Weber's Rants (tutorials)

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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Weber's Rants (tutorials)

Post by D3thAdd3r »

MegaDoom is awesome even if it's "cheating". MegaDrive Wolfenstein is better IMO as it is "pure" and works with the MegaMouse IIRC! I'd like to see more EverDrive games, it's like it's own class beyond 32X+CD nobody seems to do...wait a minute.. :idea: haha

It runs Doom..hmm, not sure my favorite. Probably the more impractical the input, the more amusing. Amiga is the coolest perhaps, from a practical use point of view. I saw somewhere experiments towards reimagined Quake 2 on Amiga or Atari ST? Quake 2 on DOS is also cool, since IMO it basically is the best game of in the DOS library now(super biased opinion).

I haven't tried CGA Wolf yet, but it looks unbelievable. Jhhoward basically turns impossible things into reality.

I found an older MB version on Google Code, though I didn't check to see how much is different. It seems to have the 3 different levels as build options, I will check further but I think it's older code(C blitter for 4bpp). I would assist anyone wanting to build off MB, but it wont be easy to make a full game out of it IMO. Simultaneously, I would like to experiment with reflashing which is likely required for RPGs too.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Weber's Rants (tutorials)

Post by D3thAdd3r »

I went and hyped Sokoban Land like it was to be released imminently, then I did that thing I do....fixing what isn't broken :lol: But it was broken, I basically was making an unplayable game due to cumbersome inputs. Testing all the levels was a chore, not fun at all.

Enormous improvement in playability!!! Instead of using a virtual d-pad, I put invisible buttons around the player so you can just intuitively click where to go. Basically a column at the top of the screen down to above the player for up, a row from left side of screen to just left of the player for left, etc. Huge difference.

I wanted to give an easy to understand, complete game, that limits tests UzeboxUI(in it's current lightly offloaded form). To do closer to the edge required more code, this required more space, so I have to rework the level data as nybble based RLE runs. Started doing it manually and my mind glazed over, but I'll finish it. Hopefully it gains enough space.

I added title screen improvements and I think all bugs are fixed, but I'm missing levels now. With RLE gains...I hope, unlikely...but I have 8x8 representations of tile data(1 set) from Sokoban World to load into RAM tiles. They would be partially loaded during an intro, and finished loading before the start button on the title appears(pretty slow unfortunately, but it is one time).These 8x8 representations have so much color for their size...they are for lack of better words, adorable haha. More importantly they show a hard limit for bitmap data in the current implementation, that isn't just theory.
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Re: Weber's Rants (tutorials)

Post by D3thAdd3r »

Still need to putt Sokoban Land in before I forget it. The bulk of work for Columns is being achieved via PCMMusicDemo which is supposed to be the implementation of MegaBomber sound.

For random fun, I really enjoy this guys videos and I think many Uzebox users would or already do:
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Re: Weber's Rants (tutorials)

Post by Artcfox »

D3thAdd3r wrote: Sat Mar 04, 2023 10:01 pm Still need to putt Sokoban Land in before I forget it. The bulk of work for Columns is being achieved via PCMMusicDemo which is supposed to be the implementation of MegaBomber sound.

For random fun, I really enjoy this guys videos and I think many Uzebox users would or already do:
Cool technique. It reminds me of what T2K does for clearing memory as it draws things to the screen to not have to clear it later, saving time. I wonder if it is possible to borrow the technique in that video to do something similar on the Uzebox.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Weber's Rants (tutorials)

Post by D3thAdd3r »

Found a sweet C64 SID Doom E1M1 version!


I had always dreamed of doing a proper Doom port for 32X. Well Doom 32X: Resurrection has already done it to an amazing degree...this is what 32X is supposed to sound like:
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danboid
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Re: Weber's Rants (tutorials)

Post by danboid »

Nice E1M1 SID find!

Doom was the game that forced me to buy a PC, sometime in '94. I started using Linux in 96.
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Re: Weber's Rants (tutorials)

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Well I went nuts for a bit seeing if Spy vs Spy could be realistic. A bunch of graphics done up, but I find we would need some attribute mode to have all the different color rooms. Just in case anyone ever searches for Spy vs Spy, this might be a good starting point to end up at the same conclusion:
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Sprites and tiles have been modified, but in such a way I think barely noticeable and which save significant resources on Uzebox. Without any colored rooms...pretty bland looking on what is perhaps already a mediocre game at best? The title screen there wasn't considered realistic, just did it to see what it would look like 8-) Wont be pursuing this one, but no reason for it to be total bit-bucket either.
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Re: Weber's Rants (tutorials)

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@danboid keeps finding rabbit holes :evil: :lol:

So I never looked closed captions that much since it didn't seem that useful for any game I'd like to do. Now that Dan pointed out a Worms implementation with Teletext graphics, it's totally changed my view on this out of band display method:



The most popular current format seems to boil down to World System Teletext? I see at least 1 FPGA Telextext->HDMI converter and I'm sure there are other options. Not sure what the support is like on NTSC displays, but it sounds like in PAL regions it was very commonly supportedl(how? turned on like closed captions??)

So it's an unused portion of the signal above the actual raster lines, which means Uzebox should be able to generate such a signal. The Teletext display can convert it into a 40x28 ASCII-ish display, so like Mode 1 resolution with less colors but re-definable tiles in the later standards.

This seems cool, why not a Mode 0 that outputs only in Teletext? Looks like it's been done on AVR https://github.com/ali1234/avr-teletext ... ter/main.c
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danboid
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Re: Weber's Rants (tutorials)

Post by danboid »

Most TVs in the UK in the 80s and early 90s had a telextext button on their remote controls that overlaid a teletext display that would differ for each of the 4 TV channels, BBC 1 and 2, ITV and eventually Channel 4. There would be a main menu / series of menus that would give you 3 digit codes to enter with your remote so you could look at specific pages. The pages of text and very low res ASCII "art" would be displayed for a few seconds (maybe about 10 seconds each) before the next was displayed and there was also a REVEAL button you could push that would display hidden text that was used in quizzes etc.

Stay away from that teletext rabbit hole DA! You've got a M748 game to finish!
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Re: Weber's Rants (tutorials)

Post by D3thAdd3r »

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Well I did rework the old graphics, and got everything down to a 16 color palette so that's progress. Redid the track graphics extensively, and now the curves look way better.They can be chopped up to make pretty arbitrary shapes and still look good now! I'm talking like sharp 90s even look ok.

This is exactly 256 ROM tiles but the curves are much more detailed though flexible for re-use. So I will need to lean on sprites for objects I originally would do with tiles...which is fine because with SPI RAM sprites, I want objects to be well animated(see the safety code flipping, or the safety road block breaking). Based on Jubatian's demo, I believe there can actually be pretty good tire skid marks(not persistent). Simple as they may be, functionality wise these are the best graphics I've ever done probably.
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