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Forums > C64 Coding > Pinball Dreams discussion forum
2003-02-13 19:16
WVL

Registered: Mar 2002
Posts: 898
Pinball Dreams discussion forum

Hey guys/girls,

instead of updating my homepage all the time, I though I could open a new thread here instead. This will also allow other ppl to comment on the development.

okay, so whassup at the moment?

Well, Last month I completely restarted from scratch on the code. Why? Well, first I wanted to concentrate more on getting the game to run in less memory, also I wanted to focus more on accurate simulation of the ball and some small other things...

What I have done till now :

1 - spawned the ball ;-)
2 - added gravity to the surroundings, the gravity data is now RLE encoded, so it doesn't take up much memory anymore. Used to eat 20 blocks of memory, now I think a map would use 3-4 blocks..
3 - I changed the gravity routine to use polar-based vectors instead of cartesean, much more accurate!
4 - added a debug mode to the movement routines, you're able to pick up the ball with the firebutton and move it around. Let go of the button and you drop it on the table again.
5 - Worked on an accurate (within 1 'bradian' degree) direction calculation routine. This routine will be used for both friction calculations and calculating new directions after collisions. So it needs to be
6 - added a (simple) friction routine.
7 - I put a small preview on the web ;-)

get it at http://www.interstyles.nl/pinball.rar

okay, what am I up to now?

1 - increase the speed accuracy to 24 bit, I need this because the friction only affects speed in the last 3 bits or so, so it's not accurate at all..
2 - add spin to the ball, so it is allowed to roll.. (also gives effect to the ball like top-spin and such)
3 - dunno yet, I'll see what is the next logical step after that.. probably the new method of collision detection, dunno..

I'm thinking of putting the sourcecode online as ascii file, so everyone can check it out...

Suggestions? Questions? other stuff?

greets, Werner
 
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2004-01-09 11:34
WVL

Registered: Mar 2002
Posts: 898
HURRAH! ;) I could've thought of that myself, but how about detecting the 2 different NTSC-timings?

I remember there being 2, one with 64 and one with 65 cycles/raster. (65 is the most common?) Should one take care of both versions, or only the most common one?
2004-01-09 11:55
WVL

Registered: Mar 2002
Posts: 898
Also, I just uploaded the latest version, with the 100% collision and bouncing routine added...

can everyone please test this? if you see weird things happening, please reset, save mem $4200-$4a00 to a file, and send it to me with a small description of what went wrong...

http://www.interstyles.nl/MAIN2.PRG
http://www.interstyles.nl/MAIN.TXT

warning : the game will go into an endless loop if you position the ball with your joystick inside the wall. take special care at the edges!!! the wall table is made like the ball is square, not round (easy to fix, but work for nothing ;) You will see what I mean when (after the ball has settled on one of the walls, you move it along the wall). In the real game all this data will ofcourse be fixed, don't worry!!
2004-01-09 16:21
Matt

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 598
hey WVL I just tested the routine and everything looks damn fine to me ;)
have you any idea when this project will be finished? it looks very promising alright! keep it up

cheers!
2004-01-09 16:42
Steppe

Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510
I don't know how to say it, but the movement of the ball looks too unnatural compared to a real pinball. It "feels" as if the ball consists of rubber gum rather than metal. And the acceleration is much too high when the ball comes very close to the wall, it gets attracted as if the wall is magnetic.
But this can probably be easily fixed or adjusted by fiddling with the gravity parameters.

Apart from that everything looks pretty nice so far, thumbs up!
2004-01-09 17:01
MagerValp

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1074
Quote: HURRAH! ;) I could've thought of that myself, but how about detecting the 2 different NTSC-timings?

I remember there being 2, one with 64 and one with 65 cycles/raster. (65 is the most common?) Should one take care of both versions, or only the most common one?


Don't bother with 64 cycle NTSC, the machines are rare and buggy - every active user over there uses C128s or newer C64s anyway.

As for SuperCPU detection, it's as simple as checking bit 7 in $D0BC. Take a look at Go64's SuperCPU tutorials for more info:

http://www.go64.de/english/scpu_e/
2004-01-09 18:39
Pater Pi
Account closed

Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 121
Hejsan WVL,
made it crash. (Whole thing freezed, also had some biiiig frame-jumps (meaning the engine seemed to freeze after the ball hitting the bar in the middle at some very flat angle and then suddenly it was beamed to another place on the screen)
Where should i send the memory-capture too?
greets,
pi
2004-01-09 19:07
WVL

Registered: Mar 2002
Posts: 898
mem snapshots to : pinball@interstyles.nl

as for the way the ball behaves, everything depends on parameters and tables right now so it all can be changed... but I won't do that until I have a real pinball table to try it in.
2004-01-09 22:33
WVL

Registered: Mar 2002
Posts: 898
btw, right now no more memdumps please ;) I already received 2 in my mailbox, and together with my own should have enough info to fix some bugs.. so please wait for the next test-version before sending in!

(already fixed 2 small bugs in the code thanx to the memdumps!! (which caused the freezing of the screen), but there's still the bug inside which 'teleports' the ball after a collision.. hmmmm..)
2004-01-10 02:40
WVL

Registered: Mar 2002
Posts: 898
I already put up a new version (same URL's as before), with a couple of bugs less.. there's still one left I know of, but you wouldn't notice (I guess, it's not really a bug, just something that's inaccurate a bit ;)

following stuff should be fixed :

- a bit faster routine
- no more freezing (unless you place the ball inside a wall with your joystick)
- the ball will now touch the wall if the ball is on the right of the wall, instead of having a one-pixel distance..
- no more 'teleporting' of the ball when it hits a wall under certain conditions (I HOPE)
- some more small bugs...

I also increased the size of the history, now runs from $4200-$6200. So if you run into something weird, send back this memory area, okay?

going to sleep now...
2004-01-15 15:09
WVL

Registered: Mar 2002
Posts: 898
new version is available from the usual URL..

please test!

this version has had some more bugfixing, and has had the ball shooter added (which still has a bug in it ;))

also some other stuff, see the sourcecode for details.

edit : btw, can someone look at the 'detectmodel' subroutine and tell me why the AR/RR detection doesn't work?

question 2 : because of JB's real-life problems, I'm looking for someone to finish conversion of the bitmap-graphics for the game.. this is how far I've got myself (based on the first version by JB)

http://www.interstyles.nl/bitmap.gif
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