peteym5

http://www.atariage...._1#entry2350331

I have continued my work on an Adventure Type Game that uses a multicolored sprites with a player/missile multiplexer. This is a pre-concept demonstration to show others what the program is capable of doing. It also lets me see if eveything can be completed within a VBI cycle, how much flicker occurs with the sprites and what things may look like as I am developing the game. We know the Atari 8-bit only has an x-number of clock cycles within a frame to complete everything. I am testing it at the max of 8 sprites on the screen at once to show it can be done. However I am thinking that most of the rooms may normally have 4 to 6 sprites. I can create little zones for some monster types so that not too many crowd on one line. Right now there is not much logic in them, just random directional movements.

The Rooms are drawn with a series of instructions rather than being stored in memory as full screens. Doing that way allows almost 3 times as many rooms available. With a 128KB Max cartridge, probably store 256 rooms, along with lots space for sprites, sound effects, fonts, and other data. The Room Index is a byte, 8 bit, range of 0 to 256. Should handle most adventure type game designs. Would have to optimize the bank switching. I prefer to copy the program logic to ram when a cartridge is initialize so it just bank switches to access different portions of data. The multiplexer rountine needs to execute fast, so its best the sprite data come from one bank or copy some of it to ram.

I have not finialized on a design yet. Right now I am tweaking the routines. Looking at doing a simplified action RPG with hitpoints, experience, some skill levels, a few different weapons. Not going to get crazy with character attributes like Charisma, Dexterity, Wisdom, etc. I discovered doing games with those things on the PC slows down the pace by making the player worry about that stuff. I am also not a big fan of "turn-based" stuff.

I am trying to add pause and other functions to my games. When I read KBCODE from Pokey, it reads the current or last key pressed. I have custom VBI and not using the system VBI. Is there something there that can set the KBCODE back to 255 when the key is depressed?

I am trying to add in music to a game project I am working on. The RMT file has multiple music lines for different short pieces of music upon game events. The problem is that it only plays the first song and repeats it over and over.

Code to call the song:

    JSR rmt_silence
 	LDX #<RMTBNK
	LDY #>RMTBNK
	lda #00 ;(#02, #04,...)
	jsr rmt_init

Does not matter what I put in the LDA #nn, I still get the first song.

How do you disable the cartridge and access the ram under the cartridge. I tried writing to $D510 and $D580, but still get the rom memory from the cart. I remember there was a way to do this. I tried searching some documention but does not work in the Emulator where I can test and debug with the monitor. I wonder if there is a problem with the emulator (800plus). I have Altirra 1.9 also.

I have been experimenting with player/missile graphics multiplexers to get more sprites on the screen. I manage to get 10 multicolor ones at 20 pixels tall just using players so they can only be 8 pixels wide. I did include setting the player double width and quad width for certain sprites. These may be use for a potential future game. I went through and drawn up some mythical monsters like Dragons, Spiders, Bats, Unicorns, Pegasus, Griffins, etc. I am consider making something that goes room by room (like 2600 adventure or NES Zelda) using Antic 4 mode for the walls and stuff in the rooms. I would like to build something original.