117 replies to this topic

[RevEng]

After much slaving over code and documentation, I am now proud to present the bB Titlescreen Kernel. Use it to create titlescreens for your bB games.

 titlescreen_kernel_1.0.zip   630.08K   319 downloads
 The bB Titlescreen Kernel 1.0 Documentation, 20101004.pdf   575.71K   307 downloads

New: Jeff Wierer has put out a test release of Visual bB with an easy-to-use Titlescreen Wizard! It even supports creating screens with scrolling, animation, and multi-colored effects!

For those that have missed my other postings, here are some screenshots from 3 of the examples in the zip.


Also, here are the bins from the examples.
 ex1-basic_color.bas.bin   16K   190 downloads
 ex2-scroller.bas.bin   16K   185 downloads
 ex3-animation.bas.bin   16K   202 downloads
 ex4-color_by_flicker.bas.bin   16K   189 downloads

Please report any bugs in this thread.

Now go forth and make titlescreens!

[edit]

It looks like the DPC+ kernel doesn't define the "scorepointer" variables like the other kernels, and many of the Titlescreen minikernels rely on them.

If you're using the DPC+ kernel, add the following line to your basic:

const scorepointers=player1x

[yuppicide]

Shoiuld be the official SEXYNESS thread.

I think we should all get together and just make a crapload of title screens for games.. then hope someone makes a port of every game lol.

[Philsan]

Awesome!
This is a big step forward for Atari VCS.
A huge thank you to skilful Mike for his achievement.

[RevEng]

thanks guys!

I can't wait to see what people make with it!

[Random Terrain]

Thanks. I'll see what I can make tonight. Now I have to figure out the best way to link to this thread from the bB page. Throwing it in with a bunch of other links doesn't seem right. Maybe I can create a section for it, add a little text from your PDF file, then add a link to this thread.

[PAC-MAN-RED]

Wow!!! This is truly a masterpiece in programming if I ever saw one.

[atari2600land]

OK, so it isn't really the best one, but it's better than big, blocky letters filling up the whole screen.

Attached Thumbnails

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[RevEng]

atari2600land, on Thu Sep 23, 2010 5:43 PM, said:

OK, so it isn't really the best one, but it's better than big, blocky letters filling up the whole screen.

It's cool - I like the shading you've done on the title letters!

[jbaudrand]

Many thanks for this kernel, I guess it will be useful to pin it or create a master Thread where all the available kernel will be displayed (I mean no support thread, because it will be difficult to read, but more like a tool box; maybe in a near future we will have a lot of kernel available)

[Random Terrain]

Update:

I had a problem where the background color wasn't right. I thought I put the following in an empty bank, but it wasn't empty:

   asm
   include "titlescreen/asm/titlescreen.asm"
end

After I moved up to 32k and put it in a bank that was really empty, the background color was correct.

Edited by Random Terrain, Fri Sep 24, 2010 1:11 PM.

[yuppicide]

Awesome documentation for your Titlescreen Kernel!

I have an idea for something that maybe can be implemented in a future version or maybe it's doable in the current state.

Currently there's an animation mini kernel to make text scroll upwards. What about another mini kernel that doesn't moves a bunch of lines at once?

Your Robotron scrolling example has an image with a height of 256, but you're only showing 64 at a time. It scrolls up slowly.

Since you are able to make an image that has a height of 256, how about a mini kernel that allows the user to alternate between 2, 3 or 4 images, which would all be contained in one image of a 256 height. Here's my example:

To alternate between two images, you would draw one image with a height of 256, animation frame #1 is contained in lines 1 - 128, animation frame #2 is lines 129 - 256. Your mini kernel would switch between those two sections to make a 2 frame animation.

You would also be able to chose to have 3 animation frames, animation frame #1 is lines 1 - 85, animation frame #2 is lines 86 - 170, and animation frame #3 is lines 171 - 256.

Lastly, you could chose to have 4 animation frames, animation frame #1 is lines 1 - 64, animation frame #2 is lines 65 - 128, animation frame #3 is lines 129 - 192, and animation frame #4 is lines 193 - 256.

People would be able to use this to switch between picture.. you could make a car zooming across the screen, a person walking, or maybe just switch between your game title and company title.

[Random Terrain]

yuppicide, on Fri Sep 24, 2010 11:40 AM, said:

People would be able to use this to switch between picture.. you could make a car zooming across the screen, a person walking, or maybe just switch between your game title and company title.

I'm either not reading that right or I'm on drugs. Sounds like you are talking about 6. Example 3 - A titlescreen with an animated graphic in the PDF file. It's right after the stuff about scrolling.

[Godzilla]

wow that is damn cool!

[RevEng]

Random Terrain, on Fri Sep 24, 2010 10:00 AM, said:

Can anything interfere with the background color?...

I'm not sure what's going on there.

The background color is determined by the titlescreencolor value, which is either hardcoded in the "titlescreen_color.asm" file (to a default of black), or it can be set by dim'ing a variable named "titlescreencolor".

But from your description I'm guessing you haven't done that... if you can post or PM the code with the problem I can take a look.

@yuppicide: RT called it right. (If he's on drugs, he's not sharing.) Have a look at the animation example!

[Random Terrain]

RevEng, on Fri Sep 24, 2010 12:52 PM, said:

But from your description I'm guessing you haven't done that... if you can post or PM the code with the problem I can take a look.

I must be on drugs. I think I stuck it in a bank I thought was empty, but it wasn't. I moved up to 32k since I was out of totally free banks and now it works.

[Random Terrain]

OK, now this is weird. I figured out the background color problem, but I just found out that if I leave in "draw_gameselect" the color of my logo is in PAL colors. If I delete it, my colors are NTSC.

[RevEng]

You probably have too many lines of bitmap data - what's your scanline count?

[Random Terrain]

RevEng, on Fri Sep 24, 2010 2:37 PM, said:

You probably have too many lines of bitmap data - what's your scanline count?

So that's what happened. I'm still playing around, so I left some of the default stuff on the screen.

[Random Terrain]

Here's my first try:

[RevEng]

Wow... That's really pretty!

[yuppicide]

Sorry, maybe I missed it because I was at work and when I looked at the picture of the gears they all look just about the same. So, I couldn't really tell from that stacked picture. Now I see you say "the gears are animated you need to trust me".

Maybe something with more contrast between frames would have done it.

[RevEng]

I see that, yuppi.

I also should have include example bins too, so I threw those up in the first post just now, along with an animated gif of the gears example.

Edited by RevEng, Fri Sep 24, 2010 11:39 PM.

[yuppicide]

I was going to suggest .bins also 'cause I had trouble trying to compile. I probably don't have things in the right directory.

[atari2600land]

Very nice work! I just have a question: Can I use other kernels, like the lives counter, with the titlescreen one?

[RevEng]

I haven't tested it with other kernels/minikernels installed, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.