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EDIT: Sorry for the dullness of the first few entries in this diary, They are more about learning the DS and Arm than Warhawk. I have kept them in because it goes some way to show how it has developed from my early beginnings in the learning of the DS hardware (thanks HK). And as such, may still be of some help to others who wish to learn ASM on the DS
Been playing with hk's ds post instructions and made a wobbly colour effect from the sample code by hitting the keybord to see what happens :)
Not really, just having a play with the mnomics that are in the tutorial code to change the colours. It is a five minute thing, but as with any coding it is a good idea to start with an example and play with it to learn, then break out from there.
I will have to look into interupts on the ds to time changes to screen refresh, but I am at work at the mo and had a few minutes to play..
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I can see your copying the register that is being used as the iterator to the screen. Also an interesting effect is to alter the screen's x pos using a sine LUT during hblank to create a wobble effect.
I just added an example to display a bitmap :)
BTW You will have to download the source again for the first example because I had to modify the makefile to work with embedded data.
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Yeah, I had a few minutes at work sat night to have a little fiddle. I was mostly playing with the "Programers notepad" more than anything just to get used to it. You have to remember that this is a world away from the far simpler TurboAsm and Action Replay ;)
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Was trying to place a 180x21 pixel bitmap to the screen on the DS, And i really cannot see why I get this big gap?
Bloody Arm... Smash the DS all up!! :)
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Damn this looks like fun... if/when i get some spare time i will definately have to try it out...
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I'm really starting to see how difficult it would be to code a full game in arm asm! Anyway I'm enjoying the challenge. I tried a slightly different approach to you Flash but finally got the logo displaying correctly. I think you would be better off using tiles to display the logo but anyway here's my solution attached :)
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Thanks HK,
I just wanted to stick with a bit of learning the bitmap mode.
I still cannot understand why my version leaves that gap? I have not had a look today and perhaps I was getting a bit too tired last night, god knows!
Thanks for working that out!
I was trying to do it using a simple x and y counter and adding the value needed to the screen pointer to simulate a carriage return (start next line). I did it that way as it was easier to ref with the c64 and doing things in a similar fashion makes things clearer to me :) Things were also easier when all you had was C, X, Y and direct increments of memory adresses.
The framebuffer mode is something that I wanted to get used to so I could code a true starfield, and the bitmap plot was a way to work out a routine (library :) ) to plot a pixel at a location when given an x,y coord.
Thanks HK..
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Done a little plot routine
plotstar:
mov r0,r7,lsl #8 @ mul r7 (y) by 256 and store in r0
add r0,r6 @ add x value to r0
add r0,#BG_BMP_RAM(0) @ add screen location to result
mov r8,#0xff @ set r8 to white pixel (I only get black)
str r8,[r0] @ store r8 at screen location
mov r15,r14 @ return to main code
set r6 and r7 to x and y and call and this will plot a pixel at x,y. This plots a pixel where indicated, though it is always black :) I cannot/haven't worked out the pallets yet.. Grrrr. There is always something.
using the final mov command to return the location prior to the call is the only way I can implement a JSR and RET subroutine..
HK: Is there anyway to call "Plotstar (20,121)" to pass the coords to the sub rather than preloading the registers? In final code the modified registers would then be pushed onto the stack for preservation and then restored prior to the return to the main code.
Also, If I wanted (ide question) to store the x and y refs of 100 stars in memory, using the ide, how can i set a memory space to do so?
i.e. Xcoord EQU 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 or Xcoord EQU 0*100. I only ask this because on the c64 you would just pick an area of memory and use it! That is not really very tidy though.
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Just realised that you can make the code smaller and tighter like this
plotstar:
add r0,r6,r7,lsl #8 @ add x + (y *256) store in r0
add r0,#BG_BMP_RAM(0) @ add screen location to result
mov r8,#255 @ set r8 to white pixel (I only get black)
str r8,[r0] @ store r8 at screen location
mov r15,r14 @ return to main code
Still can only get black stars though :)
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If your using a 16 bit video mode then the bit format is X1B5G5R5. You have to set Bit 15 on to display a pixel otherwise it will remain black. That little doosy has got a few people in trouble ;)
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madness! :) C64 was a simple 11 10 01 00 he he
Managed to fill the screen with dots, but not exactly where I wanted....?
adds r0,r6,r7,lsl #8
if the result excedes the 256 boundry, it wraps round...
Lsl should work across all bits?
must be an adressing mode and perhaps I need to use 2 registers?
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ok, Stars are now white..
What is strange in this code is that if the Y value (r7) is not an even number, then the result appears shifted 128 to the right and not the required amount? I take it that the ds stores 2 bytes per pixel, and in that I have multiplied the x by 2 to get a word location. With the Y coord, doing an lsl or 9 (x512) fails. For every pixel down it needs to move 512 bytes.
X coords work fine... grrrr!
x is not fine as it now only plots 128 pixels across?
plotstar:
stmfd r13!,{r0,r6,r7,r8} @ stack registers
lsl r6,#1 @ 2 bytes per pixel
add r0,r6,r7,lsl #8 @ add x + (y *256) store in r0
add r0,#BG_BMP_RAM(0) @ add screen location to result
ldr r8,=65535 @ set r8 to white pixel
str r8,[r0] @ store r8 at screen location
ldmfd r13!,{r0,r6,r7,r8} @ restore rgisters
mov r15,r14
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I take it that the ds stores 2 bytes per pixel, and in that I have multiplied the x by 2 to get a word location.
Well it's 16 bit mode so yes 2 bytes per pixel in the format X1B5G5R5 ie. 5 bits per color.
The registers are 32 bits so you need to write 16 bits or 0xFFFF which is a white pixel. You need to use strh instead of str so it only copies over the halfword.
strh r8,[r0]
Also note you wouldn't use ldr if you were moving the stars in realtime as it's very slow (it stores the value in ROM where it performs the operation). We use ldr because you can only load values with "mov" that are shifted 8 bit values. But it would be faster to use a mov and then an add.
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Yeah, sorta worked it out in the end..
Have really (REALLY) found it hard to find something on the net to instruct on direct adressing of the ds screen in asm.
Well.. I failed... :)
Not to worry.. Had over an hour at home today and got an early starfield working a treat.
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Right, moving on a bit and working on direct screen addressing, I have been heading toward doing a starfield (how oldschool do ya want it?) on the ds as part of a bigger thing. have set a goal to replicate the Warhawk title screen with the addition of a starfield and using (MOD/WAVE/MP3) music from asm only on the ds. Well, I have got someway toward the starfield. It mow works fine with as as many stars as you want (20 in the demo cause i am lazy)
The only thing it does not do is run under an interupt to work at 60hz and be smooth. To be honest, I have not even looked into interupts yet, I was just happy to have the starfield working. :)
I have posted the source using HK's code as a construct, though that by doing so, he will work it out and have it working in an interupt in no time.
Ok, Starfield only displays 20 stars in X speeds. The source does not limit the amount of stars. If I could be bothered to work out random numbers, I would have done more... :)
ps. the total arm9 learnng so far has taken 6-8 hours. Still having problems puting this in the context of the ds hardware. The Arm9 code is fairly easy, the ds isnt!
This uses HK's dualpics project (I cant be bothered to make a new project :) )
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Hey thats cool! Great work :)
Did you see the waitforvblank routine in the dualpic demo? That should make it smoother if you draw during vblank.
Another thing to consider; it would be much faster to draw the stars once and then use the BG's scroll registers (ie. REG_BGxX & REG_BGxY) to move the stars. You could also have them moving vertically as well as horizontally.
Something else I think would be a great effect would be to add a sine LUT and have the starfield move around using it.
Attached is a cool program called SINUSLAB which can generate sine LUT's :) (Save as "Bytes, TassC64-Style" format)
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I did try to use the existing vblank code you put in the original project, but it just hung..
What would be great is to set the starfield to and nmi.. :)
The main tihng is that I am learning.. Have a try and get the code running under vblank for smoothness, go on can ya? :)
Again, thanks for all your help!
couple of things,
1) can you put more than one command pr line in the ide?
2) can you help me with lamens (as close to bits and bytes) terms for the ds registers! Without YOUR code to set the screens, I would have been lost. If you were a c64 coder - you would understand.. :)
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HiHi... well some progress there... Nice to see
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I have spent a while and cannot find a way to generate random numbers.
I thought that a reseed of the stars when they exit the end of the screen would look good.
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Yep that would definately not look to static... :)
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Sadly, I cannot find any method to pull random numbers in Arm9. Lots of C code and several forms... But way ahead of me at the moment to convert to asm, even the MOD command frightens me!
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I was researching this as well and found some example code for generating a random number on the GBA here (http://www.zophar.net/pdroms/gba/bgdemo.html).
I also got the waitvblank code working in your demo just but adding it to the end of your loop
ldr r0, =REG_VCOUNT @ This will actually make the assembler put the number REG_VCOUNT in the "pool" and
@ the actual operation performed is a load from memory (likely ROM if you're not writting code to be
@ copied to RAM). This is an operation you want to avoid if you want speed (in that case, mov 0x4000000
@ and then add 6. The C compiler chooses this over an LDR quite often).
waitVBlank:
ldrh r1, [r0] @ read REG_VCOUNT
cmp r1, #(SCREEN_HEIGHT + 1) @ 193 is, of course, the first scanline of vblank
bne waitVBlank @ loop if r1 is not equal to (NE condition) 193
@ (CMP does a compare (it's purpose is to set the status)).
b loop @ lets keep doing it!
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Well done HK, I will have to look at the random number code tomorrow (well - today now). I could find tons in x86, but would have been too hard to convert.
I removed the vblank from my source when writing the code to do the stars, more to keep it tidy for me while coding it and perhaps did something wrong when I edited it back in... It was about 2am when I had finished as I was late from work due to Christmas - well that is my excuse anyway :)
Thanks as always HK..
PS. How is your Arm coding/playing coming along (please don't show me up :) )
PPS. I think i have a slight "ps" and "smilie" obsession... :)
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I was researching this as well and found some example code for generating a random number on the GBA here (http://www.zophar.net/pdroms/gba/bgdemo.html).
I also got the waitvblank code working in your demo just but adding it to the end of your loop
For some reason this does not work for me - the stars all move flat out at full process and do not stop and wait for the vblank.. Must be doing something stupid but it is !:30 am and the kids will be up soon (good god) so I will have another look tomorrow..
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I haven't really done much at all just been working on some of your problems like random numbers and things like that. I'm thinking about working on some of my old projects I never got finished like a port of Cleudo from the Amiga and The Detective Game from C64.
BTW I realised that waitforvblank code is wrong it should be REG_VCOUNT not REG_DISPSTAT and it should be looping over until it reaches vblank. I reposted the code in my original post.
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You are right. Works a treat now! The Ideas emu does not run it very smoothly though.
I decided to put it on a real DS and tried both R4DS and CycloneDS and it will not run on either? Just a black screen and that is all?
We must be missing something in the headers?
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Another thing to consider; it would be much faster to draw the stars once and then use the BG's scroll registers (ie. REG_BGxX & REG_BGxY) to move the stars. You could also have them moving vertically as well as horizontally.
Something else I think would be a great effect would be to add a sine LUT and have the starfield move around using it.
Attached is a cool program called SINUSLAB which can generate sine LUT's :) (Save as "Bytes, TassC64-Style" format)
Sorry, missed some bits from earlier posts.
It would be quicker to use the scroll registers (when I work them out - Ug!) but I want the stars to randomise on exit from the screen in both y location and speed. I really want to keep as close to the kind of code you would use on the c64 (it would be the same, but in chars in say a 8x8 repeated grid, or using multiplexed sprites) as this makes it easier to pick up and help when you are trying to make a correlation between them. This is the same way I worked with the Amiga and also x86 on both the 486 and the Psion 3a. I know it is madness, but it helps.. (silly fool that I am)
Using luts would be quite fun at some point... Perhaps using "words" to store off-screen data and doing rotating stars? Thanks for posting sinuslab, That is a really handy peice of software for an oldschool coder like me :)
Regarding the mention of ldr as a slow way of loading the register. Yeah, I did read that and ldr is fine to use out of loops I know, but it does make the code easier to initially write. I will not use ldr at a later stage, especially when speed is important. At the moment, it will easily run 256 stars even with ldr.
Strange compiler issue. If you add a few more stars to the data .sx .sy etc, sometimes the compiler trips and complains about an error in a command earlier for no reason and refuses to compile. You prob already know why, but I am at a loss? Try it!
Thanks as always and sorry for the delay on the reply to these points.
p.s Had a good look at the gba rand function and cannot work it out...? It is messy code after all, with non descriptive variables and branches. Perhaps I will print it out to see how to convert/modify it to the nds?
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Okay mate I got them running on hardware it was an error that I forgot to fix in system.h
Here is the correct code in system.h (I removed the BIT macro thinking the asm compiler wouldn't work with them but it did and I forgot to put them back in)
#define POWER_LCD BIT(0)
#define POWER_2D_A BIT(1)
#define POWER_MATRIX BIT(2)
#define POWER_3D_CORE BIT(3)
#define POWER_2D_B BIT(9)
#define POWER_SWAP_LCDS BIT(15)
Attached is the starfield source with the fixed code and starfield.nds file that runs on hardware. I also uploaded the fixed dualpics source code and that runs okay on hardware too :)
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Wee that looks good.. :)
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Well, had another play and got my title screen working almost as intended. All that is missing it the music (asm mod/mp3/wav player, or perhaps called to a arm7 c compile).
I have put some images on and made the stars avoid drawing over them.. Yes - I have not looked into the layers and have not even got any idea if you can use layers on a bitmap screen.. But Hey, I like doing it the c64 way.. It works and that is the main thing.
Added a load more stars, hand typed. HK, I cannot get the random code to work, have tried to compile it and I cannot get a random number. Stars go off the left and never appear again :) Also, a downside of 100% asm, you have no way to know what a value is returned as unless you write a routine to display the value (good idea - perhaps I will do that) or plot a single pixel holding the value to a safe area to pick out in photoshop.
The next step is learning tile mode and doing a scroller that uses both screens vertically for the playfield.
Initially scrolling junk but eventually moving a large level map (warhawk had 10 levels).
This could be fun and also is something that I need HK's C experience for, to bridge the gap between the C code and assembly.
Anyway, the code is posted for anyone to learn from or laugh at. It has not been optimised in any way (seeing as it runs full speed fine) and also has a few errors in it by way of instructions used - I would not pass at assembly school. All the ldrb, ldr, ldrh... and I also have not touched one of the arms leading features, adding conditions to single operations. So - presented as is, and heavily commented..
:)
PS. The graphics are straight from the c64 and I will touch them up at come point to add more colour and higher detail.
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Great work there Flash, and did you try and get it running on hardware to show off to your kids?
I think getting text to output would be a fun challenge I think I'll give that a shot and maybe try and get a random function working.
The main problem with getting the Mod player to work is the IPC code used to communicate with the ARM7 from the ARM9. There is a special part of shared RAM that is used for this. I'll look into it but my guess is it will probably be difficult to do in pure asm.
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Even a simple sample loop would be a start :)
I did put it on the DS and it works a treat!
Text output (even just numbers) would be really easy even in framebuffer. Just an image from 0-9 in 8x8 grid (10x8 units) would make it easy to pick the data and just dump it. I would cheat and convert the number to individual bytes and display one after the other :) Not much use for text though.
Perhaps looking in to doing these as includes would be great.
Random numbers and some help on tole based scrolling are two things I need your help with..
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I had a look at your demo running on the DS and it looks great :)
I just uploaded a demo to output text which also demonstrates using a tile mode.
Still haven't looked into random numbers yet, but I did get the Mod Player compiling under the new DevKitPro (only the C version thus far). I had to modify the DevKitPro ipc.h header to use the old method of sending audio data through the IPC struct. More on that later though.
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Well this project seems to be coming out nicely... Damn now i wish i had gotten that DS as a christmas present to the kid...
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or one for the big kid called "Grapple" :) :)
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I feel foolish giving you guys programming advice, but I remember that on the c64, the random number generator wasn't truly random. It produced the same list everytime. I think they used to use the clock somehow to generate random numbers. Hmmm maybe they only used a value from the clock as a seed for the random number generator....
See, I told you I shouldn't talk programming! That's my post for the day. :-X
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On the c64 the main way to do an RNG was just to hook the white noise generator in the sid chip. Something sadly we do not have the pleasure of on the DS.
Some people also used the Raster as a generator, I cant as am awaiting the VBlank to keep the updates smooth.. The numbers would all be nearly the same evey time...
So, down to some "newman" (is that his name?) code in asm as a way to generate - arrghh
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Mmm yep I am the Biggest kid at home... :) however i just bought me some christmas presents (A trackball kit) and a few nice bottles of Whiskey... so no DS for me officially.. hehe
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Been playing with Mappywin32 and it looks great at generating maps.
Have done a dummy warhawk map as a base for a level. Not quite sure of the correct way to output it though?
HK: Put a map file here for you to look at (it is Mappy format) - if you want
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Grapple: It would be great if you could join in the fun ;) You can always start by using the emulators and then get the hardware later.
Flash: The random number generator only needs a unique value for the seed. We could use a timer and a button click, VCOUNT anything that will give us a seed of some sort. But anyway for now we just need a random number generator that uses a seed. We can worry about making the seed different later.
Don't worry about MappyWin32 all you have to do to create a map is to add a png made up of 8x8 tiles and save it as Eg. level1.png and create a level1.grit to go with it like so:
#-------------------------------------------------------
# graphics in tile format
#-------------------------------------------------------
-gt
#-------------------------------------------------------
# tile reduction
#-------------------------------------------------------
-mR
#-------------------------------------------------------
# map output
#-------------------------------------------------------
-m
#-------------------------------------------------------
# graphics bit depth is 4 (16 color)
#-------------------------------------------------------
-gB4
It will use the "grit" tool (located in C:\devkitPro\devkitARM\bin). It will automatically find repeated, rotated and flipped tiles and create the map data for you (and you just write the map data to CHAR_BASE_BLOCK(x) or CHAR_BASE_BLOCK_SUB(x)). For later stages you will need to combine maps, tile data and palettes but we'll worry about that later. For now we just need to get a single map displaying and scrolling. Speaking of scrolling, all you have to do is write the offset to the REG_BGxHOFS / REG_BGxVOFS / REG_BGxHOFS_SUB / REG_BGxVOFS_SUB registers to scroll a background (NOTE: Those registers only work in text modes ie. Mode 0 as used in the text example). Just remember you probably want to use a 64x32 map size so you can scroll in new tiles as your scroll registers are moved 8 pixels along ie.
ldr r0, =REG_BG0CNT_SUB @ Set sub screen format to be tiles
ldr r1, =(BG_COLOR_16 | BG_64x32 | BG_MAP_BASE(29) | BG_TILE_BASE(0))
str r1, [r0]
Also I think it's really important to get it so we can read the touchscreen and buttons. I believe only the ARM7 can do that so we have to use shared memory to get it over to the ARM9. I'll see what I can come up with in regards to that.
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Thanks for your continued help.
But I really wanted to use 32x32 tiles to construct the level?
Did you have a look at mappy? I understand what you are saying about grits function in the generation of maps, but using mappy allows for much more versitility for construction. You can output the entire map as a single graphic though - which would be the same. It is a nice bit of software that is worthy of a look.
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I'm not sure if I explained things well enough. You don't need a tile editor you can simply draw an entire level in a graphics program and grit will take that image and extract all the tiles from it. So you can use photoshop to draw a level and grit will do the conversion. To use photoshop I would turn on "snap to grid" and set the grid size to 32x32.
Again your getting confused with tile size vs map size. A map simply says what tile goes where on the screen. So a 64x32 mode just means you can fit 64 tiles horizontally (with 32 visible onscreen) and 32 vertically (with 24 visible onscreen) as the display is 256x192 pixels and each tile is 8x8 pixels. That is so you can scroll in tiles without being able to see them being drawn (you draw the new tiles in the non-visible map area offscreen as the map is scrolled).
Tiles are always 8x8 pixels but you can use 32x32 pixel sized tiles it doesn't matter they will just be 1 tile made up of 4 smaller tiles. When you draw a level in Photoshop it will scan the image in 8x8 and it will only store one tile for repeated, rotated or mirrored tiles to save memory. A map can use the same tile over and over just by using the same tile id. To flip or rotate a tile you simply set a bit for the map entry; but all that is taken care of by grit when it generates the map data.
Here is a level from Tales of Dugar (http://www.talesofdagur.com) which is an RPG written by a friend of mine in the NDS coding scene. As you can see the entire level is drawn up for each background. You don't need a tile editor just a graphics program like Photoshop is fine. All you really need to worry about is where your going to write the data into VRAM. The greatest challenge in coding the DS for me was figuring out VRAM so I think once you get the basics of tile mode you will be flying. I'm really impressed with what you've come up with in such the short time since we started and I think your previous experience with the C64 is certainly starting to show :)
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BTW I was looking at Warhawk today in WinVice and you can actually run an Action Replay cartridge (I got one from here (http://www.planetemu.net/index.php?section=roms&dat=501)) which allows you to reset the game and view sprites in memory and from that take a screenshot to rip graphics. I was taking screenshots of the start screen and so far I've ripped most of the Warhawk font. So far I have the copyright symbol, the full uppercase alphabet and all the numbers except for "7". There are probably other characters I'm missing too but unfortunately I cant get them to display even using the AR's edit screen function. If you have any ideas on how to grab the rest of the font let me know.
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You are a little sweetie really aren't ya! :)
It would perhaps be easier to just draw the missing characters. Pass me what you have and I can add them?
With regards Grip and doing it in photoshop.
I understand the size of the screen and the tilemap made of tiles. If I can ref with warhawk.
this used a tilemap of 12x(cant remember) tiles to construct the level, each tile was 32x32 pixels and referenced exactly the same as the ds does it in hardware. Each tile had a value (0 being blank) and the map was made by just referencing the tile at each location. Each tile was made from 4x4 8 pixel blocks, creating the 32x32 tiles.
In warhawk some tiles were denoted as destructable and checked against the data for a bullet collision. If I do not have control over what tile numbers are used how can you do this check easily. C64 used a range - ie tiles 250-255 were bases.
Going back to Mappy though (please look at it). This does have the benefit of easy level construction and the ability to output the entire level as a png for use with grip.
Also, I would personally liked to have my own tile set to use on all levels and then have individual levels that used that tileset but alternate palletes. Does that make sense to you, or am I just making work for myself? I mean use the same graphics but modify the pallet as done in the c64 version.
I personally wonder if more would be learnt by me if I coded the level display and scroll using my own routines rather that hardware?
Thanks for the compliments on the coding - I love that.
The way I can put your help into perspective is - I like to think of myself as an able artist, but do need the help of that wonderful Canvas builder called HK.. I do struggle to paint a picture with 4 bits of wood and a piece of cloth.. :)
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I have had to make a concession on the maps that the ds version uses. (as mentioned earlier) the C64 had a 320x192 res screen and used blocks of 32x32 pixels (4x4 DS blocks). The Ds is 256x192 and as such cannot display the data the same as the C64. 24x24 blocks are the closest and would still not fit the width of the screen. The only option is display 8 32x32 blocks horizontally and use a map of 10 32x32 blocks (yes, I know the ds works in 8x8's - but trying to match the c64 levels).
With this in mind the DS would have to scroll the screen horizonatally 32 pixels - which would be quite nice to be honest.
Have uploaded a messy demo of what I have been playing with before I got too tired to work out any more. All I have done is an "Initial" level display code to draw the level as it would be upon the levels start ready to scroll it.
I then had a play with the data offsets to see how the tile mode works. So, the level will scroll the whole of the map for you, not smoothly nor correctly!!! This is redrawing the entire map each time a move is needed, but this still helps to see the way the ds works.
I could not do a screenshot as it is far too "FLICKERY" for that :) But, it is all progress...
Now all that I need to work out is SCROLLING (correctly)... Then move the display to the bottom and draw the rest of the map on the top screen - using both screens (oh god!) to display the level...
Here are some pics of the original C64 level 1 and A half-arsed mess-about at the DS version of the same level (Improving the graphics comes last on my list - unless there are any OFFERS :) )
PS. Am using mappywin to do the levels with a nice set of blocks to construct them. This does make it nice and easy to do, the outputted png of the level could then be edited in photoshop for added detail.
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It is getting late, but had a play with the scroll registers and got myself confused..
I have it scrolling down a few pixel and looping back to start. Ie. scroll down 8 and then return to possition 1... cycle..
What I need to do is work out how to move the entire screen down 8 pixels.. I hope I do not have to do the loop to move the entire screen data down one line - that is a lot of cycles...
Start at bottom line (rightmost)
copy line above down one line,
move left one block and repeat back all the way to the top left positon...
Oh well... Will have another think tomorrow!
Actually it can scroll the entire screen using the register (256 positions) but will repeat add nauseum... but there only appears to be one line of blank (8 pixel vert) at the top by which to use for the next map line...
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In warhawk some tiles were denoted as destructable and checked against the data for a bullet collision. If I do not have control over what tile numbers are used how can you do this check easily. C64 used a range - ie tiles 250-255 were bases.
As you can see there is a collision map used in Tales of Dugar so maybe you could make another map that denotes the destructable tiles?
Going back to Mappy though (please look at it). This does have the benefit of easy level construction and the ability to output the entire level as a png for use with grip.
I did have a look at Mappy and that level you posted. It does look handy to build the levels although I would have thought taking screenshots of the levels directly from an emulator and pasting them into Photoshop would be easier than remaking them in a tile editor. But if that's easier for you then I'm happy to go that way. The DevKitPro example actually uses Pern Edit (http://pernedit.com/) so that might be another Tile Editor to look into.
Also, I would personally liked to have my own tile set to use on all levels and then have individual levels that used that tileset but alternate palletes. Does that make sense to you, or am I just making work for myself? I mean use the same graphics but modify the pallet as done in the c64 version.
I personally wonder if more would be learnt by me if I coded the level display and scroll using my own routines rather that hardware?
Yes we can definately do that, palette changes. I did a similar thing for my keyboards where the key would hilight when you pressed it by changing palette. So yes we can do that, we just have to figure out how to tell grip to use a different palette. If worse comes to worse we can simply add a palette manually by entering the color values and switching them.
I would stick with using the scroll registeres - that's what they're there for and they are much faster than anything we could code ourselves.
With this in mind the DS would have to scroll the screen horizonatally 32 pixels - which would be quite nice to be honest.
I agree a little horizontal scrolling will be a nice touch :)
I then had a play with the data offsets to see how the tile mode works. So, the level will scroll the whole of the map for you, not smoothly nor correctly!!! This is redrawing the entire map each time a move is needed, but this still helps to see the way the ds works.
Wow! That's really impressive mate! I can't believe you've already got a level displaying and scrolling.
It is getting late, but had a play with the scroll registers and got myself confused..
I have it scrolling down a few pixel and looping back to start. Ie. scroll down 8 and then return to possition 1... cycle..
You shouldn't need to return the scroll register back to anything. You can just keep adding to it. According to GBATek (http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm#lcdiobgscrolling) the scroll value is a number between 0-511 using 9 bits to store it or a maximum value of 0x1FF (or 111111111 in binary). So what we can do is just AND the value with 0x1FF and that will ensure it will be between 0-511.
Eg.
ldr r0, =REG_BG0VOFS_SUB @ Load our vertical scroll register for BG0 on the sub screen
mov r1, #0 @ Set our scroll counter to 0
ldrh r2, =0x1FF @ This is our mask to ensure the scroll value stays between 0-511
loop:
strh r1, [r0] @ Write our scroll counter to REG_BG0VOFS_SUB
add r1, r1, #1 @ Increment our scroll counter
and r1, r2 @ AND our scroll counter with our mask
b loop @ Our main loop
What I need to do is work out how to move the entire screen down 8 pixels.. I hope I do not have to do the loop to move the entire screen data down one line - that is a lot of cycles...
Scroll one pixel at a time using the scroll registers and write a new map every 8 pixels.
Start at bottom line (rightmost)
copy line above down one line,
move left one block and repeat back all the way to the top left positon...
Oh well... Will have another think tomorrow!
Actually it can scroll the entire screen using the register (256 positions) but will repeat add nauseum... but there only appears to be one line of blank (8 pixel vert) at the top by which to use for the next map line...
It's a 64x32 tile map so if there are 24 visible vertically that should mean there are 8 tiles or 64 pixels available to scroll in tiles vertically.
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I've knocked up a picture to hopefully explain things better than I can in words. This picture shows a 64x32 map mode, and how we will have to deal with all the offsets. Since the actual level is 40 tiles across that leaves a 24 tile gap to the right of the map.
What I've done is take the level and make it 64 tiles wide (512 pixels wide). That means we can draw the map without having to worry about that 24 tile gap. It doesn't take up much more VRAM because they are just blank tiles. Some more map data is required but for the convenience I think it's worth it.
For some reason I had to add the "-mLs" option to grip which means Map layout is "reg sbb". I have no idea what that means right now but without it it was forcing a 32 tile width map.
Attached is the demo that needs to be changed to add in more tiles when it's scrolled 8 pixels up which I haven't done yet.
Also attached is the font I've ripped so far.
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I will look into collision maps after getting this scrolling working, you know me - always thinking ahead..
Mappy: Glad you had a look at it.. I think it is a nice package. Yes, I could have dumped the entire c64 level as a png (overlaying the multiple scores), but from a "Game from scratch" perspective, I thought it would (again) be best to follow the process on a comparative C64 level. Anyway, I am just playing with the level and will hopefully find someone to do some graphic work on the levels. I have tried on several occassions to get in contact with one of the original Warhawk team (who did most of the graphics) BadToad. I had been talking to him online, but he has not been online since the 14th Dec, which is prior to this coding exersise in madness..
Scrolling: I will have another play with the scrolling again tonight. It was getting late and parts of my brain were shutting off. All that was left was the descision area that kept telling me to drink more coke..
Drawing the entire map on each 8 pixel scroll takes quite a lot of cycles btw. I also want to extend the map to the top screen at some point (when I have a smooth vertical scroll going on the base screen that is), I am a bit concerned about the overheads..
I will have to look into input (surelly this can be integrated into Arm9?) as It would be nice to push the screen horizontal as it scrolls - for testing purposes.
About Maps:
On the demo level, the blank areas and areas around the edges of levels I need to make transparent so that I can have another layer (or 2) beneath that doing a vertical star routine. What do I have to do in grit if i make all BLANK areas a set colour (ie ff00ff as mentioned in the docs) transparent..?
Thanks as always for your help and I am sure the next demo will have a full scroll going on... (then on to the top screen for stage 2)... (ulp!)
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You guys are way over my head.... Had another thought (My last one) about the random number thing. If you used too use whitenoise from the sid, would it be possible to use the microphone on the DS (I Googled, and it does have one???) to get random values?
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That may be possible.. A sound idea from an unsound guy ;)
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Ok, we have a fullscreen vertical scroller working on a per pixel level.
A couple of strang things have been introduced...
HK: VBLANK - we are only scrolling one pixel per interupt, but by god it looks bloody fast on the emu, and worse on the DS, and this is with a delay?? The scroller should scroll 60 pixels down the screen (up the map) per second. It seems more like 600 on the ds (with delay?). If aliens move 1 pix per second - this is gonna be a bloody hard game with very short levels :)
Also, the map is messed up and this seems to be in blocks of 512 bytes? The map is fine as a png and the tilemaps look ok, but something has gone wrong with grip I suspect. Also, some of the graphics are messed up on a 8x8 basic, almost like the tiles are confused? Hmmmmmm
back to the little demo - sadly, the graphics are not displayed as intended, but the main thing is that it works..
I may add a sine based l/r move into it just so the horizontal movement can be seen later tonight...
All code is highly commented as always.
I am keeping a running commentary of this in the hope that anyone who is reading this will see that it is perhaps not as hard as it may appear. So, not only will the good be displayed, I will also post the problems and complete f*** ups - we all learn by mistakes so I may as well share them with you all.
PS. This still contains the strange error in the tilemaps? I have no idea why??
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Oh god!!! Another update :)
I got bored at looking at a single scrolling screen - quite dull really...
So, now we have it scrolling through 2 screens and I have also added a sine wave scroll (thanks for sinuslab hk) on the horizontal scroll to demonstrate the way in which i wish to use the screen during gameplay - a slight horizontal scroll.
It still runs FAR too fast (is that a bad thing?) and I have put a massive slowdown into the code! I am sure that HK will see why and I have not spent much time looking into why as I was more involve in getting the scroll working.. Hurrah!
PS. Cannot use ideas for screenshots as doing so makes the screenshot show the top and bottom screens look out of sync so had to use a simple screen capture.
HK, what is quite strange is that the left/right scroll works at rhe speed that it should, but the vertical scroll is way ahead of it even though they both update at the same time? I have spent just over 2 hours doing the code for the 2 screens and will have another look tomorrow.. Gonna have another little play with the title screen and that character set you sent from Warhawk!
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A little update to the title screen to move between 2 different screens (3 eventually perhaps with hiscore?)
The clearscreen code is messy and I will tidy that up later!!
Oh, and the credit screen will include a lot more people by tomorrow - I just made it quick to test!
PS - If there is anyone who wants to offer there services to improve the graphics - I would be very grateful!!!! ;)
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Latest demos look sweet 8)
I too was confused why the scrolling is so fast. It should be waiting for vblank and it should be scrolling smoothly. I don't know whats going on I will have to take another look.
Also there are two ways we can speed up writing the new map each 8 pixels scrolled
- Only write the part of the map that is scrolling in instead of the whole map each time
- Use DmaCopy. This one I'm working on at the moment. I'm trying to convert the dma.h C code over to asm. It's the fastest way to copy memory around on the DS. You simply give a source and destination address and a size and it will do a fast copy.
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The level test now works perfect on the ideas without any delays - different kettle of fish on a real ds though - way too fast... Still cannot sort out the tilemap?
Updated the title with credits also..
The title now checks key presses and A will freeze the stars (It is a start)
PS. Tried all sorts of ands and ors to get the Vblank working correctly - Gonna smash up the pc and the bloody DS... >:(
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I'm enjoying watching the progress your making :)
I'm having even less luck than you are at the moment I'm afraid (I have comfort in the fact that I'm not the only one having problems here ;) ). As I said before dealing with VRAM was one of the greatest challenges coding the DS for me and that hasn't seemed to change. In all my recent NDS projects I use dmacopy to move memory around because it's fast and you will notice that in this demo I'm going to post. The problem is the data has to be in the structure it needs to be in VRAM so when you copy the chunks of memory it's already there to display otherwise you have to use a loop to make sure everything is placed correctly.
The problem is how map data is stored in banks and it gets a bit tricky as soon as you use a map larger than 32 tiles wide because those tiles to the right need to be stored in the next bank. I had this problem when I started coding Cluedo which also uses a 64x32 map. To be able to dmacopy the map I had to draw the map as it would be stored in VRAM. Attached is a picture of the map and as you can see when you go over 32 tiles wide it stores those tiles into the next bank. I was looking at the grit options (http://www.coranac.com/man/grit/html/grit.htm) as I'm sure there must be a way to store the data like that. Although I have no idea why your original demo works okay but when I added dmacopy it introduced this large gap in the data. If I have to write a program that will split the map up into the banks then I will but anyway I'm posting what I've done so far in the hope you might be able to shed more light on the problem.
I also started playing with some interrupt code as I thought using a VBLANK interrupt might improve the scrolling. I realised there is more to interrupts than I first thought. Like there is a special place in memory where an interrupt rountine needs to go and also a table of memory addresses where the actual irq handling addresses go. The libnds library normally takes care of much of that but since were coding in pure asm we have to implement all of that manually. So for now I think I'll leave interrupts alone.
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I wonder if outputing from grit as done originally and drawing the screen using an x counter to wrap at the boundry would work? Does the map need to be 64x32? I will have a play today.
The vblank is of the most concern as the game relies on it. I just fail to understand why it works fine on the title screen?
Is there anyway you can backtrack the code in libds to get a basis in what it does. Ie. If you knocked up the exact same code using the same data in C, what would happen different?
Thanks for all your help!
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I got the level scrolling okay now I think :)
What I did was make the map 64x64 so when the vertical scroll register hits 255 I dmacopy a new bank of the map to the screens. This means we only need to write the map every 255 lines scrolled.
The level from Cleudo shows the problem I was having pretty clearly. Even if you have a 64xWhatever size map it still only stores the top left 32x32 tiles in a block so you must write the next 32x32 block after that to get the tiles to the right. Having 64 tiles vertically to play with means we can scroll out a whole screen of 32x32 and then dmacopy in the next block as needed. If we don't use the -mLs option in grit (which I have found out means to format the data in "screen blocks") then we couldn't use the fast dmacopy to write the maps. In fact it would mean every line would have to be written to the two banks in a loop (ie. Much slower).
It's probably buggy but it works okay in the emulators. Running it on real hardware is still way too fast. I even tried a different style of waitvblank but it didn't work on hardware either :(
Anyway some more code and things to ponder on. Sprites would be nice to get working but I think the header will be a little difficult to translate because they use structs for the OAM entries and I don't believe that is so straight forward in asm.
Here is the vblank code I translated. Perhaps I did something wrong?
// C Code
void waitForVBlank(void)
{
while(!(REG_DISPSTAT & DISP_IN_VBLANK));
while((REG_DISPSTAT & DISP_IN_VBLANK));
}
@ My (probably wrong) translation to asm
ldr r0, =REG_DISPSTAT
waitVBlankA:
ldr r1, [r0]
tst r1, #DISP_IN_VBLANK
bne waitVBlankA
waitVBlankB:
ldr r1, [r0]
tst r1, #DISP_IN_VBLANK
beq waitVBlankB
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That should work based on the c code, why the hell doesn't it?
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Okay I got the scrolling working by breaking each screen up into their own routines with their own y offset.
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Just made the level 1 background with the colour key FF00FF set for the transparency. Hopefully I will get a chance to play with code to add another layer later tonight
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I got that level working with transparency using the following options (since it's in X1R5G5B5 format that makes magenta 0x7C1F)
#-------------------------------------------------------
# graphics in tile format
#-------------------------------------------------------
-gt
#-------------------------------------------------------
# trasparent color
#-------------------------------------------------------
-gT7C1F
#-------------------------------------------------------
# tile reduction
#-------------------------------------------------------
-mRtpf
#-------------------------------------------------------
# map output
#-------------------------------------------------------
-m
#-------------------------------------------------------
# graphics bit depth is 4 (16 color)
#-------------------------------------------------------
-gB4
#-------------------------------------------------------
# Map layout for regular backgrounds. 16-bit entries, broken down into screenblocks.
#-------------------------------------------------------
-mLs
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Following on from the attempts to get multiple backgrounds working, major headache. I am wondering if we are missing something?
I have modified the original code and based on that was expecting these modifications to work in the extent of displaying the backgrounds. The relevence of the Tile_Base on BG1 should not matter as at the moment it does not really matter what is displayed
ldr r0, =VRAM_A_CR @ Set VRAM A to be main bg address 0x06000000
ldr r1, =(VRAM_ENABLE | VRAM_A_MAIN_BG_0x06000000)
strb r1, [r0]
ldr r0, =VRAM_C_CR @ Set VRAM C to be sub bg address 0x06200000
ldr r1, =(VRAM_ENABLE | VRAM_C_SUB_BG_0x06200000)
strb r1, [r0]
mov r0, #REG_DISPCNT @ Main screen to Mode 0 with BG0 & BG1 active
ldr r1, =(MODE_0_2D | DISPLAY_BG0_ACTIVE | DISPLAY_BG1_ACTIVE)
str r1, [r0]
ldr r0, =REG_DISPCNT_SUB @ Sub screen to Mode 0 with BG0 & BG1 active
ldr r1, =(MODE_0_2D | DISPLAY_BG0_ACTIVE | DISPLAY_BG1_ACTIVE)
str r1, [r0]
ldr r0, =REG_BG0CNT @ Set main screen BG0 format to be 64x64 tiles at base address
ldr r1, =(BG_COLOR_16 | BG_64x64 | BG_MAP_BASE(0) | BG_TILE_BASE(1) | BG_PRIORITY(1))
str r1, [r0]
ldr r0, =REG_BG0CNT_SUB @ Set sub screen BG0 format to be 64x64 tiles at base address
ldr r1, =(BG_COLOR_16 | BG_64x64 | BG_MAP_BASE(0) | BG_TILE_BASE(1) | BG_PRIORITY(1))
str r1, [r0]
ldr r0, =REG_BG1CNT @ Set main screen BG0 format to be 64x64 tiles at base address
ldr r1, =(BG_COLOR_16 | BG_32x64 | BG_MAP_BASE(4) | BG_TILE_BASE(1) | BG_PRIORITY(3))
str r1, [r0]
ldr r0, =REG_BG1CNT_SUB @ Set sub screen BG0 format to be 64x64 tiles at base address
ldr r1, =(BG_COLOR_16 | BG_32x64 | BG_MAP_BASE(4) | BG_TILE_BASE(1) | BG_PRIORITY(3))
str r1, [r0]
Looking through video.h I have perhaps done a bit more to confuse myself. I was looking bacause of reading through the tutorial on http://dev-scene.com/NDS/Tutorials (http://dev-scene.com/NDS/Tutorials). I take it that BG_MAP_BASE and BG_BMP_BASE are pretty much the equivs for tile and framebuffer screens! But, what is DISPLAY_CHAR_BASE?
Also, setting priorities for BG0 and BG1 to 1 and 3 respectivley results in BG1 becoming above BG0
BG_MAP_BASE on BG1 (and sub) kills the display of BG0 regardless of ANY setting (0-31) this is something that I really do not understand.
Is there settings that we also need to do to get this working, leading to the thought that omitting them made a single background work by using the settings defaults? By adding a second layer the defaults are no longer valid?
Or (as more usually the case) is it just me?
Added here is the leveltest code that is slightly modified and also contains the test png for the half speed star background.
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Okay sorry that I haven't used your updated level code with the stars but I just wanted to see if changing to using variables instead of reading the scroll registers would change anything. And guess what? It did, now we have perfect scrolling with vblank. Just tested this on hardware and it works great ;)
Now all you have to do is integrate your new code with this. I did change quite a bit around I'm afraid so sorry about that. But I needed to do that to help me understand the code better.
I think gbadev.org will be really helpful for this project. Lot's of knowledgable folks over there :) (Thanks to dovoto and eKid for help with this)
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It works GREAT! That is bloody strange :)
Don't worry about the code, I only did that as a test anyway, It was a way of working out the memory banks more than anything! The final idea is to use a background for the level as a bitmap to allow lots of stars at many different speeds. The code it looking trickier that first envisioned. But if it works, it will be the first time anyone has mixed a framebuffer type mode with tilemode ;)
I cannot believe we missed the halfword in the inits! I bloody spent hours going through the .h files to try and find out why bg1 and bg3 did not work - at least i was on the right tracks with them being paired (sort of)
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Yes very strange because I swore I checked all the sizes of the registers and I thought those REG_BGxCNT regs were 32-bit. Can't believe we missed that as I thought we checked them all.
Anyway it feels good were back on track. I would not use a framebuffer mode mixed with a tilemode, it just wouldn't work. What we should do is find some nice star sprites and just build a map like the level map using stars and maybe some planets and things for the background. Maybe we could have two layers for the background, something like stars on one and planets on the other and scroll them at different speeds.
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Yes very strange because I swore I checked all the sizes of the registers and I thought those REG_BGxCNT regs were 32-bit. Can't believe we missed that as I thought we checked them all.
Anyway it feels good were back on track. I would not use a framebuffer mode mixed with a tilemode, it just wouldn't work. What we should do is find some nice star sprites and just build a map like the level map using stars and maybe some planets and things for the background. Maybe we could have two layers for the background, something like stars on one and planets on the other and scroll them at different speeds.
You misunderstood me,
What i meant was to use a tilemap as a bitmap, adressing each blank tile to map a star (non scroll). Make this transparent and lay another planet background behind that scrolling a nice space picture.
It would be tricky as for both screens it would really need 768*2 tiles. So, it would have to be a single map on both screens.
I thought it would be a nice effect?
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It would be possible to write directly to tile data but it would be difficult IMHO. You would have to keep track of each star and each tile the current star is in and so on. I've heard people talk about doing that before but its really not what a tile mode is designed for. Anyway running that demo you did with the stars looks great to me anyway. With updated graphics it would look even nicer. Perhaps rather than just stars we could even have another level map (with destructable objects?). Or a star layer with another level layer. Anyway there are a few different ways we can go.
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I was going to use a star x,y and speed table and plot directly? It could work...
I just wanted to do something that had no been done before! But perhaps you are right!
In Warhawk the main level has destructible bases on it that are counted as destroyed and a bonus given if you get them all. Detecting them against the scroller may prove hard though - have not thought about it yet ;)
Please have a little play with the c64 one and see if this gives you any ideas - we just have to make it better - ho ho
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Boy was that frustrating and I couldn't get the palette offsets working either. Maybe grit can't do that?
I tried these two options
-ga <n>
Pixel offset for non-zero pixels. Useful if the associated palette is at an offset.
-ps <n>
Starting palette entry. -ps 16 would start the export at color 16. Works together with -pe and -pn.
Both options don't work. And there are no BG_PALETTE(n) macro's so we need to add the offset. Okay here is my update, didn't fix the palette issue I'm afraid :(
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Well done HK, it was a worthy effort...
Perhaps if I can make a palette in photoshop that we are going to use and save it as a indexed png, i could pre-map all the graphics to the same palette and set all to 256 colour to match. Hmmm...
I will give that a try when I get home.
PS. I see you had the same problem as me with the scroll matching and the blank areas. I am going to make all the bloody 3 layers the same size... There - that's told Mr. Arm... :)
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PS. I see you had the same problem as me with the scroll matching and the blank areas. I am going to make all the bloody 3 layers the same size... There - that's told Mr. Arm... :)
Actually I didn't even get around to looking at that - too busy trying to get the palettes to work ::)
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I have got the palettes working now and will see what I can do with adding the main ship to the scroll code!
I will post it later.
Have not had a chance to look into rotation of sprites yet, but hopefully will get time tonight!
Have made the 3 layers the same and this will be handy as I can start them scrolling before the main level (fire starts game) and then allow them to wrap! This is better overall. At some point we are going to have to think of a way to change the levels :) (levels and tilemaps, perhaps keep the same mid scroll and change the back one per level).
I have made a photoshop CLUT to map the colours.
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Ok,
The latest:-
The game now works with 3 levels of paralax and the palettes are now correct (hurrah)
I have not finished drawing the backdrops yet, but will have a go tomorrow.
The Warhawk ship is now on screen and can be controlled by joypad and fire starts the scroll. There is a jerk on the wait section that I cannot get to the bottom of at the moment. The scroll jerks when waiting.
There are some problems when playing on a real DS - it does not work! The sprite code stops the game playing. I have no idea why at the moment as it is late and my brain has gone a bit wonky. Commenting out the sprite BL's results in it working, though BG2 is not displayed? I have not looked into if it worked on the earlier post (the one with the incorrect palette).
I am sure these are little problems.
HK: one thing I did notice, in the scroll code for each layer, we are pushing a lot onto the stack? not sure if this could cause an overflow on an ARM processor?
Have commented a fair bit of the code (i removed the ldr r0,variable code in the sprite movement code as I wondered if this was the problem - it was not :( ).
Also, I had to move the memory mapping of the sprite vram as it killed the main screen (no scroll) and also the sprite would not appear.
Ok, HK - over to you :D
EDIT:
Had a look at the original sprites code and this works on a real DS, so i must be something I have done wrong?
The 3 layer scroller with the palette fault does NOT work, layer 2 (starfront) does not display on that either on a real DS.. So WTF!
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Awesome work! This is what I love about teamwork :)
I see how your using a shared palette, nice easy solution although I would still prefer to have grit take care of it for us. We would have better control over what layers use what colors. I think I'll make a post about it on gbadev and ask if it's a bug or if were using the options wrong. I would like to know the answer as I think having that much control over the palette is important. There is another grit option that sounds interesting
-pS
Shared palette data. The colors of the source bitmaps are merged into a single palette. See also -O and -S. NOTE: will alter the order of the original palette (unless the first bitmap happened to have all the colors in it (hint, hint)).
So perhaps that's another thing we can look into. It would be nice to have grit take care of all of this.
Will have a closer look at your demo but what from I've seen so far really impressed with what you've done :)
BTW Your still using BG_PALETTE(0) but BG_PALETTE is not a macro, so that is undefined behaviour. It's defined as
#define BG_PALETTE 0x05000000
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oops, forgot to change it! Silly bloody fool that I am!! :)
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That's looking sweet.
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You should see it going mate - starting to really look like it always should. Trying to keep the same "BaDToaD" style in the graphics. All I am really doing is adding a bit more to the resolution (no longer need 2 pixels for a colour) to sharpen them up a bit.
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Okay here is a sprite sheet showing what I mean about the energy triangles.
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Yeap, get ya...
On warhawk is climbs down a line at a time.. I will have a play.
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Okay got BG2 working. I'm not sure exactly what was going wrong but it looks like the tile data was overlapping other map or tile data but by my calculations there should have been plenty of space for it. So I just made more room. Did a few other odds and ends as I wasn't sure exactly what was causing it. I also fixed the crash on No$GBA when the demo ends, and the other crash after a few seconds in.
Also I noticed the movement code doesn't work on hardware but didn't get around to finding out why.
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Okay got BG2 working. I'm not sure exactly what was going wrong but it looks like the tile data was overlapping other map or tile data but by my calculations there should have been plenty of space for it. So I just made more room. Did a few other odds and ends as I wasn't sure exactly what was causing it. I also fixed the crash on No$GBA when the demo ends, and the other crash after a few seconds in.
Also I noticed the movement code doesn't work on hardware but didn't get around to finding out why.
Did you find out why it fails on hardware? I was going to, but after playing with the title screen, I had had too much wine (it is my birthday after all :) )
Ok, done some major changes to the title code (have not added to the V.xx numbers as I have been doing this bit myself - up till now!). All works and am randomly generating stars. I must have some kind of 42 year old mental block, but for the life of me I cannot get a random word to fix to a 1-6 or a 0-191 value. Perhaps my "ands" are a little scratchy? I thought I had it working, but when I expand the stars to 512, I can see that every other line (y) is missing? Also, regenerating a random upon star exit (<0) fails to work correctly, so have disabled it.
One thing you may want to try. If you double the star data, and double the move and draw stars to 1024, you get tons of errors about offsets... Try it as you may understand more, coming from the IDE background? or perhaps it is a quirk.
Played a bit with the sprites also and never realised you could not expand or rotate a sprite out of it's boundries (dimensions). When you look at the games and see a sprite zoomed off the screen you just think this is a simple zoom operation in hardware - far from it!
Anyway, here is the latest title. PS. you can now upload .nds files without the need of zipping them up!
Oh, another ps, perhaps after getting the main code running on real DS, we should look at adding music to the title screen??
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/flash/wt101.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/flash/wt102.png)
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/flash/wt103.png)
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Happy Birthday Flash!
I'll download this evening if I get a chance.
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Thanks mate :)
40 bloody 2 - god! soon be older than you ;)
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Hitting the metal in assembler...I like it ;D
Looking very nice indeed. Reading about a C64 game on the DS reminds me of the use of Robocop tune for the Ariston adverts, which is a direct rip of the Gameboy version of that SID classic hehe.
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Looking sweet! 8)
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This is the latest build of the game code.
Still some strange things involving sprites that fail to update on a real ds, but for the time being Ideas runs it as intended.
We now have horizontal movement of the levels - hurrah! Apears more solid now, getting more like a game. Also the ship now moves at the correct speed.
Several other changes far too dull to list, oh! except - let the game scroll to the end for a nice effect for the boss battles.
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Looks great! I haven't tried it on hardware yet. I like the end of level effect too. Remember color cycling in deluxe paint? I was thinking what would be cool is to add color cycling for the end of level boss. It would be quite simple just copy entry 0 then dmacopy from entry 0 to entry 1 (with size of 254) and then copy entry 0 to entry 255 then loop.
I'm going to look into getting a compressed wav file playing next. I'll be doing it as a demo. I think this will be the first time we will need to use shared ram with the ARM7 so it should be interesting.
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I dont think the shared ram will be a problem, just using it like flags (or a remote control) to init/stop things. It is the use of the sound registers that scare me, when everything is in that nasty C language contraption... :)
Have done another modify of the main code... Sorry!
Decided that 64x64 screens were a waste for the stars and have decided to make them both 32x64.. Saved a bit of memory and a lot o vram... Could help in the longrun??
PS. What is the vote on the horiz scroll, does it work ok to you lot (er - one)?
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The scroll is ok but would be better if it was constant. i.e. it didn't stop scrolling in the middle third of the screen. I found it disconcerting. Not sure if that's doable or not?
Other than that things are looking sweet. I have got to at least do a different main warhawk sprite. I always did hate that! Give me a sprite size and gun positions and I'll do one. Do I get to use 16 colours? I won't need more than that.
Time to fire up the Amiga and Personal Paint methinks!
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I will send you the sprite and a clut file. This can be used in photoshop to maintain a palette across the board for sprites - though it can use all 256 colours (or true colour) I want to use 16 to keep things tidy (and allow multiple palettes at a later date.
It has made me BLOODY happy that you are prepared to spend some of you (very small) free time to help.. You have to admit that it would not be the same without your input and to be honest, I was starting to lose a 'bit' of momentum..
Regarding the scroll. This is a tricky one. I tried to make the scroll move with the ship, but due to the difference between the viewable area and the level width, when at either edge, 4 pixels of the background fail to scroll on. Trying to compensate for that causes 4 slight steps in the horizontal scroll - not a desired effect.
I will have a rethink and perhaps come up with another solution?? Hmmmm.
Thanks as always Ian for your support.. You have put a little smile on my face and a glint back in me eye!! (or that could be a bit of ash).
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Believe it or not I'm not conversant with photoshop. I haven't tinkered with that for years. I'm too retro for such modern tools... LOL. If however you send me a 16 colour gif from the game with correct pallette I can load that into personal paint and be sure I'm using the right pallette.
As for the scroll, can you scroll 2 pixels instead of one across the background so you reach the edge sooner? Just a thought ... may look crap but as the screen is small it may not.
You do realise I'll end up buying a DS and cart because of this! LOL
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I wish it was as easy as 2 pixels. The screen is 256 (minus 32 for the sprite) and the level width is 320. So, we really need to divide by 3.5 to get it to match up. Ie scroll the level horizontal 1 pixel every 3.5 pixels that you move... Half pixels are a little tricky...
If you do get a DS, I have got at spare backup card kicking about!
I will send you the graphics later today. (will start a graphics topic)
Cheers mate!
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Really we should be using bit shifting instead of divide (which I'm sure were doing anyway). Cant we then just deal with any overflow by either ANDing it with a value or using something like movgt to keep it at the maximum if it goes over a limit. This rambling may not make any sense at all as I'm very tired right now!
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sorry, my fault for keeping you busy :)
We are shifting. Though I did add code to enable divide by any number, may come in handy later.
we split the screen into 4 vertical ares. the centre 2 are no scrolls and the outer 2 take your x coord (-192 (then divide) +32 for right) and divide (lsr) and use the calculated result for an offset on BG1 (level). It works, but as BD said, constant movement will be nicer. I will have another look at it as perhaps a fresh head can tidy it up a bit.
The only problem is that we now have a constant speed to background speed. this may be tricky using another way - but I feel I can suss it out...
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As for the scroll, can you scroll 2 pixels instead of one across the background so you reach the edge sooner? Just a thought ... may look crap but as the screen is small it may not.
I have spent over an hour trying to get the effect that you want... I have failed..
The problem is that to achieve that we need to use floating point maths, this is tricky in asm and worse in ARM. For it to work PERFECTLY, you need to take the ships X coord and divide that by 3.5 to return a number from 0-63 to set the amount of scroll that the level does horizontally... It is a pain...
Just to give you an example of how it would work (with floating math)
your X = 0-223 (255-32 = your ship width)
So, divide 223 by 3.5 gives us 63. (range 0-63)
Our screen is 256 pixels and the map is 320 - this difference is what we need to calculate, it is 64 pixels.
I can se no way round it sadly...
I will have another play later tonight hopefully and come up with another way of doing it... Perhaps a drift scroll from the centre out and then stop scrolling when it has reached it max and then allow the ship to drift to the edge, then add an auto-centre bit of code for when the ship is not moving horizontally?? Hmmm... Worth a try - what ever I can do to get it to how you see it... It is the only way we can get the FEEL into this version! ;)
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With the arm we should be using fixed point numbers (http://www.arm.com/pdfs/DAI0033A_fixedpoint.pdf). Also I found a divide BIOS function for the DS.
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That link gave me a headache.... :)
It looks interesting, but I do not really have any understanding of THUMB code as yet, but I do think the result would be the same:-
I cannot work out a way to perform and maintain the 3.5 division as illustrated earlier. As you can see, it is the only way to get continuous scrolling on the horiz based on the ships movement. If i use the carry and accumulate it, you get the occasional jerk when the accumulated fraction creates a whole that wraps the single pixel move on another straight move, ie.. a sudden 2 pixel move, or none...
Sadly there is no way to move half a pixel and any carry that you hold on to (for the halves) must be used to make a whole (or >1) at some point... You cannot do it on the dimensions we are using. Unless we made the sprite 1 pixel wide :)
I have had a play at Toads suggestion and come up with another more direct way of doing it (attached)
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I have had a play at Toads suggestion and come up with another more direct way of doing it (attached)
That is how I envisaged it working :) Great stuff!
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Phew!!!
Glad that worked out ok then! I spent several hours playing about with it and that was the best alternative I could come up with.
I have also taken the power up into account so that a single byte can increase the ships speed and the horiz scroll in conjunction..
Thanks Toad!
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Just shoved a score in,
Need to have a massive rethink about palettes because we have no yellow for the energy bars!! Hmmm....
The score graphics are the size I think works, but have not been properly edited.
PS. Warhawk used a 7 digit score also, mainly because the last sprite was used for the energy bar!!
PS. BaDToad, sorry I have used the original sprite, this is because that is the one set up in the main code.. Also, kinda like the idea of the ship selection idea... Will look into that nearer the end of the project.
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A little play with the title (thanks for .pool HK)
Now showing 1024 stars.. Tried 2048 and the DS could handle them easy - the emu couldnt :)
I think this is perhaps too many..
What would be a nice idea is to add a 'swarm' routine to the stars, so that when the screen is touched, the stars are atracted to the point of contact?
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Just had a play with level 3 to see how long it would take to "hi-resify" the backgrounds - not too long. Have not done the platau surrounds though.
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Latest source code!
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Okay I've had some success today and got a few of the todo's done :)
- Fixed sprite movement code (No need to wait for vblank)
- Fixed end-of-level Wobble effect in No$GBA and hardware
- Made level taller so the end is just stars
- Added score digit display
- Set sprite priority to zero so bg0 is above
I was always wondering where you heard that you have to move sprites during vblank because it's not true. The or'ing I was trying to do in the earlier demo is correct, I was just or'ing in the wrong values. So I've fixed that and the ship sprite moves okay on hardware and No$. The problem I believe is that you can't write an 8-bit value to a 16-bit register. So when you were writing the sprite positions you have to call strh not strb and that means you must or in the attributes again and use a mask with the x and y positions.
The end-of-level wobble effect was an infinite loop. It was a simple matter of changing
holdonmate:
ldr r2, [r0]
cmp r2,r1
bne holdonmate
to
holdonmate:
ldrb r2, [r0]
cmp r2,r1
bne holdonmate
to prevent the value overflowing the 8-bits. As for adding more to the top of the level that was some trial and error as I don't think I fully understand the beginning offset. But I just added some space and a higher offset until the start of the level lined up.
I added some basic digit display code for the score but I have no idea how to extract each digit from a number to display in assembly. Any ideas?
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Well done HK... See, a new pair of eyes can be a wonderful thing, a beautiful wonderful thing ;)
I cannot remember where I read about the sprites, I will find it and put the link here!
With the score, we set two data areas
score:
.byte 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
adder:
.byte 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
We use the score to ref the digits the sprite uses and when we want to add to the score we call and add routine with the bytes set in adder. This goes from last byte back to the first adding the value of adder. if the answer is >9, subtract the dif and add one to the next, etc. When finshed, clear the adder. That is how I have done it in all my games.
There may be a better way, but it is quicker than trying to convert a word value.
Thanks HK, cant wait to have a play! ;)
See what I mean though? How the hell did I mess up the wobble? How did I miss it? Madness! - Thanks!!!
EDIT: There is one problem now, the top 8 rasters of either screen is not being modified in the wobble.
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I left it running and this is an example of just how far the maps for the backgrounds can drift...
Shall we just call it a special effect? :)
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There is one problem now, the top 8 rasters of either screen is not being modified in the wobble.
That would probably be because it's not starting the horzontal shift early enough. Using a proper HBLANK interrupt would probably fix that, but I wouldn't worry about it too much for now.
BTW I didn't bother using sprites for the score, I thought we may as well keep it a background and then we can have the score, energy bars and text all using BG0. To have the sprites behind it it's a simple matter of setting ATTR2_PRIORITY(1). My convertion of the score digits is pretty lame I know. It would look better if the digits filled out the 16x16 space a bit more.
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I will have a play with them when I get to work, make em sweet!
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I will have a play with them when I get to work, make em sweet!
As for the levels getting out of sync I didn't even notice it until you posted that screenshot. I believe the delay is causing the REG_BG1xOFS and REG_BGxVOFS values (well actually vofsSFMain/vofsSFSub/vofsSBMain/vofsSBSub since the regs are write only) to get out of sync. One way to solve that would be to have one value for the offsets and calculate the subscreen offset based on that value. Then we know they will always be in sync.
Another way would probably be to re-write the delay code so it can't cause the two screens to go out of sync. Another possibility would be to subtract vofsSFMain and vofSFSub values and if the difference is not a constant value then to fix it. I believe there should always be 192 between them.
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An update to the last post with the addition of a working score routine.
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A little picture of firepower :) and score and other stuff!!!
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It's well interesting watching you two getting this all together. Reminds me of the old days :)
Keep up the good work guys!
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It's well interesting watching you two getting this all together. Reminds me of the old days :)
Keep up the good work guys!
;D Don't forget - you are part of that team now :D
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Update: We now have sound :) The blaster sample sounds great when you do the auto fire. Also added a text renderer so we can output text on BG0.
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Looking (sounding) great HK :)
Had a play on real hardware and it is such fun!! Having sound makes such a difference!
The sound quality does need to be improved though. I will have a play later today with any luck and see what we can do. Our problem also lie in having the title and game in a single .nds file with all sound data. I am not concerned with rom size. Games like elite beat agents are 256mb... We will certainly be less than that ;) It is just adressing larger music files that may be the problem.
NOTE: To all who try these demos, we are at a point were you really do need hardware to play it. The emus like iDeaS really struggle with doing the sound, and No$gba seems to be the best compromise.
HK: I did shorten the ingame music as It will never get to play until the end (ingame).
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Well, I thought it was time we posted something.
This is just the executable, as I will release source when I am happy with the attack wave system.
This version has now got attack waves in place. At the moment it just does a little demo of a simple attack and you cannot shoot them either (you have to pretend). I still have a long way to go with the attack code, but it is now (after many headaches) falling into place. I have gone for a curved system with acceleration, though I will also implement the "much simpler" linear waves that the original used, along with the "mines" and "hunters"
The music has been turned off also on this version, mainly because I forgot to turn it on before compile..
Sorry about my debug numbers on the screen - I really could not be bothered to comment them all out.
PS. the game is set to support 64 aliens at once - though we will have to see how this pans out when all the other code it added.
Have fun!!
oh, and you can also accumulate a score by shooting the bases! (they will blow up one day :D)
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Coming along really nice there Flash :)
Now I'm just going to get myself a coffee and go through your source update and wrap my head around it.
Up next for me is
- Adding rotating sprite support
- Fix the scrolling code and background detection
- Start thinking about the app for creating attack waves
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Looking good mate. I was dying to blast the little aliens scumbags... :D
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You will be able to soon, just gotta finish the attack wave structure.. Then on to the detection and explosion code...
:)
so, hold on tight mate!!
Ps. I hope this still retains Warhawks feel, something made it special and I do not want to lose that, whatever the hell it is?
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Coming along really nice there Flash :)
Now I'm just going to get myself a coffee and go through your source update and wrap my head around it.
Up next for me is
- Adding rotating sprite support
- Fix the scrolling code and background detection
- Start thinking about the app for creating attack waves
Ok, my turn,
Up next for me is
- Implement the special attack waves
- Add collision between bullets and aliens
- Add explosions and scoring
- Add attack wave level structure
I hope to have all this done and working for next weekend!
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Well, we nove have the attackwaves working (except specials) and background detection works against the bases. They are destroyred and we are using a sequence of sprites to add explosions to them.
We do have a problem that, every now and again, the explosions (and sometimes craters) appear 32 pixels above where they should :( and i am buggered if I can work out WHY?? But, it will be fixed if it costs blood sweat and tears, many many tears :)
So, I don't wanna release a new build until this is sorted, but - it will be a lot of fun when it does!! :)
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Here is a new build of the (Delayed) Warhawk code.
LOTS has changed since that last release, so rather than I list all the changes, just play!
Works a dream in hardware also
Sorry for the terrible crater designs, they were the best I could do, I am not an artist and only just a coder, so I realy could do with finding someone to help out with the graphics
Source is not included at the moment as I need to sit down and tidy/comment it better!
There are a few minor things to sort, but...
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/wcrat1.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/wcrat2.png)
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/wcrat3.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/wcrat4.png)
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Wow! That looks amazing...
Note to self: Download Emulator, and try give Warhawk a try.
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Note to Tempest:
"You bloody well do that!"
(Dualis plays it the slickest, but has a few problems with tiles, no$gba is slowest, but emulates perfectly)
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Hope you grabbed it temp!!!
I now have full attack waves and structures, so they can all be shot and just keep coming!! Up to 64 aliens at once.
I will spend some time just creating a few dummy attack waves and also need to sort some new sound effects out tonight, HK?
Once this is all done, I will post another demo!! :) (and this one will really be fun)
HK: I will see what sounds i can come up with, I need a good metalic "ting", a "whoosh", and a full "Orchestria" playing the hits of Trinni Lopez!, pehaps, just the "ting" and an alien explode!
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A nice new update,
Now we can shoot stuff and the attack wave system is working. There are a couple of minor bugs relating to sprite priority with the big "blocky" ship, but that was only put in for fun to see how the attack system handled multiple alien types. This is stuff that is easy to sort out when we get a bit further with proper construction of attack waves. These attack waves are not indicitive of the final patterns, but just there for play. This uses both linear and tracking aliens (with a small hint of curved patterns - these are quite hard to key in manually).
So, have fun and any feedback would be great!
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whx1.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whx2.png)
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whx3.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whx4.png)
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OMFG!
This is so sweet. I do think at the moment the warhawk has too much firepower but that's irrelevant at this stage. I am blown away by the sheer Warkawkishness of the whole thing ::)
You are still so bloody quick at coding Flash :p hehe.
Cheesy Grins all round! :D :D :D :D :D
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You are still so bloody quick at coding Flash :p hehe.
Thanks for the compliments BT, it is ALWAYS great to recieve them, and without trying to take the shine off them, HK is just as responsible for the game as I, without him, NONE of this would have got to where it is. HK has been instrumental in showing me the way with arm code and in deciphering the C based dox into a format that I can understand and utilise.
I just wanted to say that, as because it is mostly me that posts the demos does not mean it is me that does all the work, thankfully :)
I am looking forward to where we can get to next. Alien fire is perhaps the next step, leaving detection with your ship fairly low on the agenda. Having little nightmares about how I can fit the boss battles into the existing sprite code though :(
So thanks for the words of praise for the project, and remember that any suggestions are always great to recieve also.
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Indeed nods to HK. Many thanks for the work you've done and you're doing HK. 8)
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HK suggested having a "bloom" or flash effect on aliens that you hit but not destroy. To compliment this HK has written a palette editor to create palettes to "flare" the aliens.
I have this all coded into the game now and it works really well on single aliens, not sure about the "blocky ship", pehaps I should flag that so bloom does not work on that? not sure at the moment.
I will do a SVN update for HK with the source and a little later tonight I will post an nds file for feedback.
The alien bullet code is starting to fall into place, the main structure is now in place and it is just down to spending some time doing them. Believe it or not, the aliens in the earlier demo are all set to fire etc, but the code does nothing at the moment. It is coming this weekend (baring anything unexpected of course)
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Another minor update that just allows the alien shots to move vertically. This is all it does (shot wise).
Also, when an alien is hit that requires more shots, a flash to white is added to add to the effect! This uses HK's palette editor to give us a range of palettes to "paste" onto a sprite. Not sure If I should slow the "fade to normal" down a bit. It is a piece of P to add, so I am open to suggestions here (as always!)
Also, adds a glint to your ship when you fire - not sure about this, but for 4 lines of code, thought I would try it?
Comments welcome (Needed)
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/firstbullet.png)
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Looks good! I like the fact that I cannot be killed. Can you leave that part in, just for me? :)
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Looks good! I like the fact that I cannot be killed. Can you leave that part in, just for me? :)
Ps. You cannot be killed by EVEN more stuff now :)
Well, another update with the addition of several different alien shot types (not all used in this demo)
Also, added the singular shot type from the original Warhawk.
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whft1.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whft2.png)
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Well, another day, another update...
This is not a major one, but a pleasant one - code while listening to the beautiful Lily Allen album "Alright Still".. Makes a change from coding to Suzanne Vega! (which is what i played "The Pawn" to and also coded "Tidemarsh" to :) )
Anyway (ps, CRY (EDIT:Smile) is NOT the best track), this is an update that has as much behind the scenes than as is visible. The code now switches between levels upon game start, though this is only selectable in source at the moment - sorry
Also, detection between you and alien bullets is now active - alien bullets can now hit your ship, your ship flashes and the bullet dies, unless it is a NASTY tracking shot.
Also, detection between you and aliens now works. So, if you collide with a simple alien (takes 1 hit), the alien is destroyed and you lose some energy, and gain a small score (21 points). If the alien takes more than one hit, then it is you against the ailien, you both lose energy! You will flash and so will the alien!
Sorry Tempest, but in this version, you can die! :(
ALSO! I thought this was about time to release the source code, I have not done this for a while, and though it is available from google code, It is nice to post it here now and agan. The archive contains all source, sound effects, and graphics.
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whcl1.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whcl2.png)
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whcl3.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whcl4.png)
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It is a sad day... :'(
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It is a sad day... :'(
you could just compile your own version without the energy check :)
I just wanted to see how hard it is when you can die!!! :) Easy with full powerup and slightly tricky without!
I will release the next version with a cheat!! :)
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I like this one how you can die! And the message you get when it happens made me smile (which is my favourite Lily Allen song) ;)
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I meant "Smile" earlier and put "Cry" Hmmm... Must be an emotional thing due to the coding :)
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I meant "Smile" earlier and put "Cry" Hmmm... Must be an emotional thing due to the coding :)
:D
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Another update and 2 new attack patterns..
There is a slight bug in the Hunters, but this only apears on later levels. I will sort it!
Have fun!
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whhunt1.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whhunt2.png)
HK: If you download the latest Commit, set the level to 4+ to see the other mode that the Hunters take.
PS. You cannot die on this. I will leave the "die check" off for a while, I only turned it on to test energy loss.
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Ok,
The main game code is now solid (apart from the odd alien explosion that is retained on screen, sometimes? Trying to find that)
So, the job at the moment is to round off the alien fire patterns and get a good amount of different fire types to sprinkle throughout the levels. So, I am taking my time to work through a selection that I have jotted down.
Not sure what to do with the end of level boss fire patterns yet, so trying to also think of them so they can be used to add together to create some nice patterns later on!
any input would be great!
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What I was thinking for the level boss patterns was hypocycloid movement. Which is basically randomized movement within a circle where it appears to have gavity towards the centre.
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I was thinking of a Cyclomoridorroil motion, which is basically a made up word!
Sounds cool though!
:D
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HK:
Was having some thoughts about adding "ID's" to aliens. The idea is that (take the BIG BLOCKY SHIP) some aliens may be constructed from multiple sprites, and if they are indestructable, is would be nice to have the "bloom" affect all the sprites used.
So, setting an ident and doing this should be fairly easy. if ident>0, affect all matching idents. If 0, this is just treated the same.
But, is there anyway to have the ident affect the priority of the sprite, again using the BLOCKY SHIP as an example, when other ships are shot and new ones drawn, these can pass above or bellow the big ship. So, setting it's entire priority to a set level would cure this.
ie.
normal ships, id 0, highest priority
ident specified, just under normal ships (so small ships pass above)
then your shots and alien shots!
then ship explostions
then base explosions
This would also have the benefit of sorting out the boss battles, so that a hit anywhere can affect the hit points and that it will flash as one!
Any ideas mate?
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Just tried the latest version. Still looking sweet. The Warhawk feel is still there too. Top job guys!
Somehow I think I'm getting too old and slow for games of this genre. I will have to fire up Warhawk on the GP32 C=64 Emulator and get myself up to speed again :D
I was wondering if it would be easy to add a shield grafic around the warhawk so it came up from nothing to bright and then faded rapidly again when you took hits. It could look cool. If it's too much like hard work or it's a naff idea then please feel free to ignore me ;)
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A shield graphic would be really easy to add, but... we are quite short on sprites and can only hold 64 32x32 sprites in mem at any one time, so this is perhaps something we can try later, if we cam squeeze it in?
We have got a work around on the sprite limitation though, but these are level based.
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Just been playing with a lot of the underlying code, and a little of "what you can see"
so, here are a couple of demo's
One is just a demo of 3 fire types
The other is a demo of big ships (ish) and the "ident" system, used to combine aliens into one. It is fun!
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whl3t1.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whl3t2.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whl3t3.png)
The onscreen numbers display the attack pattern and the patterns ident
ps, sorry for the big alien graphic - I am useless at graphics :(
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Hey, guys!
Just to let you know that I've successfully passed the 'What's the yellow long fruit' test so registered I am.
Didn't really know where to post this amazing news, heheh, so here then.
Anyway, I'll join as often, you know, I would rather spend more time on working on stuff after working for bloody capitalists through the day and so on and so forth. :)
Cheers!
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Hey Lobo
Can I be the first to say welcome to the boards! I've been checking out your artwork for Warhawk and I must say I'm very happy with the designs your doing. It's certainly adding a nice touch to the game. Look forward to seeing you around here and hope you enjoy your stay!
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Lobo has flushed my "turd ships" down the toilet (thank god) and we now have some really sweet Rock Ships :)
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whrockship.png)
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I know everyone has an opinion but why have rocks with guns? Surely a space ship that size would be 10 times more kick ass than a rock? lol Or maybe it's just me! ::)
As far as rocks go they look great though. Just never thought of a rock as being a threatening type of enemy. "Oh no look out for the evil rock!" :D
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Shut up!!! Nemesis did!! :)
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Shut up!!! Nemesis did!! :)
Keep the bloody rocks then! Sheesh!
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Welcome Lobo. :)
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Did someone say something about "Lobbing Rocks"?
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Having a bit of FUN ??? at the moment...
Decided I was not happy with the alien fire code and that it was not versatile enough! So, had a bit of a rewrite now and this should allow us to do more with it!
Also, Not sure what to do about the (your) fire power?
Initially, you start a level with the ability to fire 4 standard bullets (shot power 1), and from level 4 (in the original) you had the ability to collect a power booster. This increases your rate of fire and ship speed! All very well on the original where 4 aliens was it at a time. Now we can have 64 all firing with degrees of armour.. Himm..
At the moment a powerup doubles your ships speed and allows an autofire of 16 bullets. What I wonder is, what the hell happens on later levels when you lose the power up!?!
My main thought is an "r-type" styled shot for when you have not got the power up? So, hold down fire and release, and you get a shot that travels twice the speed and does double (or more) the damage.
Anyones thoughts on this would be great?
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Ah, thanx guys.
Hehe, I do agree about the rock ship, it kinda looks like a potato :D. It is, most likely, one of the weirdest types of enemy ships that I've seen (which didn't come from Japan). I wonder how the others will look like :D.
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for each level we have 22 sprites set aside for level use?
I wonder if the colour schemes of each level will perhaps help to Theme it? Ie. We have a level that is really dark and purple - a nightmare level perhaps??? Bat type alien ships etc. Also, really bright Jungley level, with insectoid type aliens??
BadToad has done a really nice "wasp ship" that would fit that?
What are your thoughts Lobo (and others??)
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I was thinking of following the colors of the original BUT make them darker as these would be destroyed and obviously the palette is now different so instead of bright purple it will be a dark purple, if you know what I mean.
So, one of those 'green' levels could be jungle like level, maybe with some more organic details where you can fit specific types of enemies. The only thing that bothers me about it is that everything is in space so you cannot really make a coconut tree in there (not literally but it's still limited to 'spacey', blocky stuff) :D.
I do like the idea of nightmare type level, something very bat sharp and almost Transylvania like elements could be put on the level, would be quite fun like that.
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you are on my wavelength... :)
The only thing i do not want to do is take it too far away from the original, we have a great template for any shmup if we want to do that! But, I do agree with you.
Darker levels would be great, for the most part - only downside is that lcd screens tend to "muddy" dark colours, so perhaps some highlights here and there to perk it up a bit?
You can have space foliage? well, mossy and viney type stuff "could" work???
One thing i would love to see on a level is the "face on moon" image - Almost like the aliens made the moon one!
Also, You asked about the "wip" base at the end of level 1! This will be on all levels, but it was a wip as i had no idea what size to make it in relation to the boss! Now that I have an idea of the size that the sprite will be, shall I draw a rough outline and let you see what you can do? I am just concerned as this will use tiles (though the wip one does also).
All the best mate! :)
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Face on the moon, that sounds quite cool. Take it or leave it..20 tiles worth :D.
Yeah, thinking of stuff like adding something that naturally exists in jungles can't really be applied in space, not that I'm for a total realism but some things just won't work. So, some kinda..'feeling' of it, like you mentioned foliage, make some tiles with camo and it should be close to the idea, we'll see when we get there.
As for the WIP thing, yes-do it because there are probably enough tiles left anyway (roughly about 40 if Grit is telling the truth :D).
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well, er, an "eye" on the moon - 1 tile!!
No, I am sure we can find 20 tiles on a level somewhere??
With the first level, perhaps an industrial feel? Ie. cement. That is what it looks like to me, so???
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I was thinking the whole 'face on the moon' thing might take max of 20 tiles but probably even less than that. That said, I can put that face up there where WIP is cause even after my 'sand stuff' attempt there should be enough tiles left. So wanna do that?
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We can, on another "golden" level would work? sandy!!
I was joking about the "eye" ;)
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Hehe, yeah, the 'eye' in itself can be just one tile actually :).
So the actual face, you want it someplace else, maybe level7?
On level1, I can just make the WIP dirty as the rest of the level?
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yeah - i will send the level to you with the "base" idea later if ok?
Level7 is perhaps the best one? I will have a proper look when I get home mate!
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Ok, I have to lunch then some work and all that, you send the stuff when you can.
Cheers!
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How about, before it's toasted, the rock sort of reveals the ship inside?
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WOW!!! that is so cool!!!!
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That's what I'm talkin bout! Fricken awesome!! 8)
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I just did a search on "google" for Warhawk DS, and was pleased to see so many articles about it! But... Some comment that this is a release version (or they are hosting one), sadly, a full release of "Warhawk DS" is a way off at the moment and a lot of work is yet to be done.
Games that start without a menu should be clue enough for people, but perhaps you should consider a big fat blinking "DEMO" on the screen during play...just so even the dimmest of people don't think it's an actual finished product. ;)
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I agree :)
but they only say "release", but they really SHOULD say alpha or demo release to make it clear!
but, we cant really complain about publicity........
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Oh, hey..howdy Sokurah, how's the piggy business goin? :P
But, yeah, some 'This is DEMO FOLKS' to blink for like 28 minutes before the game starts..wait, no, news site just copy/paste stuff from each other ('source') so if the first one makes a mistake saying 'Ta-Da-RELEASE!!Warhawk!', you can bet that the others will follow.
However, even better, cause publicity aside, once the final version comes out-even more surprise for the public, you know. So, all good.
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Hmm..if the rock ship can only use the first 16 colors (if that what you were saying), than it won't look like a rock too much as only 2 grays are left and the other colors are quite useless (unless you want a purple rock :D).
However, maybe ship can be like this then, regular and damaged version (as it uses most of the first 16 colors)?
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Bugger -
They both look bloody amazing!!!
<gasp>
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We now have the start of the boss code...
The boss comes on with the base at the end of the level and will allow itself to be shot until it is destroyed!
It does not explode though and nor does it move!
So, the next stage is to work out fire paterns and a nice movement pattern..
And also add some code for what happens when it is destroyed!
But, the main code is there and works!
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- Added an interrupt handler so we can handle events such as HBLANK and VBLANK
- Moved main loop into VBLANK interrupt
- Added an fx system with some transitions such as CrossWipe, Fade, Mosaic, Scanline, SineWobble, Spotlight and Wipes
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Well, we now have moving bosses.
Need to work out a way to add firing patterns and vertical movements based on levels (and perhaps the launching of enemies also)
Also, we now have the addition of animated enemies.
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whbt1.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whbt2.png)
(at the moment, the wobble effect is messed up also - but this will be fixed)
Lobo has done a lot of work on the level graphics and the fruits of his labour will be displayed in a demo soon - thanks Lobo
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:D Sweet. Level 2 is really coming up (really), just a ground to be done, dirty is almost there. While at it, the famous 'rockship' thing for level two might be like this?
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Asolutely love 'em!
I may well have to add some code for "semi destructed aliens" to utilise the hit versions of the sprites!
Have been spending some time with the level bosses, and they have welcomed me quite happily :) so, they now fire and have may different ways of doing so, here are a couple of DEMO pics!
(https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whbd01.png) (https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/warhawk/whbd02.png)
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Again, as always, looking really sweet!!!
I will, at some point, send a template for the levels sprites, especially the animated ones. i will - be warned :)
Ok, the end of level boss is now well in its element... done some test defines for level one and two, and quite happy with the shot formations ( god!!! so wish you could clock into live chat?)
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Oh, it does look sweet, that second weird looking ship especially (for which I thought would be a disaster :'( ).
Keep sending whatever you got, as usual, I'm almost actually done with 2 and 12, probably tonight then.
Yeah, can't get the chat no matter what, empty page.
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The second one looks great.... only the picture is of when it is shot, so it is highlighted, looks great - and that one also uses twin fire :)
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Yeah, I like that 'highlight' effect, a wonder of just a few colors, well white color :P.
Feels quite good, I have to say. Boss 6 is my favorite though, something yummy about it looking like a donut.
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Boss 6 is my favorite though, something yummy about it looking like a donut.
not sure if that is a food based fantasy or sexual - he he :)
ps. have you got adobe flash installed?
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not sure if that is a food based fantasy or sexual - he he :)
Both! :D
I do have flash, unfortunately, yes, why?
Oh, just one detail, the bases at the top of each of those old (original) levels are cut off. I don't know how they look like so should I do the different types on my own for each or follow the same design as in level 1?
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The chat sofware uses Adobe Flash, wondered if that was why it was not working?
Each level can have it's own base, as long as it has a "pad" area as in the template for the boss to come in on (in the same place), the rest of the design can be ANYTHING... he he
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Weird, I don't use any blockers as I can see flash stuff just fine. Even if it was blocked a small icon would show which contents are block to enable/disable them. The only thing I see is white page and it says 'done' and it's firefox, I don't use IE.
Ok, for the bases, figured I can do anything there as long as it fits the scheme 8) .
I'm about to start level 3 and level 13 is almost done so we'll see.
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It could be a Firefox thing then :( (I will even put money on it)
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Could be ffox, can't trust no them darn things nowadays. Maybe should try that Fairlight browser for C64, hmm.
Heh, anyhoo..grocery shopping but then in an hour or so I'll send some levels, 13 or 14 or both. ;)
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I'm really loving the new levels Lobo! :)
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Thanks.
I'm actually adding some stuff to level 14 atm, depending on the tile count report.
And this is my favorite part of level 14 (shit happens when you listen to Beethoven) :P
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Love it mate,
Looking really sweet!!! ;)
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Level 14 is my favourite now! 8)
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Aye, I've shot myself in a foot there cause I don't wanna do anything else but skulls now.
That's it guys, can't work anymore then. :'(
Ok, kidding. Hehe, however, I was thinking that the bosses for levels 11-20 needs to fit the actual level *themes*, no? I mean, level 14 had to have a giant skull with dental issues and 13 for example had to be Quetzalcoatl, level 11 Antichrist or Aleister Crowley and so on and so forth. Is it viable to add all these bosses then?
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That sounds great to me Lobo,
Not sure how many levels yet due to trying to keep the executable under 4 meg! But this can be worked out if needs be. But for now - we will head for 16 levels and see where that takes us with the memory? is that ok?
REALLY looking forward to the bosses :) (gimme gimme) :)
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"Aleister Crowley" - the "beast" that he is! (was)
I still have his tarot deck from 20 years ago :)
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16 levels sounds fine, you're right about the size, totally forgot about that :P. I'm kinda working on some level which can be 16th then and level 3 at the same time (coming soon dirty bastard) so we'll see after that if there's enough space left. As for the bosses, it's Ok then to have different ones for 11-16?
Heh, *the beast*, yeah...I can put Anton La Vey as well and make just one tile being number 6 repeated three times :D. Oh..and the goat!
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I love "Alister Crowley" all hail the "BEAST"
Yeah you can make your own bosses from 9-16 is you want ;)
also "Howard Stanton Levey" was a mad pretender to Crowleys crown ! :) (so there!)
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Haha, yeah, I read some stuff that *the beast* wrote and hell if I could make horns or tails from all that. Interesting thing was that he met Lovecraft on some occasion who, I believe (afaik) stole his mistress, hehe.
But Anton, man, the Satanic Bible was actually something that should've been ported to DS, you know like DSBible but DSatanicBible :D. Then again, it would be easier to have a txt file in DSO or Moonshell.
Oh, even funnier, you know that LaVey recorded an ep called 'strange music' (duh)? Yes, yes, and I'm not talking about those 'satanic mass' types but the actual..umm, burlesque kind of a show with his wife vocalizing on a few tracks. It's a piece of crap though, hehe.
How in *hell* did we get to satanism from warhawk is a mystery of cosmic proportions.
Ok, I'll make the bosses for the other levels then, I guess that's what I wanted to say in this post. :D
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All I can say about the end of level bosses is "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" :D
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All I can say about the end of level bosses is "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" :D
Ave Satani! :D
Seriously, though, unlocked bonus boss Anton LaVey, that would be something. Btw, dude looks like Zarkov, people might think it's a Flash Gordon remake.
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he does a bit, now you mention it :)
seriously though, perhaps adding some "hidden triggers" to the game may be nice, to reveal some hidden stuff!! :) I think that may be worthy of some thought!!!
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Ah, actually no, Zarkov was the doctor, MING dammit, haha, he looks like Ming dude!
But, yeah, if there's enough space left after all of this, heck, any crazy stuff can be added.
'You have unlocked the Head of Crowley-now deal with IT!' and such. :P
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I agree, we will see what is left in the main code spacewise, and if we have enough add a few secrets - that really could be fun!! :)
Ps. We all knew you meant Ming! I just read "flash gordon" and it was all clear to me :)
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Yeah, bloody names, Mandrake, Ming, Tarzan, arrr...who goes where?
OoooHH..TARZAN HIdden lev...no, no, nevermind. :D
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This is our first video of some gameplay, and I think we will be posting more videos rather than screenshots in the future as it better demonstrates where were headed with things. This shows some of the new bullet and boss code Flash has been working on. And yes I am working with Flash on code even if it's not always apparent. But I do take my hats off to my partner in crime who is doing some amazing work on the game mechanics which is why you will know this is Warhawk when you play it. Also we have the amazing work being done by our resident pixel pushers BadToad (who did the original art) and Lobo who is giving Warhawk a sexy new coat of paint as well as creating some great new levels. Why this random act of ranting? Well I think Flash is worried that people are thinking I'm not working on Warhawk, but I assure you I am! Anyway onto the video!
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Very cool and a good idea. Maybe you guys can put a little 'timeline' in here as in how did you get together and started working on this, a little history of a sort (unless it's written someplace already).
I do know that you and BadToad are also into this but I guess people might miss that at first as the information kinda gets scattered like this, especially when we hit the 'manifestation of evil on earth' theories here :D.
I almost wish it was a blog or something here where info is more kinda out there, you know.
The video is great, btw, I think I've played in exactly the same way (and likely died the same way as well) :D.
Also, headkaze, did you do anything on DS before warhawk?
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I've never written a game in my life, nor have I coded anything in assembly. Flash and I met on the GameEx forums which is a FE for retro gaming. I helped him setup RetroBytesPortal in December last year which was originally for showing photos of his impressive retro console and computer collection. It sorta turned into something more than that now since we went for forum software and added a few things. So Flash just mentioned to me one day that it would be great for me to learn asm since I was trying to get him to learn "C". One day he mentioned writing a game on the C64 so I thought of the DS straight away since it's very much like an old console/computer. So we wrote a few demos and realised "we can do this" and that's were Warhawk DS was born.
I do have some stuff I've written for the DS but nothing great. You can see some of the old stuff I've done at my drunken coders (http://headkaze.drunkencoders.com/) site. I also wrote a "game" called Runes for the GBA which you can read about here (http://members.iinet.net.au/~freeaxs/gba/runes.html). It reads your fortune ;)
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Damn, that looks good. It's coming along nicely.
I'd also like a little info on how you divide the work between you and how you decided who's doing what and so on.
One day...one day - I'll make a shooter myslef. ;D
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Damn, that looks good. It's coming along nicely.
I'd also like a little info on how you divide the work between you and how you decided who's doing what and so on.
One day...one day - I'll make a shooter myslef. ;D
Luckily we work quite well as a team, so we don't really divide the work. We start work on bits and if one gets stuck on something then the other helps. It does not sound like much of a system, but it gets the job done.
HK has also been great in converting the original DS dev stuff into ASM friendly code. This has really helped us get so much done so quickly.
Now we are just spending our time adding the little things :)
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Ahhh..good to place the name behind the work, now I remember. I saw the site before with keyboard layouts, plus seen them in DSo and other apps. DSGoo is very cool even though I think it wouldn't work on R4 but it did on my old crappy card long time ago. That fortune telling thing, have to try that to see what stars have it in for me :'( .
And yeah, you guys are doing excellent work so far and the game really works and seems stable as a granite rock with Ming's portrait etched in it. 8)
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I got a PM from arcadecontrols.com about this game, since he asked which type of game I was going to wrote.
This game seen going to been awesome and nice rediction of the original warhawk. only missing is the excellents Rob Hubbard music (yes my brother have the original tape version that time).
Im looking when this game is released and hope I can get it play on a emulator :).
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The game does feature music, but it is off in the demo's until headkaze (mostly :) ) and I can find a way to move it to romdata and increase the quality.
we are using remixes of the original tune, 2 versions and a slow one for end of game!
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I just wanted (with this new fangled Youtube plugin - ta HK) to add a couple more videos.
These just demo bits of the game! there are no final attack waves, all that stuff is just demo patterns and will continue to be for some time until the actual game logic is at a stage that we are happy with. but at the very least, it does give an inkling to the gameplay and to the graphic work from Lobo and BaDToad :)
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Beautiful spaceships dancing and prancing. :P I got sidetracked today but some work has been done so soonish something wicked this way comes.
Also, spacefractal, you'll probably be able to play it at the end via No$ as it works great so far. I did tried Desmume as well but it runs at about 2fps while Ideas runs it just fine (about 60fps).
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We now have multispeed full directional shot from the aliens - straight to YOU <manic laugh>
It was asked earlier (by Sokurah) how HK and I work together and how we divide work, the reply I gave had no example, so - here is a "bloody" good one!
I was struggling with direct (vector) shot, had it part working but was losing accuracy on the diagonals - It was really driving me "NUTS". Last night, HK spent ages converting C# based maths code to ASM to allow us to use a fixed point divide routine. This got me thinking of another way to use this without worrying about angles and sin/cos... Well, it is done now :) So, "Hats off to HK" :)
for those who are interested, here is the code that uses the "divf32" function to get the job done......
@ ok, now to work out where to shoot???
@ r4/r5 = player X/Y
@ r6/r7 = Alien X/Y
@ r12 = shot speed
mov r10,r12 @ Store the X/Y speeds
mov r11,r12 @ we will need r12 later
cmp r5,r7
rsble r11,r11,#0
suble r9,r7,r5
subgt r9,r5,r7
cmp r4,r6
rsble r10,r10,#0
suble r8,r6,r4
subgt r8,r4,r6
cmp r8,r9
bmi directOddQuad
push {r0-r2}
mov r0,r8 @ divide this number
add r9,r12 @ we also need to divide by the SPEED
mov r1,r9 @ by this number
bl divf32 @ r0=result 20.12
mov r9,r0 @ move the whole to r9
mov r8,#0
pop {r0-r2}
b directDone
directOddQuad:
push {r0-r2}
mov r0,r9 @ divide this number
add r8,r12 @ we also need to divide by the SPEED
mov r1,r8 @ by this number
bl divf32 @ r0=result 20.12
mov r8,r0 @ move the whole to r9
mov r9,#0
pop {r0-r2}
b directDone
I will post a demo of .... er.... a boss using the fire pattern later :)
PS. there is a very slight speed rounding issue that I will look at later, just bloody happy to have it working :)
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Ok, I was gonna release this vid using the boss from level 13, but... I decided to keep some of the later levels and bosses a bit secret (should have done so with level 14 also :( ), so I have re-used level 2 to demonstrate direct fire. It does look kind of cool. This is a demo of a single pattern that can be used on both aliens and bosses, but the boss fire code/sequence can be a lot more varied!
PS. I was not very good at avoiding it :)
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Excelent work as always guys... It looks great :)
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I just love this video posting business, so good god, i will use it :)
This is just a demo to show that I have added code to "blow up" large aliens (if I even use them?). Sadly, down to trying to cram so much in, I cannot do a single explosion for it, but have to reuse the single alien explosions. So, what I have done is try to jiggle them about a bit and also flesh out the colour for them - it works mostly? What do you think?
(ps, with an animated sprite also :) )
This is a demo of some code that I was really proud of (thanks to HK for the Div code). In fact, I was so proud of the vector code that I posted it at gbatek (not that anyone there would learn from it :) ) It uses a really quick calculation to drive a shot of any speed toward you. The shot speed is not 100% perfect, but the hit is - and this is what matters to me. The code is quick and in-game you would never worry about the slight speed inaccuracies - and puting something you never notice "right" seems a little pointless - perhaps I will though?
Also, I do wanna say that you may not see a great deal of demo code for a bit as, at the moment, I am working on tidying and developing the code that we have, so there is not a great deal to show - just neater versions of what you have already seen! It is important to try a pull the code into a cohesive whole now and again, before it gets too messy!
But, remember - I always love comments - good or bad!!!
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First one looks good to me, heck, explosion is explosion and is always welcome regardless of being substitute versus its own.
Second is pretty cool too, 'follow the player bullet mode (tm)', just don't overuse it, hah, don't wanna be chased like that too often. ;D
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I suppose the explosions like that are at least - retro :)
The bullets that follow you will be used, but not at perhaps that speed, and certainly not at that rate of fire - still it is fun :)
I am still adding bits here and there, today has been time to play with the boss code and add some stuff in there and also to modify the meteors and the hunters so that higher levels change them :)
Still gotta spend some time to think what else to add to the bosses?? hmmmmmm
Also, following feedback, the ship is now faster as is the rate of fire. When you have a powerup, the ship is much faster and the fire is a continuous stream of bullets! The power shot (hold fire) is also faster and does a bit more damage.
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Sorry I've not been about much guys but I've had loads of work commitments and pressure the last few days so I'm being a grumpy old git and have no creative energy for graphics :(
Hope to get back into the swing of things tomorrow evening after I get a big meeting out of the way at work :)
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I dont know, you can feed me the shit, but I bet you cannot make me eat it :)
No worries mate, I have plenty to get on with...
If you get a chance to look at the videos posted and give me comments on them, then that would be ample at the moment!
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...the ship is now faster as is the rate of fire. When you have a powerup, the ship is much faster and the fire is a continuous stream of bullets! The power shot (hold fire) is also faster and does a bit more damage.
Yessss! Can't wait to try that out ;).
As for the bosses, my main thing would be to make them move and shoot at different rates and speeds as you reach new levels. Start with a simple boss lazily moving left and right with just a few single bullets then increase all of this per level. Yeah, talking about difficulty but it will ensure that anyone out there, regardless of *skills* will be pushed forward and have a first few levels done without worrying about bosses too much (at first). After that, you know, gradually make them move faster, even maybe a bit downward and up, make them dance in their area, stop then move fast to the side then slowly move to the left increasing the fire rate and so on and so forth. Basically-details that makes them unpredictable and different from each other ;D.
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Bosses have the ability to fire nothing or madly - through a unlimited palette of patterns - it is all down to getting the right balance. and also the movement and speed can be set on a per level basis - I just have not made any "demo" use of the code as yet!
The faster movement on the player is a benefit, i must admit... After watching the videos of the original C64 version of the game, I do agree that it needed a bit more "oomph"
It is really gonna be hard to balance the levels out, that is gonna be the bit that can make or break it. I have worked hard with the code to get it to a stage where it can now do pretty much all you want, but making use of them tools is gonna be tricky. HK and I are gonna have to work together soon on a attack wave editor (w.a.n.k :) ) then perhaps I can start creating REAL attack waves. This will come :)
At the moment it is all about adding things (the actual game code could be classed as finished really), I want to add more fire patterns and also perhaps a few modifications to the attack wave code (like offsets) and more to the bosses (like, tracking, lurching, Y movement, etc), god! so much is done and yet there is always so much to do :( (LOL)
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Just been amusing my self with the youtube demigraphics, so, here is where the hits have come from on the videos so far
LMFAO!! :)
(I giggle, but this is exactly what is shows)
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I thought it was time for another video ;)
This is just a "show" for the faster movement and fire code. Also, this uses level 14, so the Hunters are a bit "Aggressive".
Again, this is only test patterns and not indicative of the final game play.
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Oh, yeah! Very tight and the speed is just right. Love 'em 'donuts' circling around like that, very nice! 8)
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Looking good guys! My favorite is the direct fire demo. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. There certainly isn't anything like that in Tempest! :D
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Just a thought, but if anyone wants to see what is going on with the code,
Check here:-
http://code.google.com/feeds/p/warhawk-ds/svnchanges/basic (http://code.google.com/feeds/p/warhawk-ds/svnchanges/basic)
This will show you the latest updates, comments, and also enable you to look through the source code.
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The raster effect does not look good with the green sky (the right side) in the background which is show a bit whird, but when these is gone, it elsewice a great effect....
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I have fixed this in the latest demo.... Though we have not released it yet! Still working on all the boss code... HURRAH.. Will release a new demo soon to compliment the videos.
Or perhaps a new video - who knows? :)
But the raster effect looks more natural. It will be worked on, all the same... There is more to do on all aspects.
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Yes the raster effect is very different to the last demo released as I implemented proper interrupts along with a whole new fx system :)
BTW there is still a bug in the raster effect I need to fix which is because it's now using a HBLANK interrupt the top line is screwed up so on line 191 I need to change it to offset line 0.
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Just a thought, but if anyone wants to see what is going on with the code,
Check here:-
http://code.google.com/feeds/p/warhawk-ds/svnchanges/basic (http://code.google.com/feeds/p/warhawk-ds/svnchanges/basic)
This will show you the latest updates, comments, and also enable you to look through the source code.
I gotta remember to put in comments when I do an update! Doh!
Just a bit more info on what I'm working on at the moment. I have been investigating file systems so we can break through the 4MB memory limitaion of the Nintendo DS. I wrote demos for gbfs, fatlib and we have settled on EFS (embedded file system). Not only does this allow us to make the binary as big as we like by attaching files to the end of the ROM, but we can also keep them inside a single .nds file (unlike using fatlib which uses an external file system) or gbfs which maintains the 4 MB limit.
What I'm working on now is writing a ring buffer and implementing timers (which need the new interrupt system) and so we can stream music from the ROM to a buffer in the ARM9 and send it over to the ARM7. I'm hoping it's not going to be too difficult to do. The main problem is we won't be able to use the hardware IMA-ADPCM decoder because it doesn't allow streaming. So I also need to write a software IMA-ADPCM decoder (which doesn't look too difficult) but I might end up using one that someone on gbadev.org has already written. But I could just translate some rather simple "C" code myself.
The music is very important in this game which is why we want to break the 4MB limit so we can have high quality music streaming while you play :)
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as I known ADPCM is just a 4 bit system and is not really compressed, it just less dynamic sound. You might use a another ADPCM format for easier decodning?
By now I have (as I wrote in the other thread). These two tunes finally use about 2.5mb in size for both in 22khz IM-ADPCM (mono) which sound acceptable (converted from Audacity).
I can send these converted wav for testing?
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Yes the raster effect is very different to the last demo released as I implemented proper interrupts along with a whole new fx system :)
BTW there is still a bug in the raster effect I need to fix which is because it's now using a HBLANK interrupt the top line is screwed up so on line 191 I need to change it to offset line 0.
I also modified the "cloud" on the background so it does not have that hard edge and moved it into the screen a bit more. So now with your new sine code and the modified starback.png. it does look a lot nicer :) (except the top line that I had not noticed - Doh!)
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I have decided it is time to add "pulse" fire (or "burst") to the standard aliens shot code, this will enable us to fire a burst of shots of a variable lengh and spacing.
It is gonna be tricky to integrate with the current alien shot code, but I think it will be worth it in the end and add more to the game (without going too "bullet time")
I will post a video when done, whenever that will be :)
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Well, 20 minutes later and burst shot works!!! first time :) (and I was really worried about adding this)
That is a GREAT relief. This is something that will really add to the attack waves and enable some nice patterns :)
For those interested, here is the code as written (un edited/tidied)
mov r0,#SPRITE_FIRE_DELAY_OFFS
ldr r9,[r1,r0] @ get fire delay
subs r9,#1 @ take 1 off the count
str r9,[r1,r0] @ put it back
bpl doDetect @ if this is not 0, do nothing
mov r9,#0
str r9,[r1,r0] @ set to 0
mov r0,#SPRITE_BURST_NUM_COUNT_OFFS
ldr r9,[r1,r0] @ load "backup" burst number
cmp r9,#0 @ if this is "0", no need for burst!
beq fireAsNormal @ so it is a standart timed shot
mov r0,#SPRITE_BURST_DELAY_OFFS @ load the burst delay
ldr r9,[r1,r0]
subs r9,#1 @ decrement the counter
str r9,[r1,r0] @ store it back
bpl doDetect @ if not time, dont fire
mov r2,#SPRITE_BURST_DELAY_COUNT_OFFS
ldr r9,[r1,r2]
str r9,[r1,r0] @ reset the delay
mov r0,#SPRITE_BURST_NUM_OFFS @ load the shots to fire
ldr r9,[r1,r0]
cmp r9,#0 @ have we any shots left?
bne fireBurstShot
@ burst of shots has finished, so reset counters
mov r2,#SPRITE_BURST_NUM_COUNT_OFFS
ldr r9,[r1,r2]
str r9,[r1,r0] @ reset the number of burst shots
mov r0,#SPRITE_FIRE_DELAY_OFFS
mov r2,#SPRITE_FIRE_MAX_OFFS
ldr r9,[r1,r2] @ load the delay max
str r9,[r1,r0] @ and reset the counter
b doDetect
fireBurstShot:
subs r9,#1
str r9,[r1,r0]
mov r2,#SPRITE_BURST_DELAY_COUNT_OFFS
ldr r9,[r1,r2] @ load reset value
mov r0,#SPRITE_BURST_DELAY_OFFS @ load the burst delay
str r9,[r1,r0] @ reset the delay
b fireAlienShotNow
fireAsNormal:
mov r0,#SPRITE_FIRE_DELAY_OFFS
mov r2,#SPRITE_FIRE_MAX_OFFS
ldr r9,[r1,r2] @ load the delay max
str r9,[r1,r0] @ and reset the counter
fireAlienShotNow:
cmp r10,#384-48 @ Make sure alien is at least NEARLY on screen before firing
bmi doDetect @ if no, just forget it
bl alienFireInit @ time to fire, r3=fire type, r1=offset to alien
haveWeCrashed:
doDetect:
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Just a few new videos....
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Implemented the streaming audio engine and EFS (embedded file system) that allows us to break the 4 MB DS memory limit :)
We now have decent quality music although it's going to add to the final binary size significantly. I might end up researching some audio decompression routines such as software IMA-ADPCM decoding or lowering the audio mix frequency from 32000 to 22050. Right now 22050 seems to have syncing issues, but 32000 seems to be quite stable.
Anyway I am really glad all this recent work of mine has finally payed off and I hope everyone appreciates having high quality music when they play Warhawk DS :)
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All I can say is,
"f**kING AMAZING"
It REALLY is Warhawk now... :)
(make my latest vids look weak LOL)
Bloody brilliant work mate, and sounds really sweet! so so cool!!!!! :)
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(make my latest vids look weak LOL)
No way mate, sorry I didn't comment on them I was just too excited about getting the music done. I really love the new boss routines they are awesome. Along with Lobo's new graphics it's getting better and better by the day. Cool stuff! 8)
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sorry, but you cannot BEAT having that music going - AWESOME!!!!!!!!!
Ps. did you notice the burst/pulse shot.. You will see it more in the game than the videos, but all the aliens can now pulse an amount of shots, with a gap between, and then a pause until next burst - or just use the original timed shots..
May add "random" also?
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sorry, but you cannot BEAT having that music going - AWESOME!!!!!!!!!
Ps. did you notice the burst/pulse shot.. You will see it more in the game than the videos, but all the aliens can now pulse an amount of shots, with a gap between, and then a pause until next burst - or just use the original timed shots..
May add "random" also?
Yeah I was pretty stoked when it finally streamed through the whole song :)
I really like the burst shots as seen on I think the level 4 directional shot demo. I think random would be great also so it's a little less predictable. Although I like the burst directional shots on the end of level bosses. Getting to be a nice end-of-level challenge :)
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Hi guys,
Wow, that looks absolutely fantastic!
The new burst shots look great and the two videos where the boss dies and drags a trail of explosions after nearly made my jaw hit the table. Über cool. :)
The explosion when that long ship explodes (in the 'burst direct fire' demo) is that final? Compared to the other two explosions it's over too soon...needs more...Flash. :D
Oh, and speaking of "Warhawk" - I found this a few days ago. Completely unrelated...almost.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6311073.html
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The explosion when that long ship explodes (in the 'burst direct fire' demo) is that final? Compared to the other two explosions it's over too soon...needs more...Flash. :D
Well, not sure what else to add here? Perhaps I will give that a bit more thought? It is all down to allocating enough sprites for the explosion (with the bosses, we know we have over 64 free) and also finding a way to use the sprites we have to create a better effect? Hmmmmmmm
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Exiciting to get the streaming working, even it missing some ADPCM decodning, but it much better than nothing 8). I want the music, regaardles it use my tunes or other remixes (or both).
I can wait how my tunes perform in the game, because I have not heard in the real speacker and in the emulator, so I can check any issues..
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Cool, can't wait to hear that then.
Also, just how big is that music file, kinda curious cause I can't tell the real length by listening to Sid.
Ah, nevermind, just found out while playing the latest demo, cooool beans! 8)
Heh, what Sokurah found~
"She said she met O’Shea playing the game Warhawk and that he had used the screen name “Thunder-kid.”
???
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Excellent Work HK :)
Can't wait to hear it :)
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The explosion when that long ship explodes (in the 'burst direct fire' demo) is that final? Compared to the other two explosions it's over too soon...needs more...Flash. :D
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6311073.html
So, Socky me ol' china, is this better :)
Ps. sorry for the video quality, had to use No$gba so I could get the music also (HK x x x x) :)
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So, Socky me ol' china, is this better :)
I wish I could say it is...
...but wishes DO come true sometimes, so YEAH, that's GREAT! :)
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Just a little demo to show the addition of random fire.
Aliens can now "not fire, timed fire, burst fire, or random fire". I think that covers everything? They can do that on a per alien basis and fire whatever they want.
not the most interesting of videos, but..... oh well :)
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I just wait how my tunes is, which could perform in the title screen or between levels (if there is space for it)? I haven't released it at remix64.com and think I wait after the final game is release.
But the game is MUCH better now with the tune and now feel its warhawk now, and its a elsewice nice choiced tune, which work very well. My tune was elsewice inspirated by the other remix throuch.
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Thanks mate...
We have not worked out what is happening with the music any further than this. Perhaps a loop for the level complete screen could work quite well? I will have a word with the maestro "HK"...
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Now that we have streaming music we don't need to use loops. Unless we implement compression we will already be looking under 12 MB total ROM size which is about as far as we want to go. I'd prefer to get it down to 8 MB personally. We currently have title music, ingame music and game over music.
If we do end up implementing compression we could have more tunes during the game which would be nice. For example I'd like have the Press Play on Tape (http://www.pressplayontape.com/?pid=download) Warhawk version as well. BTW Have anyone got a studio recording of that? I will take a look at doing software decompression using an IMA-ADPCM codec and go from there. But please don't be dissapointed if we don't have room for more mixes, but I think it would be nice.
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I do think POTT is not very space like mix and sound outside the game, even it a AWESOME mix, but it outside the space genre in this game. Howover since they still sell thier studio versions of the cover, it still have a copyright issues here....
I have created 2 shorter alternative versions (one can go to the hiscore?) with is under one minuttes long. I have just sent all my versions to Flash recently (in mp3) and now to you, Headkaze (in allready converted wav file). Hope you like them, and it is still more room for song improvement and sound more space like, as Flash send it need some alternative versions in some levels, but it hard without have seen a full level.
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Well, this is a terrible reason to release this vid:)
This video is a starfield done in the DS's tilemode (character based mode), so, sadly, it does look like any other starfield (it isn't)... but this one has the bonus of being versitile. :), oh, and clever in a C64 sorta-way :)
ps. you have to love the msic :)
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So that's your favourite Lilly Allen song Flash?? :D
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Yeah, I was listening to the album at the time :)
(youtube will prob remove the video due to copyright infringement though... he he)
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Nice starfield.
Nice Music. What's the quality like? I'm a bit fed up with buying CDs that are heavily compressed.
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Heavily compressed :)
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eh? :)
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Sadly, at the moment we can find no way to fit the tilemap into the title code for the stars, but these will be further worked on to use in highscore, etc, perhaps with user controlled effects? :)
So, I have just finished laying out an ALPHA version for the attackwaves in level 1.. This also serves the purpose of giving HK something to work from in his quest for a good WANK (Warhawk Attackwave & Nuance Kreator) will that joke ever wear thin? So.. there will be quite a bit of tweeking and also the end boss is not final. But at least a first time player can get to the end and still have plenty of health. That is the main thing I wanted for level 1. I was going to replicate the original attack waves, but they do not work on 2 screens, though the first 2 attacks are based loosly on the first 2 in warhawk.
Also, remember - the game is SILKY SMOOTH, it is the emultion and vid capture that results in the choppy framerate (30 fps)
EDIT: I did just have a thought? In the original game, the meteors could not be destroyed and would lose you lots of health if you colided with them. In the remake, they still cannot be destroyed, but a collision will only hit you for 2 health units and then it will explode. But, what about, if you shoot them you can knock them back a fraction? almost, to knock a path through them - is this worthy of consideration?
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...if you shoot them you can knock them back a fraction? almost, to knock a path through them - is this worthy of consideration?
Muy Bien, mucho worthy doing, I hate them avoiding bastards and this way at least they can be knocked out of my way. Good effect would be to shoot them and knock them toward the enemy then enemy knocks the other one for a beautiful pinball like chain explosion :D
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ok, time for another demo.... :)
This is mostly (with a hint of title screen modification) a demo to show player death.. :) I did a bit of code to enable a dying player to still move, and while dying.. destroy bases and aliens - for a short amount of time..
Also, minor colour effects - is it too much/too little? please let me know!!!
Ok... hope this fits!!!
PS... Now have "Press Play On Tape" happy to have us use their music in the game... and also the possibilty of them doing a new studio version for us! time permitting
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Haha, magnificent effect, keep it! :P
Also, the music is kick ass, from intro to the in~game one, most excellent!
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I like the Crash 'N Burn... Nice Job Flash!
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Added some sprite scaling and rotation code for the titlescreen. Also finished the hiscore entry screen which saves hiscores to the ROM. And just did the end of level screen.
Includes Flash's starfiled routine and he's also working on some fireworks for the hiscore entry which should look really nice when it's added.
Flash has also started work on Level 2 attack waves using my new W.A.N.K app. Yes it's not just an amusing acronym but a fully fledged attack wave editor designed just for Warhawk DS! :)
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he he!!! All bases destroyed on level 1, with a tiny amount of energy left :)
(for everyone else, we were seeing how hard it is to destroy all bases and clear the level)
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Level 1 and 2 attack waves are now complete
level 3 is well on the way and "tricky", so you do need to catch the powerups. I am trying to playtest as much as I can as well as making pretty alien patterns with Lobo's alien graphics (have not quite got to BT's levels yet). It is tricky as I know where averyting is and what is gonna happen - so, i can pretty much breeze through it.
I will have to get demo code to BT (and someone else?? - offers?) for playtesting and refinement.
Made a few modifications to the game to level the difficulty a bit... but only a bit!!! we don't want a "woosies" shmup - do we?
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Beauty, hiscore thing is just perfect. How do you go about encrypting? Don't wanna be not able to cheat there, you know ;D.
Flash, you can send me the levels for testing, either one by one or en masse if you will.
And no, we donwanna sissy shmup in there, no siree bob, no.
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Level 3 is done and now that I am enjoying my WANK, and have grabbed it with both hands to see what I can squeeze out of it, things are coming along nicely... :)
Well, we have decided to hold back a little on the videos, so as to keep some of the gameplay as a suprise for those who are inerested? but, perhaps a few screens may be enjoyable... Shame you cannot see this in motion LOL
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Don't tell me, the first formation turns into Valentine's card? :D
Keep wanking.
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it does leave a love heart - well spotted lobo :)
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Level 3 is done and now that I am enjoying my WANK, and have grabbed it with both hands to see what I can squeeze out of it, things are coming along nicely... :)
Both hands? Keep the jokes coming... :D
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Wow your evil Flash, level 3 is hard! :'(
If you miss those power up's forget it :D
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I have played it a few times and can get through quite easy now. But the powerups are important, though i have also got through once without getting any... though the boss killed me :(
We have to also remember, if you do manage to get through the level, you do start the next with full energy, so finishing the level with a handfull of bars left is not a problem.
Isn't that last attackwave sweet :)
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Yeah the snake thing looks great :)
BTW The way I've done the level continue is you can select "Restart" or "Start Level xx". Moving left or right you can select the level up to the highest level you've made it to. This highest level is saved in the ROM so you can always continue on through the game unlocking levels as you go.
Also when we implement "ratings" the level continue screen will show your current rating. I'm just wondering if it should keep your hiscore so you can continue with that? Hmmm too easy right?
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Yeah, you have to start from 0 i think... Also, being able to select any level up to the last one you died on? not sure. But we will see how it works out. I just dont want to make it too easy?
Though, I wonder if we have space for a second attackwave.s, then we could have a modified NINJA version for those that complete the first 16 levels? what does thou thinketh?
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Mate I just compiled Warhawk without any of the files attached via EFS and it only takes up 2.63 MB of the 4 MB IWRAM available to us, so we have heaps of room left. So yeah NINJA (or should we call it "CAPTAIN KIRK") mode sounds good to me :)
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Great, we can have a bit of fun there :)
Remember, we do still have around 4-5 sound effects to add as yet.. But they wont take up much. Oh - and some nice completion code and animation? not sure what, perhaps Lobo will have some ideas?
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I think you could been arviable to select from example each four completed level, so if you have completed level 1-4, you have the possible to start from level 5 and so on. Howover for beat hiscores its of course allways good to start from beginning. But this have you a change to checkout the attackwaves on later levels (but might been eventuelly not the end sequence).
NB. Screenshots dosent work before you login.
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"nutter mode" ?
Hey look.... I am all free on another page and all the screenshots are a page back!!! HE HE
I am the ruling "post"....
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About the end screen? Depends. How about the ship celebrating, happily dancing around and hits the IRS office building (in space) and explodes. Good side of it is that noone in space pays taxes for that whole year?
On the other hand, it depends on how you plan to approach to the ending, just two static screens or something else?
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LOL - if only... perhaps crashes to earth and..... :)
(no idea about the ending as yet?)
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I decided that I had to do a post of HK's work on the title (cause he has told me I cannot release anymore vids of the game - spoilsport)
LOL
anyway, it is a TINY clip.....
ps. Have spread the word on the DCEmu forums http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=196799 (http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=196799)
a "few" extra pics there!
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Crappy picture, but Warhawk DS works fine on the DSi, so, luckily no stray register writes, etc..
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better pics of Warhawk DS on the DSi
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LOL - if only... perhaps crashes to earth and..... :)
(no idea about the ending as yet?)
The Warhawk lands. A little bod gets out and plants a flag in the ground!
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Heh, a little guy comes out of the ship and dumps into the last boss' skull (Duke Nukem style). ;D
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Sorry it is all a bit quiet at the moment...
Currently working the way through the levels attack waves and adding game code to try and keep it fresh as the levels progress..
We have a bug that is proving a little elusive, but he will be caught.
Lobo has done some great graphics to use with the "game complete" screens and this is looking very nice (thanks HK).
god knows when it will be released... I have to use the ID Software? idium, "when it is done" :)
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B..bug? Uggghh...Well, take your time, I don't expect the game until next week anyway ;).
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LOL!!!
:)
(Lobo - you are such a card!! he he)
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Ok then, you got until Thursday!
Btw, how many levels are already done with attack patterns and stuff?
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6 at the moment.
I have been adding code so that there can be some suprises later on.
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Not bad, ten more to go!
By the time you're finished with them, you'll hate shmups for the next thirty years or so. ;D
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You could be right :)
I will get a new demo to you soon with the latest levels and HK's completion code for a play.
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Sweet! Just send it over, time to get some dust off the DS and play it proper, tired of emulators anyway.
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ok .... i will send it later... :)
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hi loby I checked out the flash issue in Firefox, bacause Flash told me you cant use it due you use Firefox. But it possible to work in Firefox, but have some login issues.
So do this:
- First login WITHOUT using the Live chat link (also done that using the normal form).
- use this link: https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/index.php?action=chat
the link from main page link to a wrong page and Firefox cant handle the https://retrobytesportal.gameex.com/\index.php?action=chat used from the mainpage (I think Flash fix that soon).
Now the chat window should work with the Flash plugin.
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Okay thanks SF I fixed the front page so that link should work now :)
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If you use the live chat without login, it wont work (login screen never appear), but if you allready is logged in, it works fine.
I think that shoud notice your Firefox users about this little issue (example by a little text about it under or over the flash window).
Good work elsewice :-). I hope to see Lobo in the chat as well.
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Thanks, man! It does work now. I did join the chat briefly but I guess it's like, witching hour in Europe so you guys must be snoring there. :D
Will try again tomorrow, earlier though.
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We now have levels 1-7 done, and quite a few tweaks and enhancements in the game and have decided perhaps it is time to post another video of what has been happening.
Remember that this video is an emu capture and cannot portray the smoothness of the game (sadly), but should still give an indication of how the game is progressing.
As always, comments and suggestions are always welcome.
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Holy Crap! Instant classic, just add water and stir!
Suggestion - finish the game! You have until Monday.
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Ok Captain.... we're on the case :) LOL
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Hah, I'm in a mood of issuing orders, playing Red Alert 2 lately too much. :D
That reminds me, we need Yuri in the game as well, he's bald. 8)
Anyway, great work so far, you have until Tuesday then.
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That last video is AMAZING! :)
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We have a bug that is proving a little elusive, but he will be caught.
Found the bug after a long debug session so it should be fiixed soon :)
EDIT: Bug is now fixed
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Firstly, just wanna say "sorry"... I promised I would not show too much.. but....
The firework effect I thought was special as it uses tilemode. It looks like a bitmap but the plot code works on characters. This enables us to add these kind of effects to any normal screens and still retain the 3 other backgrounds. Sadly... It is about half as fast as plotting on framebuffer, but using that loses us the extra layers... so, a compromise and also a neat little effect...
(HK is gonna kill me for posting it :) - though just clearing level 1 will get you a highscore - at the mo!)
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It's a shame that the project has ended this way...
I mean with you dead, and HK in jail! :'(
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It's a shame that the project has ended this way...
I mean with you dead, and HK in jail! :'(
LOL :D
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Ok, I am still alive (thanks for the concern Temp :) )
I have a question regarding fire power,
The original fire mode used in the ds version was to release a bullet on fire release and a power shot if fire was held for a half second or so.
I have modded it to fire on press and again on release, allowing more firepower and (imho) a better feeling of (unfounded) power.
So, is it best to be able to fire quicker without mad button pressing, or is it best to pump that button..?? The only downside is that it does make the game easier (which is a benefit at level 8+ really)
The power shot still works exactly the same.
So, keep it or "swap" it?
Answers on a postcard please... or... please ring "01 811 8055" :)
( or "01 288 8055" in the beginning! - what the hell am i talking about??)
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This is a really difficult one Flash. I didn't like it at first but I think it places the difficultly at a level that makes better sense (although the boss's might need to take some extra hits to die now). I also think its nice to have less button mashing. With this new fire model I can comfortably make it to level 3 without cheating. With a bit more effort I should be able to make it to level 4 quite easily. I'm not the best SHMUP player but it feels about right to me.
It does seem a bit strange to have fire on press and release though. Perhaps we should try having two shots on button release instead to effectively double the fire power? It might feel better that way? I'm really not sure??
These are fundamental parts of the game that are really important to get right. I'm interested in hearing what other people think too.
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fire on press and release is a standard thing done on shmups, but - the main thing is, does it work?? Is it ok in this game??
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Two quick button press instead of hold and release maybe? Like headkaze said. At first I liked the model but now I really find it annoying for some reason. See what other ppl say.
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Sorry, I have added an new fire mode.. I dont think you have the latest - I could be wrong?
The new fire works like this..
Press fire - shot fired
Release fire - Shot fired
Hold fire and release - power shot
The hold for power shot only takes a second to powerup. This is a lot quicker than say R-Type, and also does 12x damage, and detroys all bases in it's path.
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Yeah, I was thinking of power shot but nevermind cause assigning the other button might be too confusing. Hmm, now that you mention it, I didn't realize that the power shot clears everything in its way, I had the feeling it was only one thing it hits first, is that something new? ???
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No, it has always destroyed all bases in its path and hit aliens for 12x the usual damage..
I will have to send you another demo soon :)
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Just one more thing about this fire on press/release business..
There was also a 'mildly' <snigger> popular game released just after the original Warhawk that used the same fire system to great effect..
Uridium
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I've gotten used to the new fire mode now and I'm convinced it's necessary to have it in the game as the previous fire power was just not enough IMHO. Plus it's nice not having to tap fire as often.
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Thats good! :)
And it also game me another oportunity to post another vid LOL
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Thats good! :)
Not that it would matter if I didn't LOL
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of course it would, silly billy...
(you know how I love to ARGUE!) LOL
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of course it would, silly billy...
(you know how I love to ARGUE!) LOL
:D
Seriously though I do like the new fire mode, I can make it to level 4 much easier now! I quite often die on Level 4's boss as I don't have enough energy to make it past him but it feels like a good ballance that it's not too easy either. I'm gonna see how far I can get through the game once its released.
We need to get the scoreboard more suited to this version too. I was also starting to think that maybe we don't have enough digits for the score? If you finish level 16 even without any aliens on it you can get a pretty big score. I'm starting to think we might need an extra one!
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We may do, I am not sure?
I will play levels 1-32 when we have it all done, cheating :) and see what score we get!
Could be fun :)
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Whattheheck, is this Earth, planet? 32 levels? Noone tells me nothing anymore :'(.\
Ohh..one more thing, keep the cheats in the final..i mean pokes.
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Don't worry mate :)
Levels 17-32 are the same designs as the first will alterations to the aliens only,
You can relax now!! :)
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...... Though.....
Lobo, I may ask you to go all out on a design for level 32 as yet - if that is ok?
Not sure at the moment, but it may be nice???
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So...for anyone lucky to survive the first 16 levels and then play it all over again for super heavy hard extreme mode to finally arrive to the last level (32 now) and find that the level is just a huge head of Anton La Vey singing 'Sunglasses after dark' ?
Sure :D .
You might wanna email me if you had something specific in mind, something along the lines of 'surprise'.
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Btw, I've just noticed that this sticky icky has 11210 views, that's disgustingly aLOT!
Ok, 9000 of those belongs to me but still...
disgusting :D.
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Still....
2210 - wow!!
LOL!!!
I was joking about it breaking 10,000 the other day! And it is not us as we have a special hidden area "the hideout" for all out discussions. I only visit here after a new post (now) or to post... So, I was pretty amazed myself!!
What will be funny is when we officially release, and it gets 3 downloads!! LOL
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Aye, you can bet on minimum 4 downloads, 3 from me as the first two will be incomplete, corrupted or flagged as 'nutty' by my scanner. :P
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It is funny because it is probably true LOL
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I saw in the Xbox version of R-Type a mode where you have unlimited lives and stop when you completed the game. I have only the demo version of it and it works really gode. It would been pretty easy to complete that game in this way, but it was only meant (for me) to beat the hiscore, since you might not shoot all enemies, so the hiscore still can variere.
If would been nice for have such a options with its own hiscore table for a simular mode like this?
Howover a lost life can of course cost some score or such in this version?
This is just a idea as a game mode.
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That is a thought mate!! I will have a think about that!
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ps... Anton La Vey sounds like a bloody good level LOL
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Yep, it does. The only downside is that it would require 7000 tiles, about 6300 more than we can afford :D.
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One thing about the new fire system that I really don't like is if you keep tapping the button eventually you run out of free bullet sprites and then you get a big gap where you can't fire. It feels like the game has lost responsivness. Perhaps we need to limit the time between when another bullet can fire so you don't end up getting the annoying gap?
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if you limited the time then you would not be able to fire lots of bullets when a alien is above you. If you increased the amount of bullets then you would not need the powerup that was in the original.
What you need to think for example - that space invaders, single shot, shoot one bullet and then there is a gap till the next available shot. or galaxians with 2 shots, when both are in motion, you cannot shoot until one remains free. This is the same even with more recent shooters like Salamander and R-Type.
I dont really know anyway round it other than giving the player all the shots they need! The art should be timing your shots to use the wisely?
oh i dont know - headache coming on!! "Nurse - gas and air please!"
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Just to break the mold for a sec :D
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I love that mate!!! :)
Bloody Anton though!! ha ha ha ha
That cover is way better than mine :(
I do want a cover as (for completeness) I do wanna add one to the release archive.
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The liitle keyboard on the right in the terrible picture is what i am trying to code and type on...
Kids spilt drink in to other..... sods! LOL
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it is not what you would call "fluid" :)
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It all seems so damn quite at the moment, but work is progressing quickly right now. But, I cannot show any more videos as we have some nice stuff in the later levels that we really want the players to discover..
So, perhaps another little batch of screen shots will suffice? These are from various levels and just an indication of the game and the wonderful work that Lobo has contributed to this project.
I am sure that HK will tell me off for doing more screens... But.. When you are working on something that you cannot share (yet), then it is always nice to show that the game is progressing nicely... Even if it appears to be taking a while LOL..
As HK has rightly stated... When we release something, we want version 1.0 and never want to need to release V1.01 etc... We want it correct the first time..
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Warhawk is getting there....
I have 2 levels to complete (level 16 will be a barrage of cannon fodder) and the bosses to tweak, and then I will need a few playtesters?
If there is anyone who would like to put themselves forward who has the hardware (if possible) that would be great.?
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as wrote in the chat I can playtest the game just before a week of two before the release, so I can test if it to hard or good ;-). The game got also included some boss music by me.
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We now have one level left for attackwaves..
Levels 1-11 have now been "difficulty" adjusted
So, getting a bit closer.... Phew!
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After all the times he's mentioned in this thread how could we not? :D
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Bloody amazing :D! He needs a shmup on his own to shoot lazerz outta his eyes while singing 'Ushti Baba'!
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Turns out he was the evil leader all along LOL
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Ok,
I had the idea to include an energy bar to show you how close you are to killing a boss or "something else slightly secret". So, thought i would post a video for feedback! does it work or not? is it a benefit?
At the very least, it is an opportunity to post another video and not show ANYTHING new!! HE HE
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I would keep it, at least to see how little of the boss energy was left before I died.
Oh and talking La Vey...priceless ;D.
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Oh and talking La Vey...priceless ;D.
Inspired by you mate! Turned out it worked quite well I thought :)
I think the fact it's taking a bit of time to get all the attack waves together means we can add nice little tweaks like this. I think the boss energy works nicely too.
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I am honored. pretty sure the baldy wouldn't mind appearance in shmup in such a stylish way :-*.
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I would keep it, at least to see how little of the boss energy was left before I died.
Oh and talking La Vey...priceless ;D.
<giggle>
Glad you like the energy bar... Was not really sure at first!
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If you lip read LaVey, i am sure he says,
"oh oh bum"?
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/Crawls out of woodwork after weeks due work commitments.
Personally I love the energy bar on the mother ship.
One thing I do think would be good if possible. Keep the Warhawk and the Mothership firing when they are in their death throes. It would for example, be so cool to be exploding and take out the mothership with your last few shots and just scrape onto the next level.
Likewise I think the mothership would look good fighting to the bitter end even if you do reduce it's fire rate.
/Crawls behind woodwork hoping to re appear very soon.
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If you lip read LaVey, i am sure he says,
"oh oh bum"?
He reminds me of someone :D
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is that "Merc the Mingless"?
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Warhawk is still in the playtesting phase, and Mark has found an interesting bug that all have missed :)
If you die just before the boss comes on, the sprites "can" become flipped. This is a left-over from the code that tries to muddle explosions up a bit and the player explosion uses sprites that are normally reserved for base explosions (also used by bosses). Hopefully fixed now...
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Never saw that one and I did die a lot just before the Boss would come out. I guess that's why the 'can happen' is there :P .
I do like how the screens look like, the way the picture was taken, all fuzzy and that. Reminds me a lot of screens from magazines back in the day and this one really looks like it came from some C64 mag :D. Needles to say, I had in mind before to make the game that looks like a magazine scan but it's tricky, need to have the yucky kinda jpg compression in order to achieve it :(.
Also, release date?
Oh, btw, you received the cover yet?
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I have to giggle, because they also reminded me of the kind of pics they would use in mags like Zzapp and also in adverts.
Though - fancy not finding that rather nasty bug.... LOL (BAD Lobo - in your bed)
:)
Release date - soon
Cover - not yet mate?
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Whutty?
I've send it like, a week ago. Madness. Ok, sent again to that 'flashblablagreatflash' mail (damn dude, I got like 6 different emails from you, what are you? secret service, Steven Seagal??) :D
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Yes, got it this time on the Simon Seagull email adress.
It is fantastic mate, you will never fail to amaze me :)
(WOW)
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hey! it was that I saw, and I guess it was the extract same problem. I did died too, and might have died just before the boss entered (diddent think about it). it was look funny. Better this than it freeze.
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That may have also caused the one in the main level also..
Hopefully it is now fixed?! :)
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Have you guys by any chance been playing in emulator when you saw this?
Just asking because long time ago I saw this sprite flippin' but not on bosses, just those 'rockship' types.
And it happen in No$. I never saw this problem on the actual hardware.
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The 3 pictures were from hardware.. So it is (was) and issue.
I had never spotted it in no$ though - wierd!! :)
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Indeed, we got opposite results, maybe a ghost in the machine or something complexly satanic. 8)
Anyway, release date? I thought I said you have until Thursday?
Oh, btw, been playing with the 'magazinecrapshot' look and discovered that the only way to go really IS to take pictures of the gfx made on comp, preferably small and crisp gfx then transferred to either some low res thing (cellphone, hehe) and take a pic. Then blow it up so all the jpg artifacts are there and then cut it down to desired size.
Here's what I got from those pics from up there, it looks pretty magazine to me, gonna do something with it or else. ;D
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He He.... You really should have worked for Zzzzaapp!!! LOL
Oh, is saturday ok for a release, sir? or Sunday perhaps!?!
All we really have left is the release notes (fingers crossed)
I have made a full cover from your "Wonderfull" artwork and will email you that hopefully tonight! Looks "Sweet" ;)
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Yeah, I should've apllied for a hair stylist position, would make their mullets stand out in the crowd. :-\
Saturday is fine, make it Friday.
Cool, lesse that cover then. ;)
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I will send it when i get home - in about 40 mins
When I was young I always wanted to be able to play the piano as well as Barry Manilow... That was my dream! But... Now after seeing your graphic work, i wish i could draw like you!!!
:P
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When I was young I wanted to be a Houdini so I chained myself and almost didn't escape. :D
Now I want $1 million, no more no less, down to a cent.
Do you have 1mill ?
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I had a ticket in last nights lottery. It was $100 mil but sadly I didn't win. Two people won the money and one of the winners said "we won't be changing anything". Don't you hate it when people say that? Give me the money then! LOL
Anyway Lobo hopefully when we move into iPhone dev and have a proper distribution channel for our games we can all make a bit out of our hard work. I've been reading about some of the commercial iPhone developers in RetroGamer and in an interview he stated that development time for a game is typically 6 to 12 months. So hopefully we can get the next couple of free games (The Detective Game and Manic Miner Lost Levels) done in record time so we can move into mobile dev.
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I wish you also planning for other phones, since I dosent plans to get a Iphone, I have example a Nokia 5800 and dosent have plans to get a new phone (works as I like it). Another option is also the google android phone. I guess C++ or such is best way for easy ports to other phones (or hopefully Adobe finnaly to get Flash working on IPhone as many others newer phone have)?
But I do understand the choice of phone.
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From what I've been reading there's is alot of work involved getting Java games working on the 1000's of different types of phones. There are different sized screens different timing's and speeds. It's really not possible for us to do the necessary testing if we went that way. Android is something we are considering but I think the fact that we can write a game for the iPhone and that it will run on all iPhones is very attractive. We will be reconsidering our options as we go though so it's hard to say exactly which platform we will be going for.
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Cross platform Java on mobile phones involves too much checking across the board to be a viable option. Though the 5800 (like many more recent Nokia and Samsung phones) is a Symbian S60 device. These do have quite a large amount of standardisation withing them and stretch through a huge range of nokia devices from the N95 several years ago. Also, Nokia has introduced an App Store like Google and Apple. So this is a viable platform.
I do believe the iPhone is a large market and a good oportunity for developing a new game on, only hindered by OSX as a SDK operating system.
So, it looks like there will be some fun ahead :)
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The detative game would been awesome to any touchscreen phone..... I think Flash is best options, I heard Flash is not to far on IPhone as well, then it would been awesome.
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Sadly Flash has now been (Just about) released on all phone platforms apart from iPhone? Which is strange considering the relationship between Adobe and Apple?
But, perhaps it is not too far away, not that i would really be interested in coding in Flash though.
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ActionScript 3 is not a bad language actually. Much better than earlier versions. Once you get the basics of C++ you should be able to code in similar languages like AS3, PHP, Java, C# etc.
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Yeah, getting to grips with C++ is my next objective and understanding how to implement it with adressing hardware (i.e. DS, iPhone, Android). So, the Detective project will hopefully be a fun learning process for me. And also playing with Manic Miner will help me correlate the two coding methods.
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I had a ticket in last nights lottery. It was $100 mil but sadly I didn't win. Two people won the money and one of the winners said "we won't be changing anything". Don't you hate it when people say that? Give me the money then! LOL
Hah, true, I think they're trying to tell their extended family that sharing is OFF.
Anyway Lobo hopefully when we move into iPhone dev and have a proper distribution channel for our games we can all make a bit out of our hard work. I've been reading about some of the commercial iPhone developers in RetroGamer and in an interview he stated that development time for a game is typically 6 to 12 months. So hopefully we can get the next couple of free games (The Detective Game and Manic Miner Lost Levels) done in record time so we can move into mobile dev.
Sounds like a plan, IPhone is powerful and interesting enough to doodle about, the rest of the platforms is more like the experiment within limits which doesn't bring $1 million! :D
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$1 Million!!!
Hmmmm.... 'big' steak!!
LOL
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Should the thread not been splitted into two, due the nice phone sdk debat rather than warhawk?
Iphone is simply for pricy, which is very high in example Denmark if you ask me, which is why I get a Nokia 5800 instead. The dectative game example does not need a fast phone or run at 60fps at all, due the theme and style. Flash (when released) or c++ is best options for compatible for most phones when released to IPhone which can guess would been in this year or such.
DS is still a nice console and you just learned the console....
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Perhaps it should be split,
But.. it is all related really... Warhawk is coming to a close and we just need to chat about "what next?" and it is really a follow on from the Warhawk dev.
I will do seperate areas for the dev of TDG and MMITLL when these are in progress..
The iPhone is not really that dear here... I bought 2 and also and iPod for just over a grand. They are nice phones and the quality of the software is really something to aspire to.
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I would never seriously push for either Flash nor cellphone games unless its a 'one shot for fun' kinda thing. The case with IPhone is that it has the power to make your time worth it, regardless of whether you're doing pacman or crysis. ;)
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Crysis on the iPhone... :)
I do think that the iPhone has a lot of untapped potential though, there are tons of games and 80% have control problems because they have tried to convert an existing game to the format. There are no buttons!!! One game that really shines on the iPhone is Shift. Sadly i completed it.. but what a fantastic game.... the left of the screen was left move, rigt was right... and when you were moving the oposite direction became jump.. what a fantastic system... would also work perfect for manic miner...
I look forward to iPhone coding.. hopefully... Just need to learn (cover your ears) C++
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Not 'real' crysis, quake 4 more likely. Go learn that C++ already, you have until Tuesday.
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LOL (seriously)
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No red meat for you until you do so! Don't make me buy you one of those 'C++ for Dummies' books.
Oh, I agree at putting at least briefly the THE THE BOsS in the video, hehe, most players will break down and cry before they live to see that. :P
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oh, cause for another
LOL (seriously)
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I never played crysis. You need to have a target who the costumers is. I have Nokia 5800 and I like it really much and it still have an nice games on it, and have no need a IPhone, due it was to pricy for me in each month(personal option). Permest IPhone might been much better technical about 3d (due it have a 3d chipset), but none of the next 2 projects require it which I guess is not 3d required. But it depend of design.
... and Nintendo DS is still nicely portable and a very good platform and might just still kept on that...
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Not crysis as a must but difference between relatively simple and relatively complex game in terms of raw power.
It's probably fun to write a game or two for cellphones (or it was) and see how it goes but does really anyone plays games on cellphones these days? I haven't seen a case in years, at least around here, Europe might be different.
Also, both these games can work on any platform if you want to adopt it to its own control set. Goes for Manic Miner as much as it goes for Detective. Actually, I think I would rather play both of them on iPhone than any cellphone out there which would probably be a chore for my eyes and hitting redial keys and whatnot. You don't need a 3d game in order to use the raw power of iphone neither but its really nice to have some extra juice for a long run ;).
Edit: Wait, why did I say Manic Miner, anyone here remaking it? :D
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Thanks SF for noticing this and correcting the flow of the topic :)
http://www.remix64.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6847&p=79627 (http://www.remix64.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6847&p=79627)
Not sure how i missed it?
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hehe, I ment I have sent you the link when we chatted :)
I have been there for a will have released some tunes in the forum as well remix64.com.
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So....is it out yet? :D
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did we not say "December"?
I am all confused!!!
LOL
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December suits me fine, I got the latest beta anyway so I can mess with mental mode. :-\
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December suits me fine, I got the latest beta anyway so I can mess with mental mode. :-\
Nah,,, too cold
Still hoping for a Sunday (night?) release,
:)
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Saturday Night feverish release? Heh, anyhoo, been playing last night for a few hours straight, finished it (all 32) and got a beautiful score there. Didn't have a single issue performance/audio/visual vise, especially not audio cause I let it play until the end while taking a cig break here and there 8).
Quite great, mental mode is even better.
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Just make sure to hide the cheats, like unlimited, level skip before the officiel release :), elsewice it would been too easy.
Then I heard more about the next project after a break..... I like the youtube trailer you send me with the way you used the music. You should not need to ask, because the music is really yours and its your game :-D (you credited me).
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SF - The music is and always be yours mate, you have just given us permission to use it! The same goes for all Lobo's work!
I have done a new vid, it is public now! I liked Lobos new logo for Warhawk on the cover mockup that we decided to add it to the title screen, so, i needed to mod the vid also to reflect this...
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I'm really starting to see how difficult it would be to code a full game in arm asm! Anyway I'm enjoying the challenge.:)
LOL - And it was and has been!!! :)
(December the 22nd - god!! LOL)
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Saturday Night feverish release? Heh, anyhoo, been playing last night for a few hours straight, finished it (all 32) and got a beautiful score there. Didn't have a single issue performance/audio/visual vise, especially not audio cause I let it play until the end while taking a cig break here and there 8).
Quite great, mental mode is even better.
So, it is not too hard???
What about the big boss on level 32? is that ok??
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Level32 one seems easier than the level16 one (btw, didn't know you used both ships, cool). First, both level16/32 small bosses are really...easy (which is cool) but with end bosses I've found it easy once I've figured where to shoot actually cause not all parts are obviously receiving damage (corners/wings, I guess).
All in all, I did die quite a lot before defeating them, usually with bosses having like 1.5% of energy left :'(.
Needles to say that always screws up my score even though I'm now somewhere about 770....blablaba millions! :-*
The summary- Hate the meteors, hate my wrong tactics about pickin' powerup (right one is - don't move, they come to you!), hate those ships that avalanche on you with that pew-pew sound. It's just a personal thing cause everything else rocks!
OH and plimsoll avengers are the best enemies ever! Shoo!
final verdict-17/10, rated L by Lobo.
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LOL - Sweet!!
Yeah - the plimsolls are cool!!
The "failling aliens" are at the very least something different and not too hard when you know what they will do? I like then in mental moda as you can maka a waterfall out of them :)
so, $1,000,000 qustion - is it ready for release???
DA DA DAAAaaaa!!!
;)
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I know what they're gonna do and it's terrible (what they do), seems like their avalanche gets triggered also if you shoot at them, ggrrrr...
For the release, don't forget, for the stars to align proper and you don't get ass zapped by the unholy manifestation of LaVey, you need to do the upload during the witching hour (after midnight will do). Also, you need to spit 13 times in 8 directions while having pants over your head chanting
'minimus...warhawkds...handheldius...dsnintenduous...releasenemysollesus...uploadus...
lobopresidentus...bestscoruseverus...'
Only then the upload WON'T FAIL!
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I like the falling aliens too how they cascade down when you shoot them going "weeeeee". The best way to deal with them is to move sideways as you shoot them and they come flying down in a big wave. Something about shooting them is very satisfying!
Not sure what a "plimsoll" is? Hmmm ???
Release will be done tonight some time. We have a couple of last minute ideas were implementing ;)
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just missing trailer as tags in the you tube video.
For some reason there is just a very little encoding error in the music around 1:16 in the trailer? Not big or annoying. I didden't hear that in the first version.
Congra for the soon released game, I also think it ready for release now with all level skips or such removed (or can been enabled by a cheat).
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Well....
Everything is ready for release....
I have put the final release package together and will not do anything until HK is awake so he can have one more final check!!
The game will not be released at this site as we have decided that HK's site is a much better place for the official site and to keep this as a forum for support etc.
So, should not be too long now :)
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Why not on both sites or have it own domain (if it really needed)? So I can not see a problem to release it on both sites :-D, I do understand.
Howover its up to you.
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Found a slight problem that will delay the release until perhaps a day or 2 hopefully!!
We have added some stuff and are now right on the boundries of ram usage that may cause problems with some cards!! :(
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I think the description on youtube should been changed soon to been released, because it think the game IS released. I think 10 July or such is very final release day for the game?
About the ram issue, if the backup card use ram as well cause the problem, I think then it might even cause problems with some commerciel games as well?
I think its a good idea to write which cards that with succes have been played with the game on the haedkaze homepage and start a compatible thread..... So the user is aware about it.
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Ya, sounds good, I've thought of the same thing when I figured the problems with R4 compared to AK2.
Needles to say, R4 won't run where AK2 does on the same card with the 'same settings'. By 'settings' I mean that the card (1gig Kingston) is heavily fragmented (some games or files split to like 60 pieces, usually those 10MB and over) and filled up to the brim (maybe 20MB left). With the AK2, same thing as above but it works perfectly, no stutter of any kind, audio/visual works as it should, no freeze (read-no problemos).
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Copy all the data off the Kingston card, format the card then copy it back on. better than defragging the card, quicker and less harm to card.
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BTW Must just say I love the game. Hate the meteors... I still found level 3 hard... but overall it rocks. I also have this left handed problem when playing shoot 'em ups on consoles. Other game types I play right handed... LOL
If there's one thing I regret it was not having more time to put into the project but you guys have done a top job and I take my hat off to Lobo, his work is awesome!
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Very minor "issue" found: Should it been possible to start the game while on the startup copyright screens? Was this intnended, I think I have not have problems with these screens, because they are not stay to long (elsewice I diddent think over that).
Level 3 is a little bit hard level, buts its a fine level which its fully completable when first found out the attactwaves. For me I dosent have any problems with meterors storms in fact you can stop the stones a bit by shooting them, but only have few problems with later attact waves.
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Copy all the data off the Kingston card, format the card then copy it back on. better than defragging the card, quicker and less harm to card.
Yep, I used to cut/paste on and off the card, unfortunately fragmentation still happens with large files. It wasn't the issue though cause I used to play anyway until all of the sudden some games started freezing or not starting at all (including warhawk). I switched to AK2 without doing anything frag-wise and it works without problems, go figure, might be a time to retire the card completely :/.
Thanx for the compliments, the best part is that it works, especially transition from 'old' levels to 'new' ones, I wasn't sure at first that it would work at all (pheew).
EDIT: Forgot this-PLIMSOLL AVENGERS!!
:D
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Gotta love the Plimsole Armada!! :D
(and all your wonderful graphical work mate!!!)
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Hehe, the best part about them is that they're completely harmless, just stand in the corner while they shoo away. :D
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LOL...
I did get hit by one, left a nasty mark...
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Just wanted to say congrats to all involved in the project.
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Thanks Tom,
Hope the holiday was ok?
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I just want to congratulate the Warhawk DS team on making it into the Top 10 R4 DS Homebrew competition 8)
We have won $25 which I'm not entirely sure what to do with but I do remember SF saying he was looking to buy an R4 card so perhaps I could ask if we could make it an R4 for SF instead? I hope he hasn't already ordered one.
Anyway it's great to see all our hard work being recognised and again I think it's a testimate to the great team we have going here and I hope we can work more together in the future. Also we need to finish a questionaire by Sunday so I'm going to send the questions to Flash.
SF please let me know ASAP if you want me to ask for an R4 card instead of the prize money.
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Congratulations :-D.
Actuelly I do have ordered a AceKard II (Flash said its awesome and I really like the GUI as well seen on youtube) for some days ago from the pcjerry Link Flash asked me and have been sent I guess (since they have "taken" the 359dkr (around 70$) from my bank account which also include a 8gb microsd card.
If I known about it I could have wait, but that it. I could still have a R4 for a alternative as well. I think its 100% up to you.
I do still need to register GoldWave..... The demo would work in some weeks I guess (I used that before, but its good to work when bulk convert samples example). But I DO register it sooner or later.
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I just want to congratulate the Warhawk DS team on making it into the Top 10 R4 DS Homebrew competition 8)
Where are the results? I can't find them! ???
Btw congratulations, really. There are really few homebrew games of WarHawkDS quality level around. Still ;)
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The results haven't been posted yet because he wants the authors to answer a questionaire which will be posted on the site along with screenshots, download details etc. I don't know what exact position we came either.
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Congratulations. That would probably mean not in the first three, right? Ah well, no love lost as usual.
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Ah, but in the first 10....
that is nearly 3? isn't it?
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Nearly. 8)
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Well.. That is close enough for me!! 8)
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Well..it could be fourth, that's even closer. ;D
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Congratulations. It really IS an impressive piece of work and it's fully deserved.
Still, it'll be really interresting to see what final position you earn.
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Congrats !
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Its was nicely to think about me as first :-D, even I allready have orded my card (thanks HeadKaze anyway).
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I've asked for an R4 instead of a cash prize now anyway. Not sure what I'll do with it yet but if noone else needs it I might give it to someone for XMas with our 3 games on it.
I am also in discussion with Flash at possibly adding some advertisements to the start of our next two games (3 seconds approx) in exchange for some free gear. If that goes ahead we are hoping to each be able to pick something from their store. This is still in idea stage so nothing is set in concrete but I would like to hear feedback on the idea. I've done this sort of thing before with "NeoFlash" so perhaps I could contact them again and maybe a store like Bamboo Gaming (they seem like a friendly bunch).
Anyway I updated Warhawk the other day to include the new intro graphics made for MMLL. And it also includes the Space Fractal logo now so you might want to download this one for your flash card.
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Seems like we all got cards here, R4 or other stuff so dunno really, do what you want with it.
The sponsoring sounds Ok, wish this was the actual way of doing things some 2-3 years ago instead of organizing compos. Actually, Neo used to do this (maybe still does, not so sure) by sending stuff for testing to some folks, kinda sponsoring them in that way besides the compos which is another story. However, if you do that, make sure that sponsor is someone who is decent enough to put in front of the game. I wouldn't really know who that might be as I'm not following stuff related to cards/manufacturers/dealers anymore.
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NeoFlash are still well respected by the homebrew scene and have always been great supporters. I have got some free gear in the past in exchange for small ads and I think it's a great idea. They do have some decent products too but I was thinking of contacting a retailer instead so we have a bit of range to choose from. I totally agree it has to be a reputable company and I won't bother going ahead with anything unless it's worth it for all of us. Anyway I think I might get a bunch of different places and contact them and see what we can come up with.
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I would been neat if this game came as DSiWare so these who not have a backup card and do want to bying the game to support us. But how its costs with the officiel SDK or such, I donny. Its also donny how much a game can been use in size?
Bear in mind most time for music is actuelly used in the Manic Miner Game.....
I still not got mine, but should arrive in the next week (its take some time from UK -> DK).
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Okay Adam got back to me and he says he can't give us an R4 because they're not a retailer anyway. It looks like he's sent the money already to my PayPal account (which is a bit strange because I never gave it to him!). I will probably end up purchasing a new DSi compatible card.
I've updated the Warhawk pages to display our new awards here (http://headsoft.com.au/index.php?category=warhawk&page=download). Also on the R4 site they are showing the 10-20 places so we're still not up there and still don't know what actual place we came lol Anyway keep an eye out at http://www.r4revolutionds.co.uk/
I would been neat if this game came as DSiWare so these who not have a backup card and do want to bying the game to support us. But how its costs with the officiel SDK or such, I donny. Its also donny how much a game can been use in size?
One of the reasons why we want to move to iPhone is because Nintendo do not support Indy developers like Apple do. I think Nintendo lose out in the long run because of this.
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Just checked your update out..
Recently Warhawk DS featured as Remake of the Month in the prestigious RetroGamer magazine (which I read religiously) which is a great honor for all of us involved.
Mate, you really should not read magazines in church... that's just badness ::)
Looks really nice with the awards mate, makes me want more........
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just funny only I and POTT actuelly got credits for the music.. but nice one anyway.
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Also on the R4 site they are showing the 10-20 places so we're still not up there and still don't know what actual place we came lol Anyway keep an eye out at http://www.r4revolutionds.co.uk/
Bronze :) Not bad :)
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It is WONDERFUL to have come third with our first DS game.. Really chuffed!!!
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"Headkaze is going to buy a flying car, and Flash wants to build an underwater norman castle. "
:D
Congrats, third is excellent indeed!
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Also - "Warhawk II DS have been mooted and also an iPhone version has been mentioned"
What is the status for these games that RBP or Proteus or whatyoucallit did back in the day for Warhawk and Horace?
WH was firebird published but who actually came up with the concepts for both? Have you any clue as to who might be holding the publishing rights for Whawk title or at least a copyright regarding this game/title/concept ? Something tells me noone really. More actually, Horace (Mystic Woods), you did the Psion version but strictly speaking whoever had the rights for that title's publishing probably doesn't hold it anymore?
Might be interesting to see one or the other on iphone if legally things can be sorted out.
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The rights to Warhawk belong jointly to Myself, Ian (Badtoad) and andrew betts (Carter).. so that is ok..
Horace in the Mystic Woods returned to me several years ago (as did Stigma).. So, I do not own the rights to Horace, but.. I own the rights to the game HTM.
It is all a bit confusing to be honest?
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The iPhones resolution would be perfect for Horace (or any Psion 3 game for that matter) but I think Horace would be too hard to control. Not all games are equally well suited to the hardware but perhaps it's possible with the right approach. I haven't tried that many games yet so I haven't seen so many ways of doing things.
Anyway, congrats on a 3rd place, although beaten by a music game and a painting game?...that sucks. :-/
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The rights to Warhawk belong jointly to Myself, Ian (Badtoad) and andrew betts (Carter).. so that is ok..
Horace in the Mystic Woods returned to me several years ago (as did Stigma).. So, I do not own the rights to Horace, but.. I own the rights to the game HTM.
Actually, that sounds quite good, meaning that you guys basically have the rights to push the title on different platform. As for Horace, I don't understand, the rights for the Mystic Wood returned to you or what?
And yes, Iphone would be perfect for Horace, I took quite a liking for the weird fluffy monster lately for no obvious reason, hmm. As for controls, trust me-speed run with Horace on Iphone would be far more suitable than with arcade controls. Reason for it is that your fingers wouldn't hurt. :P
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Well the HITMW game belongs to me, but.. the Horace character and ip still belongs to Beam software.. so... The Horace game is still possible?
Perhaps!
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Kay, well..Beam software doesn't exist in that way anymore, they point to Melbourne House and MH is now Krome Studios? Horace copyright will be in W. Tang's hands regardless of whether Beam exists anymore. It could be (or could be not) that they somehow merged with MH and © willingly transferred to them (as possible by law). Then again, that's not important as Horace is not a trademarked character and © can easily be attributed to Mr. Tang. I'm confused as to how and what kind of rights you have for the Mystic Woods? Is it just a title or usage of the character or ONLY and exclusively for the Psion platform? I'm sure that you hold all the credits in regard to making it though but that's different.
Now, in order to make it clear, please answer these questions as clear as possible, failure to do so is punishable by spanking.
So, how did it happen, did you just woke up one day and decided to make it on Psion or was there any conversation between you and Beam/MH to bring it to the Psion? I know you mention somewhere that Psion folks asked for..something, Horace in particular or any title you want? Did you ever had any contact with Beam/MH at all about MysticWoods?
Did you actually designed the whole bloody thing and the idea is yours?
You have until Tuesday to answer all this. 8)
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Anyway, congrats on a 3rd place, although beaten by a music game and a painting game?...that sucks. :-/
Those aren't games, so it means WarhawkDS got the 1st place among GAMES ;D
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Kay, well..Beam software doesn't exist in that way anymore, they point to Melbourne House and MH is now Krome Studios? Horace copyright will be in W. Tang's hands regardless of whether Beam exists anymore. It could be (or could be not) that they somehow merged with MH and © willingly transferred to them (as possible by law). Then again, that's not important as Horace is not a trademarked character and © can easily be attributed to Mr. Tang. I'm confused as to how and what kind of rights you have for the Mystic Woods? Is it just a title or usage of the character or ONLY and exclusively for the Psion platform? I'm sure that you hold all the credits in regard to making it though but that's different.
Now, in order to make it clear, please answer these questions as clear as possible, failure to do so is punishable by spanking.
So, how did it happen, did you just woke up one day and decided to make it on Psion or was there any conversation between you and Beam/MH to bring it to the Psion? I know you mention somewhere that Psion folks asked for..something, Horace in particular or any title you want? Did you ever had any contact with Beam/MH at all about MysticWoods?
Did you actually designed the whole bloody thing and the idea is yours?
You have until Tuesday to answer all this. 8)
\
Ok,
I was contacted by Psion PLC to do a Horace game for the psion. The actual idea of the game (minus the character) is mine and Psion had no involvement in the design or execution. I then sold the game to Psion and the contract of sale was (i believe) 3 years.
So, where does that leave it now? Mr. Tang (we believe) passed on. Psion is no longer a software publisher, and I have a strange rash on my testicles. Hmmm
So, the gameplay and design is still owned by Proteus Developments? The Horace character belongs to? Who?
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Those aren't games, so it means WarhawkDS got the 1st place among GAMES ;D
That's a bloody good point - We were rated the top game in the compo - WOOP!
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I just got the Warhawk DS to work on my new green Nintendo DS Lite, so I see the game in first time on the real DS :). I do need to have the card formatted with SDFormatter before the 8GB Micro-SD card got work.
The speaker do missing some bass, but have not tried to use headphone now as well, but still sound really nice on the real hw.
Thanks to include the SF logo on start-up (only why I re downloaded it again). It was not in because I did not create one when the game first got released :-D. I do still got credited by text on title screen.
Bronze for all homebrew is really really nice, and for games this was the top game in the competition.
EDIT: Spelling on the news: Warhwk?
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...and I have a strange rash on my testicles. Hmmm
So, the gameplay and design is still owned by Proteus Developments? The Horace character belongs to? Who?
Ok, for the rash, take a saguaro cactus and hold it in your underwear for a week, the indian chief told me that is the only cure for otherwise abnormal condition.
Mystic Woods belongs to you, Horace belongs to me and all your bases are be...wait, let's not.
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Congrats for your third place !
"Warhawk II DS have been mooted" :
(http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a245/Hydeux/664306.jpg)
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"Warhawk II DS have been mooted [...]"
Oh, wait, I still have to complete this! ??? (I'm stuck at 14th level since a couple of days...) >:(
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Oh, wait, I still have to complete this! ??? (I'm stuck at 14th level since a couple of days...) >:(
Deary deary me :D
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Anyway I updated Warhawk the other day to include the new intro graphics made for MMLL. And it also includes the Space Fractal logo now so you might want to download this one for your flash card.
Link? Can't find it on http://headsoft.com.au/ website... or is it 1.02 again?
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Yes, it is the same version.
Did not really warrant a version change just for a couple of altererd intro graphics really..
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no need to do that :-D. Its nothing with the gameplay to due and I was still credited, just without logo.
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Wow!!! I love reading this thread!
Reminds me of a collaboration between me and my artist friend in which we used a forum to develop a game.
http://www.shmup-dev.com/forum/index.php/topic,884.0.html
BTW, we didn't win an the game was very "unbalanced".
http://rel.betterwebber.com/index.php?action=contents&item=marvelous_twilight
I love this board!!
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It is quite nice to show the dev via a forum, though we did fall a little foul of it when the sites started posting our very early demos, a bit embarrassing.
Did not really learn by the mistake and the same think happened with the early manic miner builds as well.
Still, it is once to look back on now and again.
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Did not really learn by the mistake and the same think happened with the early manic miner builds as well.
LOL! I thought that was your FIRST and ONLY!!! Ouch!! :D :D