Moon Patrol for the beeb (New port, just starting)

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Mon Feb 24, 2020 7:40 am

The Nula colours really add to the mostalga, but other than that, it only uses B features.

LordVaderUK · Post by **LordVaderUK** » Mon Feb 24, 2020 1:45 pm

Wow - looks incredible... now I just need a BBC Master to try it out

Post by **Arcadian** » Mon Feb 24, 2020 1:51 pm

Itching to get my mits on this once it's finished! Great to see that progress is still being made! Keep going Tricky!!

lurkio · Post by **lurkio** » Mon Feb 24, 2020 5:40 pm

tricky wrote: ↑Mon Feb 24, 2020 7:40 am The Nula colours really add to the mostalga, but other than that, it only uses B features.

I'm sure it does. I was only joking when I said it couldn't possibly be running on a Beeb -- I just meant that it looks so good that if you saw it out of context you might easily assume that it was running on a machine that was much more powerful than the Beeb (even a Beeb with a Nula)!

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Mon Feb 24, 2020 7:22 pm

LordVaderUK wrote: ↑Mon Feb 24, 2020 1:45 pm Wow - looks incredible... now I just need a BBC Master to try it out

Or B, B+ or Compact

RobC · Post by **RobC** » Mon Feb 24, 2020 9:16 pm

This looks excellent

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 8:01 am

So does your BombJack

RobC · Post by **RobC** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 6:59 pm

tricky wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 8:01 am So does your BombJack

Sadly, I suspect I know which one will be completed first

Dave Footitt · Post by **Dave Footitt** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 8:28 pm

Looking great Tricky!

drfloyd · Post by **drfloyd** » Sun Jun 14, 2020 11:13 pm

Moon Patrol is not finish ?

Have seen the trailer, it is better than on C64 !

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 7:02 am

Sorry, it is moving very slowly, I planned on spending the whole weekend on it (again!) and in the end spent about 1/2 an hour and all I did was annotate a screenshot to help with debugging!

drfloyd · Post by **drfloyd** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 2:13 pm

take your time

for a great version

Iapetus · Post by **Iapetus** » Tue Jun 16, 2020 10:58 pm

Wow this is looking so great, wouldn't expect less from you tricky, you are a master at squeezing out all the juice of the BBC Micro

Looking forward to more updates and of course the finished game.

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Tue Jun 16, 2020 11:47 pm

Thanks, I just need someone stood behind me to prod me every time I distract myself!

drfloyd · Post by **drfloyd** » Sun Jul 12, 2020 9:11 am

I am here

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Mon Jul 20, 2020 10:30 pm

I have managed to save about a page and halved my ZP usage, so sound player inc intro and background music is now 16 bytes ZP and ~480 bytes of code and data. I might be able to squeeze a handful more bytes out of the encoder, but this has taken ages!

I'm out of memory and probably need another 1 and a 1/2K at least and that is without sloping ground!
I don't want to loose any more parallax scrolling as it is already 16 pixels for the mountains, 24 for the hills and 4 for the ground.
I can probably steal a char row off the top of the screen without it affecting gameplay (saucers will just not go as high) - 1/2KB.
I might even be able to get another couple of hundred bytes by packing all the little gaps around the graphics and code that needs aligning.

Which will hopefully give enough for: alien attack patterns, rocket car, tanks shooting, a few more places for jumping points, shooting forwards while in the air, game over and whatever else I have forgotten plus bug fixes that need memory!

I estimate about 1KB for sloped land, so I doubt that it will make it - this will be be a shame

cmorley · Post by **cmorley** » Tue Jul 21, 2020 7:16 am

Are you using SWRAM already or targetting an unexpanded model B? One or two banks of SWRAM on a B is pretty common now...

Exile style SWRAM support maybe? Conditional compilation to move and cull some assets from the B version with the full play window and assets if you have SWRAM.

Do you need all the assets at the same time, is there any way you could stream from disc graphics tile sets, map & music as the stage progresses using the technique Kieran used for BeebNICCC? Probably a decision you'd have to make from the start by the sounds of all the interrupt spaghetti...

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Tue Jul 21, 2020 8:10 am

No SWRAM usage yet, I try not to unless I have to.

The new music encoding and code save 200 bytes + 24 more in ZP and added the into, so it was nearly worth the time.

I want the game playable without SWRAM and as it has already been a year and a half (probably more) I don't think once it is working, I will have any enthusiasm left, which will be a shame on this one!

The sound data is less than 300 bytes and the maps are about 64 bytes each, although the common data + code is about another 1KB.

For Astro Blaster, I wanted to go back and add the extra patterns and proper docking when you have speech and there is about 10KB of SWRAM spare, but never have.

Streaming would be tricky as there are only 3 bytes unused and about 8 for the stack (OS, BASIC, DFS, workspaces Pah!)

scarybeasts · Post by **scarybeasts** » Tue Jul 21, 2020 8:39 am

tricky wrote: ↑Tue Jul 21, 2020 8:10 am Streaming would be tricky as there are only 3 bytes unused and about 8 for the stack (OS, BASIC, DFS, workspaces Pah!)

If you've smashed OS and DFS beyond recognition, there's always quicdisc

Cheers
Chris

AJW · Post by **AJW** » Tue Jul 21, 2020 10:00 am

Looks nice. Why did you run out of memory mainly? 20k screen memory?

fwibbler · Post by **fwibbler** » Tue Jul 21, 2020 10:20 am

If only all beebs had come with 20k shadow ram, it would probably have made all the difference

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Tue Jul 21, 2020 4:25 pm

B+
16.5KB screen, 12.5KB sprites .5KB sound some fast drawing routines and a smidgen of game logic!

PS needs to work with MMC

Iapetus · Post by **Iapetus** » Tue Jul 21, 2020 8:56 pm

It is a big challenge to code games for the base 32K machines as the bitmap eats up so much memory and then to have smooth fast sprites...

On the B+, besides the 32K RAm it has extra 20K Shadow Ram and 12K Ram if I am not mistaken. Can the shadow ram be used to other things besides double buffering? how fast it is to store and retrieve data from it?

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Tue Jul 21, 2020 9:38 pm

its normal speed, but on the B+, you cant dou le buffer, it's just extra ram thatbasic can use plus page can be kept low.

AJW · Post by **AJW** » Thu Jul 23, 2020 10:57 pm

Do you directly poke the sound chip in your games, Tricky, or use Osword?

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:38 am

Everything is direct to the HW.
Sound is one place that the code might be smaller, but not if I had to give the sound buffer back

fwibbler · Post by **fwibbler** » Fri Jul 24, 2020 1:50 pm

I've been meaning to ask...
If someone else was to do the sound effects and the music for a game that you were making, how would they provide it to you?
I mean are there any music programs for the beeb that can output music/code ready for use in a game or would the music man have to know how to program as well?

Same question for graphics as well really?
Thanks.

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:17 pm

I have written a few converters, so, it could be a tracker file (forgotten which).a simple MIDI file, or probably easiest a VGM file for AY8910, or SN76489 which could even be made in a been emulator with sounds statements.

For graphics, my converters work from .tga files, but paint shop pro will convert pretty much anything.

tricky · Post by **tricky** » Sun Jul 26, 2020 1:15 pm

Looks like it has been a year and a half since my last demo!
It still looks the same!
Keys are Z,X,SHIFT and RETURN.
NULA support is automatic.
The three tunes so far are 400 bytes + 200 for the player.
You can't die, but turn invisible while you are in a position that would kill you.
There are some graphical glitches and beebem is way off on timing.
No explosions, No car, No slopes, No rolling boulders, No alien patterns...

All feedback welcome, good or bad, it is all motivational.

P.S. Works well in jsbeeb

Iapetus · Post by **Iapetus** » Sun Jul 26, 2020 6:46 pm

Just had a go(jsbeeb) and it is playing great. Keep up the awesome job

I am looking forward for newer versions with more stuff implemented.

BTW Are there any emulators supporting the NULA?

stardot.org.uk

Moon Patrol for the beeb (New port, just starting)

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