Pitfall

[Rob_hawk]

I made a change late last night to handle the tree colour palette and also recoded the vine data to give it a longer swing from start of pond to end of pond to match the 2600 version, giving the below result

Welcome back! Glad you finished up that monster work project.

As always this is looking great.

[TobyLobster]

Yay, looks good!

[fizgog]

Nothing to show, but last night I started adding collision detection against the underground wall

[fizgog]

Following fixes added last night: -

Jumping into walls (wall kick)
Jumping into holes (before player just hung in mid air)
Jumping between screens

Video below

https://youtu.be/HaapgwyimdU

[lurkio]

Video below
https://youtu.be/HaapgwyimdU

Looking good!

[Rob_hawk]

Looking good!

I second that!

[fizgog]

Jumping onto a vine and swinging attempt no.1

Currently cannot jump off and it doesn't switch animation going the other way and the plot mask code is corrupting the screen as I'm not currently handling erasing in the correct order

Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gT29LvhuTA

NB I need to rewrite the plot mask (might take a while) so that it doesn't leave screen corruption, currently it's erasing the player, then drawing the player, then erasing the rolling logs and then plotting the logs, then erasing the vine and then drawing the vine

Vine is using EOR method, but player and logs are using a Mask

I need to have a long think about erasing and drawing player / objects in the correct order

[fizgog]

Taking a break from the sprite plot code to do other parts of the game

Last night I added the following: -

Added Pitfall fonts
Added countdown clock and score
Optimised screen drawing logic, which also now only redraws from branches down when switching screens

[fizgog]

Added the following features late last night

Added lives counter
Recoded player jump and falling gravity logic to match the original
Falling down through the holes, now does a little kick halfway down like the original
Falling down also loses 100 points from score

Added preliminary treasure (doesn't animate yet and current sprite white on yellow looks hard to see)
Added tar pits - black swamp instead of blue swamp
Added preliminary animated quicksand (animation is not correct yet - see video below)

https://youtu.be/LM4-3w8zvdQ


Longer video, showing falling and losing points as well as different swamps
(plus the sprite mask corruption that still needs looking at )

https://youtu.be/XsNJDZg2A6Y

[Rob_hawk]

It’s really coming together nicely. I love the animated quick sand but especially the crocs!

Really looking forward to the playable test version

[fizgog]

Finished work early so managed to add the following: -

Animated treasure
Recoded quicksand to mimic existing game - still needs tweaking though

Quick video showing quicksand and treasure

https://youtu.be/ixv5ma9H2Is

[Arcadian]

Great to see regular updates again, I'm not too familiar with the original game (even though I've owned the Atari cartridge for aeons) but the Beeb port is looking mighty impressive now, and as soon as there's a playable version I'll be all over it!

[fizgog]

Wasn't going to post anything from last nights build, but I did start rewriting the plot routines to erase and draw in the correct order to fix tearing.

I got so far and then completely crashed the system when it starts up, so I need to go over the code again line by line tonight to see what I've done.

[fizgog]

Last nights build

Fixed computer crash - missing rts in scorpion code
Added log hit test when player is on ladder, making him fall down a few rungs of the ladder
Changed croco and scorpion eor sprites to use sprite mask
Removed plot sprite eor code as it was no longer being used

Added the following to plot ordering code
Player
Scorpion
Logs
Crocodiles

Still need to add swamp, quicksand, other objects and vine

No more planned coding for a few days

[leenew]

This is coming along nicely!
I look forward to playing the finished game
How the heck did they manage this on the Atari?!

Lee.

[fizgog]

This is coming along nicely!
I look forward to playing the finished game
How the heck did they manage this on the Atari?!

Lee.

Thanks


Having hardware sprites helps out a lot I think, just a pity Acorn didn’t think it important enough

[julie_m]

Hardware sprites were generally a US thing.

British computers tended to use bit-mapped displays (which you can think of as one big hardware sprite).

[fizgog]

I had a bit of free time so added the swamp, other objects (treasures, cobra etc) and vine to new plot ordering function

One thing I've noticed though is the vine plotting routines which are using the standard OS functions plot 4 and plot 5 via OSWRCH are taking up too much of the time to plot.

Are there any standard width Mode 2 6502 code examples knocking about that draw vertical or diagonal lines (I don't need horizontal) that don't use the OS that I can use instead of me having to re-invent the wheel?

[fizgog]

Alpha 0.001

Attached ssd is a very preliminary version of the game

Usual keys, Z, X, /, * and return for jump
NB Can also use the spacebar to start the game or one of the above

A lot is still missing
You cannot die
The only collision detections are the wall and the rolling logs when you are on the ladder
Falling down will lose you 100 points
Jumping on and off the vine (rope) has been disabled
falling into the swamp has been disabled

It seems to flicker on the 3 rolling logs and the vine, (vine code is using standard OS and needs changing to custom code)


Following needs doing
Rewrite vine code
Rewrite jumping on and off vine
getting killed when coming into contact with either scorpion or cobra
Dropping down from the top after being killed
sinking and being killed into a swamp
being killed by the crocs
losing point when being hit by the logs
collecting the treasure
sound effects
NuLA support
+ loads more

Pitfall.ssd

(30 KiB) Downloaded 36 times

[lovebug]

looking and playing great

[Cybershark]

Think I've Pit-fallen in love!

[fizgog]

Thanks all

Nothing to see or play but I've added the following: -

I've recoded tile sprites saving some bytes in the process
Added falling into swamp and dying
Added reducing lives counter
Added dropping down from the top of the trees after being killed
Added clean exit when breaking out of the program
Moved zp initialiser code to after relocation code saving some bytes

[fizgog]

Added VideoNuLA support - ended up creating 2 programs to handle the different sprites

This is what it currently looks like under b-em

[tricky]

Very nice

Frogger and Moon Patrol set the Nula palette assuming that a Nula is present and then set the beeb palette as normal and use the same sprites, but they are both MODE 1.

[fizgog]

If it wasn't for the hatched sprites I think I could have just used the one program, with the hatched ones I ended up losing a couple of more colours.

I was going to have the basic loader load the correct one, depending on if the Nula was installed

[tricky]

There is some code to auto detect nula, but I can't remember where now. I wrote my versions before it had been worked out.

[fizgog]

Nothing to test or see yet but last nights build included the following: -

Player killed by Cobra - restarts by dropping down from trees
Player killed by fire - restarts by dropping down from trees
Player killed by scorpion - restarts by dropping down from sub soil

[fizgog]

Alpha version 0.002

Probably last version release before xmas

3 lives - once used up it will reset and start at beginning again
Scorpion, cobra and fire will kill you - nothing else will
You will lose points if you fall down a hole

I've disabled swamp sinking as vine needs re-writing along with jumping on and off
(I keep putting this off by doing other things but will eventually need to put my big boys pants on and crack on with it)

Shift break to run

NB Also on the disk is PitfalN which you can *RUN to see what the NuLA version will look like on a NuLA supported emulator / machine, couple of colours still need tweaking

Pitfall-0.002.ssd

(39.5 KiB) Downloaded 23 times

*Edit
Just spotted a bug if you walk into cobra player starts in underground wall instead of jungle (seems to be fine if you jump into cobra)

[fizgog]

Alpha version 0.003

This version fixes the player restart position when running into the cobra
Also added a quick Mode 7 placeholder loader (ignore ESCAPE, S, P and J for the time being)

Pitfall-0.003.ssd

(40.25 KiB) Downloaded 33 times

[fizgog]

Pitfall swing test using custom line drawing, instead of OS

Still way too slow and taking up most of the time, so I need to have another look at it

Green = erase line
Blue = Update line (very thin line)
Magenta = draw line

You can watch the video here

https://youtu.be/nJcy2ZQlWBU