I’m getting tired talking about myself in 3rd person – so today – a Malban diary entry.
Somewhere I said, I would like to provide examples for all hardware that is supported by vide – so far Lightpen is missing and VLink version 2. Although I have not yet programmed any lightpen routines, my hopes are that these will be pretty straight foward.
The last few days I was still busy getting to grips with veclink.
The only known source code that uses veclink v2 is BerzerkArena. Altough the veclink cable has no need of any specific protocoll per se, it does make sense to provide examples with a proven protocoll. But I will wait till I have a cable available – and can test the routines – befor I do another release candidate.
So what I did the last days was examine BerzerkArena. I disassembled a great part of the bin, even though originally I only wanted to “extract” the serial protocoll – I just kept going (but I will stop now,… since at the moment time is slipping by to fast).
Actually using vide is always the best scenario to discover bugs and to enhance it. Once a full release is done, there are a couple of projects (vectrex games) I would like to tackle, I guess only than will the real debugging and blooming of usefullness start…
Anyways – following a couple of enhancements I did to the debugging/disassembling/researching capabilities:
- in dissi added a menu “use label as data”, with it you can ensure that labels in the code are recognized by immediate adressings, like:
e.g. “LDU #$3563” - added “address” buttons in dumpi
- added binary format of data in dissi, with this you can discern bitmaps a bit better
- enhanced the “dump” window (which was quite boring befor), the dump window can now be used to preview:
a) arbitrary vectorlists in memory (all known BIOS format supported, and new formats can be “build”, the same way as in vecci)
b) bitmap/raster data
- the data-region to be used can be set by:
a) in dump window: left click on start address, shift left click on end address
b) the selection in dissi is taken immediately as selection in dumpi
c) direct editing of start/end address in textfields - for vectorlists a type must be selected or built
- for raster data a “line width” must be provided
Example: Font of BerzerkArena:
Example: Custom vectorlist in BerzerkArena displayed:
Further small bugfixes/enhances:
- CNT files added binary
- CNT files added length
- region “background” coloring in dissi (BIOS e.g. has now light gray background)
- dissi bug, where no CNT file was loaded, when bankswitched cartridge was loaded
- bug in vecxi removed, where vecxi had no way to get a connection to a dissi panel
- bug in static veclink removed, where one end could be connected to two vecxi
Decision pending, whether to add 3d-imager for final release, that would make the hardware nearly “complete” -> downside is – I should provide examples sources…. thinking…
Regards
Malban