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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Seeking Games Programmers
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| MauroXavier Guru  Joined: 06/03/2016 Location: BrazilPosts: 303 |
Panky, he was contacted me, but unfortunably I always must think twice when spending some money with my hobby, and like I done in the past to buy the CMM, again I need to sell some things to buy the MMX. I believe soon I will can buy one. |
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Turbo46 Guru Joined: 24/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1595 |
@ Mauro – Brilliant! I can’t wait to see your design and software. I have ordered some chips in anticipation. @ Grogster – Why not a mult-chip design - the CMM’s RTC is already an additional chip? Having to use drive a: for MOD files is a pain with it’s limited capacity and number of read/writes. Some games require you to manually copy MOD files to drive a: and manually delete others if there is insufficient room. This chip or similar would avoid these problems. Keep safe. Live long and prosper. |
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djuqa Guru Joined: 23/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 447 |
What you will be competing with $45 rPI3 emulating in Realtime the Commodore Amiga 500, probably one of the best game computer ever made. https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/amiga-emulation-raspberry-pi/ VK4MU MicroController Units |
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| Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 814 |
Plus there are a number of dedicated games playing chips available (often with up to a hundred classic games included) for little $$$ I looked at one a year or so ago- complete motherboard was about $60, included over a hundred classic video games- to fit to a dead/deceased tabletop games that a mate had in his garage (was miss pacman originally if I remember correctly)- became moot when the garage was basically destroyed during a storm and most of the contents damaged beyond repair- including said game console (and more importantly to him, his boat, which was written off by insurance, and was effectively trisected by falling roof supports) :-( |
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| Turbo46 Guru Joined: 24/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1595 |
(Ignoring the Grinches) @ Geoff If the function: DIR$(fspec) was available for drive a: that would allow some automation of MOD file management on the CMM. Is that possible? Keep safe. Live long and prosper. |
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Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3167 |
Hi Bill, it would be possible and I have added it to the upgrade list for investigation. BUT, at this time I am focusing on the Maximite3 which will be the upgrade to the CMM... so it may be some months before I get to look at it. Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 3589 |
Hi All, I am not a game programmer. But I played a lot of them in the C64 and early PC time. And some of these games, when in Basic, I looked at the code to see how the gameplay was achieved. In general, as soon as it got complicated (fast, graphics) these games all reverted to assembly code. Implemented in the basic program similar to your Cfuntion (a block of hex codes in a DATA statement that was poked somewhere). I read through 11 pages of proposals and wild idea's, and would like to mirror this to above experience. If you really want people to write an enjoyable game in basic, you will have to balance performance carefully. Otherwise the only way to achieve nice gameplay is through game specific Cfunctions, that not everyone can make (I can't). So a million colors.....nice but not in basic on a 120MHz processor. Sound... unless you have HW to support...maybe 2 voices (not 6 or more as in the sound chips you try to emulate).? Resolution 640x480, or even more (HDMI?) Even at 320x240 the 6502 guys needed assembly to allow smooth scrolling of the background. And these guys where smart. Joystick.....YES that could be done. It is major to allow people to write a game that is enjoyable. Let's face it, the old games that survived the time, regardless how simple they where, had a fantastic gameplay. Where more or less forgiving, and challenged people to try again. That is far more important then the appearance. I am not sure what the MM basic on the PI problem is with Linux, but it may be possible to build a custom Linux kernel for MMbasic, in stead of relying on Rasbian. Some guy's in Puppy Linux (famous for it's small footprint distributions) have build specific kernels on the PI. Maybe a stripped Linux kernel that allows fast startup would help. Again, this is depending on what your vision is. If you want the PI zero W (WIFI) it is a totally different game al together. So my proposal to this would be: - You need 3 graphics layers (background, foreground, sprites) - Implement background (= layer) scrolling (i.e. build the background as a larger bitmap, and you look at it through a 320x24 window). - Allow multitasking, so i.e. input (joystick/keyboard) or sound handling could be an independent task, and would not be "woven" through the main gameplay. But ...gameplay is everything. PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3678 |
For games, I don't think there is one. Yes, or Nard. But for games any Pi Linux is probably good enough. Even the bigger ones boot in a sort of adequate time and you get WiFi etc thrown in. John |
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| factus10 Regular Member  Joined: 30/12/2014 Location: United StatesPosts: 45 |
I'm not a games programmer; I just like the general purpose computer aspect of the CMM I have. I love playing with it and porting older programs (from Creative Computing's Basic Programs and More Basic Programs, for instance) to it. I'm also using it to build a darkroom timer with integrated print database for my darkroom. I'm really looking forward to the new one, Geoff.  |
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| dvanaria Newbie  Joined: 04/03/2018 Location: United StatesPosts: 15 |
I just completed a game for the CMM (Color Maximite) - a clone of Breakout, but it uses a few parts of the Sprite system and brought up a few issues I see with the current implementation.   Two improvements to MMBasic's implementation of Sprites I can think of: 1. There's no way to reuse a sprite bitmap (defined in a .spr file) for multiple sprites in a program. For example, I didn't use sprites for the bricks in this game because I would have had to have the same brick image multiple times (63 times in this instance) in the file, which would have made the file unnecessarily big for this game. 2. The Collision function doesn't seem to be accurate when testing for two sprites overlapping. It works, but not pixel-perfect (perhaps its not implemented to be that way). Here's some example code: r = Collision(3, SPRITE) If (r And &B10000) = &B10000 Then ' not exact, sprites overlapping by several pixels Here is the source code to the game if you're interested in testing it out. I'd love to know also if people notice flickering on the sprite images themselves (mainly the paddle in the game). No matter what I did I couldn't get rid of this problem. 2018-07-18_072122_BREAKOUT.zip |
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| MauroXavier Guru Joined: 06/03/2016 Location: BrazilPosts: 303 |
Finally I finished the sprite editor in my CdN Media Studio for Colour Maximite. Soon as possible I will publish all the source, including libs and schematics for PSG sound card. Now you have a powerful sprite editor and you can capture bmp files and convert it to sprites.  |
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| cosmic frog Senior Member  Joined: 09/02/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 278 |
WOW! Nice. Can't wait! Dave. |
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| Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3167 |
Wonderful. Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| MauroXavier Guru Joined: 06/03/2016 Location: BrazilPosts: 303 |
Finally I published a video with a little demonstration of the CdN Media Studio 0.5 for the Colour Maximite. In this video I show the system boot with the PSG, the sprite editor and some basic details. Rember that it's a beta software and I will release the source code soon when I finish the tile map editor. This video was published with me speaking in brazilian portuguese because I'm not so confident to speak english. PS.: The perceptible screen tearing is a issue of my Samsung Galaxy S7. PS2.: I put the subtitles in English, I hope they are enough. |
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| cosmic frog Senior Member Joined: 09/02/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 278 |
Wow! This is an excellent piece of software. I can't wait to try it. Also you are using the same monitor I use on my MaxiMite. Dave. |
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| Turbo46 Guru Joined: 24/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1595 |
@MauroXavier, Is there any chance of you posting a schematic of your sound card? I would like to experiment with the chip but I don't want make something different to what you have done and have to change it again later. @Geoffg, At the risk of disturbing the nay sayers, Is there any news on the Maximite version 3? Also is there any possibility of the function DIR$(fspec) for drive a: soonish? Bill Keep safe. Live long and prosper. |
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| Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3167 |
No, I am still awaiting an upgrade to the silicon and in the meantime have been distracted by other projects. I am planning an upgrade of the Maximite to V5 of MMBasic but sorry, I dom't think that there will be a drive A: in the final release. Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| Turbo46 Guru Joined: 24/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1595 |
Oh, OK does that mean the end of MOD files? I guess much of other the games related stuff will remain? Bill Keep safe. Live long and prosper. |
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| Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3167 |
It is way too early to speculate. My aim is to keep as much as possible while bringing the Maximite up to date (the V5 interpreter core, 64 bit integers, etc). I can say that it is proving to be a huge job. Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2294 |
that sounds interesting - anything you are able to share? it would be great if a die-shrink on the MX170H were to see a 512k flash version of the 28-pin DIP appear. cheers, rob :-) |
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