Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! During the same days when Degauss carries in for Bauknecht the Meteoriks prize for the best low-end soundtrack, they arrived at Easterparty (aka Revision) and they were not with empty hands!
Majesty Of Sprites is a hardcoding experiment under the pretences of a no scrolling Giana Sisters' like game running in multicolor bitmap, full of software sprites, gorgeous backgrounds, evil jumps to perform and diamonds and hearts to collect! Bauknecht has shown this preview version at Revision, reaching the 4th place in the generic Game Developing competition. It allows you to play 12 different and very big screens, divided in 6 'worlds' of two screens each. Bitmap sprites look very Atari-ish, having two assigned color only, setting the code free to assign a very large variety of colours any 4x8 (8x8) box (look at the very last screens, they're incredibile), moreover allowing very extensive animation all around. The enemies attack in different movements, and some shoot at you. What you loose in all this, is the scrolling. This version doesn't miss even an intro, a jolly title screen that doesn't get shame to show its little colour clashes in the sides, an ending and a gorgeous vanity board with multicolor bubbles versus hires 2x2 characters that saves your scores!
This is a preview only, without ingame tunes, missing several worlds to play and who knows what else to still add in. Don't miss to play this gem and report back your thoughts about!
Code by Mad, graphics by Nero with some help from Decca, music by Degauss. BKN and TEK, we love you back!
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! This prod sweats quality from any pore, and most of all, doesn't get shame to face a controlled colour clashing here and there (see the fantastic main logo in the title screen, or the mc bubbles versus the hires characters in the vanity board). The 2 colours sprites look veeery Atari-ish, but watching the very last levels'background rewards the choice for them: they're fantastic, especially the trees with different greens per 4x8 box and the purple clouds. Having the change to change two colours per box gives a very particular 'spongie' style to the whole graphics, quite fitting with the game's theme! At the moment, I really dunno if the sprites'definition can be enhanced, both in shape and frames number, so I don't wanna talk about'em.
Probably, I spotted out a bug: even if you get the best score, there's no change in the top three in the title screen, am I right?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! About the sprite definitions, i used a eor-filler for the sprites (for the memorysize) theyre almost smaller than the c64 ones. And btw. I think Nero would be a lil "angry" if you say that the graphics are done by him, because the ingame gfx is almost all done by me, nero could do much better but he didn't found time for it. Decca did the fonts we used there. The highscore saving is completely disabled in this version "due to" krills loader. I think we will have a savable highscore later on. There are several graphics "missing" at the moment, I hope we will do the final, perhaps with another world(s). Let's see..
And btw. we need an ingame soundtrack, the problem was that I am not a good 8 bit musician and degauss had (and most probably has) no time at all. If you (and others on plus4world) could do something with degauss new tracker than I would be more than happy about it. I think we require a different song for each world (6 worlds) and a variation for each level. The songs most probably should only consist of a few patterns, because of disc restrictions at the moment! what do you think?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Heh, this automatic forum thread is here to serve just for that: collecting discussions about the game and gather further and more precise notes about it I fixed the page, you've been moved from 'Coder' to 'Creator' in order to include you in a multifunctional way, and Nero got his 'Additional' to the 'Graphics' voice.
About the music to add in: I've never worked with Ingo's new tracker...oh, so there's a tracker here around? Good to know, we're searching for that since a lifetime! Have to talk with him about that, a cooperation work with Csabo would actually be a nice effort from the scene. And the idea of a general theme to slightly differentiate in the two levels of a single world is quite a nice one! Few patterns constitutes one song even becase a level's play could take minutes at its maximum, hence let it repeats 3 or 4 times and you need the classic a-bit-less-than-one minute tune per level.
Let's add some notes about the game. The physics are also good, with Kate performing the regular two kind of jumps, a classic for this kind of game. Both balls and all the other projectiles seen in the games undergo fine physics too. The collision routine could have been more frustrating, but I've noticed there's a sort of "merciful assigning" rule which seems to pander to the player, and that's a good thing because that said, the player gets encouraged to dare brave jumps along the foes. What is truly important to learn while playing, is the role of the water: if I got it good, if it reaches Kate's mouth she's gone
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! @Stefan: Bin am Ball. I will work on the tracker just a couple of days and release to the public. Don't expect a proper software
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! @Degauss: not a "proper software"? Does it mean it will be released in a restricted version just for the game's needings, or will it preserve all its generic characteristic, making it good for any general usage in future?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! @Luca: No, no restrictions. It's gonna be a tracker for my player-routine. I just want to lower the expecations: It is not going to be a big hit. The software is complicated in use and has many problems.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! So many people have been clamoring for a tracker, there's no way it's NOT going to be a hit. Looking forward to it
BTW, as far as music for the game: I think you (Degauss) should do it - otherwise it'll be too different in terms of the "sound". You've proven your skill in this area and your style is unique. Just do it piece by piece, I'm sure you can find the time.
For the game: guys, please fix the grammatical errors... I know it's not a big deal, but it bothers me, especially since it's such a simple thing to fix, and would make the game more polished. At least have someone proof-read the final before release.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Yes, I'm with Csabo: the best would be having Degauss as unique musician, even though if this would cause a slower release. Said that, it would be funny to listen to different styles for different worlds in such a game
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Csabo: if you name the gramatical errors I would be happy, that was just a quick shot and i didn't aim at the completeness level, and I am no english native though. If you could supply any hints for wrong spellings and so on I would be very happy.
Second point is, I am for diversity and I don't think Ingo finds any time at the moment that's normal for Ingo and somehow painful if you have to do work in time (and for Ingo it's even no fun). I would be happy if Ingo finds some time but he also has a family and a hardcore job. Dunno I would be more happy if Luca and others could do the missing musical work.
But nevertheless Ingo is a extremely good and talented musician.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! ...(continuing Mad's last sentence)...and he could enhance the joy of diversity by doing the music for one world only (2 leves), and the rest...who knows The arrival of a tracker could mix the chances, who knows, we would discover unexpected talents, or call in famous ones
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! To be honest i like the diversity idea very much. Ultimately Mad is right: I won't find spare time to do the entire music. But i could spend the little time i have to bring the tracker up to a point where others could use it - which would in turn be the bigger benefit for everyone.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! How about the idea that all the contemporary TED musicians (4-Mat, Csabo, Degauss, Luca) contribute one (or two) level tune?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Add corpsicle and YERZMYEY too. They both showed interest in a TED music editor. Oh, an there is also Yzi.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! All good ideas about all pretty nice buddies! But we don't have to forget that it's a Mad's project, he chooses, he decides. And now, let's wait for the tracker from Degauss
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Yeah! That's nice!!! I am with the idea of doing a version with some of the TED-Allstars .. Csabo, i updated the .zip two or three things couldn't be fixed and I let the "press fire!" stuff the way it is, but nevertheless thanks a lot, the vid has the wrong spellings though ..
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Make a TED Tracker that is powerful as well as easy to use then I'll have me a tune. I used to use Protracker and many others a lot in the 90's on the Amiga so commands as numbers after each note is entered is fine, (as long as there is a list of the commands).
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Some good folks could possibly convert the excellent VIC-tracker (http://www.kahlin.net/daniel/victracker/ to the 264 series?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Gaia is on the right way: actually, to have a tracker would be nice, but to have different trackers, with different variables to play with or with different objectives (tunes' filesize Vs. rastertime Vs. sfx development Vs. multiple tunes and so on...) would be fantastic! Playing on this argument, I would like for the nth time to push that mysterious coder in finishing the great Plus/4 GUI he did years ago for that famous driver , which would be really a cool tool
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! A music tracker, SFX and dare I say Sample creator can come from the same program, it's just a question of setting the tempo speed and what you do with-in each pattern to make the sound you wish to hear. It's possible in theory, just it would take some dedicated talent to pull it off.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Wow! what a release! intro gfx and MOS logo is top notch. In game gfx is kool too... but If you need any in-game or other gfx just let me know. I'd love to participate in this kool project! I have some experience with tileset based game gfx.
Is it gfx or char mode based? what are the gfx resctrictions?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Hey! ( It's bitmap mode not charmode :) ) I thought about letting some people do some levels, too. If you and or Luca would do a world it would be ubernice (I don't know if there are some more advanced plus4 graphicians online).. At the moment I must refactor some code related stuff to get more disc space for the game, i think it is possible to have several new worlds.. I will do the refactoring in the next days (perhaps this weekend).. I could send you the editor preconfigured for one world (i need the background color from you, which is also the second sprite color the rest should be easy). If I don't get the refactoring working perhaps we need two disc sides, that would intrinsically mean that we need more new levels (and musics), too.. Let's see.. Nice to hear!
Btw. I think the second part of this game will include scrolling, since it seems that this is the only critique at the moment i can understand very well.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I can imagine a quick scroll up/down/left/right when the girl reaches the screen border (quick scroll, no sprite movement, etc, simple blit + draw new tiles). Implementing AGSP with this complex gameplay should bring a complete engine rewrite (if possible anyway).
May I suggest that the same graphician should draw all worlds tilesets? Every gfxman has his/her own style, the design will fall apart with the different world graphics styles.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I think for this game, there will be no AGSP, at the moment there are mostly some bytes left (and i optimized a lot already). For Part two I am thinking of a fully scrolling bitmap game, pimping this version is not that easy (also because of the scores and other stuff), i chose to not scroll this game at the beginning of the making but for part two it will be more on focus, since there are some scrolling techniques (like rick dangerous, or perhaps just scroll x only) which doesn't require a doublebuffer and i think atleast a rick dangerous AGSP should be easily possible.
And with the gfx.. I think I will let carrion give one world, he is a ultragood gfxian and i was thinking of letting nero make the last world however he didn't found the time for it. Ingame GFX is almost all done by me at the moment and I am a coder (or somehow a musician, too) and my abilities in graphics are ok, but some cutting edge last world wouldn't hurt (i think).. Bitmap Mode is so cool for graphics on the plus4 so why not let a real graphician try his best here..
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! @Mad Hey! Just let me know exactly what you need and what limitations I have. If there's a tool for it that's even better. I'm ready to help.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I'll contact you.. I dunno if you want to play for your own (without the level editor, i could import the tiles somehow later then):
we have 2 constant colors for the complete level.. one is the brightest yellow $77 and the other one you can chose freely. however these two colors are also used for the sprites, so choose them wisely. at the moment it seems to be a nice move to have the second color as dark as possible (some levels have a brighter color at the moment though). the tiles itself can be constructed freely using the bitmap mode, one tile is 8x16 (multicolor thus 16x16) and has 4 colorram characters "behind". that way per 4x8 block you can chose 2 free colors in connection with the 2 solid ones.
i dunno about the tile count (I am at the moment at work) i think you can use around 240 tiles freely, however i have saved a range of tiles for the animations. I think it would be safe if you firstly use only 128 tiles or 160 or something like this...
however if you can wait a little i can supply the level editor soonish. But if you wanna start pixeling good look and I sure be interested in the results!
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! @Mad: actually we could think of a nice bitmap scroller using the FF1A/B (character position reload) and FF1F (vertical sub address) registers. I was always tempted to create a technology demo for that but it's a real pain to code - it's simple in theory only .
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Gaia: I know this technique (it was used in Rocket Science aswell). But i need atleast another videoram page for perfect scrolling. If I use a simpler method like it is used in Rick Dangerous, where the screen scrolls and after that you can do some actions again it would be possible but not with the current game code (for instance the score is overlapping the level content and thus must be redrawn every scrollstep). I know there is a easy way to scroll bitmaps on the plus4 and I appreciate it a lot, but it is most probably not possible to use it for this particular game. I think the second part of this game will have propper scroll, whatever we will implement then, lets see. The problem for this game is not the possibility it is the limited memory (for instance we have a double buffer for the gfx). (i thought already about a 256kb agsp version but in my eyes this would be cheating)... sorry guys..
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Note aside and offtopic, just because not everybody might find comfortable terms like "AGSP": I added AGSP in the Plus/4 Encyclopedia as effect years ago, but I'd never linked any release, because, from what I know, no existent Plus/4 software used it along all these days.
A demo effect evaluation can become really a hard task, when HSP, AGSP or Linecrunch definitions are involved, because one doesn't really know how the visible effect really works inside the author's code and which choices (sometimes also hybrid ones) have been implemented. Mostly, I tried to __argue__ that before tagging an effect, and several times I had to go back and untag some of them. Even more difficult, there are some notable misunderstandings because historically some effects have been named in different ways, and there's a bit of confusione between, e.g., HSP and VSP. Just for example, under these three effect's tags, we assigned one single software, just under HSP, and prudence stopped us to assign it to other ones.
Just to babble a bit about some cases: - how to recognize a HSP instead of a forced memory copying with scrolling, just as the final part of Stukas Over Disneyland, to name one, seems to be? - what about a VSP? Is it vertical, or horizontal in the very end? - how to recognize a real Linecrunch, even if somebody has clearly written it in the demo itself (Brainwash 2nd part)? - where's the right point to distinguish Linecrunch and FLD? - Plus/4 strictly related: is the technique with $FF1A/B+$FF1F relationable to one of the effects above?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! @Mad OK the gfx specs you described are actually what I expected and imagined. Will try to come up with some of my old tilesets made for c64 unreleased games.
btw: For the tiles editor please check out "Tiled". it's writen in Java runs everywhere and has a lot of kool features. It can export binary formats or csv which might be helpfull. I strongly recomend this tool, as I use it for my mobile projects. [edit] actually it's not Java but it uses Qt lib, but runs on any OS.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! @Carrion: ok it's nice to know..
Painting the tiles and seeing the level changing on the fly was a very big help for a "non" graphician like me..
Actually I don't think an external editor would be a good move here.. the animations the enemyformat and the ability to paint plus4 tiles on the fly where some points I really liked, I am just not on the external tool or using several libraries side.. If the tool is good ok, but I also did the sprite paintings in the editor and got the right formats for every level in the right directories and so on, i took me just one day to make the editor and it made my life more simple as fighting with external dependencies. But thanks for the tipp.
AND BTW: if you want to use this tool for the level, you are welcome.. I think i can import the data somehow :) The level is 256 tiles in the width and 20 tiles in the height.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Would be cool to see a Pinball game done in this style. With the Plus/4's extra speed I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to put a C64 to shame as the better machine for doing a Pinball Simulator.
Again keeping with the single screen, how about a Smash TV clone!!
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Yeah a Pinball Simulator would be nice!
And btw.. i freed up to 180 Blocks on the disc.. Thinking about scrolling at the moment.. dunno if it's possible.. I check some ideas.. Perhaps the final will have some scrolling, lets see..
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! No Prob.. it's normal disc format.. i just freed 180 blocks .. the complete gamecode was saved at every world, the plan was to have different gametypes for every world, but that is not necessary.. the next days i will try to build a scrolling version of the game, (could last several weeks). The levelheight must most probably be shrinked somewhat, but that should be no problem.. let's see..
OK.. I tried to get some ff1a/ff1b scrolling.. However I don't think it will turn out nice.. Seems, that I will stop this now.. The second part of this game will have some scrolling, but my tests here seem to not turn out very well if i do this now for this part... Perhaps the scrolling will work somehow, but there are a lot of questionmarks later on, at the moment the main problem is that the framerate could get below 10 fps..
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Many thanks to edhellon for having supplied a video recording of the game presentation @ Revision
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! @corpsicle yes we have a hidden forum where we talk about news you don't know yet Don't worry, when it'll be released, you'll know from here in a world record's time
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! haha, Luca you want to take all the credits. but it good for the game, as my version would be less creditable than the effects already in the game
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Now that Knaecketraecker has been released, I think that Mad could write here his rules about acceptance and needings of the tunes he asked for: memory location, memory usage, quality, inspiration per level...
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Hey!
I need some tunes like this: 1 or 2 minutes, pretty simple (not annoying) voice a and b always can be used the 3 voice m is used for sound effects but can hold some notes also. memorylocation not required. I think every not too sophisticated tune will work, since we had 5 minute tunes in rocketscience. Perhaps not, too many instruments should be taken.
Inspirational wise: World 1 (starting levels) - should be fun World 2 (the forest) - should be mystic World 3 (medieval) - some nice medieval tune World 4 (prehistoric) - should be fun World 5 (spacestation) - a spacy tune World 6 (futureworld) - can be spacy, too..
I dunno how many musicians or people who can do music are here in the forum, but if some of you could help with the music that would be awesome!
BTW: I would be happy for every music i can get..
oh and if its just 4 or 5 patterns that would also be nice..
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! If i can preliminary book one it would be the forest. What sort of deadline are we looking at? I have tons if projects, then again im sure i can squeeze this in just because i want to.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Mad, you would be happy for every music you will get, but what if, say, my music plays like a mediocre quality tunes pack and I begin to stress your patience writing all the further days "Why don't you wanna use my music?"? You're a gentleman, but I would suggest to be kind and clear
What do you mean with "4-5 patterns used", are you referring to the complexity of the tune or there's some hints about memory waasting? Did you silently mean you would play x2 music (and that's why there's a very limited usage required for the M mixing channel), but noone should go beyond this limit?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I think we will have enough memory for a full tune. The 4 - 5 patterns are just if you doesn't want to make a 100% tune. It seems, that we need a lot of music (12 songs already (2 per world)) and I think i will be happy with any tune produced by the guys of the forum. If you make tunes which don't sound that well ok that can be a problem however having no tune (like it is at the moment) is worse .. Perhaps there is the possibility to reuse and transpose the tunes for the 2 levels of a world, so only 6 tunes are needed. However I don't know if it is possible to get 6 tunes from you in time, since it is a lot of work.. (the leader of the "return" magazin in germany asked me if we could put the final into an issue around august)
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Another question I have: why the Degauss' driver only? I mean: is there a reason why you need a TED tune made with his tracker, or it would work with any other file ready to be used? And I repeat myself (I did fiund this info quite an important one, strange you didn't mark it...): are we talking about x2 tunes, I mean x2 calls each frame?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! For the song: it is doublespeed, the 4-5 patterns used was only meant in the way that if you are "lazy" i would fine with a "small" tune. We use degauss routine, because it's already in the framework and the soundeffects are played with it. You can play all 3 voices, but the 3rd voice will also be used for the soundeffects thus will be interrupted by them. At "xplode man" they interrupted the song for the soundeffects, which i don't want to. It would be nice to use this tracker for the music, if it shouldn't work, i could also ask degauss for two very small tunes since he can work with his tracker and we will have ingame music and soundeffects without a change in the code. Why did you ask to use another already ready file?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I got it right then, the specific usage of Degauss' music routine is strictly connected to the develope of the mixed SFX, I simply would have a confirmation of that from you Ok, let's see how this tracker works, it will be real fun
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Hey yeah Luca!!! On a sidenode: I will also build a final world, which will use 8way scrolling.. (slow fps rate though)
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Hello, just a question.. Is it possible to rename this game to "MOS Preview"? It would be very awesome.. just asking!
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! As I told you via messenger, I've wondered since the first release why BKN didn't label it as preview
The page remains the same, we're simply gonna tag the download links as "Preview". Afterward, we can: - rename the current file as "majesty_of_sprites_preview.zip" and call the final version "majesty_of_sprites.zip"; - leave the current file as is, due to the fact it has been spreaded this way anywhere, and call the final version, for example "majesty_of_sprites_final.zip".
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Ok I just noticed, that it's possible to revote a release.. Having a messy version up and getting votes for it is not so easy :)..
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I assume this requires a real floppy drive to work? I cannot get past the opening picture with and Sd2iec. I have tried both the d64 images posted. In Vice it doesn't work with a 1551, but does with a 1541.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Imperious: eeeh yes, it uses an IRQ loader, hence a real drive is neede to load it. The loader works on a standard 1541, no 1551 option (like in the golden era ). Oh, and again, I never stop to suggest this: currently, VICE is still a mediocre choice as a Plus/4 emulator, use YAPE instead!
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Thanks for the reply. Would be nice to see it running on the real thing obviously, but emulators are still a good way to enjoy games that need the extra hardware that I don't have. The SD2IEC is handy as I have a VIC20, PLUS/4's and c64's and can use it on all. I will give Yape a try.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Hello Imperious. Perhaps i find some time to do a bios loading port (krills loader supports this as a special option, too, perhaps thats just a recompile). With the 1551 support, krill planed this very long time ago, but i think he has other things to do at the moment. If I find the time, i will do a bios loading port.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Mad, just to leave a brief note to you: today I guess I spotted out a nasty bug while composing the 1st of the two lil'tunes for World 5 (space station), while I was about 70% of it. Degauss has been informed and he's on the code to defeat it, although it looks pretty nasty to me. And yes, that would brake my work a bit.
All in all, consider me busy on those ones A I said before, the theme of the two will be the same for both, but mostly eerie for the first, jolly for the second Anyway, memory usage is a real pain, the final file is beginning to be bigger than I would expect, even avoiding memory waste here and there. For example, I've found more convenient to use two similar patterns with very few changes than use a shorter pattern length in order to manage little slices, which leads to have a very bigger tracks values...
And what about you recoding the core code? And about a suggested deadline to enter all the music?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Hey Luca! The main point at the moment is the highscore saving, i try to get this done somehow. If I don't get it right the next few days, krill offered some help in coding it. (the problem is that the loader is installed on the drive and I don't get the bios saving routines work at the moment.. Let's see).. With the songs, you almost have all the time in the world, at the moment the point of release seems to be the evoke2014 in cologne this year, means, that it's the 31th of july.. Sad to hear that there's a bug in the replay routine, let's see what degauss can do on it..
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Oh, not a sad fact, all in all, we should be happy to have spotted out such a nasty bug in a relatively short time
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Mad, I've just send the 1st of 2 tunes, just before running away for the holidays at sea Check that file, see if it's not too long and listen to it in order to know if it matches your tastes As said before, the 2nd tune will have the same main theme, but in a jolly mood.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I was looking at some of the old school coders to see what they did after C16/Plus4... Terry Lloyd who did the graphics for Monty on the Run for our system later worked on Amiga. I see one game he worked on and it reminded me of Majesty Of Sprites.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Yeah cool game! I think you will be surprised by the final, too. BTW. Today i got the highscore saving working, had to disable krills loader (with krills help) and restore the kernal vectors in the lower pages to use kernal saving. However I think that was the last major obstacle.. And we have almost all musics, too (thanks to 5tarbuck and Luca). I think the final will be released at 31th of jule if all goes right..
BTW: The C64 will get a major jumpnrun.. http://www.knights-of-bytes.com/metamorphosis-part-1-a-pirates-life-for-sam
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Mad: final release the 31th of July or June? Hope the former one, 'coz I'll be back from Sardinia the first days of July, ready to compose the World 5-2 tune.
EDIT: omg, June has 30 days only of course, the answer was mandatory, I really need these holidays at sea like hell...
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I have two started songs, i will get time to finish them when my vacation starts (beginning of July) if you still need them. =)
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I've just sent to you a cutted version of my tune, reduced and made simpler in order to match your maximum of $0A70 (song only).
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! My contribution of two tunes has been taken worked and implemented. Both will stay in good company, with the ones made by Degauss and 5tarbuck. A little bird has told me we'll hear all of those tunes very soon
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I havent finished my songs, and now i want to ask if its too late to get them into the game or if i should try and finish them within the next week?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I just send a complete version to psytronik. All the musical work is done already (cheers, Luca, 5tarbuck). We do have exactly 0 Blocks of discspace left. So I would be happy if the game gets released soon. On another point, I plan to release a free version next weekend on the evoke demoparty in germany. So the game is finished (hopefully) and just the cover for the commercial version is in the making, yet.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Aww, oh well then i will have some tunes ready for another project in the future. =) Btw just played through the game! Its great!
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Mad, which agreement did you accept with Kenz in order to have both a freeware version and a commercial one? For Adventures In Time, me and KiCHY have released two similar versions, and the latter one with Psytronik logo and other little improvements. Are you going to walk a similar path with Majesty Of Sprites?
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Announcing that Majesty Of Sprites final release will compete at Evoke in the "Interactive" compo, which will be held tomorrow, saturday 1st of August @ 22:00, and SceneSat Radio will cover the event live!
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Alright, played through the final version just now. =) Its really fantastic, now i regret even more that i didnt have time to finish any songs for it.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! PopMilo Basically:
i just store the outline pixels of the shape and fill it later on. That has two advantages: - most of the time if you have very flat content you have just to store some of the pixels - you don't need to shift the pixels for the 4 x steps required at positioning the sprites (you can just start with another pixel)
basically for every outline pixel you just need one byte. you can encode in that byte the y position and if the next pixel is at the x position right to it or if its on the same x position.
The innerloop looks like this:
.loop .readit ldy $4444,x bpl .notnextrow cpy #$ff bne .notready rts .notready lda .whiteValue + 1 lsr lda .whiteValue + 1 ror ror sta .whiteValue + 1 cmp #%11000000 bne .notbignextrow lda ZP_WRITE_EOR_BUFFER + 0 clc adc #EOR_BUFFER_YSIZE & 255 sta ZP_WRITE_EOR_BUFFER + 0 lda ZP_WRITE_EOR_BUFFER + 1 adc #EOR_BUFFER_YSIZE / 256 sta ZP_WRITE_EOR_BUFFER + 1 .notbignextrow cpy #$fe ; don't set a pixel at all beq .nopixel tya and #127 tay .notnextrow lda (ZP_WRITE_EOR_BUFFER),y .whiteValue eor #$44 sta (ZP_WRITE_EOR_BUFFER),y .nopixel inx ;jmp .loop bne .loop ; 2 cycles sprites with more than 256 will not work! It's columns not rows, just to clarify.
Perhaps someone can save some cycles, however it's pretty fast already at setting the outline pixels.
If you have all the pixels of the outline you do some second pass on the buffer where you painted the outlines like this:
lda EOR_BUFFER + 0,x eor EOR_BUFFER + 1,x sta EOR_BUFFER + 1,x eor EOR_BUFFER + 2,x sta EOR_BUFFER + 2,x eor EOR_BUFFER + 3,x sta EOR_BUFFER + 3,x eor EOR_BUFFER + 4,x sta EOR_BUFFER + 4,x eor EOR_BUFFER + 5,x sta EOR_BUFFER + 5,x .. etc.. (the ",x" is not required i used it to reduce the memory footprint of the eorroutine)
so you get the shape formed by your outlines filled. It's a little bit tricky to understand the eorfiller, basically its this (every line are the 8 bits of the bytes):
I used this technique because on the plus4 you have to store the sprites 4 times (if you don't use some other trickery) in order to get propper pixelwise x moving. With this technique you just store the outlines and the shifting is not required since you can start at any x position with the drawing.
Another Point is: the sprites in MOS have two colors, so i have two outline buffers one for the black (opcode used: and) and one for the white parts of the sprites (opcode used:or). i use the y position of the outline so that 0-31 writes into the black eorbuffer and 32-63 writes into the eorbuffer for white.
Another nice feature is, that you can easily mirror this on x for mirrored sprites.
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! I tested the SD2IEC version on real iron and it works quite fast and neat. Of course, you have to loose the wonders of IRQ loading, but the result is perfect. I put the files to be downloaded on the Majesty Of Sprites page, nonetheless they're not the final ones because today we shall test an ultimate version with storable hiscore too, so stay tuned
Re: Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite! Wow Mad, that's one of the craziest routines I've seen
Never thought it would make sense to use eor-filler for sprites... Gotta think more about it. Sure saves lot of space for sprites with larger surfaces in one color. That 'trick' with two colors in separate buffers is extra cool. Thanks for good explanation!
Ladies And Gentlemen, Her Majesty The Bitmap Softsprite!
I fixed the page, you've been moved from 'Coder' to 'Creator' in order to include you in a multifunctional way, and 
Have to talk with him about that, a cooperation work with 
