Downloadable Vectorblade versions

[Malban]

Thx for the heads up.
One problem at a time though :-).

For now I’ll concentrate on the crash.

[Peer]

The “ever” increasing “what is not to be named” I actually totally rule out. Remember? – First thing in my game round that thing is always reinitated to a fixed base value…

Yeah, memory failure on my side. Too much stuff inside my head…

The thing is I used the “what is not to be named” in game quite frequently for other things – than pure “storing intermediate data”.

Another memory failure. You also told me about that before. I should run some diagnostics on my higher brain functions…

Any chance that those “other things” might conflict with some jsr/rts/rti like instructions that at the same time want to use Voldemort in the regular way?

Or have I already also asked that before, and already gotten an answer to that from you?

Cheers,
Peer

[Peer]

… an afterthought…

… and there is the small thing, that the actual crash NEVER yet happened while playing in Vide!

Yes, precisely. So even if Voldemort is responsible for some evil, that would not explain why he is not doing the same evil in Vide. Unless Vide is some sort of sanctuary where certain evil spells do not work.

Which brings me to the following (hopefully not already asked) question:

What exactly happens, when

– a write to a ROM location occurs?

– a read or write to the unmapped(?) memory between $CC00 – $CFFF, $D800 – $DFFF occurs?

I read that some parts of the memory are shadowed.

But again, what excactly happens in such situations on the real hardware, and how does Vide handle those things? Any chance of some mismatched behavior here?

Cheers,
Peer

[Malban]

These things “should” be emulated correctly. The shadowing is emulated.
Write to ROM can be enabled/disabled in settings. I actualy DO write to ROM – this is used, when accessing the
FLASH Rom
a) initiating writing sequences
b) actually WRITING to the flash

But “chances” are certainly always there…

But there are also some instructions I do not emulate – if Voldemort “uses those” when “hitting” – this might also explain some things.

See: 6x09_Instruction_Sets.pdf (last page – especially the HCF)

 

[Jerome Vince]

After more than 400 levels, no crash!

[Malban]

Too early for champagne – but don’t tell Peer anyway.

I don’t want to hear any “I told you so …”

 

[Peer]

I don’t want to hear any “I told you so …”

I would never say that. That is not in my nature.

And I too think that it is still too early to conclude anything. If it really is Voldemort, then what magic spell does Vide use to keep him at bay?

[Jerome Vince]

Just a little detail about my last test: when you leave the “settings” menu pushing the button 2 (instead of the 4) there are (temporary) sound glitches.

[Malban]

@Jerome:

Did you per chance play some more?
I have yet to play myself some more hours. I’d just like to know the relation…

played hours : no crash

(or if you encountered a crash)

If you have a life apart from Vectorblade… thats of course Ok too 🙂

Cheers

Chris

[Jerome Vince]

@Chris,

Thanks for the message! Yes, it is big busy week for me, that’s why i did not test Vectorblade yesterday. But tonight i will try to test it again (at least 3 or 400 more levels with several configurations)! 😉

 

[Jerome Vince]

😓 The bug is still there: a crash after a game of 170 levels…

[Peer]

…and there goes Voldemort… 🙁

[Malban]

I’ll next remove “VecVox” support.

But sometimes it not only rains – it pours. As of this hour my Eprom programmer is broken – it does not work.
I still have warrenty (5 years) – but I don’t know when I will be able to burn my next flash – who knows the circumstance the warrenty will take.

Nonetheless I will make a VecFever version without VecVox soon.

Cheers

Chris

 

[Malban]

VecFever variant:

Vectorblade_B51.V4E – 12th Mai 2020

Only difference – VecVox removed (still with a big stack).

@Jerome:
Thank you very very much for your extensive play. I know it is very tedious to play one game over and over again.

And I am very sorry – if this overplaying is robbing you of the fun Vectorblade should be.

[Malban]

I can’t sleep. Vectorblade is circling in my head… Geee…

Anyway – I thought of a “cool” way, which might give us more clues. With the removal of Major Havoc, I have ATM about 15kB more space available … and one thought led to another.

1) … I can use space in bank 0 to write to the flash
2) I need a flash internal bank of 4kb (that is the block size that can be erased)
3) I can “save” a game state there, so the player can turn off/vectrex in a “pause” situation

which than led to…

I can save the gamestate when I press the NMI…

Which than led to – I can have 3 saved games.

• one “manual”
• one NMI
• one “each level”

One such game save is 1024byte + 4 (all RAM + U and S register) –  so in 4k I can save 3 games.

If I play, and save each level, plus when I deem necessary “manually” and when a crash really happened. Than I have three states that I can examine, which may lead me to an answer.

If I save the data to the flash – I can READ the flash with my (if not broken) EPROM programmer and actually LOAD the states in Vide!!! (Ok – still some programming to do for that)
But that way I can actually access data generated by a real vectrex. Provided the “autosave” of each level works… I can RESTART at the exact level, where the crash occured.

And since WaitRecal (also my own version) adds a counter each round I even know (provided I play exactly the same – which actually is pretty impossible) after how many “rounds” in the level the crash occured.

I must build a prototype of that tomorrow and add to Vide a “load RAM” feature… :-).

 

 

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