Planet Nubium : A game for the BBC Master

[billcarr2005]

I've been enjoying each version of this game, improving all the time!

[kieranhj]

Planet Nubium now has game music!!!

Through the genius of Kieran Connell the game can now play tunes ripped from the Sega Master System. The SMS has the same Texas Instruments SN76489 sound chip as the BBC Micro.

Thanks Andrew. I would like to add that although I provided the music player the effortless & accurate conversion of Sega Master System tunes for the Beeb is thanks to the excellent Python tool written by simonm.

You can find this and more on GitHub also: https://github.com/simondotm/vgm-converter

[jregel]

I spent a bit of time this evening playing Planet Nubium. Really good game, different from, but obviously very reminiscent of Manic Miner. Great job!

[Andrew_Waite]

Planet Nubium now has game music!!!

Through the genius of Kieran Connell the game can now play tunes ripped from the Sega Master System. The SMS has the same Texas Instruments SN76489 sound chip as the BBC Micro.

Thanks Andrew. I would like to add that although I provided the music player the effortless & accurate conversion of Sega Master System tunes for the Beeb is thanks to the excellent Python tool written by simonm.

You can find this and more on GitHub also: https://github.com/simondotm/vgm-converter

I added simonm to the author list. Please can you pass on my apologies for the oversight!

The new .SSD file is posted below.

[fandenivoldsk]

Wow, what an awesome game! It should be released on floppy.

[Andrew_Waite]

I spent a bit of time this evening playing Planet Nubium. Really good game, different from, but obviously very reminiscent of Manic Miner. Great job!

Thank you for your kind comment.
Planet Nubium originated from my love of Spectrum games. I was experimenting with the BBC Micro to see if I could convert sprites from Stephen Crow's Starquake and Matthew Smith's Miner Willy games to four colour MODE1. Hence the mutant telephones, pen knives, amoebatrons, penguins, killer ice creams etc. all make an appearance in Planet Nubium. The sprites have been colourised and stretched to fit in a 16x24 pixel frame rather than the original 16x16 frame on the Spectrum. There are also some additional sprites I created myself. The game engine came from a MicroUser game I wrote in 1986 called 'Santa's Sleigh'. There may even be a few 32-year-old ASCII characters from the old code in the new game!

[Andrew_Waite]

I have made a few small improvements to Planet Nubium, to now reach Version 1.7.

The flashing effect when Rocketman crashes now works properly with my SCART to HDMI video converter, and I made some small changes to the formatting of the text in the title page. At the end of each level the score increments and the fuel counts down to zero at a slightly slower rate.

The bootable .ssd disk is available below, or type ' CHAIN"NUBIUM" ' to load and run the game.

The code has been tested on BeebEm V4.14 and a real Master. Feedback and bug reports are very much appreciated!

Source files are available at Github : https://github.com/andrewwaite1

Known Issue :
The game requires all four banks of Sideways RAM. Sideways RAM banks maybe configured for ROM in machines fitted with a RetroClinic DataCentre.

[Yrrah2]

Just dropped in today to see the game.
Nice!!
Also downloaded the different versions to see what is changed.
Never thought of a progress bar while loading on a Beeb.

On BeebEm 4.0a (mac) the music goes mad.
Didn't try the game yet on my master.

Cheers

[lurkio]

On BeebEm 4.0a (mac) the music goes mad.

Yes. Same for me on BeebEm Mac.



EDIT: Added issue to Mac BeebEm GitHub repo: https://github.com/stardot/beebem-mac/issues

[Andrew_Waite]

Just dropped in today to see the game.
Nice!!
Also downloaded the different versions to see what is changed.
Never thought of a progress bar while loading on a Beeb.

On BeebEm 4.0a (mac) the music goes mad.
Didn't try the game yet on my master.

Cheers

Sorry to hear that the game music does not work on BeebEm 4.0a (mac). The music works on the target system of the game, which is a BBC Master. I would call this an issue with the BeebEm emulator.

[Yrrah2]

Sorry to hear that the game music does not work on BeebEm 4.0a (mac). The music works on the target system of the game, which is a BBC Master. I would call this an issue with the BeebEm emulator.

Yep is indeed an BeebEm thing.
Played it on my Master. Really nice!

[KarateEd]

There is a slight bug in relationship to the music. On occasion the music starts revving up until in no longer resembles music. I've not been able to tie this down to any particular level or sequence of events. It's as if the clock says, go fast and faster and then back to normal after a few seconds.

It's strange but It's probably something in the MC section of the game.

Oh, that's with playing it on Beeb-Em 4.14.

[Andrew_Waite]

I have made three changes to the original Planet Nubium game, to now reach Version 1.8.

The .ssd disk image available below. The disk is bootable, or type ' CHAIN"NUBIUM" ' to load and run the game.

Changes since Version 1.7 :

* I found the flashing effect on my real Master when Rocketman crashes irritated my eyes because it went on for too long. Eyeballs are now protected by shortening the duration of this effect.

* The pip-pip-pip sound when Rocketman is running in 'SOUND FX' mode now works properly on real hardware.

* Loading time has been slightly shortened by reducing the number of files that are loaded from disk into Sideways RAM.


The code has been tested on BeebEm V4.14 and a real Master.

Feedback and bug reports are very much appreciated!

Source files are available on Github : https://github.com/andrewwaite1/Planet-Nubium-v1.8

The game requires all four banks of Sideways RAM. Sideways RAM banks maybe jumpered out on a real Master in favour of ROM chips.

[Andrew_Waite]

An update to Planet Nubium, which is now at Version 1.9. I think that this will be the final version of the game.

The .ssd disk image available below. The disk is bootable, or type ' CHAIN"NUBIUM" ' to load and run the game.

Changes since Version 1.8 :

* A new loading page, which I think works so much better than the original ringed planet.

The game requires all four of the BBC Master's Sideways RAM banks.

[lovebug]

simply brilliant

[Andy1979]

Really like this game; has anyone run this successfully on a Master Compact?

I've been trying to get all the games from "World in Pixels" running on mine, doing my testing in Beebjit. Game runs great emulating a Master, but as a Compact it crashes at the end of the loading screen with the following message:

[Andrew_Waite]

Really like this game; has anyone run this successfully on a Master Compact?

I've been trying to get all the games from "World in Pixels" running on mine, doing my testing in Beebjit. Game runs great emulating a Master, but as a Compact it crashes at the end of the loading screen with the following message:
Nubium.JPG

I do not have access to a Master Compact to test the code I am afraid. The code to play the loading tune uses the ECONET workspace memory below page at &E00. Try disabling the loading tune by typing LOAD"NUBIUM"

Then deleting lines :

380 CALL&2A00:CALL&2A03
and
580 CALL&2A06:CALL&2A09

And then type RUN

What happens?

[Andy1979]

I do not have access to a Master Compact to test the code I am afraid. The code to play the loading tune uses the ECONET workspace memory below page at &E00. Try disabling the loading tune by typing LOAD"NUBIUM"

Then deleting lines :

380 CALL&2A00:CALL&2A03
and
580 CALL&2A06:CALL&2A09

And then type RUN

What happens?

Thanks Andrew. I've since tried the game (v1.9) on real hardware under MMFS and it crashes the same as in beebjit, so doesn't seem to be an emulator issue, or one connected to DFS 2.45 (which was the issue with Prince of Persia on the Compact). The music works though, and sounds great.

I tried deleting those lines, but it still crashes at the same point, with the same error.

Also tried your bug-fixed version 1.4, which was prior to you adding the music, and it still crashes with same error (albeit at line 960 due to different versions).

[tricky]

Have you checked that you still have four SWRAM banks free?

[jms2]

I think I can see the problem. PROCbasic attempts to page BASIC back in, but BASIC is in Rom E on the Compact rather than Rom C. Hence it pages in garbage and the machine crashes.

I'm sure I could fix it but perhaps it would be better to let Andrew consider how best to handle it - a Compact-specific version or one which can deal with both. I notice that the game doesn't recognise a Compact as being a valid machine, but it would be nice if it did, and then record the rom position accordingly.

[Andy1979]

I think I can see the problem. PROCbasic attempts to page BASIC back in, but BASIC is in Rom E on the Compact rather than Rom C. Hence it pages in garbage and the machine crashes.

I'm sure I could fix it but perhaps it would be better to let Andrew consider how best to handle it - a Compact-specific version or one which can deal with both. I notice that the game doesn't recognise a Compact as being a valid machine, but it would be nice if it did, and then record the rom position accordingly.

Thanks once again jms2 - that's it.

Can confirm that changing LDA#&C to LDA#&E in line 1410 of "GAME" gets it running in Beebjit emulating a Compact, though this would of course break things on a Master.

I'll refrain from posting any versions here and let Andrew decide what he'd like to do.

[jms2]

Looking closer, I found Andrew's code to be a model of clarity and very easy to edit without breaking things. So I would like to propose the following simple fix - in the loader NUBIUM the variable M% is set to &C and left at that value if a Master is detected. If a Compact is detected, M% is changed to &E. The mechanism to try loading on a different machine can remain as is, but will presumably only work successfully on a B or B+ with enough SWR in the right places.

Code: Select all

39 M%=&C:REM BASIC slot
40 IF INKEY(-256)=253 GOTO 60:REM Master
45 IF INKEY(-256)=245 M%=&E:GOTO 60:REM Compact

The main file, GAME, does not need to be changed except the hardcoded value of &C in .basic should be changed to M% to pick up the appropriate ROM number.

Code: Select all

1410.basic LDA#M%:SEI:STA&FE30:STA&F4:RTS

This all works for me in both Master and Compact modes on B-Em. I would post the modified disc image, but I realised that I have patched v1.6 whereas I'm not sure if this is the latest release version. Therefore I'd like to propose the above and let Andrew take care of implementing it properly!

[dudleysoft71]

Surely the basic rom is selected while it's assembling the code, so you could replace

Code: Select all

LDA #&C

with

Code: Select all

LDA #?&F4

which would use whatever rom bank is currently selected, that will be basic and it should work with any MOS version.

You could also set M% to ?&F4 in the loader if space is tight where the code is assembled.

[jms2]

That's very clever! I would never have thought of that. It would also help with the B+128 situation where Basic is in rom &F (although I find it still doesn't work on that machine for some reason).

[Andrew_Waite]

I think I can see the problem. PROCbasic attempts to page BASIC back in, but BASIC is in Rom E on the Compact rather than Rom C. Hence it pages in garbage and the machine crashes.

I'm sure I could fix it but perhaps it would be better to let Andrew consider how best to handle it - a Compact-specific version or one which can deal with both. I notice that the game doesn't recognise a Compact as being a valid machine, but it would be nice if it did, and then record the rom position accordingly.

Great piece of debugging! I did not know that BASIC is in ROM E on the Compact rather than ROM C, and that will certainly cause the program to fail.

The same issue will affect Planet Nubium Two on the Compact. I will release new updates for both games with a fix.

[Andy1979]

Encountering another issue when trying to launch this game.

Applying the suggested patch to the game works great, and I can play it from MMFS no problem at all on my Compact.

However, I have since built an MMC menu for my Master Compact using the guidance here viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12073

It launches the game just fine, but when the progress bar gets to the end on the loading screen it crashes with "Bad mode at Line 10". I'm assuming that's Line 10 of "GAME", which sets MODE 1.

My guess that I'm running out of memory, since the game runs fine from a cold boot. Have tried setting the MMC menu to both *Exec !BOOT and CHAIN "NUBIUM" - get the same result each time.

I shall try an earlier version of the game to see if that fixes things, but can anyone think of anything to add to the !BOOT file to clear the MMC menu out of memory if that's the issue?

[jms2]

There's something odd going on here. It can't be simply that you've run out of memory, because a Compact has the same amount of memory as a Master 128. Also, the file "NUBIUM" selects Mode 1 anyway, so re-selecting it in GAME should not be a problem. Residual data in memory from the menu shouldn't be a problem either.

So I'm puzzled.

[Andy1979]

There's something odd going on here. It can't be simply that you've run out of memory, because a Compact has the same amount of memory as a Master 128. Also, the file "NUBIUM" selects Mode 1 anyway, so re-selecting it in GAME should not be a problem. Residual data in memory from the menu shouldn't be a problem either.

So I'm puzzled.

Fixed it! All it needed was *BASIC adding to !BOOT

Edited the SSD in beebjit with *BUILD !BOOT as follows:

Code: Select all

1 *BASIC
2 CHAIN "NUBIUM"

For whatever reason, that makes it run from the MMC menu system. I guess from cold boot the system will already be in BASIC, so not required.

[jms2]

Good news that it works... but I must admit I don't really understand why *BASIC fixed it. CHAIN is a BASIC command of course, so in order to start the loading process the machine had to have been in BASIC anyway.

[Andy1979]

Good news that it works... but I must admit I don't really understand why *BASIC fixed it. CHAIN is a BASIC command of course, so in order to start the loading process the machine had to have been in BASIC anyway.

No idea. My thought process was:
- I checked the !BOOT file for one of the recent Bitshifters conversions and that had *BASIC in there)
- Given dudleysoft71's fix for the Compact was all about loading basic from an assumed location I wanted to make certain that the MENU program wasn't doing anything to counteract that.

I guess it could have been something else in the original !BOOT file that was causing the issue, but that doesn't explain why altering the menu to CHAIN"NUBIUM" didn't fix the program.