390 replies to this topic

[SpiceWare]

ah - I gotcha now. Yes, that would make a lot of sense to do. I'll try it tonight.

[supercat]

SpiceWare, on Tue Apr 4, 2006 9:45 AM, said:

The king graphic is currently updated once every other scanline - to clear it on one side would require it to be updated twice on every scanline, or 4 times as often.

If you have separate subkernels for both-kings-live, left-king-only, right-king-only, and both-kings-dead, there should be plenty of cycles since you don't have to draw the player sprite for the dead king.

[Jacob Rose]

supercat, on Tue Apr 4, 2006 6:44 PM, said:

SpiceWare, on Tue Apr 4, 2006 9:45 AM, said:

The king graphic is currently updated once every other scanline - to clear it on one side would require it to be updated twice on every scanline, or 4 times as often.

If you have separate subkernels for both-kings-live, left-king-only, right-king-only, and both-kings-dead, there should be plenty of cycles since you don't have to draw the player sprite for the dead king.

It's not a player sprite, it's a playfield pattern. That's how he's able to have so many flicker-free objects in motion. Really smart, since the kings never move anyway.

[SpiceWare]

Jacob Rose, on Tue Apr 4, 2006 1:55 PM, said:

What I meant was to alter it only after both kings in the same row are dead, which would eliminate the worst case problem, without requiring two updates per scanline. The lesser case problem would still be there, but the worst case would be eliminated.

Thanx for the wonderful suggestion!!!

Attached Files

•  mm.bin   16K   110 downloads

[supercat]

Jacob Rose, on Tue Apr 4, 2006 7:16 PM, said:

It's not a player sprite, it's a playfield pattern. That's how he's able to have so many flicker-free objects in motion. Really smart, since the kings never move anyway.

I know that, but if a king is dead its corresponding shield (which is a player) won't be displayed.

Incidentally, if you check out my "Of mice and minikernels" blog entry, I show two sixteen-pixel-wide high-res kings on a scan line with two shields and a fireball, all at single-line resolution. The left-side shield and king are red; the right-side ones are green.

Having multiple fireballs is more important than hires kings, but the minikernel is still interesting, IMHO, because of the nice puzzle it leaves for the observer (how DOES it work, anyway?)

[SpiceWare]

I'd missed that - pretty cool looking!

[Jacob Rose]

supercat, on Tue Apr 4, 2006 11:00 PM, said:

I know that, but if a king is dead its corresponding shield (which is a player) won't be displayed.

Ah, good point!

supercat, on Tue Apr 4, 2006 11:00 PM, said:

Incidentally, if you check out my "Of mice and minikernels" blog entry, I show two sixteen-pixel-wide high-res kings on a scan line with two shields and a fireball, all at single-line resolution. The left-side shield and king are red; the right-side ones are green.

I'll check it out!

[SpiceWare]

supercat, on Tue Apr 4, 2006 10:00 PM, said:

Jacob Rose, on Tue Apr 4, 2006 7:16 PM, said:

It's not a player sprite, it's a playfield pattern. That's how he's able to have so many flicker-free objects in motion. Really smart, since the kings never move anyway.

I know that, but if a king is dead its corresponding shield (which is a player) won't be displayed.

I took a short-cut on the shields so they only take 8 cycles per scanline to draw -

; scan line 1/2
; at a cycle before right player is displayed
lda (shield3),y
sta GRP1 ; update right player's shield for current 2 scanlines
...
sta WSYNC
; scan line 2/2
....
; at a cycle after left player has been displayed
lda (shield1),y
sta GRP0 ; update left player's shield for the next 2 scanlines
sta WSYNC

ie - the shields are drawn on every scanline that they could be shown on. I padded the image with zeros on either side and adjust where the shield? values point to in order to move them up/down. When the player has died the pointers are set to "ShieldDead" which is 32 zeros. The zero padding uses 80 bytes(actually 160 because top/bottom of screen are in 2 seperate banks), but that's less than 4 different castle kernels would take up.

[scogey]

Fireballs look great, I cant wait to see what this plays like with 4 players. This is one of those that will be a great game to throw out there at a party and let everybody give it a try. Keep up the good work!

[SpiceWare]

Thanx!

My to do list currently looks like this:

1) dragon
2) revamp fireball routines
3) paddle routines
4) 4 human players
5) computer player routines

I was originally going to do the dragon 4th, but realized I needed to have those routines worked out to see what cycle time I'd have left to read the paddles. I don't expect to have the dragon fully functional after step 1, just the timing needed to draw him worked out.

Edited by SpiceWare, Sat Apr 8, 2006 10:20 PM.

[SpiceWare]

Correction - I need to swap 1 & 2 to free up some RAM in order to do the dragon routines.

Edited by SpiceWare, Sun Apr 9, 2006 9:54 AM.

[SpiceWare]

1) Dummy dragon routine is now in place. Just waiting on some spiffy dragon graphics

2) fireball routines have been revamped

3) paddle routines are finished and the shields are now human controlable.

That means I'm now working on step 4 - getting it playable by 4 players. I've got the collision routines started. So far they only work on the lower castles, and only for the bricks(not the shields). The fireball doesn't reverse directions yet (made it easier to test the brick removal routines). Also, the fireball stops moving once it hits a lower king - hit RESET to reset the board and start everything going again.



NTSC  mmNTSC.bin   16K   88 downloads

PAL  mmPAL.bin   16K   86 downloads

Edited by SpiceWare, Wed Apr 19, 2006 8:50 AM.

[PacManPlus]

This is coming out *AWESOME*

Great Work!

[SpiceWare]

Thanks!

I received a sample of the dragon graphic from Nathan today and it's *AWESOME* as well

[Lord Thag]

Yes, this game is coming along amazingly. I'll definately be buying one if you release it!

[SpiceWare]

My friend's headed back home so I'm at work on MM again.

So far today I've added the sound routines - and they're in stereo at that My Atari has a CyberTech S-Video card that includes stereo output. Stella also supports stereo. You have to hit TAB then change the GAME PROPERTIES just like you do to set Stella to use paddles. The change doesn't take effect right away though, you have to "restart" the cartridge to enable it. On the Mac you can restart a cartridge by picking the FILE menu then RESTART CURRENT GAME. The shortcut key is APPLE-R so I suspect Windows and Linux users could hit ALT-R to restart the cartridge. You'll get the message "NEW CONSOLE CREATED" when it's restarted.

I'm currently working on the lower shield collision routines and then the lower king killed routines.

After that will be the upper castle collisions. If all goes well the first 4 human playable version will be released this weekend. Fireball Capture and computer players will be added later.

here's a "sneek peek" with a tentative destroyed brick sound  mm.bin   16K   85 downloads

[keilbaca]

SpiceWare, on Sat Apr 22, 2006 2:18 PM, said:

My friend's headed back home so I'm at work on MM again.

So far today I've added the sound routines - and they're in stereo at that My Atari has a CyberTech S-Video card that includes stereo output. Stella also supports stereo. You have to hit TAB then change the GAME PROPERTIES just like you do to set Stella to use paddles. The change doesn't take effect right away though, you have to "restart" the cartridge to enable it. On the Mac you can restart a cartridge by picking the FILE menu then RESTART CURRENT GAME. The shortcut key is APPLE-R so I suspect Windows and Linux users could hit ALT-R to restart the cartridge. You'll get the message "NEW CONSOLE CREATED" when it's restarted.

I'm currently working on the lower shield collision routines and then the lower king killed routines.

After that will be the upper castle collisions. If all goes well the first 4 human playable version will be released this weekend. Fireball Capture and computer players will be added later.

here's a "sneek peek" with a tentative destroyed brick sound attachment

WOW!

I can't wait to get ahold of the 4 player playable game... me, catie and josh will be waiting for it, and they can get a feel of one of the greatest multiplayer games ever, and they can feel my wrath of warlords

[SpiceWare]

It's time to gather your friends and get Medieval!

Note - I'm aware that there are numerous qwerks, such as fireballs getting stuck travelling horizontally or vertically. Just hit RESET or SELECT and start over.

NTSC  mm20060422NTSC.bin   16K   86 downloads

PAL  mm20060422PAL.bin   16K   83 downloads

[Shawn Sr.]

SpiceWare, on Sat Apr 22, 2006 9:18 PM, said:

It's time to gather your friends and get Medieval!

Comming along quit nice. And the name is actually pretty cool. I can get the hang of calling Warlords by the title Medieval Mayham for sure!! Espcially when it looks this damn good!!

Edited by Shawn Sr., Sat Apr 22, 2006 8:33 PM.

[PacManPlus]

Just Waiting...

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[SpiceWare]

That's not bad! However, you're missing a Y in MAYHEM. Don't feel bad though - I originally left out an E from MEDIEVAL in the main menu



There will be a label contest, though I believe there are 2 in queue ahead of me.

[PacManPlus]

AAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!

Didn't even see that

[PacManPlus]

I actually didn't plan on entering any contest; pretty much everyone here can make a better label than me. I had just thought with all the problems surrounding 'Castle Crisis', you wouldn't be selling this one... So I was going to make my own.

But, if you do have plans on selling this, I *absolutely* am buying one!

[SpiceWare]

wasn't aware of any issues with Castle Crisis.

[~llama]

SpiceWare, on Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:48 AM, said:

wasn't aware of any issues with Castle Crisis.

Originally Infotari got their panties in a wad because it played like Warlords, or something along those lines. It was back when they cracked down on their copyrights... check Cybergoth's avatar I think that was the issue, anyway. Could be talking out my ass on that one.