390 replies to this topic

[SpiceWare]

mos6507, on Wed Nov 29, 2006 2:01 AM, said:

I think the transition to the knight coming out to indicate the winner of the round is too abrupt. I think you have to maybe extend the flash/soundfx of the last king's death or maybe play a very short fanfare (like in Basic Math when you get the right answer) before the knight starts his victory march. I can't tell if it does this already, but I would also try to make his walkcycle match the rhythm of the title music. I think that would be most effective.

Was thinking the same but it got late so wanted to post what I had. I figured out the changes to make on my drive to work to fully play out the last king's death before triggering the knight sequence.

It does not walk in sync with the music - though I already figured out how in the easter egg so I should be able to copy that over to the knight sequence.

mos6507, on Wed Nov 29, 2006 2:39 AM, said:

BTW, if the dragon can be present when the game is technically in full play, you could use this as a deliberate extra game element. Either the dragon could interact with the fireballs or any other sprite you throw in there could.

Neat idea, but not going to happen.

[PacManPlus]

Just out of curiosity, how much ROM space do you have left? With everything you've managed to pack in this game, you must be coming close to having it all used!

Also, I would just like to say that you've done such an incredible job here. The attention to detail is stunning! Everything in this game, from the visual effects to the gameplay itself, is absolutely top-notch. You should have worked for Atari back in the day

Bob

[Gregory DG]

^^ Heh, I don't think Atari would have allowed him to spend this much time polishing it.

[SpiceWare]

PacManPlus, on Wed Nov 29, 2006 9:34 AM, said:

Just out of curiosity, how much ROM space do you have left? With everything you've managed to pack in this game, you must be coming close to having it all used!

START OF PASS: 1
 ---- $0 bytes of RAM left
 ---- $0 bytes of BANK 1 ROM left
 ---- $11f bytes of BANK 2 ROM left
 ---- $4 bytes of BANK 3 ROM left
 ---- $1f0 bytes of BANK 4 ROM left
 ---- $1a9 bytes of BANK 5 ROM left
 ---- $263 bytes of BANK 6 ROM left
 ------ $24 bytes of BANK 6b ROM left
 ------ $1f bytes of BANK 6c ROM left
 ------ $6 bytes of BANK 6d ROM left
 ------ $1 bytes of BANK 6e ROM left
 ------ $1 bytes of BANK 6f ROM left
 ---- $115 bytes of BANK 7 ROM left
 ---- $1c bytes of BANK 8 ROM left

As you can see, not much. Bank 2 will shrink as I finish the Knight routines. Bank 4 will shrink as I finish the easter egg. Bank 5, 6 and 7 will shrink as I create the animation playback tables. The scattered bytes in bank 6 aren't very useable - they're due to the menu graphics not being able to cross page boundries.

Quote

Also, I would just like to say that you've done such an incredible job here. The attention to detail is stunning! Everything in this game, from the visual effects to the gameplay itself, is absolutely top-notch. You should have worked for Atari back in the day

Bob

Thanks!

[mos6507]

Gregory DG, on Wed Nov 29, 2006 11:24 AM, said:

^^ Heh, I don't think Atari would have allowed him to spend this much time polishing it.

Damn right. You probably wouldn't be surprised to know that Solaris (considered by many as the pinnacle of the 2600) probably had the longest dev cycle of any commercial game. It was a borderline homebrew since Doug started it for Atari Inc and then continued working on it for kicks during the videogame crash period before finishing it for the Tramiels.

[SpiceWare]

• Knight doesn't start marching until the king's death sequence is over.
  
• Modified Knight to be in sync with music.
  
• Rewrote Dragon Animation routines to support sequence data being stored in banks 5, 6 and 7

I realized I had to do bills tonight, so wasn't able to add any new animation sequences.

Attached Files

•  mm20061129NTSC.bin   32K   52 downloads
•  mm20061129PAL.bin   32K   37 downloads

[r_type2600]

Looks better with each version, close to perfect now

One more thought - wouldn't it be more intuitive to have the knights walking in from the side of the winning king (e.g. from the left for blue and purple, from the right for red and green)?
Shouldn't be too difficult to implement, and would add some variation...

Eric

[SpiceWare]

r_type2600, on Thu Nov 30, 2006 12:29 AM, said:

Looks better with each version, close to perfect now

thanks

Quote

One more thought - wouldn't it be more intuitive to have the knights walking in from the side of the winning king (e.g. from the left for blue and purple, from the right for red and green)?
Shouldn't be too difficult to implement, and would add some variation...

Good idea, though it would require additional dragon sequences that there may not be room to hold.

[Omegamatrix]

Spice, you're a genius and I hope this is just one in a long line of 2600 games from you. I love how the best quality games are coming out 20+ years after a system was introduced. Someone said that Atari probably wouldn't have given you as much time to polish Medieval Mayhem as you have and that's true, but who cares?? I say the more polish the better. In the end it's what separates the ordinary from the extraordinary.

[SpiceWare]

Staying up late the past week has worn me out, so I'm heading to bed. What I've done this evening is only half finished, so there's no new BIN for tonight. I've taken Friday off work so I can wrap everything up.

Omegamatrix, on Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:27 PM, said:

Spice, you're a genius and I hope this is just one in a long line of 2600 games from you.

Thanks! I don't know about a "long line", but I do plan at least one more 2600 game.

Edited by SpiceWare, Fri Dec 1, 2006 9:42 AM.

[jpfalcon2003]

If your next one is as good as this one, I'll be getting that one too.

[Nathan Strum]

One minor suggestion - on the silver knight, when he's color cycling, part of him turns black which makes him partially disappear. I think it'd look better if it only cycled through to the darkest gray, instead of all the way to black. The gold version looks fine since there isn't any black in that group of colors.

The dragon animation looks amazing! It's great to see it launching fireballs in all four directions.

[SpiceWare]

Nathan Strum, on Fri Dec 1, 2006 3:11 AM, said:

One minor suggestion - on the silver knight, when he's color cycling, part of him turns black which makes him partially disappear. I think it'd look better if it only cycled through to the darkest gray, instead of all the way to black. The gold version looks fine since there isn't any black in that group of colors.

Yeah, I looked at removing the black line when I set up the knights. Cycling thru 8 colors is very easy(and quick) to do. Cycling thru 7 requires additional logic and I didn't see a way to do that with the CPU time constraints during the kernel.

I'll take a look at it again when I finish the rest of the animations - at that point I'll know if I have enough ROM left for a table based solution that's been percolating in the back of my mind.

Quote

The dragon animation looks amazing! It's great to see it launching fireballs in all four directions.

The left directions haven't been reimplemented yet????

Edited by SpiceWare, Fri Dec 1, 2006 10:20 AM.

[Nathan Strum]

SpiceWare, on Fri Dec 1, 2006 8:20 AM, said:

The left directions haven't been reimplemented yet????

I just assumed they were. For testing, I've only been playing to three wins.

[SpiceWare]

• Extended animation sequences
  
• Launch sequences towards all 4 players

No changes will be made tomorrow, I have company in town for the day. I'd plan to finish the game Sunday, so now's the last chance to report any bugs or problems with the game play.

Attached Files

•  mm20061201NTSC.bin   32K   40 downloads
•  mm20061201PAL.bin   32K   30 downloads

[espire8]

There is a bug in the demo screen. the word is broken and backwards now .

[SpiceWare]

arrrgh!

Some changes I made to the animation routines would cause the knight to "moon walk" if the dragon launched towards the right hand players. A variation of that same glitch is impacting the DEMO message. Hmm - it also looks like the demo routine is always launching on the first pass, have to check into that as well.

[Uzumaki]

LOL oops...

That's what programming for 2600 so much fun. One minor change can break half of the game.

Going to see what else you broke accidentally.

[atari2600land]

If you're playing a 1 player game, and you lose first, do you have to watch the rest of the 3 computer players duke it out to see who gets first?

Edited by atari2600land, Sat Dec 2, 2006 9:01 AM.

[SpiceWare]

atari2600land, on Sat Dec 2, 2006 9:00 AM, said:

If you're playing a 1 player game, and you lose first, do you have to watch the rest of the 3 computer players duke it out to see who gets first?

Yep - though I did modify the game a while back so the fireballs will switch to max speed to make the round end quicker if all the human players have died.

[Uzumaki]

Still haven't found any other issue other than broken DEMO and moonwalking knight.

Should be as simple as inserting a one line code to reset the mirroring after the dragon routine.

[mos6507]

SpiceWare, on Sat Dec 2, 2006 7:24 AM, said:

atari2600land, on Sat Dec 2, 2006 9:00 AM, said:

If you're playing a 1 player game, and you lose first, do you have to watch the rest of the 3 computer players duke it out to see who gets first?

Yep - though I did modify the game a while back so the fireballs will switch to max speed to make the round end quicker if all the human players have died.

This works well although you haven't been able to get the AI to stop targetting the empty castle areas.

[SpiceWare]

mos6507, on Sun Dec 3, 2006 3:18 AM, said:

This works well although you haven't been able to get the AI to stop targetting the empty castle areas.

I modified the AI last week so it ignores empty castle areas if all fireballs are held by computer players. If any fireballs are in the air or caught by a human, the AI will be tracking them. There's no CPU time left to add additional logic to the AI player routines.

[SpiceWare]

• fixed flipped DEMO message
  
• Modified music during knight sequence
  
• added a very rough-draft "knight chase off" sequence
  
• I think 6 of the 16 in game animation sequences are finished

Attached Files

•  mm20061203NTSC.bin   32K   47 downloads
•  mm20061203PAL.bin   32K   31 downloads

Edited by SpiceWare, Sun Dec 3, 2006 9:02 PM.

[mojofltr]

Very well done!

The animations give the dragon a lot of personality and make it seem as though she is actually thinking about where she should spit the fireball!