, 2022 Share Posted February 17, 2022 The sound and music are reminiscent of what you'd hear on a TurboGrafx / PC Engine game. Very distinctive. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted February 17, 2022 Author Share Posted February 17, 2022 I captured that video with Mednafen, although I typically use Handy for testing and screenshots since Handy has the built-in rudimentary debugger (perfect for assembly hackers ). Has anyone else noticed that Mednafen doesn't use pure black for 0/0/0? I'm guessing it picks some median value for each Lynx palette combo, as all the colors look a little washed out compared to Handy. I guess the real test is how it looks on a real Lynx though. Anyway, here is a screenshot showcasing new sprites when the small invaders break formation and attack! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WesleyrpgAust Posted February 25, 2022 Share Posted February 25, 2022 What an awesome looking game, can't wait to buy this one! Can i add some suggestions at the expense of getting my name in the credits? Put the score in small white text at the very top of the screen (maybe use the same font as Namco's Galaga's score text) Delete the score down the bottom. (Just rely on the score up the top) Move the main ship lower to the point where it say's score now. Move the Alien ships up a little...not much just a tiny bit, maybe to where the upper score is now. Try and improve the scrolling speed of the invaders which will make them move alot more smoothly! If i can think of any more ideas i'll let you know! Idea 1. Put a Level number in the bottom row on the right side with the number of ships on the left as is. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted February 25, 2022 Author Share Posted February 25, 2022 Thanks for the feedback! Glad to see fans excited about this game. Just to clarify on the two scores, the top is the high score, the bottom is the current score. I cannot easily change the font in the game, but can reposition the text (in fact I already have compared to the original code). I could also add a label next to the top score to make it more obvious. I've already slightly increased the size of the playfield relative to the original, but cannot increase it more without negatively affecting other mechanisms in the game such as rate of fire and number of bullets on-screen. Another example is the game has "movement pattern" data which tells each invader where to go for the next frame. Even something seemingly simple like "move all invaders up 4 pixels" would actually require hand-edits of hundreds of bytes of data. Not sure I trust myself to get all those edits done without injecting a new bug. I will likely include a level number on-screen to help the player have a sense of progression. I did something similar in Centipede. Although in this game, your progression is much more closely aligned to your score, since you have to destroy all enemies to advance. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted February 26, 2022 Author Share Posted February 26, 2022 Looking for opinions on the "pixel shatter" explosion effect. For the small invader, I'm launching four particles which change colors as they expand away from the main explosion. Recently I enhanced the code to launch a 2x2 color-changing "particle" since it's more noticeable on the Lynx screen. For example: I'll put up another video in the near future showcasing this bigger particle, but in general I think I like it better this way. Thoughts? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WesleyrpgAust Posted February 26, 2022 Share Posted February 26, 2022 It's hard to tell how good the effect will be until we see it in video! I say any explosion is a good explosion! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted May 16, 2022 Author Share Posted May 16, 2022 OK, it took me waaaay too long to get this video preview made, but here is Microvaders with the bigger explosion debris. Do you prefer this or the original pixel-sized debris? I found that single pixels were a bit hard to see on an original Lynx screen, thus these bigger debris graphics might look better overall. Still to come: randomizing the debris so it doesn't make the same pattern every time. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PFG 9000 Posted May 16, 2022 Share Posted May 16, 2022 3 hours ago, Songbird said: OK, it took me waaaay too long to get this video preview made, but here is Microvaders with the bigger explosion debris. Do you prefer this or the original pixel-sized debris? I found that single pixels were a bit hard to see on an original Lynx screen, thus these bigger debris graphics might look better overall. Still to come: randomizing the debris so it doesn't make the same pattern every time. Would it be possible to keep both styles? As long as you're doing a debris randomizer, maybe have explosions of both pixel sizes to add further variety. But I totally get it if it's a memory issue. I think I actually prefer the smaller pixel-sized explosions. I would be concerned that the chunkier debris could get mistaken for bullets. But without playing both versions side by side, it's hard to say. If the smaller version doesn't show up as well on actual hardware, that's a valid concern. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted May 16, 2022 Author Share Posted May 16, 2022 Thanks for the feedback! If it helps, the chunkier debris is what I had on the demo cart at Midwest Gaming Classic. And yes, I did have the thought about making some debris chunkier and some single-pixel. Right now each piece of debris is tracked individually in the Lynx, which gives me more flexibility for changing its color, vector, and duration. But it's also software intensive. What I could do is switch to a pre-rendered "pixel shatter" sprite animation. Every pixel shatter would look the same, but I could more easily get a cloud of pixels instead of just four. Things to ponder... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted May 16, 2022 Share Posted May 16, 2022 Looks great (both explosion styles). Can't wait to purchase this one, will look great on the McWill enhanced Lynx! Sorry if it's been asked - will there be an option to turn off the music? No matter how good it is, any game music gets grating after a few hours of play. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sramirez2008 Posted May 16, 2022 Share Posted May 16, 2022 Hmm...I like them both and as @Stephenstated, both will look great with McWill screens. Thanks for the demo. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyprian Posted May 16, 2022 Share Posted May 16, 2022 it looks cool 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr_Wiggles Posted May 16, 2022 Share Posted May 16, 2022 I like the bigger ones. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jgkspsx Posted May 16, 2022 Share Posted May 16, 2022 I really strongly prefer the smaller explosions. The big ones seem to make it hard to distinguish enemies in a swarm. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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