[Ti-83plus Asm Games] Rush Hour: Greyscale

[Liazon]

it looks pretty nice from the screenshot. is that still 1 pxl movement? ya, RGP can really slow things down when you're trying to do a lot of unaligned sprites or tiles or maps. But I guess it's good if you're still using 6 mhz right?

and as someone once said, the the difference between 1, 2, and even 4 pixel movement is sometimes not noticeable at all, although blur usually gets pretty noticeable when you move more pixels at a time.

and nodoublebuffer really is a case by case basis. In this case, you might not need it. On the other hand, you might be doing this already, don't use the double buffers at plotsscreen and savesscreen if you aren't using them for something else. Instead of redrawing everything every loop, just erase and redraw what you need to move, XOR should still work. I don't know if that will work easily with your size of sprites though, but just a suggestion.

as for how your sprites look, you could always get someone else to do them so it's no big deal. I think they're fine, the light gray is a nice contrast from the white.

as for iondetect, perhaps you should look in the mario source or something. most likely the documentation is somewhat inaccurate, or the assembler is doing something unexpected (doubtful). I'm sure someone can help you with that.

great job so far though!

[WikiGuru]

thanks for your input. I'm not using double buffer, though that might be something I could try, and as far as I know it's in 6mhz mode (unless RGP's doing something about that). As for the sprites, I figured that it would be a great deal easier to do what you said about xoring, and that's what i'm doing (which is why the cursor still moves relatively fast). I have an idea on how to change the RGP file so the sprite routines are faster, i'll see if it works.

Progress Check:
As of this moment, here's what's going to be in version 1.1
- RGP
- New car sprites (flickerless 4-level greyscale for 83+SE, someone needs to test on the other calcs)
- A version for ion, and a version for MirageOS (don't know why, but what the heck)
- Works on emulators! (or should)
- enormous size and slower (thanks to RGP, but we still love it, right?)
- Constrain cursor when selecting cars (can't move cursor around if car can't move in that direction)
- New selection method (2nd to select, alpha to deselect)

I've uploaded the file (or will, right after I post this)

edit:
@liazon: i checked, and mario doesn't have included source. any other programs I could try checking?

[Liazon]

phoenix try the file extlev12 or extlev16

sounds good so far though. you probably won't need the double buffering, it'll probably just slow down more. keep in mind that RGP was designed to be appsafe, so nothing uses SMC, aside from the buffers and a couple of the timing variables. since you have a ram program, you could probably use a faster sprite routine w/ SMC.

[WikiGuru]

uhhh... every single piece of code I find that has external levels is either cryptic or very poorly documented! I couldn't figure out how it works from phoenix's or Orzunoid's code. I did learn (i think) that you need to search the vat multiple times with iondetect just to find one level, but I can't figure out how it works

[luby]

Mario uses its own version of iondetect but here might help.

[WikiGuru]

I think I've found the problem. It's not that the detection isn't working. It's that I'm looking for the wrong string! Stupid '.db $BB,$6D' at the beginning of each program... Well, this means I can finally get onto the business of actually getting external level support! (thanks, kermmartian!)

edit:
@luby, Oh yeah, there's a level, can't remember which one, but I found an error where somehow a horizontal car got onto the same line as the "you" car. I'm going to just remove the map (when I find it), but could you find one to replace it (same difficulty, which I think is expert, or advance. Can't quite recall that, either)

[luby]

It was probably a typo or a coding error on your end. If you find it, I will replace it, free of charge.

[WikiGuru]

I found it. It's expert map #29. It looks like this:
.db $03,$04,$05,$06,$07,$0A
.db $08,$00,$05,$06,$07,$0B
.db $09,$01,$02,$03,$04,$0C (problem part in bold)
.db $03,$04,$08,$00,$03,$04
.db $08,$00,$09,$05,$06,$07
.db $09,$03,$04,$05,$06,$07

Also, I would like to take this time to draw everyone's attention here. Please participate in it, it would be a great help to me

[luby]

Oddly enough, that's how you are supposed to solve that one. Remove the odd car in order to get rid of your car. Here's a different one:
Expert:
.db $05,$06,$07,$00,$08,$08
.db $08,$05,$06,$07,$09,$09
.db $09,$00,$08,$01,$01,$08
.db $03,$04,$09,$0A,$00,$09
.db $00,$00,$00,$0B,$03,$04
.db $05,$06,$07,$0C,$00,$00

[Liazon]

glad you got that resolved

[WikiGuru]

hmm... That would be my problem since I haven't implemented that part of the game yet. You can only remove 1 "you" car because it sets a flag. I was planning on implementing something like that sometime in the future (so you can have 2 cars you need to remove)

[WayneWalker]

This does not work on mine (Ti-84+) for some reason.
I've tried the Ion version and Mirage version both do this.

[bananaman]

Have you downloaded tr1p1ea's lcd fix program.

It looks like you have bad hardware in your calc that needs to have the driver fixed.

[calculators_yay]

Yeah I have similar problems. Where can I get this "lcd fix" program?

[WikiGuru]

Oh, wow. I have never encountered that problem. Then again, I don't have an 84+. Is this what will happen on all 84+'s when it runs my program without the LCD patch?

edit:

I have a question. I've implemented a method of tracking whether you've beaten a map or not, but I'm not quite sure where i'm going to display the text. Which option should I choose (see attached screenies)?

[TheStorm]

This is where you can get the lcd fix just run it once after every ram clear. and you shouldn't have issues. http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/366/36608.html

[Liazon]

i like option 2

[DarkerLine]

My vote goes for option 2 as well.

[WikiGuru]

ok, looks unanimous :biggrin: I've implemented option 2. Now to keep working on an external level support and the editor. I'll create a format so people can start compiling their own levels on the computer

[alexrudd]

Option two, but move the Level and difficulty up a pixel or two.