Various Questions

[+CyranoJ]

5 minutes ago, Gedalya said:

Is the visible screen size smaller than the physical screen size? I believe the screen size is 352 x 240. It seems like what is on screen is less than that.

 

Make your background or whatever object bigger in _rapinit.s

[Gedalya]

8 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

 

Make your background or whatever object bigger in _rapinit.s

Thank you!

[Gedalya]

I have attached an ABS file of my work in progress. I am hoping for some feedback. The game is just a foundation at the moment, it is far from a finished product. It needs a lot of additional work but, speaking as-is, as a foundation, do you think it is worth the additional investment in time to finish it? I have a couple of ideas in my mind of some other fun projects. The game is a programming assignment I gave myself. It is based on an Ansimuz product of the same name which can be found here. Any and all feedback is appreciated. 

starfighter.abs

[Clint Thompson]

Looking pretty good on the PVM! Nice big colorful sprites and clean audio, you're off to a good start.

 

 

I do notice some speeding up/slowing down while shooting, which I believe to be unintentional. I've made that mistake in the past and while I don't remember now exactly what it was (might have been due to using delays when and/or where you really shouldn't be), I'm sure you'll figure and sort it out.

 

You can add some thrust timing ticks to give it a little slow-down when you let off the button later on. Easy to add a small delay after clearing the screen and the READY text comes up as you progress.

 

Congrats on your accomplishment with this so far, many don't even make it to this point! I forget, are you using emulator only or also on real hardware?

[Gedalya]

Thank you @Clint Thompson! Your feedback is appreciated . I am using an emulator and also a skunk board so I can play on real hardware.

[+CyranoJ]

Good, solid start! Well done!

[Gedalya]

10 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Good, solid start! Well done!

Thank you so much!

[Gedalya]

Is there a practical limit to how many sprites you can have in a game? It would seem so. I'm seeing a performance hit for over 125 sprites while testing.

[+CyranoJ]

7 minutes ago, Gedalya said:

Is there a practical limit to how many sprites you can have in a game? It would seem so. I'm seeing a performance hit for over 125 sprites while testing.

 

Yes, the object processor has to process the list each scanline, so if you add too many it can't display them.

Use BRAnch objects to split things into banks if you want more.

[Gedalya]

Thank you! BRAnch into banks? Is that assembly?

[+CyranoJ]

12 minutes ago, Gedalya said:

Thank you! BRAnch into banks? Is that assembly?

split objects into vertical bands and add BRAnch objects around them. You can do it in JS, but its an advanced thing. 125 objects should be fine for a starter project

[Gedalya]

10 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

split objects into vertical bands and add BRAnch objects around them. You can do it in JS, but its an advanced thing. 125 objects should be fine for a starter project

Thank you!

[Gedalya]

Are there some general rules for choosing between RAM and ROM for assets? I ran into the following error:

 

I was able to resolve it by switching some of the assets to ROM. I read through @Clint Thompson's wonderful article on Jag Performance and focused on changing audio assets to ROM, but I'm wondering now about my 100 or so other assets. Any tips or general rules to follow? Or is the answer that this is a complex balancing act for maintaining optimal performance. 

[42bs]

Do you need all assets every time? Likely not, so you may split them up and 'load' those from ROM currently needed.

[Gedalya]

On 10/18/2023 at 3:39 PM, 42bs said:

Do you need all assets every time? Likely not, so you may split them up and 'load' those from ROM currently needed.

No I do not need them at all times. Please forgive my ignorance, at what point is an ABS asset loaded vs a ROM asset? Are ABS assets loaded all on start (such as when the object list is read) or only when called? Are ROM assets only loaded when called?

[Sporadic]

45 minutes ago, Gedalya said:

No I do not need them at all times. Please forgive my ignorance, at what point is an ABS asset loaded vs a ROM asset? Are ABS assets loaded all on start (such as when the object list is read) or only when called? Are ROM assets only loaded when called?

The abs assets are loaded into ram at boot along with code etc.

 

The ROM assets stay on the cart and are referenced directly from there.

However, having sprites that live in ROM can impact performance, depending on your game.

 

What you can do instead if you need the space is to store them in the ROM, packed. Then when you load a level (for example) you can unpack those graphics into ram and point a sprite to that. 

Sprites from ram tend to be more performant. 

 

But you can use a mixture of all options above to what suits you.

 

Edit: there's a sample project that shows  how to use packed assets. It just shows a large image. But you can change it for smaller sprites. 

Edited October 19, 2023 by Sporadic

[Gedalya]

1 hour ago, Sporadic said:

The abs assets are loaded into ram at boot along with code etc.

 

The ROM assets stay on the cart and are referenced directly from there.

However, having sprites that live in ROM can impact performance, depending on your game.

 

What you can do instead if you need the space is to store them in the ROM, packed. Then when you load a level (for example) you can unpack those graphics into ram and point a sprite to that. 

Sprites from ram tend to be more performant. 

 

But you can use a mixture of all options above to what suits you.

 

Edit: there's a sample project that shows  how to use packed assets. It just shows a large image. But you can change it for smaller sprites. 

Thank you! This makes sense to me.

[Gedalya]

I would like to share a more recent version of my game. However I see in the files created after the build that there is an ABS file and a ROM file. Is the ABS file an intermediary file that is a subset of the resulting ROM file? Which file would I end up sharing?

[SlidellMan]

Gedalya, what you have so far is pretty solid. Granted, you still have some things to do, such as give the asteroids proper collision, improve the firing routine, etc. Kudos to Ansimuz for the graphics and music. (If you need more, I can help with the fonts.)

[Sporadic]

17 minutes ago, Gedalya said:

I would like to share a more recent version of my game. However I see in the files created after the build that there is an ABS file and a ROM file. Is the ABS file an intermediary file that is a subset of the resulting ROM file? Which file would I end up sharing?

You'll want the ROM file, if you have put assets in there. The abs is part of the build at that point.

[Gedalya]

1 hour ago, SlidellMan said:

Gedalya, what you have so far is pretty solid. Granted, you still have some things to do, such as give the asteroids proper collision, improve the firing routine, etc. Kudos to Ansimuz for the graphics and music. (If you need more, I can help with the fonts.)

Thank you. Although there is more that I want to do, for the moment I have been focusing on refinements, so I hope to polish collision detection and the firing routine (shootbang!).

 

This raises another question I have which relates to help. I see that for a number of projects people collaborate. I am interested in teaming up with someone who is more knowledgeable than I am so that I can add more sprites. Although simple, right now I have a functioning game. I'm at about 100 sprites and 2k lines of BASIC. Anything I should keep in mind when soliciting help? For good or ill. 

 

Attached is the latest build. 

starfighter.rom

Edited October 20, 2023 by Gedalya

[+CyranoJ]

57 minutes ago, Gedalya said:

Anything I should keep in mind when soliciting help? For good or ill. 

 

Avoid the people who have been banned from here, and anyone they associate with.