307 replies to this topic

[Underball]

This looks like it's going to be awesome!!!

One critique if I may though: I see that you have added digitized speech, but I haven't a clue what they're saying. It's very muddy sounding, even compared to Berzerk VE which doesn't have the advantage of using the DPC chip.

[PacManPlus]

Absolutely excellent

Great job, as always. Look forward to purchasing this.

[disjaukifa]

PacManPlus, on Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:23 AM, said:

Absolutely excellent

Great job, as always. Look forward to purchasing this.

Agreed, I'm just now getting into Berzerk and I've found it terrible addicting, looking forward to trying this one out tonight when I get home!

-Disjaukifa

[SpiceWare]

Underball, on Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:11 AM, said:

One critique if I may though: I see that you have added digitized speech, but I haven't a clue what they're saying. It's very muddy sounding, even compared to Berzerk VE which doesn't have the advantage of using the DPC chip.

The only advantage DPC+DA has over Berzerk VE's speech routines is that I can still draw the display while playing back speech. This means I'll be able to play back samples during the game instead of only between rooms while blanking the screen. Both are limited to 4-bit sound. Berzerk VE might even have an advantage in sound quality as it gets 4K* (less space for a small piece of code) for each phrase while DPC+DA only gets to use 2K. To compensate for this, I store each word as a separate sample, but that's not as efficient as storing a complete phrase. You can read up about that in this blog entry, where in the comments I discovered that breaking up "humanoid" into "human" and "oid" used 467 more bytes while combining "get" and "the" into "get the" saved 494 bytes.

That said - what's currently in there is proof-of-concept. I think the main problem with it is the speech is too fast - I used the Mac's built in speech to create the samples and made it talk faster as a quick-and-dirty way to shrink the samples. There's also ways to use filters to improve the quality of the samples. I am using them, but I haven't taken the time yet to read up on how that works - hopefully I'll be able to use the filters more effectively after researching them.

I also plan to support the AtariVox.

* I haven't looked at Berzerk VE's routines but it's possible they used data packing, which would expand that limit to 8K of data per phrase as two 4-bit samples can be packed into every byte and unpacked in real-time during playback. BVE has time to do that as it's not displaying anything. For DPC+DA I am able to pack the data to store the samples, but they must be unpacked before going into that 2K buffer as there's no time during left in the display kernel to do it.

Edited by SpiceWare, Mon Aug 22, 2011 12:55 PM.

[disjaukifa]

Just want to say I finally got around to trying this game out and its fantastic, I hope you continue your development of it, its going to be one awesome games. What do you think the time frame is to getting a more playable copy of the game, ie where the Robots are moving?

-Disjaukifa

[SpiceWare]

Thanks!

If you're impatient you could always follow my blog. What I post there is a lot more technical, but it gets updated more frequently. The most recent Frantic blog entry, where's the humanoid?, has the ROM which shows off the routines the robots use to decided which direction to move.

I'm about half way done with making those routines also return "Target Lock Acquired", which determines if the robots should shoot or not. I suspect that'll be posted to the blog tomorrow or Thursday as I've got yard work to do tonight

Once thats completed I need to tweak them to also work with the smart missiles (they can change direction mid-flight). After that's done I'll be able to start work on making the robots move and shoot.

Based on where I'm at there's a chance that'll be done Saturday, though I might be going out of town for the weekend - if so, I'll be stopping by Pinballz in Austin again

Edited by SpiceWare, Tue Aug 23, 2011 9:01 AM.

[Zach]

Random Terrain, on Sun Aug 21, 2011 8:58 PM, said:

This gives me hope that we might get a Centipede type of game one day where the mushrooms look like mushrooms and they actually show individual damage, like in the arcade version. Even if there would have to be fewer mushrooms, I'd still like to see it.

I've been hoping that Harmony/Melody would make it possible to support the trackball too. And please if someone remakes Centipede, include the music from this commercial.

[ComputerSpaceFan]

If we're posting requests, I'd just like Frantic to work on a Harmony cart plugged into a FlashBack 2

[SpiceWare]

ComputerSpaceFan, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:34 PM, said:

I'd just like Frantic to work on a Harmony cart plugged into a FlashBack 2

Based on this, I don't think that's going to happen.

[disjaukifa]

Hey Spiceware,

Out of curiosity are you doing this in batari Basic or pure assembly?

-Disjaukifa

[ComputerSpaceFan]

SpiceWare, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 2:53 PM, said:

ComputerSpaceFan, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:34 PM, said:

I'd just like Frantic to work on a Harmony cart plugged into a FlashBack 2

Based on this, I don't think that's going to happen.

Hmmm I wonder if that would mean a cartridge version would work on a FB2. I guess we'll have to see when people order it. If it does, I'm definitely buying one.

[SpiceWare]

disjaukifa, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 2:59 PM, said:

Out of curiosity are you doing this in batari Basic or pure assembly?

It's a combination of 6507 routines written in assembly and ARM routines written in C.

I'm using DPC+, which is our updated version of the DPC bank switching found in Pitfall 2. I'm specifically using the new DPC+DA variant that adds digital audio playback.

I've been posting the source in my blog if you're interested in looking at it.

[SpiceWare]

ComputerSpaceFan, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 3:27 PM, said:

Hmmm I wonder if that would mean a cartridge version would work on a FB2.

No, the cartridge version will use Melody Board, which is basically a Harmony w/out the SD slot.

[disjaukifa]

SpiceWare, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 4:13 PM, said:

disjaukifa, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 2:59 PM, said:

Out of curiosity are you doing this in batari Basic or pure assembly?

It's a combination of 6507 routines written in assembly and ARM routines written in C.

I'm using DPC+, which is our updated version of the DPC bank switching found in Pitfall 2. I'm specifically using the new DPC+DA variant that adds digital audio playback.

I've been posting the source in my blog if you're interested in looking at it.

I'll have to head over there later and read up on how you are making this game. I didn't think we could use C for any of the programming though thinking about it now it definitely makes sense.

-Disjaukifa

[SpiceWare]

Moving and shooting went in far quicker than I expected!

These are preliminary routines and there's lots of refinement to be done, so no need to say "it's too difficult!"



ROM (don't forget the notes in the first post if you're using Stella)
 frantic_harmony20110824.bin   32K   68 downloads

Edited by SpiceWare, Thu Aug 25, 2011 11:24 AM.

[disjaukifa]

SpiceWare, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:18 PM, said:

Moving and shooting went in far quicker than I expected!

These are preliminary routines and there's lots of refiniment to be done, so no need to say "it's too difficult!"

frantic_harmony20110824.bin_1.png frantic_harmony20110824.bin_2.png

ROM (don't forget the notes in the first post if you're using Stella)
frantic_harmony20110824.bin

Awesome update, though I have to admit, the too difficult thing does apply, I was able to get through about 3 rooms without getting hit once, but it was still a challenge. Fantastic job, I look forward to seeing further updates on this game.

-Disjaukifa

[raindog]

disjaukifa, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:58 PM, said:

Awesome update, though I have to admit, the too difficult thing does apply, I was able to get through about 3 rooms without getting hit once, but it was still a challenge. Fantastic job, I look forward to seeing further updates on this game.

-Disjaukifa

The top and bottom entrances are hilariously brutal. I just sat there watching myself die 2 or 3 times a second when I used a bottom exit on a later level. But very, very impressive. Looking forward to trying it on the Harmony.

[SpiceWare]

I did some playtesting of Berzerk last night after taking the bike out and noticed a few things that'll make a difference.

• there's a short period of time (1-2 seconds) at the start of the round where the humanoid can move & shoot, but not the robots
  
• The slow robots shots appear to be 1/4 the speed of humanoid shots (I'm current using 1/2 speed)
  
• The fast robot shots appear to be 1/2 the speed of humaniod shots (I'm currently using same speed)

[disjaukifa]

SpiceWare, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 8:44 AM, said:

I did some playtesting of Berzerk last night after taking the bike out and noticed a few things that'll make a difference.

• there's a short period of time (1-2 seconds) at the start of the round where the humanoid can move & shoot, but not the robots
  
• The slow robots shots appear to be 1/4 the speed of humanoid shots (I'm current using 1/2 speed)
  
• The fast robot shots appear to be 1/2 the speed of humaniod shots (I'm currently using same speed)

I think the first item in the list is the largest improvement, that is really needed, and maybe you switch it up based on the difficultly set at the start of the games. Meaning if its set to B then its 2 seconds, if its set to 1 then its 1 second.

Any chance we can get a new binary?

Also i know you said you are programming this with a mixture of C and Assembly, are you doing it mostly in C or Assembly or is it about 50/50 in both.

-Disjaukifa

[SpiceWare]

disjaukifa, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 8:48 AM, said:

if its set to B then its 2 seconds, if its set to 1 then its 1 second.

I'll keep this in mind, though it would be a menu option (kids setting, or something like that) as opposed to a difficulty switch.

Quote

Any chance we can get a new binary?

There's a great chance I'll post a new binary, tonight or tomorrow after I've had time to make changes, but definitely not right now in the middle of the work day. Keep an eye on the blog though as not all updates warrant getting posted here.

Quote

are you doing it mostly in C or Assembly or is it about 50/50 in both.

C is used for all game logic.

6507 assembly is used for all things that interface with the Atari hardware (trigger vertical sync, positioning sprites/missiles, the display kernel, etc). That's because the ARM processor in Harmony/Melody does not have access to the TIA and such.

[Dr. Kylstein]

The robots in the demo charge at walls too readily. In Berzerk, they do know how to avoid walls, they just misjudge corners and edges sometimes. Most frags are due to bumping into or shooting each other.

[disjaukifa]

Dr. Kylstein, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:49 AM, said:

The robots in the demo charge at walls too readily. In Berzerk, they do know how to avoid walls, they just misjudge corners and edges sometimes. Most frags are due to bumping into or shooting each other.

Maybe in the arcade version of Berzerk, but in the 2600 version, the robots do that all the time, I know because I've played about 3 hours of Berzerk this week, and that is become my primary strategy for clearing a room.

-Disjaukifa

Edited by disjaukifa, Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:55 AM.

[SpiceWare]

Dr. Kylstein, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:49 AM, said:

The robots in the demo charge at walls too readily.

SpiceWare, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:18 PM, said:

These are preliminary routines and there's lots of refinement to be done

[disjaukifa]

SpiceWare, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 11:24 AM, said:

Dr. Kylstein, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:49 AM, said:

The robots in the demo charge at walls too readily.

SpiceWare, on Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:18 PM, said:

These are preliminary routines and there's lots of refinement to be done

+1 reputation for that, answering a questions with a quote from yourself from the previous day . . . awesome!

-Disjaukifa

[SpiceWare]

disjaukifa, on Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:54 AM, said:

Maybe in the arcade version of Berzerk, but in the 2600 version, the robots do that all the time, I know because I've played about 3 hours of Berzerk this week, and that is become my primary strategy for clearing a room.

I suspect that was changed because the robot's couldn't collide with each other in the 2600 version.