I added a “dispatcher” to the frogger code. Within the dispatcher the old “MoveTo-InBetween” routines get called. The dispatcher uses subroutines, so theoretically JSR and RTS cycles are wasted, but the code looks generally so much nicer, that I leave it in (as long as I don’t need extra cycles).
The ym decoding is done via the dispatcher, I split up the decoding in eight (I think) subsections, each of these subsections is independent of the others and they ar
e called in different MoveTo sections.
YM decoding thus uses virtually no extra cycles.
I am about to finish editing top down sprites (see image), there are 2 different cars, a van, a racing car and a caterpillar. More or less like the original.
The vectorlists in general are about 1/3 longer than the ones used before. Alltogether I think about 40 vectors more are drawn now, than in the original vectrex frogger. I used to only count objects drawn – but at some stage the vector count of objects DOES matter. The caterpillar alone is 26 single vectors. In vectrex dimensions that is HUGE.
I also slightly enhanced playability by stretching the play area a bit. Frogger now does not as easily get out of bounds. The right most house was sometimes really tricky to get to. Now that jumping is slightly slower (animation), it has been getting even more tricky. Nonetheless, adding the animation was a good idea. The jumping feels more like “Frogger” than befor.
I still have to do much playtesting, doing sound effects and other stuff, but the new version is coming along nicely.
Regards
Malban
really looking forward to trying this new version! 🙂
if this version was geared in a way to making it be a really fun game for a high score competition, then, we could have a champion, and would be fun trying to beat each others scores.
if this is something u are thinking of, could be cool if possible getting a score on the screen so we can see how we are doing as we play. and having the bonus for getting a frog home quickly (this could make all the difference between going for that top score.. you are rewarded for working fast). then also, some bonus items appearing (perhaps in very dangerous areas, to taunt the player), and also of course perhaps the most evil of all: having points increased by eg. 10 points every time you move forwards (up), but then -10 points if you move backwards 🙂
– and then if the game has the set number of levels and an ending (instead of games which let you play forever until you are out of lives).. then it would be fun trying to cram as many points as possible out of each level before you reach the ending of the game
Lol
Quite a few of the items you mentioned are in the original game:
– timing is implemented, you get bonus score for time left
(and I don’t know if anyone ever noticed, but the levels also have different timing parameters!)
– jumping one step ahead DOES add 10 points,
– taking a jump backwards DOES decrease score by 10
– there are the two original bonus items available (fly and girl), I would like to keep it more or less arcade like
Things not implemented:
– score while playing, as of now the score is only displayed in pause mode, adding score (and possibly level information, like the arcade version)
requires at least 6 additional “sprites” (five digits, plus level sign – or so)
I don’t know if I have that many cycles left to do a proper display, I’ll try, I already thought about it. But I am not sure it can be done, especially
now with the huge automobiles.
– Ending – well yes, I never thought about a fixed end, as of now there are 16 level and than a roll over.
But I like the idea of a fixed END and having frogger together with his family having a party!
Thx for your enthusiastic comment :-)!
Malban
hey, yep i thought i did remember in your original frogger about the 10 points + – forwards/backwards; i should have checked in vide first to be sure 🙂 .. .. also i wasnt sure about if the original gave bonus points for time remaining, so that’s nice to know it does
damn shame about the vextrex’s text displaying, as it would have been nice to have a bonus display counter shown which reduces as the level time passes (just like in donkey kong), and your score displayed also, but anyway as u said, it’s too much extra on the screen – too late for going down that road perhaps