Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo] / Double Action 53

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tepples
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by tepples »

RFK clearance get! That fills one slot.
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NESHomebrew
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by NESHomebrew »

tepples wrote:RFK clearance get! That fills one slot.
Nice! How are we doing for space?
tepples
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by tepples »

I've replaced Snail Maze Game with 1007 Bolts because the former's maps are a direct copy of the maps in Sega's version, which could get us in legal trouble.

RFK took one 32K slot and some CHR space in the unused portions of other games' slots, leaving us with 14 games, 2 toys, and four free 32K slots. That can change based on a couple things. For now I'm assuming that NovaSquirrel's FALSE interpreter won't push his app collection above the 16K that I've already allocated to SFX Editor. And Pong 198x could be re-added if its redesigned single-player mode matures.
tepples
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by tepples »

Today in #nesdev:

<tepples> I don't think Snail Maze Game will make it into Double Action 53. There's plenty of space, but the maps are identical to Sega's.
<Roth> No probs. I kinda figured that would end up happening, so I'm not too butthurt. Only slightly ; )
<tepples> If I were doing it, I'd make an Eller's algorithm maze generator and just store the seeds
<Roth> Eh, it was what it was. I wanted to try and port something simple to get back into the swing of programming, so it was a success in that regard.
<tepples> thanks for understanding
<Roth> no biggie
JRoatch
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by JRoatch »

I would like to submit this to the multi-cart, but it requires about 200 bytes of code to execute before the menu initializes. The rest of the code compiles to less then 1KiB, and can fit comfortably in the apps bank.

also since I'm kind of free now, Is there anything I can do to help prepare this volume of action 53?
tepples
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by tepples »

I wonder what the core dump could be used for. Is it that the player would hold a button while pressing Reset to see a core dump of the most recent game?
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by JRoatch »

tepples wrote:I wonder what the core dump could be used for. Is it that the player would hold a button while pressing Reset to see a core dump of the most recent game?
Yes for that purpose (also to see what the nes starts out with on cold boot), but with v1.2 no button holding on reset is necessary. When the boot section is installed at reset*, and the app part as an menu activity, all the user has to do is start the activity to view the ram contents since reset.

*: with chr ram bank switching, and erasing a magic string as well.
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by tepples »

It's possible, but I'll have to wait for INL to OK it because it'd involve running two more traces to the CHR RAM.
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by JRoatch »

tepples wrote:It's possible, but I'll have to wait for INL to OK it because it'd involve running two more traces to the CHR RAM.
oops, I didn't even think about that. If it's too expensive, I can change it to use the button routine from 1.1 or something.
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NESHomebrew
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by NESHomebrew »

So unless there are any more last minute entries that I'm not aware of, should we set a cutoff date so we can finalize the build?
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by JRoatch »

I'll vote +1 to a cutoff.

If it's ok, I would like to see the current build to see where we are at. (at least from here)

can old (before 2011) homebrew games be possibly included? While gathering games to showcase for a play-through marathon, I may have found a few that could be included, but I realize that authors might be hard to contact. Filler like famitracker music, or a gallery of concept screen shots would work as well, considering there has been recently some very neat things posted in that area.
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by tepples »

43110 wrote:can old (before 2011) homebrew games be possibly included?
Yes. The first multicart included Munchie Attack, a very old homebrew by Memblers. These five things are necessary:
  1. The author can be contacted, or the ROM is already distributed under a license that allows distributing copies for a fee. (This includes all free software licenses.)
  2. The game isn't an obvious infringement, such as using Mario or Pac-Man sprites.
  3. The game uses NROM (#0), CNROM (#3), BNROM (#34), AOROM (#7), or UNROM (#2 or #180).
  4. The game is playable with a standard controller.
  5. The game is (subjectively) better than most of the games on Action 52.
Filler like famitracker music, or a gallery of concept screen shots would work as well
Get permission and I'll see what I can do to fill the remaining 128 KiB out of the projected 512 KiB cart. I'll also bug NovaSquirrel to finish his "toy box", even if it means removing the unfinished FALSE interpreter.
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by NovaSquirrel »

My FALSE implementation had weird bugs involving corruption of the interpreter's stack, which I had trouble isolating and mostly came up in more complex programs. Typing in programs without a keyboard (I don't have a Famicom and a keyboard, and assume most people don't, so I never added support for that) is annoying enough that I didn't really see fixing it as very urgent.

I made a build of the toybox with just Life:
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NESHomebrew
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by NESHomebrew »

We could always fill the extra space with some original music. I'm sure we could find some willing participants.
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Re: Results and Downloads posted [2014 Compo]

Post by tepples »

Today NovaSquirrel and I were recording a few gameplay videos to promote DA53. We managed to get a complete 5-round game of RHDE on DVD+RW. But during the process, we found problems with a few of the games. Currently Function and Sliding Blaster are failing lot check.

Flicker
Hardware showed a serious flicker problem with 1007 Bolts and Function that the more lenient FCEUX did not. It's as if the PPU update code doesn't finish on time.
  • In 1007 Bolts, once I got to the first speedup, the bolts flickered horribly. It turned out the OAM upload was at the end of the NMI handler, after all the game logic, instead of at the beginning. I moved it to the beginning, which fixed it.
  • The background in Function is "bouncy" in some CPU/PPU alignments, looking more like an Action 52 refugee at times. In FCEUX I noticed sprite 0 activity for some reason. It appears to be waiting for the end of vblank, busy-waiting about 16 more scanlines, and then enabling rendering. It also disables rendering early at Y=206, which causes known problems with OAM refresh. I'll try to get in touch with Denine.
Report from Nova
FALSE is out and Conway's Life is in. He's also given me clearance to drop his sound effect editor in favor of mine, though I'll have to patch out the battery support to get the builder to recognize it. He's made some minor improvements to Double Action Blaster Guys. But there's a crash bug related to pickups in Sliding Blaster that he's working on troubleshooting.
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