Not dead, just sleeping (ftagn)

Damn, August already!

I think my last entry pretty much summed up how things were going. The middle of the year is always hectic for me, doubly so with kids now. A lot of things work wise and home wise to look after, and it's the 'farm season' and since taking up some part time work out on the farm, spring and summer are a good chance to get some extra money as well as a workout and some sun.

Now that things are getting quiet again, I turned back to working on the Scramble Project - just like 'back in the day' I can see where things could have been done better, and perhaps smarter, but unlike in the heyday I'm not going to scrap and start over (this is probably the number one reason I never really got much finished back then) rather I'm keeping notes on what I've learned for 'the next one'. And hopefully there will be a next one.. the base Scramble game is going to be a PD release and pretty much follow the coin op gameplay/maps. I'll likely do a MAJOR reworking using all these tidbits for 'Scramble Deluxe' the shareware game.

But all that is pretty much dependent on getting things finished here, and that seems to be a sticking point.. About a month ago my computer packed it in (I've cobbled together a setup that allows me web access and little else for the moment), what I thought was a power surge from a lightning storm (I was out working when it went down) turned out to be the fan finally shuffling off it's mortal coil (and housing) and frying the processor.
This system has been pretty good to me, I hardly realized I'd built it in 2006, It's worked smoothly and like a charm forever... technology has marched on a bit though, and if the damage to it had been more I'd probably be rebuilding a new computer from scratch - however there are still processors available to replace my old one (not many, but the ones that are out there are better and now cheaper than what I had) for a paltry 60 bucks.
Maybe I can nurse another 6 years out of it! At the moment it still does everything I need it to quite well.

Of course the downside is all my work on Scramble was on that machine. I was working through an emulator and testing on the Amiga via AmiExplorer. The bad news is that for the last 2 months of working on it, I'd only transferred executables (boneheaded thing I know, especially when I learned that lesson doing the reverse - working on the Amiga and not sending the files back to the PC). So the Scamble code I have on the Amiga isn't the latest versions - not by a long shot.

Still , things are not 100% lost - time is coming back for these projects and I'm not letting it pass by. The last several days I've fired up the Ami and have been going over the 'core' routines that are tried and true. I'm optimizing, organizing and, more importantly, commenting a lot of these and putting them into a framework where they can be reused with as little effort as possible.

Hopefully this can be used later as the base to build Scramble Deluxe and eventually EVA.

End of the month...already?

In like a lion, and out like a lamb. Guess that sums this months dev pretty well.

Exactly the opposite for everything else in the home. As the month went on I found less and less time for programming, and more and more time for the things I need doing around the house. General handyman type stuff - the twins requiring more attention - and spring arriving, so I have to start whipping the lawn (very unkempt from it's last owner) into shape and a brand new garden started.

I managed to get a bunch of the groundwork stuff done for a couple of things on the to-do list, I've decided to follow the original game on reset - have it go for 2 screens warm up before restarting the level, and I'm glad I did as a lot of the older code had the original test map hardcoded in - I never got around to making it use the map structures (which when setup right, would make changing maps for stages very simple). This still needs completing, but it's close.

While thumbing through the code to address this, there were several old placeholders for things that needed doing/fixing for bullets, bombs, and their explosions on reset - so I got that cleaned up and tidied up somewhat, and started tying a lot of the common functions for updating/drawing/erasing/background saving together. This also needs finishing, but it's cleaning the code up and making it a bit tighter.

Once it's written down it seems like a bit more - but not as much *visible* progress as I'd have liked to see.

Fuelbar Start

Slow progress this five days. Winter gives way to Spring, and projects in the yard need starting.

I've managed to tweak the fuelbar graphics slightly - using a copperbar on color 4 to do the fuelbar.. it's a bit of a dated effect, but it lets me get to the important thing - an increasing/decreasing horizontal fuelbar - without having to worry too much about the graphics. I'll probably put my head to making it a bit better, but more than likely that will happen on the shareware rewrite of the game.

Hopefully screenshots next update, but with the yardwork, garden planting, and looking after the kids, I'm thinking the 5 day update will be the order of the day.

Cheers!

Sig.

Bombs Away!

Not the best shot, but you can see one bomb has blown up a missile and another is dropping.

2 bombs can be dropped just like in the arcade game, and although I'm not 100% satisfied with the look of the launch, it doesn't look half bad - so for now I'm keeping it as is (until the polish stage of things - or I find myself with only enough time to do small tinkering projects).

Bombs hitting the ground do a little explosions (like bullets) , and if they hit the main objects they do the bigger explosions - it looks pretty nice.

I fired up MAME the other day to have a play and make some notes on the original (mainly to look at the missile firing sequences) and found another interesting point worth noting - when you start the game, or any time you have to restart a stage due to being killed, the game puts you at a screen long 'lead up' that I originally thought was part of the first map.
I intend on keeping this trend, mainly as it lets me shorten my stage setup routines by quite a bit, and extends the first part of the map by some 20 tiles. Also, from a playability standpoint, it gives you a slight break to get back into the groove after being killed - which is a good thing.

With the addition of the bomb code (which needs a little dialing in on the collision side) most of the engine work is behind me.. or so it seems (until I list it out - then it seems like it never ends).

Before tackling the map reading issues I'm going to try and put the rest of the ship stuff behind me - so still to do for this milestone:

• Add 10 points every second on score
• Setup the fuel bar properly (remove placeholder graphics)
• Decrease fuel every second and crash if you run out
• Increase fuel when you blow up a tank
• mystery score on a module blow up

After than it's going to be map and missiles - then it's down to map out the rest of the first level.

Cheers!

Sig.

No Screenshots

Ok no screenshots today, and it's been 5 days since the last update. It's been a pretty long week around the home trying to catch up on mundane chores and keeping the kiddys happy.
I spent the precious downtime I had on working on some graphics for a mock up of the Retroromicon splash screen - nothing worth showing yet, and some split off code projects that I'll need, not only for Scramble, but for everything - sound and music.
Not my forte, and not something I've done much of in the past (apart from the obligatory protracker music include).

I managed to get some PT Replay source going using the CIA timer rather than vbl - took a bit of futzing and some reading (the source I had was pretty vague in the instruction area), making it case sensitive to fit in with my own code, making some changes to play nice with my includes. So far it SHOULD slot into my framework pretty well.

I also played around some waveforms and playback code - I was always partial to the Fairlight demo group low 'thrumm' sound effect on their splash screens - so I think I'll do something similar for my own Retroromicon screen before the music kicks in for the main splash.

Today though, it's back to bomb code - when I have something a little more substantial I'll put up a screen shot.

Cheers.
Sig.

Well it seemed a few of the things on this months 'to do' were a little easier than I expected (still waiting for something to break.. it was a little TOO easy).
As you can see, the module object is in there, I'm flying over top of an explosion as one of the missiles I've shot is starting to blow.. up on the hill is the final wisp of a strafe.
I whipped up a better score font too - I figured if I'm gonna write to most the bitplanes, I may as well have it look nice.
Also note - score. Working.
Numbers are converted from hex to decimal pretty fast - faster than my earlier attempt messing around with BCD numbers.
It's looking pretty nice - there are still a couple of 'big ticket items' on the docket.

Map routines - I'll have to go over and make sure they are actually using the map object (I have suspicion they aren't entirely). Once the map is working, the top scoreboard will have to be finished to include the stages (the middle section) and maybe give it a facelift - that flat embossed blue is a little bland next to the new font.

Modules as per the original game are supposed to give a mystery score 100,200, or 300 pts - I have to do this still.

Fuel tanks are in , but so far the fuel system hasn't even been started. That will also have to be done and tied in.

Also the original game gives you 10 pts for every second you stay alive.. I'll have to add this as well.

Still - good progress for one day!

Cheers.

Sig.

Scrolling Fixed - Onward!

A couple of days later (not all spent coding, just less to TO code this week) and the scrolling is changed over and fixed!
I had a bit of a dumb moment, thinking the screen modulos didn't need changing - duh - that's what makes it work, otherwise it keeps looking for an outrageous amount of bytes to find the next bitplane, ending in what I was saying wouldn't happen: memory corruption.

So, after changing that - everything else had to change as well. Lucky for me I've stuck by my guns and continued to seek out more elegant solutions rather than having everything hardcoded.
After scratching my head over the screen mods - which has always made me scratch my head trying to work them out... It's not difficult once you get your head around it, but when you only approach that point usually once a project (in my case every year or so) you forget it's little quirks.
It ended up just changing a couple of numbers in a couple of key master objects. I was surprised how most things just came back up first or second try.

I got to look over some of the older code and revisit it - some had to be done (like ripping out half the scroll routine) - and in the process I put in a few things I wished I'd thought of earlier. Some routines got a much needed facelift and optimization. Many routines now run off a pointer and have eliminated a bunch of X Y coord conversions... Scramble is running much leaner on screen time now... which is good because I think I'm pushing the home stretch (so far as bare bones GAME goes).

Still to do, and my focus on this month:

- Score board routine. Now that explosions are done and objects get erased, time to tackle this
- Add new static objects Module and Fuel Tank
- Rework some graphics (mainly ship explosions)
- Start expanding the map framework to jump to the next map section

At the moment the map is really giving me pause... I'm pretty much doing it by hand as the Amos map editor didn't really work out - and I haven't really worked on a Blitz one. Devpac is limiting my text file lines - so the maps for this version will be done in stages.

If I get these things done by the end of the month, I'll start working on the Moving Objects (the missiles that fire up) and start on the Fuel handling code.

February is looking to be busy with a pretty big list of goals...

Cheers,
Sig.