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Vectorblade_Beta24.bin – 11th June 2019
done: no Minestorm
done: Peer: Text adjustments
done: Peer: from reset go to “beginning”, not options loop
done: sounds in shop now correct (I think)
done: achievement fireworks longer!
done: todo play promotion jingle
done: player blackhole extro sound
done: vox tryout
done: helmut: scrollTextsDirect
done: Nico: Merchant version in shop
done: Nico consistent now- I know, that the shop is not finished yet. I noticed if you try to buy something that you have already/are maxed there is no sound, exept life and autofire. If clicking on these hou hear the “buy” sound even if the item is not bought.
done: cant figure out a way to detect… todo – detcted whether voc is connected, if I keep it it will be a “setting”
done: not reproduceable: Nico: sometime there is a permanent buzzing sound inside the options menu
done: reordered Achievements – again!This version uses VecVox. I probably remove it again – pending huge protests… 🙂
@Eric:
No didn’t do any text optimizing. And actually I don’t think I am going to – I am a bit to lazy for that.
I know Kristof (Vector Patrol) has pretty carzy optimized string printing. But I think I leave that for others, unless i REALLY have to.If I find time in the next two days, following things are open:
- Major Havoc – at least a working tryout
- last boss animations from Jasec are still missing
- helmut: Scrolling vs. Paging
- Nico: On the desktop screen you begin with greetings, which is kind, but it would be more informative to show the different bonus items first.
- ??? Nico: I’d love to see a really short introduction text, like “Captain V. Tiberius Rex – you are the last hope to rescue the galaxy from the Alien invasion….” on this screen.
- VecFever: saving support
- double data fast abc – check circle data?, bh bhcircleData in bank1, circle data in particles bank 0
- ?triangles on desktopn top/bottom not equal
- jingle on minestorm success?
- minestorm success also print about 1000 credits?
- in demo mode also do a high score table!
- Hardcore mode
- level select
- is it still? ->wobble in challenging stage, when bonus are still dropping
- add beta tester credits
invincible super blademaster edition to test all the levels!
how does this “lock” thing work? – bought it, but lost my laser when picking up a single shot accidentially.
nice to see my trader here 🙂 – perhaps a little bit big.
hehe, you were fast to download… there is anew 24 version, that is not “super” – but otherwise the same 🙂
(as this was mentioned in this thread before, I am also posting this here)
Regarding the help texts, I think a dictionary (though in general a clever method) is overkill here. I strongly guess that there is not “enough” text to yield a good compression ratio (you have to store 2 byte pointers for each word), even more so as the decompression algorithm is not trivial and also consumes rom space.
So, question: Do you want to try to save some help text bytes in favor of major havoc, or not?
If not that is perfectly fine.
If so, I would offer to try to come up with a shortened and more concise version of the texts. Let me know if you want this.
If you also want to consider (additional) data compression, you could go for a simple approach: use a “5 bits per character” encoding, and store the text(s) as groups of “5 bytes per 8 characters”. The nibbles of the first 4 bytes contain the lower 4 bits of each character, byte 5 contains the 8 upper bits of the 8 characters. Compression ratio is 5/8, and the decoding would require only minimal changes of the printing routine. Unless your storage & printing works completely different 😉
The way Kristof (if I remember correctly – it’s already been 1 1/2 year ago that I looked at it) “shortened” his text memory, was to have actually “pointers”(memory address) to “words” (text) stored, and sentences were made up by a bunch of pointers, which I guess were defined as macros with the name of the words. As soon as a word has at least 4 letters and is used more than once, the memory imprint is at least equal – with every following usage there are saved bytes.
(one could actually apply a RLE scheme and/or additional indirection and use only one byte)For Vectrex I think this would be the route to take.
Decoding letters does not work, unless you decode them before actually printing them.
Each “line” of a letter must be printed in EXACTLY 18 cycles, you can’t decode in that time.
If you use a buffer – you have at least one loop more – which lengthens the overal printing time dramatically, I probably could only display 2/3 (at most) of the text I am displaying now.
If you have said pointers, the actuall output to screen would stay exactly the same, and no additional computanial resources are needed.
That said, I will for now just procede and pretend that I have enough memory – and look where it leads me.
Thanks for the offer – I might take you up on that!Regards
Malban
Regarding the help system there’s one more option which I favour:
d.) Get completetly rid of the help system
I think there could be some few on-screen texts where needed (but very few, only). But a separate help system is unusual and an overkill. For the helpless user (like me 😉 ) there is a printed manual, still.
Regarding Minor Havoc:
Already, there’s the warp failure and the minestorm mission. This all has to do with your space ship. I’m not sure whether adding a jump and run is a good idea. Yes, it adds even more varietey but from my point of view the game could be complete even without MH. (Instead of adding MH the landing sequence which is part of the Minestorm mission could be made more complicated/different (e.g landing on a planet and not just on a rock) or there could be an end sequence.)Well.
The help system will stay. Even if it it some way might be an overkill. Thing is even if you don’t like it, you can easily totally ignore it – just don’t press button 1.
I am VERY inclined not to include the VecVox part. I’ll leave it in the source code with a “define” switch – so anyone who “later” wants to have a version with it, can compile it in.
I’ll further listen to my beta testers – and if they come up with good ideas – I will enhance VB accordingly.
Meanwhile – while I still HAVE some space left, I will (if time permits) continue on MH. If at some point it becomes to large – or I need the space for other more important stuff, than I will skip it for sure.
Who knows it might become a little game of its own, after all – the “engine” behind it has been in development longer than Vectorblade. (But than it won’t be MH related, than it will be more jumpi and runni – like “thing on a vectorspring” 🙂 )
Cheers
Malban
PS
The help is also to “show off”, how large strings can be printed without losing the 50Hz goal…. har har har…PPS
Also:
I still intend to release Vectorblade into public domain, and make it runnable on VecFever (runnabilty needs soldering skills, what I mean “high score saveable).
So there most probably will be versions without a manual!
No new version today. Just mentioning 2 points:
a) The shop has about 300 cycles left befor it hits the 50Hz mark.
There is no time left to display more. I might be able to squeeze a few cycles out of it. But any worthwhile “sign” will use probably at least 3000 cycles. So either I drop something else – or there will be no additional sign! I just can’t do it!b) The last beta was IMHO stable. I’ll prepare a few demo carts for the revival tomorrow, if you find anything crucial (spelling has been corrected @Peer) tell me soon, otherwise I will build 1-2 with Vox and without.
I was not lazy today, I started with updating the tile engine, and hopefully tomorrow I will have a first functional beta with all the stuff I wanted, which is:
– defineable levels
– packing of levels
– arbitrary tiles
– smooth scrolling in all directions
– tile clipping in all directions
– animated tiles
– collectable tiles
– player sprite in the middle
– collision detection player/tiles
– MOBs (Moveable objects[animated]) that roam the level, which have a “behaviour” of their own, also clipped in all directions and are “active” even when not displayedThe last one – MOBs – is the only thing not finished. Everything is working but the clipping when moving not yet completely (I have to adjust the moving of the MOB to the moving of the player), which just has not been implemented yet.
Surely there must still be optimizing and fine tuning after that, but the “engine” seems to be working good.
(The round object you saw in the last MH levels… was a closed pacman MOB, that had its movement synced to the player and was not animated yet)
Malban
Thank you for not providing a new beta version. This gives us testers some time to breathe. 😉 I just did about two hours of playing with beta24 and didn’t experience any crashes (I avoided the Minestorm Mission and didn’t use the help system, though).
The shop has about 300 cycles left befor it hits the 50Hz mark.
I’d say: Simply forget about the shop sign. The trader having his arms over the table of items looks cool, already.
So either I drop something else – or there will be no additional sign! I just can’t do it!
the sign was just an idea to fill the empty space. Nothing I really wanted to see or I find important.
tomorrow I will have a first functional beta with all the stuff I wanted
congrats to this milestone!
Agree pointers to words is the easy way to implement it, before you get into complicated forms using some form of hamming codes to use shorter addresses for more often used words.
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