Colecovision Robotron 2084 Released!

[+swlovinist]

I have now repeated the bug on original hardware in both physical cart and using the Ultimate SD cart.   Here is the game running on original hardware using the Ultimate SD cart and crashing at Wave 25.

 

 

[AnalogKid]

When folks started reporting issues I went out and bought a vintage '83 Colecovision with the original voltage regulators, capacitors, power supply, VRAM chips, etc. in order to debug the issues.  It was so vintage it barely worked when I got it home until I hit it with some contact cleaner.  I was able to sporadically reproduce the reported issues and a couple things were going on, one I was being too aggressive with the VRAM timings and after 40 years not every CV has aged as well, two there was inexplicable flakiness with the value in memory for the enemies remaining count after the enemies were initialized.  It was a case of being able to run the same code 50 times and out of those 50 runs, one time the result of the tally was: 1+1=3.  The fix for that was to replace the incremental tallying with running a tally just before entering the game loop and also changing the check for 0 enemies to AND off the upper bits before the OR to be absolutely certain a DEC didn't roll the value back to 255.  Thirdly there was a code bug that starting with a high enough wave, say 20 or so, if your player died without having shot anything at all, the game got stuck. 

 

I've had two great guys helping me test on their own vintage CVs and between the three of us I think we're just about ready to sign off on the update.  It has been frustrating and disappointing as I wanted everyone to enjoy the game but I'm doing everything possible to make things right.

 

[+swlovinist]

On 1/17/2023 at 12:11 PM, AnalogKid said:

When folks started reporting issues I went out and bought a vintage '83 Colecovision with the original voltage regulators, capacitors, power supply, VRAM chips, etc. in order to debug the issues.  It was so vintage it barely worked when I got it home until I hit it with some contact cleaner.  I was able to sporadically reproduce the reported issues and a couple things were going on, one I was being too aggressive with the VRAM timings and after 40 years not every CV has aged as well, two there was inexplicable flakiness with the value in memory for the enemies remaining count after the enemies were initialized.  It was a case of being able to run the same code 50 times and out of those 50 runs, one time the result of the tally was: 1+1=3.  The fix for that was to replace the incremental tallying with running a tally just before entering the game loop and also changing the check for 0 enemies to AND off the upper bits before the OR to be absolutely certain a DEC didn't roll the value back to 255.  Thirdly there was a code bug that starting with a high enough wave, say 20 or so, if your player died without having shot anything at all, the game got stuck. 

 

I've had two great guys helping me test on their own vintage CVs and between the three of us I think we're just about ready to sign off on the update.  It has been frustrating and disappointing as I wanted everyone to enjoy the game but I'm doing everything possible to make things right.

 

These things happen and don't beat yourself up.   We know that it will be fixed eventually.