767 replies to this topic

[vdub_bobby]

Most excellent!

[mos6507]

One of the best kernels, ever. It looks like you can even create different islands of patterns. If you go too far to the right you pass by a section that is just verical strips, and different colors. I can see how something could exploit that to give the illusion of a larger world, like a formal tiling system.

[roland p]

Thanks everyone! This feedback really keeps me going

cd-w, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 12:39 AM, said:

I notice that the checkerboard actually extends underneath the playfield at the edges (Alt-N in Stella). I don't suppose it would be possible to make it slightly wider?

I could try to tweak it. One line should be able to scroll 1 full tile, so what you see at the and is the tile that comes at the next line. It's scrolled by eating one cycle.
It is now one kernel, wich rotates the lines 45 degrees. Maybe if I split it in two (or just parts of it), where one kernel is a 22,5 degrees rotated version of the first one, I have more time.

mos6507, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:02 AM, said:

One of the best kernels, ever. It looks like you can even create different islands of patterns. If you go too far to the right you pass by a section that is just verical strips, and different colors. I can see how something could exploit that to give the illusion of a larger world, like a formal tiling system.

The tile board is now a repeating 'texture' of two lines heigh and 32 bytes wide. You could create a texture of 256 bytes (256 unique colors), and every line on screen is a pointer within that 256 bytes.

I now want to add antialiasing (non-flickering) to enhanche the tiles in the distance.

grtz,
Roland.

[Jay Silverheels]

Speaking for non-emulator users, and people at work, we'd love to see some screen shots of this WIP. This thread is very interesting to follow!

-Jay

[roland p]

Well, the thing looks best in motion

Attached Thumbnails

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Edited by roland p, Tue Sep 30, 2008 5:03 AM.

[Andrew Davie]

roland p, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:01 PM, said:

Thanks everyone! This feedback really keeps me going

It's quality work -- well done, you should be very proud of this.

Don't slack off -- now's the time to push for some sprites and see what you can do!
Or perhaps a second screen down below?

And one request -- I'd like to have the speed attetuated by friction ASAP!

Cheers
A

[Andrew Davie]

There is something "odd" about the horizontal lines of the chequerboard. I can't quite place what is wrong, but it seems like there's a momentary (1 frame) period where the colour at the division flickers back to the old colour, then goes right. If you watch the boundary of a square as it moves away from you, it appears not to move smoothly, but flicker back and forth between the two colours. Is this an artefact of my imagination? I just feel it should look a bit more "smooth" than it is.

[roland p]

Andrew Davie, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:39 PM, said:

roland p, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:01 PM, said:

Thanks everyone! This feedback really keeps me going

It's quality work -- well done, you should be very proud of this.

Don't slack off -- now's the time to push for some sprites and see what you can do!
Or perhaps a second screen down below?

And one request -- I'd like to have the speed attetuated by friction ASAP!

Cheers
A

The sprites are a sort of last requirement. If those are in it, we could say that ballblazer should be technically possible.
I've already been working on friction and brakes, but it's not the way I want yet, it was commented out for the last version. For friction and braking I'll try a two stage design where friction is high at high speed and low at low speed. nothing fancy. Maybe add more stages if it looks crappy.

[roland p]

Andrew Davie, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:57 PM, said:

There is something "odd" about the horizontal lines of the chequerboard. I can't quite place what is wrong, but it seems like there's a momentary (1 frame) period where the colour at the division flickers back to the old colour, then goes right. If you watch the boundary of a square as it moves away from you, it appears not to move smoothly, but flicker back and forth between the two colours. Is this an artefact of my imagination? I just feel it should look a bit more "smooth" than it is.

I'm not sure what you mean. You can try to move at the slowest speed, the you can see more precisely what is going on. The resolution is very low so that can make thing a bit weird, especially in the distance. I want to add (real, non flickering) antialiassing to smooth things out a bit, just like the real ballblazer. The kernel allows this. This should make it look less wonky.

[roland p]

I've tweaked the engine a bit to make the tiles look better in relation to the on screen raster. a tile in the distance will now grow exactly 1 pixel each time when it comes closer. It has less interference with the raster.

Attached Files

•  ballblazer.bin   4K   108 downloads

Edited by roland p, Tue Sep 30, 2008 6:42 AM.

[Random Terrain]

roland p, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:41 AM, said:

I've tweaked the engine a bit to make the tiles look better in relation to the on screen raster. a tile in the distance will now grow exactly 1 pixel each time when it comes closer. It has less interference with the raster.

That looks much better. And since you can go fast enough right now to singe your corneas, the second player window shouldn't slow things down too much.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

roland p, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:32 PM, said:

I'm not sure what you mean. You can try to move at the slowest speed, the you can see more precisely what is going on. The resolution is very low so that can make thing a bit weird, especially in the distance.

I think those effects come form vertical and horizontal movement overlapping. Since vertical movement is much smoother than horizontal, it can happend that e.g. the last visible edge of a tile is scrolled out only to be scrolled in a frame later by the other scrolling direction.

There isn't much you can do against this, except for synced scrolling. But then you would loose vertical scrolling resolution.

[roland p]

Thomas Jentzsch, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 7:40 PM, said:

roland p, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:32 PM, said:

I'm not sure what you mean. You can try to move at the slowest speed, the you can see more precisely what is going on. The resolution is very low so that can make thing a bit weird, especially in the distance.

I think those effects come form vertical and horizontal movement overlapping. Since vertical movement is much smoother than horizontal, it can happend that e.g. the last visible edge of a tile is scrolled out only to be scrolled in a frame later by the other scrolling direction.

There isn't much you can do against this, except for synced scrolling. But then you would loose vertical scrolling resolution.

I think that could be improved by using small sprites to increase the resolution

[atari2600land]

Nice work so far! BTW, when you get to the left edge goal, it kind of "repeats" itself a little bit before you get there. Just wondering if that is something fixable.

[roland p]

atari2600land, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:20 PM, said:

Nice work so far! BTW, when you get to the left edge goal, it kind of "repeats" itself a little bit before you get there. Just wondering if that is something fixable.

When I've added some collision detection which bounces the player back into the playfield, the issue should be fixed.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

roland p, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:24 PM, said:

I think that could be improved by using small sprites to increase the resolution

Maybe...

[roland p]

Kernel with one sprite... phew...

Attached Files

•  ballblazer.bin   4K   124 downloads

[johnnywc]

This is looking fantastic!!!!

GREAT JOB!

[birdie3]

WOW!!

[Thomas Jentzsch]

roland p, on Wed Oct 1, 2008 12:07 AM, said:

Kernel with one sprite... phew...

I suppose that was a real pain.

BTW: I checked the color values from the 5200 version:
SKY_COL = $80
BORDER_COL = $14
DARK_COL = $b4
MEDIUM_COL = $b8 ; for interleaving
BRIGHT_COL = $bc

;$e4/$e6 are also used, for interleaving with the brown border

[Jay Silverheels]

roland p, on Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:01 PM, said:

Well, the thing looks best in motion

Thank you for the pics, nonetheless. This is pretty amazing stuff! Please keep up the good work.

I want to BallBlaze on my 2600! I mean, I want to be a Ballblazer!

-Jay

[roland p]

Thomas Jentzsch, on Wed Oct 1, 2008 8:01 AM, said:

I suppose that was a real pain.

Yeah, that one really hurt When the scanlines scroll to left/right, the instruction that fills the GRP0 register moves too... It now works ok, I still have to make it dynamic, which adds 1 cycle (Change LDA immediate into LDA zero page), but that should not be too hard.

I now make updates every other line. The drones are symmetric, so maybe I could use GRP1 in reflected mode, and fill it with the same data. The scanlines are then offset one line, but that could be corrected with VDELP1?
I've tried turning on VDELP0, but that resulted in an invisible sprite...

Thomas Jentzsch, on Wed Oct 1, 2008 8:01 AM, said:

BTW: I checked the color values from the 5200 version:
SKY_COL = $80
BORDER_COL = $14
DARK_COL = $b4
MEDIUM_COL = $b8 ; for interleaving
BRIGHT_COL = $bc

;$e4/$e6 are also used, for interleaving with the brown border

Thanks, but are you sure?, I've tried those colors, but the bordercolor $14 results in light brown, and the dark/bright colors result in a blueish tint.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

roland p, on Wed Oct 1, 2008 12:23 PM, said:

I now make updates every other line. The drones are symmetric...

Not when viewed from the side.

Quote

I've tried turning on VDELP0, but that resulted in an invisible sprite...

If you enable VDELP0, you have to write to GRP1 to copy the buffered GRP0 data into the visible GRP0 register.

Quote

Thanks, but are you sure?, I've tried those colors, but the bordercolor $14 results in light brown, and the dark/bright colors result in a blueish tint.

Yes, I am sure. They look a bit odd, maybe because there is no definitive palette for emulators.

Those are 100% the colors from the 5200 version (emulator screenshot and palette compare). Maybe you try those values and check on a real TV (or someone else does it for you). Best would be, if you can directly compare with a 5200 console output.

[roland p]

Thomas Jentzsch, on Wed Oct 1, 2008 12:41 PM, said:

Not when viewed from the side.

They look indeed very different from the sides..

Thomas Jentzsch, on Wed Oct 1, 2008 12:41 PM, said:

Yes, I am sure. They look a bit odd, maybe because there is no definitive palette for emulators.

I've attached a picture with those colors used in the middle...

Attached Thumbnails

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[Mayhem]

Gotta say that's looking pretty good so far