vdub_bobby Posted October 27, 2023 Author Share Posted October 27, 2023 15 hours ago, MateusSolo said: Excellent! You changed the sound for the missed shots, right? It sounds better now (or is it just my imagination?). Is there a way to make the player's tank the first one to enter the screen? Or is it something related to hardware limitations (or a designer's choice?). Because I always move my joystick when that first enemy tank appears at the upper corridor, and my brain instantly complains when there's no input response from that tank. Yep, I did change the sound. And the player tank enters last by design, but ... I'm rethinking that decision 😄 Every time I play it my kids ask "why does your tank come in late?" 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MateusSolo Posted October 28, 2023 Share Posted October 28, 2023 8 hours ago, vdub_bobby said: Yep, I did change the sound. And the player tank enters last by design, but ... I'm rethinking that decision 😄 Every time I play it my kids ask "why does your tank come in late?" Haha! So, it's not just me! How cool you have kids who enjoy Atari games! Mine still prefers his smartphone garbage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 7, 2023 Author Share Posted November 7, 2023 UPDATES: Biggest change is added music. ♫♪ Several changes to the level-complete routine, now get points for each remaining wall piece. Lots of bug fixes. TankMaze.asm TankMaze.bin 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ZeroPage Homebrew Posted November 7, 2023 Share Posted November 7, 2023 Just a heads up, when I was checking out the game in Stella's Developer Mode the screen continuously rolls. This may not happen to all consoles when played on real hardware but it may affect some of them. Great new updates to the game, looking forward to featuring it on ZPH again in the near future! - James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 7, 2023 Author Share Posted November 7, 2023 6 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said: Just a heads up, when I was checking out the game in Stella's Developer Mode the screen continuously rolls. This may not happen to all consoles when played on real hardware but it may affect some of them. Great new updates to the game, looking forward to featuring it on ZPH again in the near future! - James Yikes! Thanks for letting me me know. I guess I need to focus on cleaning up the scanline count. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 9, 2023 Author Share Posted November 9, 2023 UPDATES: Scanline count is (mostly) stable at 270 lines. Occasional jitters as far as I can tell that I still need to track down and fix. Added tank "explosion" graphic. Can shoot through it but running into it is deadly (for you and enemy tanks). Still fiddling with this. Fixed small bug in enemy AI routine. Assorted fiddling. Interested in feedback on the difficulty, I think right now it starts off too easy. I sped up the enemy tanks slightly to help this, but needs more work. Besides bug fixing and assorted tweaking, the remaining major feature to implement is a sort of "power up" system. RAM and screen real estate are very limited so still pondering how this will work. Feedback welcome! TankMaze.asm TankMaze.bin 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ZeroPage Homebrew Posted November 9, 2023 Share Posted November 9, 2023 26 minutes ago, vdub_bobby said: UPDATES: Scanline count is (mostly) stable at 270 lines. Occasional jitters as far as I can tell that I still need to track down and fix. Unfortunately it looks like there's still quite a bit of screen rolling when set to developer mode. I recorded a video showing what I'm seeing. Ignore the menu I was in on the video, the option that you need to look at is under 'Developer Settings -> Video -> Jitter/Roll Effect -> Sensitivity and set that to 8 or above. Again, this may only affect a small portion of people playing your game with sensitive televisions or upscalers. - James - James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prizrak Posted November 9, 2023 Share Posted November 9, 2023 Been playing Minotaur off and on during development, I'm really digging the improvements. Love the the new music, the way the playfield disappears and counts the score, and the enemy movement. Huge improvements over what I've been playing on some older builds. Like @ZeroPage Homebrew said, there some screen roll, not too bad though. My TV shows a twitch rather than a full roll during gameplay. Keep up the awesome work 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+D Train Posted November 9, 2023 Share Posted November 9, 2023 4 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said: quite a bit of screen rolling hoo boy. my car used to do that. nothing that a little octane boost couldn't fix... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MateusSolo Posted November 9, 2023 Share Posted November 9, 2023 14 hours ago, vdub_bobby said: Interested in feedback on the difficulty, I think right now it starts off too easy. I sped up the enemy tanks slightly to help this, but needs more work. I think the difficulty is pretty OK as it is right now. Not too difficult, not too easy. Maybe the enemy tanks should be more agressive towards the player's base though? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 11, 2023 Author Share Posted November 11, 2023 For the screen rolling in developer mode - I could be wrong, but I believe that it basically rolls the screen if you don't hit exactly 262 scanlines / frame (NTSC), how exactly determined by the sensitivity setting. So it is (mostly) stable at 270 scanlines / frame, so if you set the sensitivity to 7 it doesn't roll at all. If you set it to 8 or higher, it rolls continuously, since right now it continuously is 8 or more scanlines away from 262/frame. I'll keep working on this to get it closer to 262, but ... my understanding (mostly 20 years out of date!) is that TVs can handle 270 scanlines / frame without a problem. E.g., I believe the Elevators Amiss final binary is 270 scanlines/frame and I've never heard of any issues. Happy to be corrected on this for sure! (Also, if I'm wrong about how that setting works in Stella, I'd love to know that also!) Thanks, and absolutely really appreciate the feedback and playtesting! You guys are the best Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted November 11, 2023 Share Posted November 11, 2023 (edited) 7 hours ago, vdub_bobby said: If you set it to 8 or higher, it rolls continuously, since right now it continuously is 8 or more scanlines away from 262/frame. Nope. It checks that your scanline count and VSYNC lengths are constant and that the VSYNC length is large enough. The higher the sensitivity, the stricter the checks for unstable frame. Also, with higher sensitivity, less unstable frames are allowed before the screen starts to roll. (see JitterEmulation::frameComplete() in Stella's source code) 7 hours ago, vdub_bobby said: I'll keep working on this to get it closer to 262, but ... my understanding (mostly 20 years out of date!) is that TVs can handle 270 scanlines / frame without a problem. E.g., I believe the Elevators Amiss final binary is 270 scanlines/frame and I've never heard of any issues. Happy to be corrected on this for sure! (Also, if I'm wrong about how that setting works in Stella, I'd love to know that also!) CRTs have no problem. But since more and more people play using modern equipment (same for streamers like @ZeroPage Homebrew), it might be better to stick to 60Hz. E.g. if a game has flicker and does not do 60 Hz, you get problems on modern TVs. Frames will be merged or doubled, so the flicker becomes much more pronounced. And modern equipment can be really sensitivity to unstable frames and produce no output at all. Edited November 11, 2023 by Thomas Jentzsch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 13, 2023 Author Share Posted November 13, 2023 On 11/10/2023 at 11:46 PM, Thomas Jentzsch said: CRTs have no problem. But since more and more people play using modern equipment (same for streamers like @ZeroPage Homebrew), it might be better to stick to 60Hz. E.g. if a game has flicker and does not do 60 Hz, you get problems on modern TVs. Frames will be merged or doubled, so the flicker becomes much more pronounced. And modern equipment can be really sensitivity to unstable frames and produce no output at all. Aha! Thanks, that's good to know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 13, 2023 Author Share Posted November 13, 2023 (edited) On 11/10/2023 at 11:46 PM, Thomas Jentzsch said: Nope. It checks that your scanline count and VSYNC lengths are constant and that the VSYNC length is large enough. The higher the sensitivity, the stricter the checks for unstable frame. Also, with higher sensitivity, less unstable frames are allowed before the screen starts to roll. That's interesting. I'll look into this more, I'm not sure in that case why it would roll. AFAICT the scanline count (on the title screen anyway) is completely stable, and VSYNC uses the standard routine... at least it was standard 10 years ago! lda #%00000111 VSYNCWaitLoop sta WSYNC sta VSYNC lsr bcs VSYNCWaitLoop Funny how much has changed - for 50 year old hardware! - in 10 years EDIT: I updated the VSYNC code to add one more scanline to the VSYNC routine and that fixed the rolling. Stella code is looking for VSYNC of at least 3 scanlines: myVsyncCorrect = abs(vsyncCycles - 76 * 3) <= 3; // 3 cycles tolerance EDIT EDIT: Or to be specific, exactly 3 scanlines (+/- 3 cycles) Edited November 13, 2023 by vdub_bobby 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 On 11/13/2023 at 5:49 PM, vdub_bobby said: EDIT: I updated the VSYNC code to add one more scanline to the VSYNC routine and that fixed the rolling. Exactly. The VSYNC macro code uses lda #%1110. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted November 14, 2023 Share Posted November 14, 2023 There is another bug in your code: There is code executed in the hotspot area. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 16, 2023 Author Share Posted November 16, 2023 UPDATES: Scanline count is a more or less stable 262 lines/frame. Level-end routine slightly updated. Can now run and shoot through explosion graphic. Changed colors of tanks, this is very much in progress. Powerups! At the beginning of each level a random number between 1 and 7 is chosen. If you kill that many tanks without dying, then a powerup (bull head icon 🐮) will appear. Run over it to get a small speed boost. The count resets to seven at that point, if you kill seven more (without dying!) another powerup icon will appear. Collecting that will kill all tanks on the screen and give a point bonus. And etc. This is also very much in progress and feedback very welcome! General code cleanup and optimization. TankMaze.asm TankMaze.bin 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 16, 2023 Author Share Posted November 16, 2023 On 11/14/2023 at 2:19 PM, Thomas Jentzsch said: There is another bug in your code: There is code executed in the hotspot area. Can you point me to where this is happening? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted November 16, 2023 Share Posted November 16, 2023 6 hours ago, vdub_bobby said: Can you point me to where this is happening? Thanks! If you wonder about the bytes @ L3FF8/9: These are randomized by the coming Stella, because hotspots return more or less random bits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MateusSolo Posted November 16, 2023 Share Posted November 16, 2023 14 hours ago, vdub_bobby said: Powerups! At the beginning of each level a random number between 1 and 7 is chosen. If you kill that many tanks without dying, then a powerup (bull head icon 🐮) will appear. Run over it to get a small speed boost. The count resets to seven at that point, if you kill seven more (without dying!) another powerup icon will appear. Collecting that will kill all tanks on the screen and give a point bonus. And etc. This is also very much in progress and feedback very welcome. The powerups idea and execution are pretty good and a lot of fun! I also like the powerup icon being a little Minotaur head. Maybe there should be an option to turn them off to those who prefer their military action more realistic? For me, they're pretty great though. Bullseye! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 16, 2023 Author Share Posted November 16, 2023 10 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said: If you wonder about the bytes @ L3FF8/9: These are randomized by the coming Stella, because hotspots return more or less random bits. Ahhhhh... thanks. Too much I've forgotten. Obviously (in retrospect) you can't have code running on the hot spots. 🙄 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 16, 2023 Author Share Posted November 16, 2023 1 hour ago, MateusSolo said: The powerups idea and execution are pretty good and a lot of fun! I also like the powerup icon being a little Minotaur head. Maybe there should be an option to turn them off to those who prefer their military action more realistic? For me, they're pretty great though. Bullseye! That's a really good idea, thanks! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted November 20, 2023 Author Share Posted November 20, 2023 UPDATES: Updated powerup graphic Shooting the power up now destroys all bricks and tanks in an approx 1.5-brick radius Other minor changes to how the powerups work and when they appear (notably, you can no longer get two - or three! - of them to show up on screen at the same time) Added sound effect for power up Updates to music Updates to the attract screen/routine Scoring update: for each subsequent tank you kill in a level without dying you get an extra 25 points. In other words, if you kill all 20 tanks in a level without dying you will get these points: 1st tank: 50 points 2nd tank: 75 points 3rd tank: 100 points 4th tank: 125 points ... 20th tank: 525 points Minotaur.asm Minotaur.bin 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted November 21, 2023 Share Posted November 21, 2023 Looks like you fixed the hotspot bug too. 👍 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MateusSolo Posted November 21, 2023 Share Posted November 21, 2023 Now, wouldn't it be nice if the first stage happened to be the title screen? I love how we can duel in the title screen of Rotschkar's Gunfight. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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