Fbf Back On Track

[Justin W.]

Hello all. I have been absent from this forum for approximately the last 2 months. Because of lack of interest and too much school work I had little time to actually do any programming. Thus I wasn't here very often. I'm glad to announce my arrival back at UTI!

You probably all thought that Fate By Fire was going to dissappear as another unfinished game. Well guess again. It's back and better than ever. Expect some new things to come as it has taken full speed ahead and this time it's as a Flash App.

Meaning nearly limitless possibilities!

It was slow to take off as I had a lot of learning to do for app programming such as jump tables and formatting.

My next feat is to make Durk's grayscale package work in an application. For the most part this will be a reasonably easy task to undergo. But as a result of not using ion many of the defines have to be changed and a large portion of the routines removed. (I intend on adding some of my own new routines.) As an added challenge the variables that are to be self modified must be made RAM based so changes need to be made to durks code as to where the variables will reside. Most likely in a saferam location.

If I make it work I believe it will be the first high quality grayscale app!

Another great thing that comes from it's conversion to Flash App is the limitless new engine upgrades and options. More Tiles, possibly a larger world, more story, and more graphics. The project has been underway for about the last week now and is steasily picking up steam. Shawn and I are working our butts off to get this going.

Depending on where I decide to go with it, the game may be smaller than earlier predicted but expect alot more eye candy. Such as the fact that I estimate a possible 200 or more tiles could be added provided we need them. Another treat will be the inclusion of an animated intro movie.

Well that was long winded.

Hope you all enjoyed the newest news, and look for more of me around the forums in the future.

[b__]

I cant wait for it to come out. There havent really been any good games lately.

[interwined]

It sounds great, should be a nice game once released.

[62 52 53 53]

So, how will you separate it into the different parts?

[Justin W.]

What do you mean seperate it into parts? This is an application we're talking about. It can be as many pages as I like. I doubt I'd need all ten.

[Adm.Wiggin]

Good!!! FBF is BACK! yay!

[David]

Yes in deed!
BTW, where's Pascal?

[Justin W.]

You know David, I've been wondering that myself. I haven't seen him in month's. I finally decided to press on with my game without him. If he shows back up I'd be glad to let him back in.

[Tyler]

Amazing! Good luck converting ION into nostub!

[Justin W.]

Heh. The conversion process is nothing. Ion really doesn't differ from no-shell asm.
It's just a matter of a few different defines.

For the most part I don't use Ion routines anyways.

[Darth Android]

do you have any more eye candy for us to post?

[Justin W.]

Well here's the thing. The app only works on calc. So in order to show you a screen shot I would have to make a still pic or put together one frame by frame for an animated gif.

As of right now there isn't much to see anyways. I've finished the main GUI. And am now working on the game options setting. After I've completed that i will start on the storyline and gameplay.

[b__]

[Tyler]

That might be it, slow computers dont work too great with the sdk. I tried to convert the greystyle library into nostub, I thought I had it but I kept getting the error :

FILE TO LARGE! BINARY FILE MAY NOT BE LARGER THAN BYTES.
THE SYSTEM CANNOT FIND THE FILE SPECIFIED (<-- Because it can't move the 8xp file to the 8xp_bin directory. Yeah so its a little screwed up )

[Tyler]

You might have to load the buffers into ram memory to make it work, it would make the file much smaller and correct me if I'm wrong -- but you can't write directly into the flash app mem! (Im feeling smart lol)

[Justin W.]

In an app you cannot have self modifying code.

The conversion of the grayscale dev kit library is more complex than most would think.

[Shoester]

i hav a question: is this game going to be smooth scrolling? And if so how are u going to make it so that the the grayscale doesn't look all garbled up because it moves so fast?

[Justin W.]

Actually the game won't be smooth scrolling. The reason being that smooth scrolling vertically is simple and very fast. Horizontal smooth scrolling on the other hand is not. Now to delay the vertical scrolling to equal the speed of the horizontal slows down overall gameplay. Now with grayscale (2 buffers) it would be twice as slow, hardly worth it. Overall you have a better effect using 8*8 tile scrolling meaning a mere switch of columns of bytes. Much faster and still appropriate. Another large plus of using tile scrolling is the ability to use aligned sprite routines, meaning the overall gameplay speed is increased and sprite routines that take less memory. Thus leaving more open room for special features.

If you have any more question please feel free to post

[Darth Android]

[Justin W.]

I will be making a demo soon. Then anyone who wants can download and see it first hand. It will be a while before that is complete. I have finished the basic GUI for the game start-up and have almost completed the game settings screen.

Things the Game Settings Screen will Display:

List Items Marked with an Asterix (*) are not complete.

-Contrast Adjustment
-Interrupt Frequency Adjustment
-Battery Status*
-Calculator Type (83+ or SE)*
-Operating System*
-Free RAM
-Free ROM

All items marked are easy tasks to complete.

Once they are complete, I will begin the basic game structure.