Author Topic: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime  (Read 39691 times)

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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #30 on: December 19, 2013, 12:30:38 am »
I like the tiles ideas. :D I am curious about how it will be when we can fall off the track and die. :P

By the way, since this seems like an official game project, do you think we should move this topic to the HP Prime projects sub-forum at http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?board=212.0 ? (Other calc projects and ideas->HP Prime)
« Last Edit: December 19, 2013, 12:32:38 am by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline MacBernick

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #31 on: December 19, 2013, 08:21:18 am »
Thank you. I still have important things to do at work so my progress on this is slower and my answers shorter, one week to go like this I guess.

I don't know what's the best place to put it, just do as you think it is best. I came here in the first place because a search engine drove me to the Prime Hack thread, as people in this forum seem to be cool I decided to post my project here, but I admit I didn't think about where exactly it would fit best.

I spam amazon twice a day about my lost-in-post Prime, with no success atm. If I have no news in a few day I'll go for a refund and order it somewhere else. Oh and I saw a ti84-plus CSE at quite a good price (those little things are really expensive here in France) on another www site, I ordered it today too ^^ Is there any good (and accurate :p ) emulator for this one yet ? I tried a 84-plus SE (not C) emulator (was Wabbit the name ? something like that) that seems good, those two machines are quite compatible I guess ?

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #32 on: December 19, 2013, 09:14:39 am »
Both are 15 MHz and have similar hardware except the hidden RAM (unless the 84+ you get is from before April 2007, where the hidden RAM, 128 KB, is identical). As for emulators, the only emulators I know of for the color model is jsTIfied (although it requires an high end computer) and I think that some recent versions of TilEm have color 84+ support too there, but it's lost somewhere on Cemetech forums.
« Last Edit: December 19, 2013, 09:17:16 am by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline MacBernick

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #33 on: December 27, 2013, 08:47:18 am »
Hiii guys !

I have more time now, and my Prime is on its way to my home, should be here tomorrow or so, at last ! This game will soon be finished !


Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #34 on: December 27, 2013, 11:33:10 am »
Glad to hear! Also did Amazon tell you that? I hope so. Also I heard that UPS had many delays over here lately, which caused much backlash from customers, so I assume that USPS and others did too.

Just a suggestion, though: Try to continue coding on the computer then when ready to test speed on calc, close the connectivity kit then connect the calc then send the file with the emulator (it takes several seconds). Otherwise, it's a bit annoying on the calculator because some symbols are harder to access and the editor kinda lags when the code is large. At least the HP Prime makes this much easier compared to TI calcs, because with TI calcs, most emulators lack the support to send directly to the calculator, so there are many steps required to test on a real calculator for those who code on the computer.

Offline MacBernick

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #35 on: December 27, 2013, 09:32:30 pm »
I had a refund from the Amazon vendor and I ordered a new one somewhere else.

Yes I'm going finish dev on computer before testing on calc, except when I'm not at home.

Right now I'm working on some stuff that does not require accurate timings like loading/ending screens, credits and things like that.

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #36 on: December 27, 2013, 10:09:36 pm »
Oh ok that's good. IMHO I don't plan on ever ordering from Amazon vendors again. I had too many bad experiences with them compared to Ebay sellers.

Regardless, though, backup often. Losing progress every 5 minute is annoying and I see your program is getting a bit large, so inevitably the emulator might crash more.

Also for the title screen and stuff, do you plan to use some special effects like fade in/out? (see other thread)

Offline MacBernick

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #37 on: January 03, 2014, 07:44:58 pm »
New update :)

Yes I think I'd like some cool transitions like the ones you do.

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #38 on: January 03, 2014, 08:53:36 pm »
I like the new track and graphics. It looks very nice. I also like how the ball appears below the track, it looks good when falling down. Also lol it's quite hard actually. Hopefully the final version has multiple levels with different difficulties. :P

Just a few things:

-Do you ever plan to move the track at the bottom of the screen and add a sky at the top with an HUD? It might look more polished/professional that way, else people might think the game was rushed if it remains with the bottom half of the screen nearly empty.

-If BLIT_P(G1,  xEnds(ray, 1),  ray + 20,  xEnds(ray, 2),  ray + 24,  G4, 0, (rayTable(ray) + camPosition) / 8, 160, (rayTable(ray) + camPosition) / 8, #FF00FF) is changed to BLIT_P(G1,  xEnds(ray, 1),  ray + 20,  xEnds(ray, 2),  ray + 22,  G4, 0, (rayTable(ray) + camPosition) / 8, 160, (rayTable(ray) + camPosition) / 8, #FF00FF), it could slightly improve speed, but then you lose the 3D effect. I would show you an idea to do a 3D effect, but sadly the emulator doesn't like my code (Whitespace bug). That said, I think my idea would be slower anyway (although it allowed the walls to be shaded).

-I get error invalid input at the end of the track.
« Last Edit: January 03, 2014, 09:32:13 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline MacBernick

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #39 on: January 03, 2014, 09:35:48 pm »
I like the new track and graphics. It looks very nice. I also like how the ball appears below the track, it looks good when falling down. Also lol it's quite hard actually. Hopefully the final version has multiple levels with different difficulties. :P

Thanks. Yes the game is hard and this track is not the easiest. I will make a couple of tracks with growing difficulty, and I have some ideas to allow to easily create and share users tracks too, without me actually making a track editor. I will also slow down the overall speed of gameplay a little bit (not too much though). Also jumps won't be infinite in final game, about 4 to 6 available per run only.

Just a few things:

-Do you ever plan to move the track at the bottom of the screen and add a sky at the top with an HUD? It might look more polished/professional that way, else people might think the game was rushed if it remains with the bottom half of the screen nearly empty.

Yes, there will be a sky background (maybe with slowly scrolling clouds if it doesn't kill frame rate), with time, speed, and jumps left on it.


-If BLIT_P(G1,  xEnds(ray, 1),  ray + 20,  xEnds(ray, 2),  ray + 24,  G4, 0, (rayTable(ray) + camPosition) / 8, 160, (rayTable(ray) + camPosition) / 8, #FF00FF) is changed to BLIT_P(G1,  xEnds(ray, 1),  ray + 20,  xEnds(ray, 2),  ray + 22,  G4, 0, (rayTable(ray) + camPosition) / 8, 160, (rayTable(ray) + camPosition) / 8, #FF00FF), it could slightly improve speed, but then you lose the 3D effect. I would show you an idea to do a 3D effect, but sadly the emulator doesn't like my code (Whitespace bug).

Hmmm that's no 3D effects, that's just me forgetting to adjust the blit parameters ^^'
Thank you for pointing out.
I don't know yet if this effect will be added in the big track grob or in a render pass.

-I get error invalid input at the end of the track.

Yep, that's because tracks have no end yet, and this one is too short to trigger the loop point, which I didn't bother to modify because it will be kicked out soon.
« Last Edit: January 03, 2014, 09:36:10 pm by MacBernick »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #40 on: January 03, 2014, 09:42:49 pm »
Scrolling clouds would be nice I guess, but yeah I think frame rate might be an issue if there are two mode-7-like layers. I wonder... would it be hard to make it so the camera always follows the ball and that it's the race track that moves around like in Rad Racer for the NES, for example? This would allow larger tracks, but of course might slow the game down since this would mean extra columns of tiles being shown on the left and right far away.

As for the unintentional 3D effect, since it was unintentional, do you think you could bring back the 3D-like wall tiles there was in the previous version? Although they were not perfect, they still gave some sense of depth to the track. :)
« Last Edit: January 03, 2014, 09:42:59 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Han

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #41 on: January 03, 2014, 10:03:51 pm »
You may be able to improve the speed by a large amount by switching to MAKELIST or MAKEMAT commands rather than appending elements to an existing list, etc.

Offline MacBernick

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #42 on: January 03, 2014, 10:16:33 pm »
In fact I had a simple horizontal scrolling in mind for the clouds, the frame rate wouldn't survive another projected scrolling for sure ^^'
Something like 2 blits with offset from a tileable clouds texture would be far enough I guess.

What you saw in previous version was an attempt to use the big track grob to render the 3D effect, with two issues : perspective is screwed up and using actual texture looked very bad because of far distance flickering. It would make more sense now that the resolution is doubled though.

The graphics could be improved further without any performance cost by using 32x16 textures instead of 32x8. But I don't know what is the grob size limit and if the big track grob could be doubled without limiting track length too much.

You may be able to improve the speed by a large amount by switching to MAKELIST or MAKEMAT commands rather than appending elements to an existing list, etc.

I was wondering if append() was really an efficient way to create my tables. Thanks for the tip. It won't change the speed of the game but certainly make the wait period a bit shorter which is always good.
« Last Edit: January 03, 2014, 10:43:34 pm by MacBernick »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #43 on: January 03, 2014, 11:11:37 pm »
I once had a 3200x3000 GROB and had no problem. However, in my pseudo 3D program, after running Spaceinvaders or certain other programs, I notice that BLIT often fails to render properly. It's most likely a calc bug, so sometimes you need to hit ON+SYMB. I guess the best way is to give it a try, then if you get reports from me about missing chunks of the map or erratic behavior after a long period with no soft reset, then bring back 32x8. I think it should be fine, though. The calc has several MB of RAM, after all. :P
« Last Edit: January 03, 2014, 11:11:49 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline MacBernick

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Re: [WIP] Trailblazer Prime
« Reply #44 on: January 11, 2014, 10:28:00 pm »
Last minor snapshot (0.0.6) before major update !

The game is now fully playable, first post updated.

Next things to do :
graphics improvements (including but not limited to landscape, game logo, friendly time format, HUD, animated ball and more),
menus,
track selection,
user tracks creation and loading,
moar tracks !
powerups ?

Edit : my best time so far for this version is 21159 18361 18241 18188 18057 17570. (To myself : stop playing and go to bed dude !)
« Last Edit: January 12, 2014, 12:22:23 am by MacBernick »