Actually – for a change – working with Vide, at least if you programmed it yourself is:
a) kind of fun
b) showing opportunities for small but “rewarding” additions
Here a few that are done and will be available with the next upload (sometime this week):
YM-Editor
- YM Channel swap
I added buttons to the ym-editor to swap channels – that was usefull to me, since the ym files for frogger had their voices all over the place. Most of the time only two voices were used by the music – but the channels were not consistent.
In order to play music in two channels and have one channel for my SFX, I had to change the ym files so that for the music only the first two channels were used. You can do something like that with a single mouseclick now. - YM Amplitude change
Likewise – amplitude settings of these files were sort of“messed” up.
With the additional buttons displayed in the image, one can
a) “shift” (double or half) the amplitude of a channel
b) “multiply” with a given number (double, with result converted to 4bit int)
Vecci
- Remove point
(see image above)
When selecting two connected vectors, you can now chose to “eliminate” the middle point.
While editing the objects in Frogger I quite often used that new feature. - Split where needed
allows you now to edit the “need” value (befor it was always fixed 127) - Switch Orientation
(See image below)
When selecting a vector, you can now (easily) inverse its orientation.
Tracki
- added “delete” button
- added display of “current” cycles
- added “ignore” to unrealistic values (e.g. other “main-loops” with different compare values)
Regi
- added output of current cycles count
While often that is not usefull, sometimes it is – since dissi allows you to reset the value, it is often faster to just “look” than to type “c” [RETURN] in dissi 🙂
… and other diverse bugfixes.
Frogger
Is also progressing nicely… In short following things “changed”…
- added a few music scores (not all yet – though)
- added sfx and the ability to play them while the music is playing (not finished, only sfx added right now are “lane death” and “jump”), but as a proof of concept it works nicely
- edited several “sprites” again
- the crocodile and the snake were given some more frames, animation is more smooth
- added score (after all) to the game, which is displayed all the time – all levels still within 30.000 cylces
(including ingame music, sound effects and score display) – the score display (positioning, printing and calculation) uses pretty exactly 1500 cycles - I probably won’t be able to also show level and life information – well, one cannot have it all
- I also have to do some more testing on the real machine to confirm everything is still working ok
Regards
Malban
Addendum:
Current version – with strings as scores.
ace 🙂 great to see the score displayed on frogger
what are you going to call this updated release of frogger, any ideas yet?
about the lives and level info on screen (the final frontier? :)), would using little lines be a possibility or are you really no longer able to spare room for anything else
like in this pic below perhaps, the lives (3) in the bottom right of the screen, and the current level (4) shown to the right of the score:
http://s15.postimg.org/6s1kspeu3/piccy.png
ps. if worried about too many lines when you have reached the higher levels, then instead, for example you could use a longer line each time you reach every 5th level, so in the pic below, we are on level 7:
http://s22.postimg.org/60rfu1j0h/piccy2.png
See the added video file.
The before shown vector “scores” did not work out well on a real vectrex.
Peaks are now above 30000 cycles, since the strings take about 2000 cycles to display.
The thing is I tested the current version on a real vectrex (as you can see), and since the peaks are exactly that – PEAKS – no constant time over 30000 cycles – the display does NOT wobble.
It seems to many cycles seldom enough don’t matter :-). Sooo – if it does not get any worse even I am content to break the 30000 mark. A goal that doesn’t make any sense to pursue – is sort of nonsense :-9.
Malban
love that video, animation looks great and running so smooth 🙂
looks really nice and ‘arcade style’ with that score up