+SpiceWare Posted June 3, 2006 Author Share Posted June 3, 2006 (edited) The kings gained weight! At Nathan's request, I revised the castle/king sections to support a 5 pixel wide king instead 4 so he could come up with better king shapes(the shapes in the screen shot are still my test shapes). It took a few hours to do so, but I think the end results will be nicer with the extra pixels. I also changed the king death flash. I think the original was better, but would appreciate any feedback. mm20060602NTSC.bin mm20060602PAL.bin Edited September 9, 2007 by SpiceWare Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 5, 2006 Author Share Posted June 5, 2006 I fixed a couple things that annoyed me 1) the dead kings are no longer visible during screen flashes 2) the dragon can launch the fireball in more than 4 directions. No more sitting pretty on your castle's corner waiting for the round to start I have to do some "house cleaning" on the code so this will be the last update for a while. I'm down to 2 bytes of RAM and need to free some up for the AI routines. mm20060604PAL.bin mm20060604NTSC.bin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted June 11, 2006 Share Posted June 11, 2006 (edited) Hey Darrell: We played this game at my little get-together yesterday, and I must say everyone was having quite a bit of fun with it! It is a blast There are a few small things that came up during gameplay... (we used the version in the post above this one) 1) The fireballs can still get 'stuck' in a horizontal or vertical direction, although not as often as it used to. 2) Sometimes, after a person is holding the fireball, when it is released, it goes back to 'slow' speed 3) If two players are facing each other, the fireball can constantly go back and forth between them without changing direction if neither of them move or catch the ball. That's all we came up with... Great work! Bob Edited June 11, 2006 by PacManPlus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 11, 2006 Author Share Posted June 11, 2006 Great, glad everybody enjoyed it 1) yeah, I need to tweek the "english" routines some more. 2) hmm - That could be tough to track down. Was it always the same player(corner)? Same release direction? 3) Hadn't run into that. Probably not much of an issue for games with catch enabled, but for no-catch neither player will want to move... I'll need to add some english to the paddle collision routines as well. Thanks for the feedback! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
telengard Posted June 12, 2006 Share Posted June 12, 2006 (edited) I fixed a couple things that annoyed me 1) the dead kings are no longer visible during screen flashes 2) the dragon can launch the fireball in more than 4 directions. No more sitting pretty on your castle's corner waiting for the round to start I have to do some "house cleaning" on the code so this will be the last update for a while. I'm down to 2 bytes of RAM and need to free some up for the AI routines. Awesome, I always wondered why you could see the kings when a brick was hit, going through this thread explained a lot. Also, very cool about the dragon launching in different directions. I thought it was too easy just setting up in that one spot. I'm looking *very* forward to trying this out! ~telengard Edited June 12, 2006 by telengard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 12, 2006 Author Share Posted June 12, 2006 There's a number of tradeoffs to deal with when designing Atari VCS games. Warlords was an almost filled 4K rom (only a few bytes free) so they chose the "easy route" of the color black for dead players which is why the king and shield are seen when the screen flashes. On mine I was able to use additional ROM filled with 0s to "draw" the dead shield with, but my tradeoff comes in that the king is drawn using playfield graphics and there's no CPU time to make the left king different from the right king so I initially used the same "black" trick as Warlords. For the most recent version I used up a precious byte of RAM to save the screen color and use that instead of black to color the dead kings with. You can try it in Stella. The only tricky part is configuring the game to use paddles as Stella will default to joysticks. 1) start Stella 2) load Medieval Mayhem 3) hit TAB, a menu will pop up 4) select Game Properties 5) on the CARTRIDGE tab set SOUND to STEREO 6) select the CONTROLLER tab 7) change both controllers to PADDLES hit OK 9) hit EXIT MENU 10) restart the emulator for the change to take effect. Under OS X use APPLE R, under Windows and Linux use CONTROL R. You'll get a message "New Console Created" when it restarts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted July 16, 2006 Author Share Posted July 16, 2006 (edited) Wow - over a month since the last update. Time flies when your having fun. Part of the delay was my nephew(11) wished to learn how to write a video game while I was visting for the week of July 4th. I had given my brother an Atari 2600 w/supercharger a few years ago, so I decided to teach my nephew batari BASIC. For a couple weeks before the 4th I installed batari BASIC and figured it out so I could teach him. He came up with Deathstar Break In (most recent binary is in Post #7). Since the last update, I've: cleaned up the RAM usage and now have 9 bytes free for the AI routines. modified the initial fireball launch routines, they didn't seem random enough. revamped the english routines to only bounce funny when going straight up/down or left/right. This should stop the "stuck" patterns that I've seen occur. changed the king graphics to new ones designed by espire8. Speaking of graphics, Nathan's been too backlogged to do the dragon graphics. Lucky for us, espire8 has stepped up to the plate. In case you've missed it, espire8 designed the 3 frames that are currently used for the dragon animation, and did so by graphic hacking the initial test dragon. I look forward to seeing the finished dragon mm20060716PAL.bin mm20060716NTSC.bin Edited July 16, 2006 by SpiceWare Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted July 17, 2006 Share Posted July 17, 2006 I'm glad espire8 has been able to continue working on the dragon - the game is looking great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supercat Posted July 17, 2006 Share Posted July 17, 2006 [*]changed the king graphics to new ones designed by espire8. Do you detect king death via the collision registers, or via ball position? If the former, I think the top players would have an unfair advantage since a ball that just barely nicks the inside corner of the "king box" will kill the lower players' kings but not the upper players'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted July 17, 2006 Author Share Posted July 17, 2006 (edited) Hmm - hadn't noticed that but yeah, the upper players would have an advantage with the kings as drawn. I've dropped a note to espire8 on it. I guess I got lucky when I did the original king shapes as I wasn't even considering that. Edited September 9, 2007 by SpiceWare Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
espire8 Posted July 19, 2006 Share Posted July 19, 2006 [*]changed the king graphics to new ones designed by espire8. Do you detect king death via the collision registers, or via ball position? If the former, I think the top players would have an unfair advantage since a ball that just barely nicks the inside corner of the "king box" will kill the lower players' kings but not the upper players'. Hi Darrell, just read your post concerning the king icons. Thanks for telling me. I did'nt know how it would affect the gameplay like that. Yes, I see the problem here with the kings as the top of the crown is 2 pixels wider than the bottom of the graphic making it a bigger, easier target if you are in the lower corners. I'll try to remedy that and touch up the crowns abit more tomarrow tonight for Darrell to look at. -- Thanks supercat. BTW, I was happy to help pick up the meyhem dragon from Nathan's list of things to do. (You sure are going to be busy ) Also, I'll be laying out the second part of the dragon animation sequence this week. There's two- (1) the entering, turning around and exiting part and, (2) the part where it stops somewhere in the mist of the first sequence to randomly take a pot shot at any of the four corners before making it's exit. It will take me a little time but I'm enjoying this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybergoth Posted July 19, 2006 Share Posted July 19, 2006 Can't you just flip the bottom kings vertically? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
espire8 Posted July 20, 2006 Share Posted July 20, 2006 (edited) Can't you just flip the bottom kings vertically? Thanks for the suggestion-- that's the way the arcade version is actually set up (even the dragon flies on the flip side too): but concerning this homebrew, it does trouble me that the crowns don't look like crowns upside down. Anyway, the kings can look different between the top and bottom rows, so I decided on some revisions that will fit within a placement grid boundary. I turned the top crowns into warrior helmets since they have wide bottoms and narrow tops opposite of the crown shapes so now all players have narrow side advantage. Or if the helmets are placed on the bottom row, crowns on top -- all players will be at wide side disadvantage! Either way, the trade off affects everyone the same. I did several crown / helmet designs that will work here. -Okay Darrell, time to pick your flavor! ^ ...heh heh. Edited July 20, 2006 by espire8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted July 20, 2006 Author Share Posted July 20, 2006 Can't you just flip the bottom kings vertically?Thanks for the suggestion-- that's the way the arcade version is actually set up (even the dragon flies on the flip side too):From my tests with Warlords in MAME, the dragon always launched towards the human player who hit their start button first. In the arcades there was a 2 player upright cabinet and a 4 player cocktail table. In the upright cabinet humans play the bottom positions, so the dragon is always flying upright. In the 4 player model the dragon flips depending on which side the "first" human player is on. It's possible the top king graphics flip for the upright cabinent, I'll check that tonight. but concerning this homebrew, it does trouble me that the crowns don't look like crowns upside down.agreed - I'd rather use different images than flip them Anyway, the kings can look different between the top and bottom rows, so I decided on some revisions that will fit within a placement grid boundary. I turned the top crowns into warrior helmets since they have wide bottoms and narrow tops opposite of the crown shapes so now all players have narrow side advantage. Or if the helmets are placed on the bottom row, crowns on top -- all players will be at wide side disadvantage! Either way, the trade off affects everyone the same. I did several crown / helmet designs that will work here. -Okay Darrell, time to pick your flavor! ^ ...heh heh. Looks good! Think I'll go with crowns on the top and the helmets on the bottom. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted July 20, 2006 Share Posted July 20, 2006 How about adding a sound effect when the missiles hit the black border and not the blocks? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted July 21, 2006 Author Share Posted July 21, 2006 (edited) New king shapes. Also added Edge Bounce sound effects, though I don't think I'm going to keep them. They sound OK when there's 1 fireball, but not so good when there's 3 rapidly bouncing around the screen. mm20060720NTSC.bin mm20060720PAL.bin Edited September 9, 2007 by SpiceWare Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted July 28, 2006 Author Share Posted July 28, 2006 primitive AI version is in my blog Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy2600 Posted July 28, 2006 Share Posted July 28, 2006 Medieval Mayhem? Phaah Its Warlords Arcade! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keilbaca Posted July 28, 2006 Share Posted July 28, 2006 Medieval Mayhem? Phaah Its Warlords Arcade! Too bad we can't call it that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted July 28, 2006 Author Share Posted July 28, 2006 I've gotten to the point where I like the name Medieval Mayhem better than Warlords. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy2600 Posted July 28, 2006 Share Posted July 28, 2006 (edited) Medieval Mayhem? Phaah Its Warlords Arcade! Too bad we can't call it that... Said you. I have two most powerful things with me one I can make label saying Warlords and two I know I can fine some one that can hack and rename it into Warlords. and Ill play it as Warlords on the real unit Edited July 28, 2006 by Atariboy2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted August 6, 2006 Author Share Posted August 6, 2006 (edited) We now have AI players. They can track multiple fireballs, but don't yet know how to capture/release a fireball. I've also added english to the shield bounce, fixed the graphic glitch for player one and made the difficulty switches control paddle direction. Left controls Gray and Right controls Blue(even if player 1 is controlling the blue shield). This also make doubles rather interesting mm20060805PAL.bin mm20060805NTSC.bin Edited August 6, 2006 by SpiceWare Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
espire8 Posted August 6, 2006 Share Posted August 6, 2006 Dragon Update -- Here are the frame sequences for the dragon. 27 frames in all:Frame_count.bmp I did not test the animation yet and I still need to include the graphic table differences for each frame as I did for the first three. I'll put the sequences in the right order as I figure out which frames I can reuse again. BTW Darrell, how much memory are you putting in for the dragon? Just want to make sure I'm not going over the limit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted August 6, 2006 Author Share Posted August 6, 2006 Looking good! Hmm - I thought I'd sent that to you already, though it looks like I'd only sent that the dragon area is 43 rows tall. I reviewed what I sent Nathan and I had calculated that there's room for 32 frames of animation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
espire8 Posted August 7, 2006 Share Posted August 7, 2006 32 frames! Wow, I'm glad to hear that. Least i don't have to worry about cutting it to close for memory. I believe that's all the frames I'll work with for now tho (unless I plan to smooth out the animation some more) and 'clean them up' so they can register properly (i'm gonna have to keep track of the height). Afterwards, putting the frames together where the sequence "branch" into an animation loop cycle which is the tricky part. Can't wait to see this in action...back to work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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