Frogger, first playable demo

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Played with this for over an hour today on the Prosystem Emu...and I noticed a few things.

 

For starters the sound is just fine in this emu..but then I have a 2ghz P4 with over 700mb of ram so most emus do run okay in that regard. Didn't notice any screen flicker on my PC...but I did find a bug that is pretty nasty.

 

If you jump into your frog hole just as the beginning of the croc head appears, you hear the sound and briefly see the bonus points to jumping in there in time. And you are brought back to the bottom to start again. However, the frog hole you jumped into...will not have the smiling frog in it when you do this. So it appears that as if you haven't actually jumped in there when you have. I lost two frogs trying to jump into this not realizing that I had already jumped into that frog hole at the beginning of the level.

 

Once I figured out this was happening, I started to keep playing and jump into the others. Sure enough when I filled the last one I would advance to the next level, but one frog hole still appeared to be empty when in fact it wasn't. This has happened everytime I jump into the frog hole just as the teeth of the croc appear in the hole.

 

The other bug isn't nearly as drastic, but when you clear a level and the ending music plays, if you press the controllers to the left, or right (only directions tested so far...) the music will start to get all messed up, the game slows down, and the frog will be stuck in mid motion of his jump. Once the music finally clears and the level restarts, everything is back to normal, so this doesn't cause any severe issues with game play. But the frog hole not appearing to be filled when you jump in before the croc fills it...is a problem for gameplay.

 

Again, I am playing on the Prosystem Emu and this is using your latest demo build of the game dated Oct 3, 2005.

[Schmutzpuppe]

Played with this for over an hour today on the Prosystem Emu...(...)

Pleased to hear that

 

If you jump into your frog hole just as the beginning of the croc head appears, you hear the sound and briefly see the bonus points to jumping in there in time. And you are brought back to the bottom to start again. However, the frog hole you jumped into...will not have the smiling frog in it when you do this. So it appears that as if you haven't actually jumped in there when you have. I lost two frogs trying to jump into this not realizing that I had already jumped into that frog hole at the beginning of the level.

 

Once I figured out this was happening, I started to keep playing and jump into the others. Sure enough when I filled the last one I would advance to the next level, but one frog hole still appeared to be empty when in fact it wasn't. This has happened everytime I jump into the frog hole just as the teeth of the croc appear in the hole.

This is because the last croc position is cleared after the frog jumps into a hole even if the hole is the one you jumped in.

I know this bug but didn't fixed it (yet).

 

The other bug isn't nearly as drastic, but when you clear a level and the ending music plays, if you press the controllers to the left, or right (only directions tested so far...) the music will start to get all messed up, the game slows down, and the frog will be stuck in mid motion of his jump. Once the music finally clears and the level restarts, everything is back to normal, so this doesn't cause any severe issues with game play. But the frog hole not appearing to be filled when you jump in before the croc fills it...is a problem for gameplay.

This is a new one I'll check it out.

Thanks for the feedback Cro§Bow!

 

There is one more bug I know, sometimes you can jump over the lady frog.

Anyone found anymore bugs?

[Schmutzpuppe]

Here is a bugfixed version where the "empty hole" bug shouldn't occur anymore and also the sound problem at the end of the level is fixed.

There was one more bug that nobody seems to notice.

I said the version would have more level which is true but I forgot to disable the three level limit so you where only able to see the levels >3 if you skip them using the "select" button.

Now you can reach all level by playing the game.

Frogger.zip

[supercat]

Anyone found anymore bugs?

944091[/snapback]

 

The collision detection in the water seems inconsistent and unfair sometimes. Also, I once jumped onto the shore from a diving turtle just as it was diving and had the skull and crossbones land on the shore. If the jump was in time, the frog should not have tied; if it was not in time, the skull and crossbones should have been over the turtle.

[Danno]

Teh every five seconds flicker problem still happens.

[Schmutzpuppe]

The collision detection in the water seems inconsistent and unfair sometimes.  Also, I once jumped onto the shore from a diving turtle just as it was diving and had the skull and crossbones land on the shore.  If the jump was in time, the frog should not have tied; if it was not in time, the skull and crossbones should have been over the turtle.

944615[/snapback]

The collisoin detection worked quite good for me now but I will check it again especially you problem with the the diving turtles.

 

Teh every five seconds flicker problem still happens.

944833[/snapback]

Bad to hear but as I mentioned before I am not able to reproduce it.

Maybe I am running out of cpu cycles!?

PAL has more cycles left during vertical blank that could be the cause that it work without problems on PAL devices.

Did the last version without music worked for you?

Hm, I guess I need some testing help to solve this.

Edited October 9, 2005 by Schmutzpuppe

[Bruce Tomlin]

Teh every five seconds flicker problem still happens.

Bad to hear but as I mentioned before I am not able to reproduce it.

Maybe I am running out of cpu cycles!?

PAL has more cycles left during vertical blank that could be the cause that it work without problems on PAL devices.

Did the last version without music worked for you?

Hm, I guess I need some testing help to solve this.

Oops, I bet you ran out of DMA cycles on a scan line. You're testing this on real hardware, right? Also, would PAL possibly have a few more DMA cycles on each scan line than an NTSC unit? I haven't thought about this before, but it seems possible.

[Schmutzpuppe]

Teh every five seconds flicker problem still happens.

Bad to hear but as I mentioned before I am not able to reproduce it.

Maybe I am running out of cpu cycles!?

PAL has more cycles left during vertical blank that could be the cause that it work without problems on PAL devices.

Did the last version without music worked for you?

Hm, I guess I need some testing help to solve this.

Oops, I bet you ran out of DMA cycles on a scan line. You're testing this on real hardware, right? Also, would PAL possibly have a few more DMA cycles on each scan line than an NTSC unit? I haven't thought about this before, but it seems possible.

945518[/snapback]

I don't think so because I didn't change the DL and DLL in the last versions.

I had the case that I run out of DMA cycles and the result was that all the data out of the cycle range just wasn't visible but there was no flicker.

If I understand it correctly the whole screen flickers every 5 seconds, right?

[Godzilla]

wow this looks awesome, I can't wait to buy it :-)

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Well I finally got to try this out for the first time on real hardware and man, it is impressive! Too bad the 7800s design makes it difficult to do many kinds of games at this resolution.

 

Do you need a Pokey chip to hear any sound though, as I'm not hearing anything on Frogger.

[Tempest]

Can someone post screenshots of the game in action?

 

Tempest

[+remowilliams]

I don't think so because I didn't change the DL and DLL in the last versions.

I had the case that I run out of DMA cycles and the result was that all the data out of the cycle range just wasn't visible but there was no flicker.

If I understand it correctly the whole screen flickers every 5 seconds, right?

945745[/snapback]

My rough estimate was five or six seconds, so that sounds right.

 

Well I finally got to try this out for the first time on real hardware and man, it is impressive! Too bad the 7800s design makes it difficult to do many kinds of games at this resolution.

 

Do you need a Pokey chip to hear any sound though, as I'm not hearing anything on Frogger.

952165[/snapback]

Yes, you need a POKEY in your CC2. It sounds as good as it looks

[Shaggy the Atarian]

I don't think so because I didn't change the DL and DLL in the last versions.

I had the case that I run out of DMA cycles and the result was that all the data out of the cycle range just wasn't visible but there was no flicker.

If I understand it correctly the whole screen flickers every 5 seconds, right?

945745[/snapback]

My rough estimate was five or six seconds, so that sounds right.

 

Well I finally got to try this out for the first time on real hardware and man, it is impressive! Too bad the 7800s design makes it difficult to do many kinds of games at this resolution.

 

Do you need a Pokey chip to hear any sound though, as I'm not hearing anything on Frogger.

952165[/snapback]

Yes, you need a POKEY in your CC2. It sounds as good as it looks

952176[/snapback]

 

I'll have to finish doing that then. I already ripped apart one an Atari 800 that pretty much never works, but I wasn't sure which one was the Pokey chip. It's labelled CO12294, right?

 

@Tempest, I'll see if I can get some screenshots or maybe even a video from the real thing, unless someone does before me.

[+remowilliams]

I'll have to finish doing that then. I already ripped apart one an Atari 800 that pretty much never works, but I wasn't sure which one was the Pokey chip. It's labelled CO12294, right?

952188[/snapback]

Yup, or the CO12294B if I recall (though I think that's the XLs)

[Shaggy the Atarian]

I'll have to finish doing that then. I already ripped apart one an Atari 800 that pretty much never works, but I wasn't sure which one was the Pokey chip. It's labelled CO12294, right?

952188[/snapback]

Yup, or the CO12294B if I recall (though I think that's the XLs)

952191[/snapback]

 

That's close enough. I'll take another look at it when I get home tonight.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Well I installed my Pokey chip and got sound from both Ballblazer and Commando, but still nothing from Frogger. I did make sure to get the latest .bin. Could it be I chose the wrong bankswitching file?

[Mot]

Well I installed my Pokey chip and got sound from both Ballblazer and Commando, but still nothing from Frogger.  I did make sure to get the latest .bin. Could it be I chose the wrong bankswitching file?

954646[/snapback]

 

Does anyone know if this works for Frogger with sound?

 

7800: Frogger 10/07/05 (WIP)(uses Pokey) FROGR78 78HSCPOK HSCPOKQU

[Schmutzpuppe]

Well I installed my Pokey chip and got sound from both Ballblazer and Commando, but still nothing from Frogger.  I did make sure to get the latest .bin. Could it be I chose the wrong bankswitching file?

954646[/snapback]

I haven't verified it but the latest version should work with 78POKEY/78BIOS CC2 setting.

[Schmutzpuppe]

Well I installed my Pokey chip and got sound from both Ballblazer and Commando, but still nothing from Frogger.  I did make sure to get the latest .bin. Could it be I chose the wrong bankswitching file?

954646[/snapback]

 

Does anyone know if this works for Frogger with sound?

 

7800: Frogger 10/07/05 (WIP)(uses Pokey) FROGR78 78HSCPOK HSCPOKQU

954683[/snapback]

I think there was no version from 10/07/05.

The latest is from 10/08/05 and this version should work with the settings even if HSC is not supported (yet).

[vdub_bobby]

Here's a screenshot, by the way. My colors may be WAY off...I dunno. This is from MESS:

[+remowilliams]

Well I installed my Pokey chip and got sound from both Ballblazer and Commando, but still nothing from Frogger.  I did make sure to get the latest .bin. Could it be I chose the wrong bankswitching file?

954646[/snapback]

Here's my menu entry that works fine:

 

7800: Frogger (WIP) FROG78 78POKEY 78QUICK

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Well I installed my Pokey chip and got sound from both Ballblazer and Commando, but still nothing from Frogger.  I did make sure to get the latest .bin. Could it be I chose the wrong bankswitching file?

954646[/snapback]

Here's my menu entry that works fine:

 

7800: Frogger (WIP) FROG78 78POKEY 78QUICK

954844[/snapback]

 

Thanks, I'll give that try I think I just forgot to label it as 78POKEY.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Here's a screenshot, by the way.  My colors may be WAY off...I dunno.  This is from MESS:

954839[/snapback]

 

Yes the colors are different on the real thing and everything looks so much better. I did make a video of Frogger in action, but for some reason it turned out blurry and pixellated.

[oesii]

Well I installed my Pokey chip and got sound from both Ballblazer and Commando, but still nothing from Frogger.  I did make sure to get the latest .bin. Could it be I chose the wrong bankswitching file?

954646[/snapback]

Here's my menu entry that works fine:

 

7800: Frogger (WIP) FROG78 78POKEY 78QUICK

954844[/snapback]

 

 

Yeah, that setting works for me too or this one:

 

7800: Frogger FROG78 78POKEY 78BIOS

[Shaggy the Atarian]

Here's a pic of Frogger on the real hardware. Quality isn't the best as digital cameras and TVs don't always work out the greatest.