New version of Frogger (was: A demo of what is looking like a new Frogger for the beeb)

[Zarchos]

+1

[sorvad]

Yes,looks amazing. I was at Play Blackpool as well but hadn't noticed this running. Perhaps it was off when I passed

[tricky]

I'm afraid that there is no simple tweak, Frogger has 32 "screens" per "frame" and relies on some very tight timing.
I'll have a play and see if I can make it work, the quick fix wasn't!
Is there a useable mode on the TV for now?

[Arcadian]

Yes,looks amazing. I was at Play Blackpool as well but hadn't noticed this running. Perhaps it was off when I passed

Ah, don't think it would have been running in Blackpool (I left Replay last year btw Steve) ... I'd heard that the new owners wanted to charge homebrew exhibitors at Blackpool the full dealer rate for tables ...

It's the Museum event at MSI Manchester back in March/April that was running Tricky's Frogger conversion; expect to see it running at the London Science Museum this summer!

[sorvad]

@arcadian, that's a shame, saw you last year but you were very busy so didn't get chance to say hello. Sorry for slight highjack of this thread.

[Bagpuss]

I'm afraid that there is no simple tweak, Frogger has 32 "screens" per "frame" and relies on some very tight timing.
I'll have a play and see if I can make it work, the quick fix wasn't!
Is there a useable mode on the TV for now?

Thanks for getting back to me, Tricky.
I suspected that this wouldn't be an easy fix, given what the game is actually doing to generate the display.
There's seem to be several more colours there than mode 1(?) would normally allow.
It's perfectly playable as it is, so please don't worry too much about it. It's disappointing that the TV won't allow more adjustment of the vertical position. I guess I'll just have to go back to the Cub for the more authentic look.

I'm just grateful to have such a faithful recreation of Frogger to play. Croaker was my previous favourite on the Beeb, but you've far surpassed that and then some. Thanks for all your time and effort!

[tricky]

Thanks, do you find it smoother on the CUB or flat screen?

I probably shouldn't post this, so Mod's, please feel free to take it down.
Hopefully this is more likely to sell MicroMart than do them out of any back orders (I'm guessing mine was the only one for this article!).

I'm hoping that the scores for Graphics, Sound and Playability are for the original Frogger

[tricky]

OK, found the bit I was missing, I usually hang all the timing and video settings off a few variables, but I had forgotten to hook up vsync_pos in one place, fixed now
Version with the image one row below centre.

[Bagpuss]

OK, found the bit I was missing, I usually hang all the timing and video settings off a few variables, but I had forgotten to hook up vsync_pos in one place, fixed now
Version with the image one row below centre.

Massive thanks for this! Works perfectly!
Now....... could you do Astro Blaster as well..... pretty, pretty please.

On a serious note, the Astro Blaster clone is brilliant. Only just discovered it. One of my favourite arcade games of all time.
Just wish I had the speech chips, so I could hear 'Fuel status marginal' etc.

[tricky]

I'll take a look, when I get some time, AstroBlaster might be a little more tricky.
I did post a couple of fixes, I think it was in the AstroBlaster thread for the Speech version of BeebEm; its not perfect!

[Matt Godbolt]

Looks amazing!

Works nicely in jsbeeb: https://bbc.godbolt.org/?autoboot&disc= ... rogger.ssd (SSD content loaded from a github gist...please do let me know if that's not ok!)

[paulv]

I love this version for Frogger, it's very cool...

But, the thing that's always puzzled me about Frogger and it's the same in all versions...

Frogs are amphibious

Paul

[leenew]

I love this version for Frogger, it's very cool...

But, the thing that's always puzzled me about Frogger and it's the same in all versions...

Frogs are amphibious

Paul

Ha ha!
Lee.

[sirmorris]

* mis-post removed for the sake of sense

[ThomasHarte]

Henhouse Harry apparently picked his line of work despite any contact with a hen being a cause of instant death. But that might be more a heroic tale of challenging one's limits.

[tricky]

Looks amazing!

Works nicely in jsbeeb: https://bbc.godbolt.org/?autoboot&disc= ... rogger.ssd (SSD content loaded from a github gist...please do let me know if that's not ok!)

That's great, I've been looking fora way to do that without actually learning git

[tricky]

No change to the game, just added a .adf ADFS format disc incase anyone wanted to try it on their Compact with joystick.
I did try it on one, but didn't have a joystick to try.

[JSeymour]

Very impressive work!

[tricky]

Thanks, have you tried carnival or AstroBlaster (best with a speech chip) or my Circus emulator is quite fun if you have a paddle

[kieranhj]

Hey Tricky - did you see that there is a big Frogger article in this month's Retro Gamer magazine? Including a list & description of all the home computer conversions - you should definitely send them your awesome authentic version for their homebrew column!

[fwibbler]

Seconded!
I was hoping they would have noticed it and included it in the 'conversion capers' section themselves, but no.

[tricky]

Is that April or may?

[kieranhj]

Is that April or may?

Just says issue 167. Presume May.

[tricky]

I've just got a reply from them, they said that they only include conversions that were available at the time, but they hinted at a possible new feature that could include more recent versions.

[fwibbler]

Great! Hopefully itll be a general feature that can include some of your other remakes as well.
I vaguely recall that they missed your version of Carnival a while back as well, showing Acornsofts Carousel instead.

[tricky]

[kieranhj]

I think we should lobby Retro Gamer for a Tricky Homebrew special. They're overdue some good BBC content. You must be one of the more prolific retro game developers still doing conversions to improve on what was released at the time. They certainly do a featured interview each month, that would be a start...

[nama]

Any one know where I can get the ROM version of Frogger?

Cheers

[tricky]

I've just put it in the games on EPROM thread, but I guess it should be here anyway.
As I said, this ROM is a little rude as it just starts in response to any OS call/query, this was for PowerUP! last year.
Keys are: [Z], [X], [/] and [:] on the beeb, but : is usually mapped to ' on an emulator.
Try it out in an emulator in master mode by *SRLOAD FROGGER 8000 4 and then CTRL-BREAK.
It should work fine on all beebs except a model A, including Master and Compact.

[tricky]

I've just been off to find the original compression thread, it is still on RetroSoftwar and contains Frogger, all source code for the compressor and decompressor including and a sample !BOOT (which can be built as a ROM).

If anyone wants to, it should be easy to make the ROM a little more polite and start with say *FROGGER.

This compressor and decompressor were also used for the excellent The Darkness of Raven Wood.

The compression isn't as good as pu-crunch etc, but I think is is probably the fastest decompressor and also the smallest at < 80 bytes.