746 replies to this topic

[popmilo]

STE, on Thu Nov 10, 2011 7:34 AM, said:

You shouldn't need any masks for the sprites. the transparent separators for the legs etc will work perfectly adequately without masks, as they do on the c64 version...

Agreed. But would still need to AND sprite background with "mask" bytes (From a lookup table).
"3-color-C64-style-sprites" would be ok and would save memory for masks. (A lot of memory and hand pixeling ...).

Rybags, on Thu Nov 10, 2011 7:43 AM, said:

They'll most likely be softsprites, so masks needed for all of them in that case.

If those are 4-color soft sprites than - yes, full sized masks are needed for every sprite.
But in 3-color case - only 1-256 byte long table is needed.

Plus - it can be any 3 colors out of 4. With separate 256 byte table for "sprite"(bytes that are ORed on top of masked background), sprites could be in any 3 out of 4 screen colors.

Rybags, on Thu Nov 10, 2011 7:43 AM, said:

The OR method just won't work with this game - there's the possibility of the kid moving over any possible playfield colour. The only way it'd work is if only the clothes colour is Playfield and PMGs are used for all other aspects of the kid.

Yeah... Wall background behind pillars is one of those cases...
It is an interesting idea although... could be used for a different game (one that has less background-front interaction but still has sprites coming close to each other so that simple lda-sta wouldn't look ok).

Anyway... Creating all these special cases makes me feel like its cheating... We should make one standard routine for 4-color softsprite that will work over any background and with any PM combo.
Back to code editor...

[sack-c0s]

cheating? when you have 64k and under 2mhz of CPU (or 3.5MHz and instructions that eat cycles like they're going out of fashion) everything is smoke and mirrors to get the game or demo up and running.

Even with quad core 3GHz CPUs and multicore GPUs a liberal amount of cheating is needed to keep framerates up. I mean you could draw every branch of every one of those hundres of trees with hundreds of triangles, or you could just render one to texture and then just throw 2 triangles at the screen everywhere you need a tree. Cheating? maybe. Gamebreaking? no because you'd need a metric shedload of power to draw everything, or end up with an empty looking world if you did it 'properly'.

I really wouldn't worry about being considered a cheat, so long as nobody is dropping game features...

[Heaven/TQA]

Sack, agreed and as long as the player does not feel "cheated" anyway... I guess in Raster Master I am cheating like hell... but who cares?

[w1k]

new test xex file
http://atarionline.p...2#Comment_27783

[popmilo]

w1k, on Sat Nov 12, 2011 2:29 PM, said:

new test xex file
http://atarionline.p...2#Comment_27783

At your post at atarionline.pl "i dont see it altirra prince 2.00.47" - just move joystick (cursor keys).

Nicely done.... Colors little of, but cool

[w1k]

oh.. not my post.. sorry

[José Pereira]

popmilo, on Sat Nov 12, 2011 3:26 PM, said:

w1k, on Sat Nov 12, 2011 2:29 PM, said:

new test xex file
http://atarionline.p...2#Comment_27783

At your post at atarionline.pl "i dont see it altirra prince 2.00.47" - just move joystick (cursor keys).

Nicely done.... Colors little of, but cool

He is using ANTIC4.
The guys masked on the Pillar are not pixel mask but he is doing byte Mask (remember that the Pillars have 10pixels width...), see that when you go from Right to the Left and see the guy starts masking 2pixels more than the Pillar width...
The Mask are at byte boundaries because he's using PF3andPF2 as White and PF3 the Front colour of the Walls/Pillars.
He then use two Players in multicolour to get the Flames...

Quote

TIP: Type '?' for help, 'CONT' to exit
312 0 52DE BEQ $52E7 (N) A=01 S=f7 X=00 Y=01 P=--*B-I--
> gtia
HPOSP0=94 HPOSP1=94 HPOSP2=74 HPOSP3=74 HPOSM0=00 HPOSM1=00
HPOSM2=00 HPOSM3=00 SIZEP0=00 SIZEP1=00 SIZEP2=00 SIZEP3=00
SIZEM= 00 GRAFP0=00 GRAFP1=00 GRAFP2=00 GRAFP3=00 GRAFM =00
COLPM0=48 COLPM1=f4 COLPM2=48 COLPM3=f4 COLPF0=04 COLPF1=18
COLPF2=0e COLPF3=68 COLBK= 00 PRIOR= 24 VDELAY=00 GRACTL=03
>

Now he still has the problem: How to colour the Enemy clothes?
Enemy would then be PMs only and it's sword White a PF can because I would put the Enemy out of the Flames scanlines, but then he would still need to Mask PMs...
Still need two routines for Masking (one for PFs of Prince and the Enemy Sword and the other for the Enemy PMs)

Remember what we talked about Char-Mode...
In a static screen you can have in Char-Mode but on the real game lots to re-done...
More, on Char-Mode you'd certainly don't have cycles for the guys soft sprite and PMs, almost sure...

If Char-Mode it's possible, then I wouldn't White as PF3 but as PF0 or PF1...
I wouldn't mind changing the Tiles to fit in Chars but then it would be lots of Charsets (Memory would be almost the same as 24Char-Lines would 1Kb more: 9Kbs in 1Charset to each 3Char-Lines, screen 189scanlines would need to be 25Char-Llines=200 scanlines)

Edited by José Pereira, Sat Nov 12, 2011 4:25 PM.

[popmilo]

w1k, on Sat Nov 12, 2011 3:28 PM, said:

oh.. not my post.. sorry

w1k

i dont see prince on altirra 2.00.47

What!! There is someone at atarionline using same name as you !!!

[w1k]

[José Pereira]

w1k, on Sun Nov 13, 2011 4:48 AM, said:

I saw and like that video you posted... the one that you are always trying to close the cat inside the Cabinet...
Now I see the reason

By the way, what is the cat always trying to catch under the Cabinet?

[José Pereira]

The reason why there's a strange post sign-in as w1k at AtariOnline:

Edited by José Pereira, Sun Nov 13, 2011 5:09 AM.

[José Pereira]

Strange, really strange things hapenning...

First we had Emkay and then we now have Em_kay
We have w1k but we also have k1w1:
http://www.atariage....ser/27350-k1w1/
Are you teaching your cats to sign up here?

[w1k]

cat want play.. you know, hide and seek, etc

Edited by w1k, Sun Nov 13, 2011 5:24 AM.

[Stephen]

Maybe this link would be of some use http://jordanmechner.../2011/10/ebook/

[Heaven/TQA]

just bought the ebook for my kindle...

[MrFish]

Stephen, on Tue Nov 15, 2011 1:08 PM, said:

Maybe this link would be of some use http://jordanmechner.../2011/10/ebook/

Thanks for the link Stephen. I've read through much of his site (including a lot the journal material that would be in the pdf) before and downloaded most of the technicals there, but I haven't gone there for some time. I wouldn't have seen this if you hadn't posted the link. +1

[Jacques]

How is the progress? Did this thread lead to alive project being still worked on?

[Philsan]

http://www.atarionli...&page=1#Item_32

[emkay]

Philsan, on Sat Feb 11, 2012 2:14 AM, said:

http://www.atarionli...&page=1#Item_32

Would be nice to have it a little more original...

[Jacques]

Philsan, on Sat Feb 11, 2012 2:14 AM, said:

http://www.atarionli...&page=1#Item_32

You got it wrong I was asking whether THIS THREAD did result in alive project, not the one on Atari-online
As it was a lot of academic discussion going on here

Edited by Jacques, Mon Feb 13, 2012 3:43 AM.

[popmilo]

Jacques, on Mon Feb 13, 2012 3:43 AM, said:

Philsan, on Sat Feb 11, 2012 2:14 AM, said:

http://www.atarionli...&page=1#Item_32

You got it wrong I was asking whether THIS THREAD did result in alive project, not the one on Atari-online
As it was a lot of academic discussion going on here

You are right, lots of discussion, not much code
As far as I can say, no one (yet) made a sacrifice in blood and pledged to do it officially, but I'm rather sure something (at least similar to pop) will come out for atari eventually

[Rybags]

It's a big commitment. With good Apple 2 disasm'd source, you're still talking in the hundreds of hours.

There's all manner of mods now out for the C64 version - keeping the data structures compliant has meant that many of the user created map packs port straight over.