West Bank (Bank Panic clone)

[sometimes99er]

I thought version one (Spectrum) quite excellent. The silhouette graphics (black on background) has it's charm. Didn't care much for the SG-1000/MSX graphics - the characters (persons) are blurry. The C64 was perhaps only a tad better. Making the graphics better seemed almost impossible, did have https://twitter.com/CollectorVision/status/1514319821470527489 in mind, - but then yes, you actually pulled it off in version two ! Much better contrast in use of colors, and black, than SG-1000/MSX. Bravo. 👍
 
The problem with Spectrum games converted to the TI, to me, is that I can easily go play it on the Spectrum. And yes, maybe the sound is better with perhaps added music. Flying Shark and now this makes a difference. And I know, takes more work.
 

[fabrice montupet]

This graphics upgrade is excellent! The game's now appeal me to game with. Thank you Ciro and Rasmus, you made a great work.

[Asmusr]

Did anyone reach phase 8 (dusk) or 9 (night)? If not, half of the ROM is wasted. Maybe for the next high score compo? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. 🙂

[tmop69]

9 hours ago, Asmusr said:

Did anyone reach phase 8 (dusk) or 9 (night)? If not, half of the ROM is wasted. Maybe for the next high score compo? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. 🙂

It's a great candidate for the next high score competition! I'll surely partecipate. 🙂 

[tmop69]

@Asmusr just a couple of feedbacks on the game:

 

- the V2 has a glitch in the flashing screen when you hit a bomb: the bottom righ corner (at right of lives counter) is flashing too, instead of only the borders if compared to V1;

 

- I'm not a left-handed, so the 1,2,3 and O,P buttons are not optimal for me. The Arcade versions has buttons on both sides of the joystick. It would be great to have also 7,8,9 to shoot and S,D to move. Or eventually, the possibility to define the keys. Of course, with emulators you can make some modifications to the layout of the keys, but this is not possible with the real iron;

 

- A screen with the list of keys could be of great help (I have forgotten the use of O, P keys to move...). 🙂 

 

 

[Asmusr]

On 8/5/2023 at 3:36 PM, tmop69 said:

@Asmusr just a couple of feedbacks on the game:

 

- the V2 has a glitch in the flashing screen when you hit a bomb: the bottom righ corner (at right of lives counter) is flashing too, instead of only the borders if compared to V1;

 

- I'm not a left-handed, so the 1,2,3 and O,P buttons are not optimal for me. The Arcade versions has buttons on both sides of the joystick. It would be great to have also 7,8,9 to shoot and S,D to move. Or eventually, the possibility to define the keys. Of course, with emulators you can make some modifications to the layout of the keys, but this is not possible with the real iron;

 

- A screen with the list of keys could be of great help (I have forgotten the use of O, P keys to move...). 🙂 

Thanks for the feedback. I have added the keys you suggested and fixed the glitch.

westbank-v2.rpk westbank-v2-8.bin

Edited August 8, 2023 by Asmusr

[tmop69]

7 minutes ago, Asmusr said:

Thanks for the feedback. I have added the keys you suggested and fixed the glitch.

westbank-v2.rpk 69.82 kB · 0 downloads westbank-v2-8.bin 256 kB · 0 downloads

Great, many thanks!

 

[tmop69]

@Asmusr with the new keys I can shoot faster now. 🙂 I need now to try on Mister using an arcade stick with concave buttons to check how good I can score! Hope to see this game next month on the competition...  

[Retrospect]

ahh this is great.  I've never played West Bank before.  Seen it for the ZX Spectrum though but this one's fantastic.  

I was shooting real sharp, no cowboy could get past me ... fastest shooter in the west.

 

Then I shot the bomb.

 

😄

[+OLD CS1]

59 minutes ago, Retrospect said:

Then I shot the bomb.

[Retrospect]

I keep coming back to this game it's addictive.  I need to get further but I'm a bit crap at it for now , practice makes master as a great coder once said.  

[retrodroid]

I somehow completely missed this entire thread until today. I guess the name threw me off, if it had said "Bank Panic" I'd have been all over it! 🙃

 

Just wanted to say "Wow!".  Really nice work to all involved!  Certainly a high water mark for our platform that really shines, and really cool to see several contributors come together to make it special.

 

Funnily enough, I had previously contemplated doing a Bank Panic version for the 99/4A myself, as it seemed like a good candidate for the system with some nice stretch goals in terms of graphics as well. Whatever I would have done wouldn't have come close to this though...  😆

  

 

 

[retrodroid]

Strangely, if I try to load the westbank-v2-8.bin as a ROM cartridge using the TI-99_4A core on my MiSTer, the graphics are all scrambled.  The music is fine, and the game seems to play okay, though you can't really see what is going on.

 

 

 

 

The same .bin file works fine on C99 and JS99'er for me.

 

 

[Asmusr]

20 hours ago, retrodroid said:

Strangely, if I try to load the westbank-v2-8.bin as a ROM cartridge using the TI-99_4A core on my MiSTer, the graphics are all scrambled.  The music is fine, and the game seems to play okay, though you can't really see what is going on.

Since you're also having troubles with Ghostbusters I suspect it's an issue with the MISTer. West Bank works fine on a real console. Can you run other big ROM cartridges?

[retrodroid]

25 minutes ago, Asmusr said:

Since you're also having troubles with Ghostbusters I suspect it's an issue with the MISTer. West Bank works fine on a real console. Can you run other big ROM cartridges?

By "big ROM" cartridges you mean ones using multiple ROM banks?  Yes, I have many other rom cartridges successfully, including my own. These are the first ones I've seen an issue with. 

[Asmusr]

5 minutes ago, retrodroid said:

By "big ROM" cartridges you mean ones using multiple ROM banks?  Yes, I have many other rom cartridges successfully, including my own. These are the first ones I've seen an issue with. 

I mean 256K or 512K.

[retrodroid]

43 minutes ago, Asmusr said:

I mean 256K or 512K.

Not sure then. Where can I find some example ROMs of this size to test with?

btw the original westbank8.bin works fine, though I see it is much smaller than the v2 one.

[Asmusr]

1 hour ago, retrodroid said:

Not sure then. Where can I find some example ROMs of this size to test with?

btw the original westbank8.bin works fine, though I see it is much smaller than the v2 one.

Here are a few of my creations.

flying-shark-8.bin pinball99-8.bin

Edited December 8, 2023 by Asmusr

[Asmusr]

Large (up to 32M) cartridges are supported according to the documentation: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/TI-99_4A_MiSTer. Maybe @speccery can help?

[retrodroid]

I've gotten the larger carts to work on MiSTer.  In the TI-99_4A core config menu I had to select "Cart Type:  Paged378", now the graphics load correctly (vs "Cart Type:  Normal").

 

 

[Asmusr]

1 hour ago, retrodroid said:

I've gotten the larger carts to work on MiSTer.  In the TI-99_4A core config menu I had to select "Cart Type:  Paged378", now the graphics load correctly (vs "Cart Type:  Normal").

Great that you found a solution. Is Ghostbusters also working with that setting? How many cart types does the MISTer have? In reality the only types of ROM are inverted and normal (non-inverted).

[retrodroid]

2 hours ago, Asmusr said:

Great that you found a solution. Is Ghostbusters also working with that setting? How many cart types does the MISTer have? In reality the only types of ROM are inverted and normal (non-inverted).

Yes, Ghostbuster's is working too with that setting.

 

The core offers the following cart format options:  Normal, MBX, Paged7, Paged378, Paged379, and MiniMem (I have no idea what the differences are).

 

[Tursi]

Well, I don't know as far as Mister's naming goes, but MBX does have its own cart with some RAM onboard, and MiniMem is half RAM. Paged378 and Paged379 are the non-inverted and inverted types. I have no idea what Paged7 might be.