New Game: Dungeoneer

[Wrathchild]

Some loaders might utilise the stack area (page 1) and this game is using page 1 for many checks.

 

I'd recommend @godlikemouse adds a bit of initialisation code that sets the area of page 1 used to zero.

Or you could do something like LDA #0, TSX, LOOP: STA $100,X, DEX, CPX#$FF, BNE LOOP

 

For example, even using and running an exomizer self-extracting conversion of the binary results in corruption:

exomizer sfx $600 -n -t 168 -Di_table_addr=$500 -Di_load_addr=$5000 -o a.xex dungeoneer.xex

 

 

If, in Altirra, I set a breakpoint at $600 and then run the command "f 100 LF8 0" to zero $100 to $1F7, then the option screen is shown correctly.

 

a.xex

[Wrathchild]

Just checked on Github, so variables (memory.asm) are between $C0 and $13D, so this should suffice:

 LDA #0
 TAX
LOOP:
 STA TILEPTR,X
 INX
 BPL LOOP

 

[CMR]

I still see the glitched screen pop up a split second before the option screen appears.  The option screen is no longer scrambled and everything works perfectly though.  I tried it on the mister core as well as my original and unmodded 800XL loading from sddrivemax.  It's the same on both of them.

[darwinmac]

I do not see the graphical problems with the updated version. However, I will defer to @Wrathchild regarding what needs to be done to make it compatible with as many loaders as possible. 
 

Again, great game. I finally got past level 3. ?

 

Bob C

[pps]

15 hours ago, Wrathchild said:

Just checked on Github, so variables (memory.asm) are between $C0 and $13D, so this should suffice:

 LDA #0
 TAX
LOOP:
 STA TILEPTR,X
 INX
 BPL LOOP

 

Maybe it would be better to just change location of it all and begin at $80. So you won't touch stack area anymore. 

[godlikemouse]

17 hours ago, Wrathchild said:

Just checked on Github, so variables (memory.asm) are between $C0 and $13D, so this should suffice:

 LDA #0
 TAX
LOOP:
 STA TILEPTR,X
 INX
 BPL LOOP

 

Thank you for taking the time to check out the github repo and provide feedback/code review for this.  I'll try refactoring the memory location to use $80 upward hopefully that will fix the issue.

[godlikemouse]

3 hours ago, darwinmac said:

I do not see the graphical problems with the updated version. However, I will defer to @Wrathchild regarding what needs to be done to make it compatible with as many loaders as possible. 
 

Again, great game. I finally got past level 3. ?

 

Bob C

Thank you for the feedback.  I'm glad you got past level 3

[godlikemouse]

1 hour ago, pps said:

Maybe it would be better to just change location of it all and begin at $80. So you won't touch stack area anymore. 

Thank you for the suggestion.  I'll try refactoring the memory location to begin at $80.  Hopefully, this will solve the issue.  I didn't realize this is the stack location for the Atari.

[Wrathchild]

1 minute ago, godlikemouse said:

hopefully that will fix the issue.

Still advisable to ensure its initialized properly too

[godlikemouse]

1 minute ago, Wrathchild said:

Still advisable to ensure its initialized properly too

Thank you, I will try implementing the initialization you proposed first.

[godlikemouse]

Thank you everyone for taking the time to try out my game and provide feedback.  I'm humbled by the comments, suggestions and code reviews given here.  To address some of the loader issues discussed I've added an initialize zeropage procedure based on the above feedback from @Wrathchild.  Please feel free to try again using the attached (dungeoneer.xex) xex file and let me know if this solves the issue.  Thanks again everyone for your help on this.

 

On a side note, once this issue is resolved I plan on adding more levels to the game and I've begun work on implementing a custom RLE for compressing the map graphics in memory.  So far, the compression ratio looks very promising.

dungeoneer.xex

[godlikemouse]

7 hours ago, CMR said:

I still see the glitched screen pop up a split second before the option screen appears.  The option screen is no longer scrambled and everything works perfectly though.  I tried it on the mister core as well as my original and unmodded 800XL loading from sddrivemax.  It's the same on both of them.

Hi @CMR, if you happen to have the bandwidth.  I would love to see what you're seeing in terms of the glitched screen for a moment.  I wish I had the ability to reproduce what you and others were seeing, it would make fixing this issue a bit less like guesswork  If you could post a pic or a video of what you're seeing I can try and fix the issue.  Thanks again.

[Wrathchild]

30 minutes ago, godlikemouse said:

Please feel free to try again using the attached (dungeoneer.xex) xex file and let me know if this solves the issue.

The exomize'd version still corrupts. This is down to the zp,x wrapping back to address zero:

 

 

So the solution would either (as earlier suggested) move the variables to start from $80, or adjust the procedure:

 

;
; initialize zeropage
;   resets zeropage
.proc initialize_zeropage
    lda #0
    tax
loop
    sta $C0,x
    sta $100,x
    inx
    cpx #$40
    bne loop
    rts
.endp

 

[godlikemouse]

9 minutes ago, Wrathchild said:

The exomize'd version still corrupts. This is down to the zp,x wrapping back to address zero:

 

 

So the solution would either (as earlier suggested) move the variables to start from $80, or adjust the procedure:

 

;
; initialize zeropage
;   resets zeropage
.proc initialize_zeropage
    lda #0
    tax
loop
    sta $C0,x
    sta $100,x
    inx
    cpx #$40
    bne loop
    rts
.endp

 

Thank you for testing this @Wrathchild and providing a solution.  I've implemented the requested changes.  Please let me know if the attached (dungeoneer.xex) xex file works as expected.  Thanks again, sincerely  

dungeoneer.xex

[Wrathchild]

36 minutes ago, godlikemouse said:

works as expected

Yes, all good now.

dungeoneer_exo.xex

[godlikemouse]

3 minutes ago, Wrathchild said:

Yes, all good now.

dungeoneer_exo.xex 8.02 kB · 0 downloads

Fantastic! Thank you so much for your help on this, it was truly invaluable. I will push a new version out to github with this change after fixing another issue. Thanks and have a good one.

[Wrathchild]

The final test will be with these two versions on @TGB1718's setups

[TGB1718]

2 hours ago, godlikemouse said:

Thank you for testing this @Wrathchild and providing a solution.  I've implemented the requested changes.  Please let me know if the attached (dungeoneer.xex) xex file works as expected.  Thanks again, sincerely  

dungeoneer.xex 26.79 kB · 4 downloads

This works fine now, many thanks

[Beeblebrox]

Just had a 5min 1st play via Altirra using cursor keys. I could obviously do with some more practice, (or extra lives), as keep dying on level 3. ? 

[TGB1718]

20 minutes ago, Beeblebrox said:

Just had a 5min 1st play via Altirra using cursor keys. I could obviously do with some more practice, (or extra lives), as keep dying on level 3. ? 

Same here, more lives would be nice

[godlikemouse]

Thank you both for playing Dungeoneer ( @Beeblebrox @TGB1718 ).  There are actually more lives you can earn at 400, 800, etc..  Level 3 is supposed to prepare you for the rest of the game.  If you need a hint, look carefully at the green liquid and sand positions.  A lot of the time those are laid out to help you find the right angle.  Also, look for secret passages, etc..  Those can help   Thanks again.

[zzip]

On 5/29/2022 at 1:44 AM, godlikemouse said:

Thank you for giving my game a try. I'll look into the glitched title screen and find out what's going on there. I mainly use the Atari800 emulator being that I'm on Linux. I haven't seen the corrupt title screen, but I'll try to reproduce it and fix it if I can.

FYI-  Altirria works extremely well on Linux under Wine if you want a second emulator to test things against.

[godlikemouse]

7 minutes ago, zzip said:

FYI-  Altirria works extremely well on Linux under Wine if you want a second emulator to test things against.

Thanks @zzip, I actually already run Altirra under wine.  For some reason though, I never saw the glitched menu screen.  Not really sure why.  Might be a configuration setting or something?

[TGB1718]

@godlikemouse I sort of ignored the slight corruption during the load as it did go straight to the menu screen

which it didn't for me before.

 

But here is what some people are seeing:-

 

 

[godlikemouse]

28 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

@godlikemouse I sort of ignored the slight corruption during the load as it did go straight to the menu screen

which it didn't for me before.

 

But here is what some people are seeing:-

 

 

Thank you @TGB1718 for sharing that with me.  Now I can at least see what's being discussed.  Do you have any idea of how I could get something similar to happen with either Atari800 or Altirra?  I've been trying to reproduce this issue but have been so far unsuccessful.