I have been toying with the idea of trying AstroBlaster while I get better enough to go back to Phoenix. There were a few bits of my version of Phoenix that seemed more in line with Space Invaders or Astro Blaster and I couldn't face just ripping them out and starting those bits again, so I ripped out everything else. I started grabbing the gfx and trying to capture the movement and attack waves, then I found the "Fighter pilots needed in sector wars ..." post from PacManPlus on the AtariAge forum and asked if he could help with the attack movement data. He gave me a hand and saved me years getting the attack pattern movement data sorted.
I have been working on this for two weekends and most nights this week and am rather excited, so I just had to share this. The demo so far runs at 50fps, drawing every sprite and the players ship every frame with no flicker The demo contains all eight sectors including the unreachable one. I currently have less than 1KB left, but can probably save about 1/2K by packing the movement data. It is going to be tight and I have already cut a few corners, but it does look possible.

URL:http://youtu.be/E799lN-j5WE
Thanks again PacManPlus, I probably would have given up by now if you hadn't helped me with the data.
PS Video is over 5 minutes, and is nearly finished uploading ;o

Funnily enough - this is another favourite of my wife's after Phoenix. We discovered it in the Arcades section of the Replay events - ie the real arcade cabinet. The sound from the cabinet is excellent; the explosions are really bass-y and ominous. I guess that bit can't be done on a little Beeb speaker, nor the robot voice (unless a mangled version of Speech by Superior software was used in sideways ram perhaps ???)


Once again astounded at your quick progress! The 50fps framerate looks great. Looks v close to the original again

How come this seems to be easier to code than Phoenix? Is it because you've got all the movement data from the PacManPlus guy for AstroBlaster whereas with Phoenix you've got to "hand code" the movement from scratch?

Once again - wow! It's amazing that you make so much progress in so little time.

It's great to see the Beeb being pushed like this. Just goes to show what a capable platform it is in the right hands.

Hope your health continues to improve and we can get to play these wonderful games on the Beeb.

the movement in this is only really easier in that each alien moves in the same way and they don't overlap. it doesn't hurt that i didn't have to write it down one frame at a time from a mame replay either. there are a few waves that have individual movement, but they only have four aliens and just play the same sequence with a short delay. there is lots of work to do: asteroids, collision, docking/refueling, sound, stars , delays between spawning aliens, shots, bombs, reduce the data size...

Yep I can appreciate that there's lots of stuff to do to get to a finished game!

I guess I hadn't sat down and worked out the differences between AstroBlaster and Phoenix..

Shown the Mrs your Youtube WIP and she's looking forward to playable demo once more.

i knew i should have kept quiet but i got a bit too excited when the animation code worked first time. i guess i should go and do some now inie has finished

Hi Tricky,

I must say that the game looks very good and very fast .. APPLAUSE!!!!: .... is it written for MODE1?
I guess you are using a lot of tables and predefined animated graphics and that needs a lot of space. Maybe you can make the levels auto loading or pack them into the game to save space.

Greetings
Kees

It is mode 1 - I wasn't a fan at first, but we are becoming friends
I reserve space for the 4 shifted versions and expand just the alien for the current wave.
Each level is only a few tens of bytes + the gfx.
If I kept the OS/DFS about, I could load each level, but would probably only have room for one level at a time - I guess that's all I would need
I have a cunning plan to save enough space - and I do like a cunning plan

I'm off to SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, Canada for a week, so probably no progress.

Have fun over there! It's probably good to take a break for a week, anyway.

Hi Tricky,
I also love it when a plan comes together ...

Have fun in Canada, maybe you'll come back with a few ideas for some new games ....

Greetings
Kees

Ooooh, I only ever knew the Beeb's "Positron". As with "Carnivale", it's amazing to see it all happening in MODE1 - particularly with those extra colours! Wonder what Partis would make of it?

Is it just me, or does this version look more like a Speccy game now? Maybe it's the status bar? Or the font?

Back now and on holiday this week, so family commitments apart, I'm hopping to get some progress.
Here is what I have added so far:
Fixed some of the waves (bodged a few more).
Added alien bombs, although they can't hit you yet.
Added player shooting, hitting aliens and making them explode.
Added WARP, it should last 10 seconds, which is the same as in the arcade, but as it is 50Hz, you can do a little less. I have re-enabled it each wave mostly for debugging purposes.
The next wave starts when all of the current ones are dead; you can also press SPACE to skip a level, particularly useful for the asteroid end of sector wave as you can't shoot it

keys Z,X left, right. RETURN fire, SHIFT warp, SPACE to skip rest of wave.

PS I haven't seen a spectrum version, but as it only needs to move 9/16 as much memory and can do it 16 bits at a time, it should be fairly easy

Cor blimey, I've just been playing (or rather, skipping) through the levels, and there appears to be an endless array of enemy graphics, formations and colour varations! Unbelievable stuff!

Also, I'm impressed with the speed/movement - especially how certain objects speed up suddenly (yet everything is incredibly smooth!).

Really hope you see this one through! (And once it's complete - enhanced BBC Master 128k disk version with sampled speech? ).

Its the original 7 sectors from the Arcade (v3) and the unreachable sector 8 that is only displayed in attract mode. There are 72 waves, 32 aliens each with its own sprites and attack formations, 22 movement patterns and various other data. I have tweaked a few of the formations and animations to better fit the beeb (or my laziness), but apart from that it is looking promising. I'm down to 607 bytes with no sound or joystick support yet (it takes a lot of memory to draw that quickly - how things change). I still need to do the player-bomb/alien collision (which won't be cheap), asteroid waves, docking, scoring, secret bonuses, the other formations, fuel, lazer temp, ... so as usual, it will be a real squeeze! I had thought about speech, but as with the 7800 version (which fills a 48K cartridge) we can't speak and play, so only some messages make sense.

Just had a blast Tricky, and this looks ace! what's a spectrum??....
looks more like a Ultimate Play the game release, like Jetpac /Nightshade

Do like the spinning discs on wave5

brilliant, pure Brilliant

It's looking very smooth, I must say. The synchronised movement of the enemies certainly freaks me out as much as it does in the arcade version.

MODE 1 with those extra colours looks very nice indeed!

Thanks, I've got plenty of cycles to draw the "stars", but memory is really running low - no change there

Could you write it for a Beeb with sideways ram? I reckon a fair few real Beebs still in use have sw ram and thus might be viable option?

My beeb that I have had since I was a teenager has SW RAM, but it has different addresses to most SW RAM kits!

I have just added bomb vs player collision and alien vs player proximity detection - that ate 300 bytes, but I might have miscounted somewhere as I thought bomb/player only took about 80 bytes and alien/player proximity is shorter!

323 bytes left and still a long TODO list!