[hcmffm]

Ehm, that was EXACTLY the order that was first implemented!

Correct. When paging horizontally your initial order is right. (Sorry, for the back and forth.)

But the achievments itself have no natural order – so your “two”- order system does not make sense – or I don’t understand it.

Hmm, I thought there were types of achievements that are easier to achieve (e.g. sniper) and types of achievements which are harder to get (e.g. Score). That’s why I thought of two levels of ordering. Idea behind this order is that you see an achievement that you have received without paging through all the stuff. But it looks like this order will not help much in this respect.

 

 

[hcmffm]

this looks more like an alien trader 🙂

Indeed. It’s good that you’ve added the body; this way it looks like a trader behind his/her/its shop desk.

Before seeing your (Nico’s) latest draft I designed variations of your (Nico’s) original draft for a trader:

[hcmffm]

I wish you (Malban) a nice trip to the Revival Event in Britain.

Do any of you guys have a VecVox and care to try?

I can give it a try. I’ve got an AtariVox which is supposed to be compatible with the VecVox. Personally, I don’t like hardware add-ons much unless they are included in the cartridge (like the VecFever or Vectrex32 cartridge). So I wouldn’t mind if you gave up speech synthesis.

[hcmffm]

Nico’s draft with minor changes:

(I’d like to do some more changes but I have to go to work. Maybe tonight…)

[hcmffm]

Beta 21

Thank you for changing the order of the achievements. It’s not quite what I meant. First, let me make a suggestion which has influence on the order:

Scrolling vs. Paging
Currently, there is line-wise vertical scrolling in the shop and paging (Achievements screen, Status screen) use joystick up/down.
Suggestion: For paging use joystick left/right instead of up/down. Appropriate arrows indicate this. This will help the user to understand the concept of scrolling and paging better and usage gets more intuitive.

Order of achievements
I think the order of the achievements should be (assuming that the player sees achievement 1. first):

1. Lowest achievement – Lowest level
2. Lowest achievement – …
3. Lowest achievement – Highest level
4. …
5. …
6. …
7. Highest achievement – Lowest
8. Highest achievement – …
9. Highest achievement – Highest level

[hcmffm]

I’ve made various edits to the “movie”:

• Added additional lines.
• Textual change: MUSIC: VTK ⇒ MUSIC BY VTK
• Textual change: KEEP VECTREX ALIVE  ⇒ KEEP THE VECTREX ALIVE  (Can explanation mark be used?)

Notes:
– All in all its 10 more lines in total. Hope this is not a problem and still matches to the length of the music.
– Centering of the changed texts is probably wrong.
– Renamed all strings, I hope that’s correct.

scrollTextsDirect 
line01a_it          db       0, " ",$80 
line01b_it          db       0, " ",$80 
line01_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line02_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line03_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line04_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line05_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line06_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line07_it           db       0, "VECTORBLADE",$80
line08_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line09_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line10_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line11_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line12_it           db       0, "  WRITTEN",$80
line13_it           db       HALF_CHAR, "    BY",$80
line14_it           db       HALF_CHAR , "  MALBAN",$80
line15_it           db       0, " ",$80
line16_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line17_it           db       0, " ",$80
line18_it           db       0, " ",$80
line19_it           db       HALF_CHAR , "  MUSIC",$80
line20_it           db       HALF_CHAR, "    BY",$80
line21_it           db       0, "    VTK",$80
line22_it           db       0, " ",$80
line23_it           db       0, " ",$80
line24_it           db       0, " ",$80
line25_it           db       0, " ",$80
line26_it           db       0, " ENJOY THE",$80 
line27_it           db       0, "   GAME!",$80
line28_it           db       0, " ",$80
line29_it           db       0, " ",$80
line30_it           db       0, " ",$80
line31_it           db       0, " ",$80
line32_it           db       0, " GREETINGS",$80
line33_it           db       0, "   TO",$80
line34_it           db       0, " ",$80
line35_it           db       HALF_CHAR, "   ALEX",$80
line36_it           db       HALF_CHAR, "  THOMAS",$80
line37_it           db       0, "VECTREXMAD!",$80
line38_it           db       0, "  KRISTOF",$80
line39_it           db       HALF_CHAR, "  SASCHA",$80
line40_it           db       HALF_CHAR, "   PEER",$80
line41_it           db       0, "   CHRIS",$80
line42_it           db       0, "   CHRIS",$80
line43_it           db       0, "   CHRIS",$80
line44_it           db       0, "   CHRIS",$80
line45_it           db       0, "  RICHARD",$80
line46_it           db       0, "   GAUZE",$80
line47_it           db       HALF_CHAR, "  GEORGE",$80
line48_it           db       HALF_CHAR, "   CLAY",$80
line49_it           db       HALF_CHAR, "   JOHN",$80
line50_it           db       HALF_CHAR, "   JUAN",$80
line51_it           db       0, "   JACEK",$80
line52_it           db       0, "VECTREXROLI",$80
line53_it           db       0, " ",$80
line54_it           db       0, " ",$80
line55_it           db       0, " ",$80
line56_it           db       0, " ",$80
line57_it           db       0, " ",$80
line58_it           db       0, " ",$80
line59_it           db       0, "  KEEP THE",$80 
line60_it           db       0, "  VECTREX",$80 
line61_it           db       0, "   ALIVE",$80 
line62_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line63_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line64_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line65_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line66_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line67_it           db       0, " ",$80 
line68_it           db       0, " ",$80 
                    db       -1                           ; = end

[hcmffm]

EDIT: Changed the subject of the original topic to “Highscore list (entering a new highscore)” to make this topic more common and match its posts.

 

The moving of letters to the correct position looks good. Thank you very much for adding the animation, Malban!

May I ask you Malban for something? Anytime the player achieves a new high score, his initials stay for the next time he gets again to the high score wheel.

Highscores do not happen to often but this would indeed a nice feature. I guess one has to have a look at old highscore screens to see how that worked back in the old day of video arcade machines.
EDIT: I think “OK” needs to be added: By default the player shoots on “OK”. When shooting on “OK”, the current digit is confimred. When all three chars are entered, shooting on “OK” confirms the entered initials.

“Bug”: Wrong letter
The current problem I have are wrong letters: When shooting a letter and then moving on to the next character, the wrong char is hit. E.g. when shooting at “H” and then directly moving on to “M” a “J” is entered (and not the “H”). This is sort of correct but not what the player wants.
Did this occur to other testers, too?

Confirmation at end
Currently, the highscore entering is finished as soon as you add the third character. If you have chosen a wrong last character you have no option to correct it.
Suggestion: There should be an “OK” character to confirm the initials (this is standard in video arcades).

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by hcmffm.

[hcmffm]

Thank you for the change and the strings, Malban. The increase in overall spacing looks really good.

I’ll edit the source tonight and will add some extra lines. This will require additional “line<xx>_it”s – I hope that is o.k..

 

[hcmffm]

c) Significantly shorten and reduce the help text.

+1 (I think a help system is good for Windows and its Desktop, but not for a computer game.) “Just figure it or RTFM!” 😉

[hcmffm]

Thank you for beta 21 and 22, Malban! I’ve played a bit this afternoon and all looking very good. I hope your headache is over, soon so that you feel better, again. Ich wünsche dir ein schönes Pfingsten!

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by hcmffm.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by hcmffm.

[hcmffm]

Will there be some sort of brightness calibration screen or message in VectorBlade?

Correct brightness level is quite essential for the visual experience, I think. So adding a page for calibrating page “Brightness” is a good idea, Peer.

EDIT: Just to make sure: The calibration is just for helping the the user to calibrate the Vectrex using the potentiometer at the back.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by hcmffm.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by hcmffm.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by hcmffm.

[hcmffm]

The achievements – like you said are displayed in the correct order when you get more than one at a time…

Perfect!

[hcmffm]

Boss brightness – sure I can increase it – but you are aware, that than the flashing becomes less pronounced.

Are you sure you want it increased?

Boss brightness is good on my Vectrex. Other opinions?

[hcmffm]

What the original Warblade does… it prints little bars as to where between minimum and maximum speed you are.

Sounds like a good solution – but the Vectrex graphics and performance might make this challenging…

Another one for the Flowers section…

[hcmffm]

Thank you for the reply. As you, Malban, wrote in another topic, the level/position is a 16 bit value. Displaying numbers 1…65535 doesn’t make sense – but a percentage would be cool.

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