MMLL Development Diary

sverx · **Reply #270 on:** September 16, 2009, 07:15:37 am

Quote from: spacefractal on September 15, 2009, 06:31:09 pm

Can all music and level graphics been loaded from a external rom area to memory, so a lots of internal memory can been saved and possible to extend the 4MB used (if required)?

Using a filesystem. EFS/NitroFS for example. Then the XMs will be files that would be loaded when needed.
I have unreleased functions -but I can share them if needed- for that, if that will be the chosen path... but it seems to me Flash has a different idea (and I think that he's right, we don't need it...)

Bye!

flash · **Reply #271 on:** September 16, 2009, 07:21:03 am

The addition of the file system also causes compat probs with several cards - it is best to keep the entire data within the executable area. With Warhawk, we had no choice because we wanted the fantastic soundtrack. This was something the original was remembered for! Manic Miner has never been in this position on the spectrum.. Though the music we have now is wonderful.. We still have room for several more tunes.

sverx · **Reply #272 on:** September 16, 2009, 07:35:20 am

Quote from: Flash on September 16, 2009, 07:21:03 am

The addition of the file system also causes compat probs with several cards

Yeah, I've read about those problems.

Btw I'm very curious to know how many tunes are there now and how many tunes are going to be in the final version. And the size of them (min-max). Flash knows what I'm thinking

flash · **Reply #273 on:** September 16, 2009, 09:21:16 am

Yes, I have an idea

At the moment there are 11 tunes ranging from 7k to 280k, though I think (with the movie levels and completion/game over) there will be around 18-20 tunes.

spacefractal · **Reply #274 on:** September 16, 2009, 11:32:06 am

I still not having plan to use the first song I created that use whole 280KB memory (still to much I say), which was before I got the idea about variours themes of the same song. I have sent you a another tune in mp3 preview per email. check that out in little different style, but still very Reggie.

Gameover, levelend (apart if you want to use the first sample you got which works quite well) tunes and other jingles would been in a shared xm with subtunes. Here the organs can works very well, quite like the title tune.

movie tunes would do the same, but own patches and plans to use 8 channels (so I can use full chords using 3 channels and not as one channel which mostly used ingame).

List of movies BTW? plans to do snippets of it like same way the game, Blagger goes to Hollywood does, here More loop friendly. Much faster to do that in shared xm.

First one would been little GB snippet.

I look on demo soon and trying to complete the new level, but a bit tired today and a lots to do today with friends.

sverx · **Reply #275 on:** September 16, 2009, 12:46:25 pm

Oh, it's finally starting to work

Here's the idea: gzip the XMs and uncompress them (with zlib) when it's needed. That requires an uncompress buffer (mallocated at run time) that should be at least as big as the bigger file. But this way the space occupied in the NDS by the XMs will be about 2/3 ... so it means we need to do some calculations.

Btw it can be a good idea if we have some files having all almost the same size, IMHO.

At the moment I've got a demo partially working. It decompresses but it gives error but the XM loads ok. Weird.

Well, tell me your opinion before I spend too many hours on it

Bye!

flash · **Reply #276 on:** September 16, 2009, 12:56:23 pm

I knew that was what you were thinking LOL

The idea is sound (no pun intended)

All depends on decompression speed

sverx · **Reply #277 on:** September 16, 2009, 01:27:45 pm

Quote from: Flash on September 16, 2009, 12:56:23 pm

The idea is sound

Quote from: Flash on September 16, 2009, 12:56:23 pm

All depends on decompression speed

mmm... I don't know how to measure it.

Looks like it's taking (with no$gba on my PC, will run tests on hardware later...) about 400 ms for decompressing a ~400KB gzip'd XM to his original size (~600KB) but this is twice the size of our currently bigger tune, right?

flash · **Reply #278 on:** September 16, 2009, 01:32:38 pm

Yes, so....

Based on that - we SHOULD be ok?

Sadly, there is only one way to really know - and that is to test it (in game that is)

sverx · **Reply #279 on:** September 16, 2009, 01:50:31 pm

I've got some more tests to run anyway... because at the moment there are some things I still have to deal with. One is that you need to manually edit (with an hex editor) each .gz file to make the decompression work, the other is that it gives an error even if it decompress just fine. I'm working on both, I'll let you know.

spacefractal · **Reply #280 on:** September 16, 2009, 04:14:06 pm

Im still not home... So no new general tunes before tomorrow. I guess the endlevel sample should been used and allready here use the other processor for decompression so it can been ready faster?

headkaze · **Reply #281 on:** September 17, 2009, 01:02:30 am

Not a bad idea SF, you could send a pointer to the compressed data over to the ARM7 which can have the buffer there, decompress and play. Although sverx's xm lib has the load routine on the arm9 side. Doesn't sound like zlib will take that long to decompress and it would only be done at the start of the level anyway. Are you considering adding zlib compression support to the actual xm lib itself?

Also what are you using to compress the xm's? Perhaps you need to use a different tool to compress them? I assume your using Sektor's ndszlib port along with gzip rather than something like 7Zip?

Lobo · **Reply #282 on:** September 17, 2009, 03:53:39 am

Need to go slightly off the XM topic to something else for a moment. I've told Flash about it but the rest of you folks should know. It is something that has been bothering me for years about news posting but now it's just-broke that fukin camel's back with a stupid straw.

Sadly, I've discovered today while looking for the original Lost Levels pictures (similar to what Flash has posted on the first page) that a 'DEMO' of MMLL DS has been 'released' to the public, apparently today.

Ok, head hurts. For whoever did this first (cause the rest just copy/pasted and slightly modified that 'news') and I think I know who did it, this news has spread all over the place oddly and it's one wrong case after another. In case any of you unregistered viewers here are from those places which have posted the 'news' of the 'demo', let me clarify a few things (before Flash wakes up and eat you alive, deservedly so).

MANIC MINER LL DS DEMO WAS NEVER RELEASED. NEVER.

Hope that makes sense. What has been posted on some sites is unfortunately that pre Alpha Alpha Alpha Alpha Alpha of the Alpha test for speed and collision. Not a DEMO and especially so no one was 'granted to try out the Demo' (cause you're cool or something) so far except that the news about the game was posted on RR, deservedly so as the folks over there DO check the news before posting it, not just randomly jump to conclusions about what is going on. Needles to say they use brains more than CTRL+C & CTRL+V in order to make something that can be called 'NEWS'.

And yes, this is bullshit to see things happening in such wild, disorganized and ultimately wrong and disrespectful way toward the authors. Not only that the news posted about the build is wrong (demo and alpha test are different things, very) but the news about remake is completely wrong!

If the original poster of this 'news' took his frickin time to skim through the odd 19 pages so far, he would realize that this game IS NOT a ZX remake but collection of Lost Levels from systems in range from GBA to ORIC and odd ones in between, made in one place for the first time on DS with inclusion of 'custom levels'. That is what this game is all about.

But, 19 pages is too much, it's easier to simply Cut/Paste whatever you find on page 1 and throw in a mix of pictures you find and voila~ my webpage lives!

This is amateurish bullshit and completely wrong way of informing the audience out there by force feeding them with news taken out of context. In my writing class in college, anyone posting this as news based on such research would get minus F(ucked) ~ for eternity!

Just not fukin cool! Reason to get upset? We're all here bustin' asses to make it work and you can't put two and two together? Can't wait a fukin month or two before it's released? Can't ASK for news, ask for details, ask for an actual demo? Instead you just blindly jump to conclusions or whatever fits your understanding as long as it fills the fukin news page on your fukin websites for today and then you'll see what to do tomorrow, rip some other bullshit news, 'Hey, I've heard that Warhawk is in development for DS, let's make the news cause it might be out in October'!

THANKS A FUKIN BUNCH!

Ok, guys, continue with that Xm problem...

headkaze · **Reply #283 on:** September 17, 2009, 05:10:27 am

Wow that really is an early beta. Infact the only binary posted here and in the second post. I don't know what to say about it other than the same thing happened to Warhawk DS and it just seems like this "war" between websites to get the first post/news out about a game. Once one posts it they all do. I think the most annoying part is it always seems to be a really early alpha and in some ways embarrassing because it's not intended for the public. Even now if you search "Warhawk DS" on Google 5 results down is a really eary alpha version of Warhawk that got leaked out.

My personal pet peeves about a news item is (1) Getting the facts wrong (like even simple things like who the author(s) of the game are) (2) Releasing early alpha tests that are obviously not meant for public release (3) Hosting the binaries even when specifically asked to link back to a website.

Why release a pre-alpha anyway? It's not like you can play the game or get any sort of enjoyment out of it. It doesn't really make sense. There is nothing wrong with posting a news item about an "upcoming game" that's "in development", "coming soon" but why bother posting a binary and having people think it's some sort of official demo?

sverx · **Reply #284 on:** September 17, 2009, 07:09:20 am

Oh wow...

how do they get that demo? I'm sure I didn't give it anybody, not even my closest friends!

Btw now I think you should write a news in the homepage about the fact that this 'release' it's not -yet- a demo but a leaked developing version. Then maybe we could move all the posts from this topic to a new one and replace them with a single post (with the very same link) so that everybody following the link will hit that message. IMHO, of course.

edit: oh, now I see... it's the .rar attached at one of the first posts of this topic! What the f=$£...

flash · **Reply #285 on:** September 17, 2009, 07:16:33 am

Yes, it is bloody annoying when one person spots an executable of a game in VERY early stages and posts this as NEWS! We had exactly the same happen with Warhawk a while before Lobo had joined the team. So, a terrible looking very early demo of that was spread as "Warhawk DS Released", much like now?

Perhaps I should not have posted that demo all that time ago? But.. then again.. This is ours website and why the hell can we not post demo's? It is nice to show the very early production of a game and that version was posted to allow people to give me feedback on if I had the play mechanics right before I went full steam ahead and got to work on the rest of the code.

The sad thing (as HK noted) is that even after full release, these pre-alphas (just look at the filename for the original picture) will still linger everywhere, and some will not even cover the release..

It makes me mad!!! Why the hell would someone think that posting news on that would gain Kudos? Madness!!

sverx · **Reply #286 on:** September 17, 2009, 07:31:38 am

Back to the XM-zlib topic... no, I'm still not planning to make a release library out of it, but... who knows

I made a couple more test yesterday... the only important thing I discovered is that on my DS it's a bit slower than on my PC with no$gba (I couldn't believe that!). So decompressing a 400 KB gzip'd XM back to his original size (almost 600 KB) takes ~480 ms (125 uncompressions in 60 seconds) on my NDSLite. All that is done on ARM9 of course, since it's done in the loading side of the library, not on the replaying side.

Quote from: headkaze on September 17, 2009, 01:02:30 am

Also what are you using to compress the xm's? Perhaps you need to use a different tool to compress them? I assume your using Sektor's ndszlib port along with gzip rather than something like 7Zip?

I'm using Sektor's port and I'm g-zipping file with a g-zipping tool I already have on this PC. But the uncompress() function takes an input buffer containing a deflated bitstream, but the gzip file has its file header but the stream header is missing. And I also suspect (I'm still investigating this) that the CRC of the file is different from that of the stream, thus the error I'm still getting even if the decompression is working.

I hope I'll work it out in a couple of days

flash · **Reply #287 on:** September 17, 2009, 07:35:29 am

I am looking forward to it, and if you can get it working, it would still be a great addition to the library.

Decompression will only need to be done at level start, so a handful of millisecs SHOULD not be a problem and the saving in space should be very welcome.

sverx · **Reply #288 on:** September 17, 2009, 07:52:58 am

Quote from: Flash on September 17, 2009, 07:35:29 am

a handful of millisecs SHOULD not be a problem and the saving in space should be very welcome.

I think it'll take 1/4 of a second for an XM whose original size is around 300 KB. I also forgot to ask what's the total size of the all XMs so far... just curiosity

spacefractal · **Reply #289 on:** September 17, 2009, 08:04:16 am

I just remember 2 very early demos (alpha really) actually got released in one of the first pages (when backgrounds was going to been experiments), but annoyring if people think this is the officiel demo, which is not.

This is why we need some news post in the frontpage about the status to make sure, due I guess no one read this very long thread.

I have never releaseed any newer betas (MMLL or nor TDG) or such I have got by emails. I might shortly shown it to a very close friend, but he have only seen that, not played.

PS. Why are my logo in the credits screen lighther than others and not back background?

Lobo · **Reply #290 on:** September 17, 2009, 08:31:32 am

No, noone here leaked anything, that's for sure. What happened is that one person came casually to the forum, strolled through the first page of MM diary, looking for some 'fresh' news for his fukin site. What do you know, he finds something in .rar that is an .nds file, download it, host it at his site, call it 'NEWS', 'DEMO' and then the rest of the sites followed with minor changes or complete cut/paste posting. And the .rar in question, now this is funny, is 25 DAYS OLD!

Released on August 23rd and the day its being posted as a 'DEMO' was yesterday, September 17.
Just WOW!
If those people are really following developers and their work (which they're not), they wouldn't wait for 25 frickin days to release an alpha test! Why wasn't it posted 25 days ago then?

Because it was random visit and random scavenging/leech sort which made that 'news'.
And yeah, like in case of Warhawk, this might as well be for some 'that final version or news about the game', not to mention bloody confusion that this can generate. It's ADIOS BRAINS formula that these sites are operating on, like HK says, just posting anything to stay relevant in some petty war they're waging, to them news means quantity of information, not quality and they don't give a shit about developers, just that shiny banner (or 300 of them) to bring them a buck or two from sponsors because they GOT NEWS. They're just pathetic.

Seriously, I'm disgusted after seeing this but it teaches a few lessons, one very important-
don't post binaries around the site anymore until the game is finished, send it via email and we're fine. At least not to give the reason to random lurker to degenerate the information as they see it fit!

Good thing that at least TDG never got any binaries posted, pheeew...

Now, Ok..back to XM, hope it works out fine.

Oh and fix that spacefractal logo, seems lighter

, I'm off to bed.

spacefractal · **Reply #291 on:** September 17, 2009, 08:56:39 am

hey where do you live? its morning here in Denmark (10:56) :-D

RevStu · **Reply #292 on:** September 17, 2009, 08:58:49 am

Hello! Just thought I should join in, really. I have to say I'm absolutely gobsmacked at the progress that's been made on this, and the new graphics look astonishingly good. (Can't comment on gameplay or music as it seems the alpha version isn't available now, except for the one that DS-Scene have just leaked.) I'm especially happy that Flash is focusing on making the levels as close to the originals as possible, rather than tweaking them to make them easier - some of them are extremely hard, but they're supposed to be. 20 stages isn't a lot in this day and age, and you don't want people zipping through them in half an hour. (The stages in Super Mario Bros The Lost Levels were brutally tough too.)

Just wanted to throw in my 2p on the extra-levels thing. To me, it's important that The Lost Levels stands alone, including only levels that were in official MM releases. The idea of including other new levels is great, but my personal feeling is that they should be kept separate from the main game. The SAM Coupe version of MM had three totally separate level sets in it, and I'd like to see any extra levels appear as a separate game mode, either available from the start or unlocked when you finish the main game.

I've already messaged Flash to offer some story text to appear between levels, which could be adapted from the original copy I wrote for Retro Gamer and appear in a nice little scroll like the one seen in the Horace screenshot in this thread. Very very excited at developments so far, can't wait to see more...

flash · **Reply #293 on:** September 17, 2009, 09:14:58 am

Quote from: Lobo on September 17, 2009, 08:31:32 am

Oh and fix that spacefractal logo, seems lighter , I'm off to bed.

That was fixed in the latest version emailed yesterday

flash · **Reply #294 on:** September 17, 2009, 09:23:07 am

Great to see you on the board Stuart...

Quote from: RevStu on September 17, 2009, 08:58:49 am

Hello! Just thought I should join in, really. I have to say I'm absolutely gobsmacked at the progress that's been made on this, and the new graphics look astonishingly good. (Can't comment on gameplay or music as it seems the alpha version isn't available now, except for the one that DS-Scene have just leaked.) I'm especially happy that Flash is focusing on making the levels as close to the originals as possible, rather than tweaking them to make them easier - some of them are extremely hard, but they're supposed to be. 20 stages isn't a lot in this day and age, and you don't want people zipping through them in half an hour. (The stages in Super Mario Bros The Lost Levels were brutally tough too.)

Some levels have 'minor' tweaks, not to make them easier, but to make them possible. The problem is, Oric - different jump mechanic, when you jump and hit a platform above, you fall in the direction of the jump. Archimedes - The jump distance is a few pixels longer than the original, etc...
Also, I have struggled for ages on "In a deep dark hole" to try and map the invisible platforms... ha ha - I cannot guarantee they are 100%, but it is hard and plays well..

Quote

Just wanted to throw in my 2p on the extra-levels thing. To me, it's important that The Lost Levels stands alone, including only levels that were in official MM releases. The idea of including other new levels is great, but my personal feeling is that they should be kept separate from the main game. The SAM Coupe version of MM had three totally separate level sets in it, and I'd like to see any extra levels appear as a separate game mode, either available from the start or unlocked when you finish the main game.

I think that is the way we will go.. Either, unlocked after completion (my fave idea) or accessable as another set from the title?

Quote

I've already messaged Flash to offer some story text to appear between levels, which could be adapted from the original copy I wrote for Retro Gamer and appear in a nice little scroll like the one seen in the Horace screenshot in this thread. Very very excited at developments so far, can't wait to see more...

I will look into that, and perhaps send you a Demo soon (if you wish?)
I just don't want to cause too much of a delay between levels.. I will see how it goes hopefully today, all being well.

spacefractal · **Reply #295 on:** September 17, 2009, 09:31:08 am

haha, I just checkout demo, and I was just up from bed and did not have time yesterday.

Then I gonna think I release that demo on my site..... Just kidding.

And yes the sf logo is now much better :-D

I just tested some of the new levels (with cheat).

In a Deep Dark Hole is evil, which require some attempts, but its actually possible to complete that one.

Just playing other levels now....

flash · **Reply #296 on:** September 17, 2009, 09:34:59 am

Quote from: RevStu on September 17, 2009, 08:58:49 am

Hello! Just thought I should join in.....

Might I add to that, "About bloody time"

spacefractal · **Reply #297 on:** September 17, 2009, 09:41:14 am

In Bright Light, Bright Light seen not possible, due you allways hit the lamp on the top (you allways stop on convolve)?

flash · **Reply #298 on:** September 17, 2009, 09:46:28 am

There is a switch on the left hand side that will reverse the conveyor belt

spacefractal · **Reply #299 on:** September 17, 2009, 09:56:37 am

that one is not easy to spot, since it very integrated into the foreground. I did once and did not noticed it got reserved.... elsewise its a nice level.

I got The Dragon Users Bonus completed. Howover I think I took the keys i wrong order, so it was not the fastest route I took.

Does the animals walk in the air in Eddie's Forest? That look a bit odd and should been something bird or something that.

Would been nice if the Willy got something Attribute clash in the Spectrum level for simulate more the original?