s0c7 Posted July 16, 2005 Share Posted July 16, 2005 I have given plenty of clues, but no one I guess has figured it out yet. 892815[/snapback] Maybe you should have mentioned Trigun. He was more recent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted July 17, 2005 Author Share Posted July 17, 2005 (edited) Ok, been hard at work on this the past few days. Mostly fixing painful bugs and redesigning architecture. It's getting really hard, almost sweat-inducing work. I've worked til 2Am or so every night this week. It doesn't seem like much progress is showing though Here's a video of the adventurer "dot" cruising around King's Zoo. I made it pink in honor of a web site I used to love to order from - pinkdot - may it rest in peace. The Pink Dot I fixed a bunch of things with regards to entering and exiting screens and the display of sprites. Right now I'm working on displaying multiple sprites and then I'll work on collision detection, and then probably ai of the dragon. Take care, Trigun out. Edited July 17, 2005 by retrocon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gambler172 Posted July 17, 2005 Share Posted July 17, 2005 Hi i would like to play it.Why not posting a test version? greetings Gambler172 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted July 22, 2005 Author Share Posted July 22, 2005 Just a quick update. This project is still progressing and most importantly I'm still having a blast building it I just haven't been able to do any screenshots because I'm getting hardwood installed throughout the house and the wife packed the digital camera away somewhere. In any case, I've got the dev environment set up on the kitchen table so it's still moving forward I've got multiple sprites working well now (major pain, but it was worth it). The system supports eight 32x8 pixel two color hardware-based sprites on screen at once. This seems to have caused a small playfield bug that I have to figure out (the playfield is slightly wrapped around the screen). And I've just started on playfield/sprite collision detection. Overall, I just can't believe how ultra-smooth the sprite movement, how responsive to the joystick it is and how ultra-clear the vga display is. Not missing a cpu at all. An all-hardware based system really rocks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted July 29, 2005 Author Share Posted July 29, 2005 Ok, maybe I'm starting to miss the ol' cpu a little... The hardwood floor is in but I'm not much further along. One step forward, three steps back... I have probably rearchitected and rewritten every piece of this engine three times in the past week except for maybe the joystick interface. It turns out even in hardware there are limitations in how much you can do during each pixel clock. It's very very easy to create a deadend design. However the good news is that I really think I'm starting to gain more control over my designs, especially by using state machines. I have settled on an engine with four hardware sprites with 8x32 pixels. The screen is 1/4th vga at 160x120. The hardware playfield is 32x24, so each pf pixel = 5x5 screen pixels. I don't want any flicker or crap like that so there will only be up to 4 things on screen at once. I don't really want to put in more hardware sprites to conserve logic elements (LEs). Not sure how that will affect things compared to the original adventure yet. Anyone think not supporting more than 4 sprites will be a problem? Things are progressing though. I'm rewriting the playfield logic one more time, and then should be moving into the collision detection and the AI, for which I at least have a plan now. Hopefully there will be screenshots when I have something worth showing. Shouldn't be too much longer before Rhindle is chasing the dot around the screen. Take care. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhindle The Red Posted July 29, 2005 Share Posted July 29, 2005 You find that Rhindle is imprisoned and sickly; actually he's dying. That's odd. I feel fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FireTiger Posted July 29, 2005 Share Posted July 29, 2005 your sickly and close to death, wern't you reading? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted July 29, 2005 Author Share Posted July 29, 2005 your sickly and close to death, wern't you reading? 900976[/snapback] Don't worry, dot will probably save you if you're nice and don't try to snack on him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted August 3, 2005 Author Share Posted August 3, 2005 I just realized the 3rd of everything sucks. Remember Porky's 3? Anyway, forgive me cause I'm a little drunk. I have been rewriting vhdl for three days and finally fixed the bug that was killing me. I don't actually know if you can call it a bug because when you have to continually rewrite everything is actually a bug?? Anyway, I don't know if this is good to admit but I was getting so frustrated from the past couple days that this evening I started out before sitting down in front of the monitor with a nice bottle of pinot noir, Saintsbury actually 2003. And within like one hour I had rewritten it again but this time correctly! and the damn thing worked. All four sprites scrolled perfectly left to right. Oh the joy. Here is the demo video: Four Playas A Movin' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted August 10, 2005 Share Posted August 10, 2005 In the original Adventure, the dot was made out of the ball sprite. It looks like you are using a player for that. If you use the ball, then yes, you have to have the same color as the playfield, but the upside is you should be able to have more sprites on screen at once. Also, in Adventure there is no limit to the number of objects you can have in a room, so depending on the number of objects and moving enemies that roam around, you will run into situations that overload your kernel unless you allow it to start flickering more and more. The only way to force limits is to, in the AI, prevent too many monsters from occupying the same room. But if you can kill them, and the bat is present, then it's always possible to bring them into the same room as the bat swaps the corpses for the objects. So I still think you have to accomodate any scenario. Also make sure that when you animate the dragon that when he moves horizontally he's supposed to "bounce" like a bunny rabbit. Otherwise you are missing a key stylistic element of Adventure. As for getting permission, the programmer of Adventure II (5200) managed to get permission for his release in exchange for the game allowing the game to be back-ported to the 2600 for the Flashback 2. You should contact Curt Vendel about licensing your end product for any future Flashback product and they should be understanding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supercat Posted August 10, 2005 Share Posted August 10, 2005 In the original Adventure, the dot was made out of the ball sprite. It looks like you are using a player for that. If you use the ball, then yes, you have to have the same color as the playfield, but the upside is you should be able to have more sprites on screen at once. 907969[/snapback] I don't know if you realize this, but Adventure III is not a 2600 game. It's actually a dedicated piece of hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted August 10, 2005 Author Share Posted August 10, 2005 In the original Adventure, the dot was made out of the ball sprite. It looks like you are using a player for that. If you use the ball, then yes, you have to have the same color as the playfield, but the upside is you should be able to have more sprites on screen at once. 907969[/snapback] I don't know if you realize this, but Adventure III is not a 2600 game. It's actually a dedicated piece of hardware. 907972[/snapback] Yes, I am sorry I never made this clear and then so many people made that assumption that I started having a little fun with it. Basically you could think of this as an attempt to recreate the development of an arcade game from the early 70s, ie the Atari Pong / Space Race era; that is, with no cpu, but rather directly with gates, flip-flops and signals. The difference is i'm not wiring them on a board, but rather using vhdl. I really hope to recreate the Atari Adventure experience though, with some of the same limitations, but perhaps different in some ways as well. Also, I did talk with Curt and it seems like it would be way too much of a hassle to ever go through Atari's red tape to release something, so this will probably just be for fun if I ever finish it at all. Maybe if I do finish it I'll make a couple prototypes, not sure. Anyway, this is a big project and I've been thinking about tackling something a little smaller first, so I'm probably going to try to recreate one of those simple one screen late 70's arcade games first. I have one in mind already that should be pretty simple and I have thought of a lot of fun variations. I really want something I can complete in a month. Then maybe with that experience I'll avoid so many of the roadblocks that are killing me right now on this rather ambitious Adventure sequel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted August 10, 2005 Share Posted August 10, 2005 Yes, I am sorry I never made this clear and then so many people made that assumption that I started having a little fun with it. Basically you could think of this as an attempt to recreate the development of an arcade game from the early 70s, ie the Atari Pong / Space Race era; that is, with no cpu, but rather directly with gates, flip-flops and signals. The difference is i'm not wiring them on a board, but rather using vhdl. I really hope to recreate the Atari Adventure experience though, with some of the same limitations, but perhaps different in some ways as well. That is even cooler. If you really want to make it look like a 70s arcade game you shouldn't make it look like the 2600. 70s Atari coinops looked like they used a sprite resolution equivalent to 320x200 rather than 160x200. The sprite size was not limited to 8x8. I think it was 16x16 or wider. They were also almost universally greyscale units. Exceptions were things like Indy 800 that needed the extra colors to distinguish more than 2 players. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted August 10, 2005 Author Share Posted August 10, 2005 That is even cooler. If you really want to make it look like a 70s arcade game you shouldn't make it look like the 2600. 70s Atari coinops looked like they used a sprite resolution equivalent to 320x200 rather than 160x200. The sprite size was not limited to 8x8. I think it was 16x16 or wider. They were also almost universally greyscale units. Exceptions were things like Indy 800 that needed the extra colors to distinguish more than 2 players. 908383[/snapback] Well the 70s game I have decided to do is Head-On. The 2600 has a version called Dodge Em. This simple engine I'm building supports quarter vga (160 x 120) with 8 colors. It supports a single static playfield of 160 x 120 and 64 sprites of 8 x 8. The sprites and playfield can have 8 colors. Sprites support transparency and can rotate to any 90 degree angle. I think this will let me do a bunch of games from the 70s pretty well. There is some loss of resolution but I'm not after perfect recreations. I'm more after taking existing concepts and expanding on them. I want the games to have a bunch of different variations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted August 10, 2005 Share Posted August 10, 2005 I don't know if you realize this, but Adventure III is not a 2600 game. It's actually a dedicated piece of hardware. Aaaaaaand that's the sound of my interest suddenly dropping to zero. Hey, I think I'll go start a thread about the development of a super-awesome game that nobody will ever get to play too! I can just make stuff up and nobody will know the difference! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uosipa llamxew Posted August 10, 2005 Share Posted August 10, 2005 I've never been much of a fan of Adventure so I was reading this thread purely out of my interest in the homebrew scene. My interest went way up after realizing that this was running on its own hardware! Very cool! This may be a neat piece to take to one of the gaming conventions. I look forward to reading about further development. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted August 10, 2005 Author Share Posted August 10, 2005 I don't know if you realize this, but Adventure III is not a 2600 game. It's actually a dedicated piece of hardware. Aaaaaaand that's the sound of my interest suddenly dropping to zero. Hey, I think I'll go start a thread about the development of a super-awesome game that nobody will ever get to play too! I can just make stuff up and nobody will know the difference! 908484[/snapback] Everyone is entitled to their opinion, even you ZylonBane. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kisrael Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 I guess this would explain why we couldn't get a ROM to play with ourselves... it's an interesting concept. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhindle The Red Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 I guess this would explain why we couldn't get a ROM to play with ourselves... You need a ROM for that? *backs slowly out of the room* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kisrael Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 Heheheheheheh. Whoops. Err..."why a ROM couldn't be made publically available for people to try" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted August 15, 2005 Author Share Posted August 15, 2005 Heheheheheheh. Whoops. Err..."why a ROM couldn't be made publically available for people to try" 909393[/snapback] Well, there is something called an SOF file that is a binary image of an fpga that can be loaded onto a dev kit. In theory, anyone with a UP3 dev kit could just load this SOF file in and it would work. It has to have a EP1C12Q240C8 fpga though because the pin mappings are different for every fpga. This is a pretty common fpga though. I think it's the one kevin horton is using for his NES recreation and also the same one that the new MSX recreation uses. When I'm done with this Head-On recreation I'll post the project files and everyone can see how bad my vhdl is. With the source in hand, a few changes and pin adjustments should be all that's needed to make it work on most fpga dev boards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrocon Posted August 15, 2005 Author Share Posted August 15, 2005 I guess this would explain why we couldn't get a ROM to play with ourselves... You need a ROM for that? *backs slowly out of the room* 909390[/snapback] Yes, I think you exactly nailed my fears. Rabid 2600'ers closing in around me with a rope and noose Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kisrael Posted September 16, 2005 Share Posted September 16, 2005 Any progress with this? It's kind of neat if you ended with something a bit like a famiclone, A/V wires and all. It reminds me a bit of http://www.onebitmusic.com/ , these little techno-lite-embedded-in-CD-jewelboxes some artist has been making. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legend Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 did this project die out? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandmountainslim Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 did this project die out? Nothing dies out when Team Savage is involved Wp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.