Omnimaga

Calculator Community => Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas => TI 68K => Topic started by: AaroneusTheGreat on November 19, 2008, 10:40:15 am

Title: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on November 19, 2008, 10:40:15 am
Seeing as the new omnimaga is up, running, and doing quite well from the look of it, I am going to start a DOA thread here.

STORY:

You are part of the I.G.I.A, the InterGalactic Intelligence Agency. You have been sent to Titan, one of saturn's moons to investigate the disappearance of weapons, plutonium and some soldiers. The IGSA, the InterGalactic Security Agency runs and funds this base, so uncovering the reasons for the disappearing weapons and soldiers is of the highest importance.

After being briefed, fed and dismissed, you spend some time reading in your quarters. Some time in the early hours of the day, you hear a crash. You grab your weapon and dash towards the direction the sound came in. The T1000 has gone berserk. It appears that this prototype defense robot has killed a soldier. You draw your weapon, find a weak spot and fire. After the thing has been disabled and the body of the soldier is taken care of, the T1000 is taken in for diagnostics to find out why this happened.

In the morning you hear a commotion coming from the administrative quarters. "What now?", you think as you rub the last remnants of sleep from your eyes. You make your way to the commander's office and find out that during the night, the diagnostics lab technician has been murdered.

.... And that's all I'm giving you for now. When I write up the rest of the story you'll have to play the game to figure it out for yourself.

There has been a lot of work done on this game already, and you can track the progress from the beginning on www.tifreakware.net.

Recently I implemented some nifty things with the enemies, they drop items when you kill them, and also locked doors, and black hole generator booby traps.

Here are the screenshots chronologically.

Here's the beginning:

(http://tifreakware.net/atg/89screeny.gif)

(http://tifreakware.net/atg/v200screeny.gif)

A little further into development:

(http://tifreakware.net/atg/screeny0002.gif)

(http://tifreakware.net/atg/screeny0003.gif)

AI starting to take shape:

(http://tifreakware.net/atg/SCREENY0005.gif)

Some early cinematics:

 (http://tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/SCREENY0009.gif)

 (http://tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/SCREENY0010.gif)

Menus starting to take shape:

(http://tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/SCREEN0004.gif)

Starting to put fine touches on cinematics:

(http://www.tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/SCREEN0012.gif)

:: A little time warp ::

Here's today:

This one shows that the player is mortal and the black hole effect.
(http://www.tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/SCREEN0043.gif)

This one shows the neat little item dropping from the dead enemy thing.
(http://www.tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/SCREEN0044.gif)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on November 19, 2008, 04:02:53 pm
I eat aaroneusthegreats

err... I mean this is awesome, I was getting worried because there weren't any progress but I'm happy that you resumed work on this. I love the enemies, they look very realistic for a calc game and still look pretty well with the background walls. I was wondering, is the floor randomly generated? I am curious if a mode 7 floor could be possible with such engine?
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: metagross111 on November 19, 2008, 06:15:04 pm
nice. imcurious about why all of these have a square screen. why not full screen?
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on November 19, 2008, 06:30:26 pm
It's because raycasting, especially with grayscale, takes a lot of processing power. Even if it's running on a TI-89 making it full screen would make the game run under 2-3 frames per seconds for sure. On a TI-83+ all raycasters uses smaller portion of the screen too for similar reasons, altough with no grayscale.

Even Mode-7 runs a bit slow at screen wide resolution. In F-Zero 68k the lower rows of pixels are half resolution scaled at 2x size to speed up things, if I remember
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on November 19, 2008, 07:30:18 pm
I don't know for sure if a mode seven style floor would be possible, but it sounds plausible, even a modified raycasting algorithm that drew the floor and the ceiling the same way you would draw the vertical walls (imagine walking through a hallway on it's side) would do the same thing. Or I could make a mode seven style engine that drew to the flat picture I'm using for the background, but I don't know much about mode seven, I might be able to work something out given enough time, but I don't know how much it would slow the whole game.

It's a good idea though.

I hear a lot about the whole screen thing, besides the fact that the game's viewing screen already has more pixels than most of the whole 83+ screen (96*96 pixels for my game, 96 * 128 for 83+), the HUD is one of my favorite things about the way this game plays, it gives you the impression of being at the controls of the player
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on November 19, 2008, 07:43:02 pm
actually the 83+ is only 96x64 and the 86 128x64
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: metagross111 on November 19, 2008, 10:03:12 pm
well, i do not yet own an 86
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Madskillz on November 20, 2008, 12:18:21 am
I think this is an 89 game...
This looks great by the way. Can't wait to see what else comes from it!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: metagross111 on November 20, 2008, 01:02:42 am
nice colors -_-
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on November 20, 2008, 01:38:23 pm
Thanks for the support and commentary guys.  :)

Oh right, I remember, 96*64.


Yea this game if for the following calculators;

89/89Titanium
92+
Voyage 200
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: simplethinker on November 20, 2008, 04:40:19 pm
It looks great so far  ;D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: metagross111 on November 20, 2008, 05:30:55 pm
i like the enemy. berserk bot FTW!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on November 20, 2008, 06:21:39 pm
(on a semi-off-topic note, does the TI-92+ have a blue LCD like the old TI-92?)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on November 20, 2008, 10:43:41 pm
I don't know for certain but I believe an early form of it did, being the little talked about 92II which was a regular 92 with an expansion port and came with an optional plus module. The neat thing about that one was if you had more than one plus module you could use it as preloaded flash memory, therefore you had "flash drives" for your calc as I understand it. I haven't seen one in real life, but I think it had the blue lcd.

EDIT: I was right: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:TI-92-II.png
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: metagross111 on November 20, 2008, 10:50:29 pm
well, isnt THAT a clunky looking device?
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: simplethinker on November 20, 2008, 10:54:20 pm
My cousin has one.  It's not as big as that picture makes it look.  (Look at the size of that picture, the pic of a 92 takes up more memory than a 92 has :D)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: metagross111 on November 21, 2008, 01:24:21 am
lol, can't the same be said for other calculators? ;)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on November 22, 2008, 11:44:32 am
Lol actually I think it's quite a pleasing size, the keyboard is actually big enough to type on with three fingers of each hand, making basic programming a BREEZE, let me tell ya. You can type about 70% of your normal speed on it, which is nice. It's much clunkier than the other  models though, I also like the directional pad on it, it's a fused piece of plastic, so it feels like the directional pad on a sega or similar.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on November 26, 2008, 01:49:10 pm
I did some work on this, I just finished implementing the "Read Emails" feature of the computer console feature. What this allows you to do is to read emails to and from crew members in the game, giving you important clues and hints. Also this same code is going to display the security logs feature as well, and probably any other text that the computer console displays that needs to be word wrapped and might cover several pages. It also lets me format the messages so that they aren't just huge monolithic blocks of text.

When I write the messages I can add line endings wherever I want to end the current line and make the code start a new line, plus I can add spaces at the beginning of lines for a tab effect, and the word wrapping will not remove them if they are more than one space. (one space means that the code wrapped a space to the next line, and that looks stupid do the code removes it, if its more than one it's a tab so it leaves it alone)

Anywho I'll show you what I mean as soon as I get a chance to make a screenshot. Next order of business, write some messages, after that I will start on the proximity mines feature.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on November 26, 2008, 02:32:00 pm
mhmm nice, is it a bit like my old Omnimaga Speech Routine From 2004?. I inputted a string of characters and certain symbols caused the calc to start writing on a different line and other characters triggered a pause and others made the routine erases everything then start displaying at the beginning oif the text box again
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on November 27, 2008, 10:19:52 am
Yea similar to that except this is in C and it reads from files in the archive memory.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: metagross111 on November 28, 2008, 04:55:29 pm
the omnimaga speech routine? sounds interesting. do you still have that file lying around?
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on November 28, 2008, 06:19:38 pm
it's in the download section under Our TI products and TI-83+. It uses CODEX though and is very old so it might require optimizing and will require modifications to work with xLIB instead of CODEX
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on December 26, 2008, 10:11:37 pm
I recently implemented a neato new feature, Proximity Mines both as traps and for the player to use against his or her enemies. Also, I fixed several issues that have been around for a while now, and it seems the game engine is currently completely stable, which is nice to have it that way so soon again, I'm sure  I'll break it again while adding new things, but that's how it goes. I also started work on the player's default weapon, being his fist, so soon you will be able to shoot till you're out of bullets, then pummel things to death with your fist.

I also started writing down ideas for DOA in a notebook as well as a general outline of work to be done to keep better track of DOA's daunting to do list. Anywho, here's a screenshot.

(http://www.tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/PROXIMITY001.gif)

Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 26, 2008, 11:20:36 pm
Yay new screenies! looks even better, I love how the enemies die, very Doom-like. Keep up the good work :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: kalan_vod on December 26, 2008, 11:32:50 pm
Great work sir! I love how those enemies decentigrate!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on December 27, 2008, 10:18:03 am
Thanks guys. :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Madskillz on December 29, 2008, 06:49:14 pm
Wow this is great, I am thoroughly impressed. Keep it up, this looks to be a sure fire hit!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on December 31, 2008, 09:01:21 pm
Thanks man. Im starting work soon on two new levels, I have the ideas already worked up, most of the implementation already mapped out in my head, the only thing left to do is to sit down and write code. I have a few more graphics things to do as well, I started work on a new weapon, your fist, so you can pummel your enemies to a pulp once you run out of ammo.

I have to finish writing the code for the fist weapon and draw the images for that and that will be done, which won't take long, I expect to have that done by next week or so. So more to come, things are going much more smoothly, I've reached the downhill slope I think, most of the work in this game has been setting up the engine so that I can do things like this.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Madskillz on December 31, 2008, 09:47:14 pm
cool, ha I love that you added a fist. Keep us posted!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on December 31, 2008, 11:41:01 pm
This is nice, usually after doing the entire engine things goes much faster, keep up the good work :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: necro on January 02, 2009, 02:57:19 pm
looks nice Aaroneus
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 10, 2009, 10:08:22 pm
Getting closer to being done with the fist, it would have gone faster had I not had to draw my sprites myself, a lot of the graphics in DOA are ripped from my favorite raycasting games, but I couldn't find a punching animation I liked so I started drawing them by hand today. I'm done with #1 of 3.

I also have several new level tasks in the work and one new level style already completed, I have to create the cinematic scene explaining it before I can finish that level, but it's getting done. I'm slowly but surely marching towards the finish line.

I'm surprised as heck at how bug free DOA is at this stage in development, I was expecting more difficulty, but my planning turned out to be much better than I thought and it's going quite smoothly. I'll let you know more soon. Plus I may have a new screenshot soon.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 10, 2009, 10:22:58 pm
I can't wait for new screenies, I hope you don,t get too much bugs, I remember in Doom you had to deal with a lot of issues that arisen after release x.x. I know how it feels
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Madskillz on January 11, 2009, 02:06:46 am
Great Aaroneus sounds like things are coming along nicely!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 11, 2009, 11:44:16 am
Yes I'm excited about it. And I hope the debug process is nothing like Doom89's lol that was a mess.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 11, 2009, 01:49:14 pm
Or Mana Force 2, you don't believe how much pain I had with this game. So much that I abandonned it for almost one year after finishing it. So many bugs. On top of that this calc was running an old OS (1.14), all of which had trouble when grouping files, sometimes leading to corruption, so some programs would modify themselves when grouping and give me ERR:SYNTAX and when I opened the code there was random junk at some points. So the game went through two debugging rounds x.x

I also got trouble with ROL2 but only with one bug and it was so annoying and impossible to recreate that I just added something in the game resetting a certain character HP to normal state (since the bug involved altering her HP stats to random crap at one point early in the game) and never fixed the actual bug
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 12, 2009, 07:05:35 pm
Made some progress:

This one shows the new fist weapon in action:

(http://www.tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/FIST.gif)

This one shows you a bit of the redesigned level 3:

(http://www.tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/LEVEL3.gif)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Madskillz on January 12, 2009, 08:52:03 pm
I love the look of the fist great work on it!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: noahbaby94 on January 12, 2009, 09:46:24 pm
Wow that looks awesome.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 13, 2009, 01:50:24 am
I love the textures :)

Btw I don't remember if I asked this but is the floor sand texture randomly generated or is it based on your coordinates and angle of view?
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Speler on January 13, 2009, 03:27:01 pm
Everythings looking great. Keep it up.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 16, 2009, 03:10:33 pm
DJ: Nah, the floor is neither random nor based on the world map or anything. It's actually three images that are changed randomly, if you look hard enough for long enough you'll see that the same thing shows up every couple of steps or turns.

Thanks for the support everyone, its one of the reasons I keep working on my projects, if no one was interested I would probably have given up long ago. Well, maybe not, I usually finish my projects for myself foremost. I'm glad you all like it just the same.

I started work on level 5 and it's beginning cinematic scene. I should have level 5 done by Monday or so, if all goes well.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 16, 2009, 03:30:15 pm
Yay! Keep up the good work :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 25, 2009, 05:35:30 pm
I'm working on the layout of level 5. Things have been kind of crazy lately. I hope to have level five done soon. I also have a couple of new features in the planning stages, they have to do with the player's ability to interact with the environment I'm setting up. I should have a couple more things that the player can interact with that help him or her and also move the story along. I have the basic story all mapped out now.

So much to do and so little time to do it.   :-\

Now to find that elusive "free time" stuff.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 25, 2009, 05:37:10 pm
glad to see new progress, I hope you can find some time though. Focus on real life first though ;)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 31, 2009, 04:45:56 pm
The Fifth Level is coming along nicely, plus I fixed a few errors concerning lighting and also added a new nifty effect, smoke. In level 5, it will be difficult to see because the rooms are filled with smoke, due to the broken air handling system, also you can't breathe, so you are forced to use your emergency rebreather/oxygen supply, which only lasts for about 5 or 10 minutes.

The fifth level is going to be based on time, if you get to the end of it before your oxygen runs out, then you beat the level, if not, you die. Plus there will be enemies to fight, and you have to unlock certain doors to reach the transport pod to advance to level 6.

These sorts of tasks will be implemented here on out to keep the game from getting monotonous.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 31, 2009, 04:53:44 pm
Interesting, I can't wait to see a screenshot of it in action :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: kalan_vod on January 31, 2009, 08:42:35 pm
Glad to see it going forward, love to see some SSSA! (sweet screen shot action)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 31, 2009, 11:28:06 pm
SSSSA?
(Super shit screen shot action)?

j/k
(Super sweet screen shot action)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 14, 2009, 02:30:17 am
Doa is currently in a sleepy stage. I am going through a lot of rl issues. Really a lot of major stress and some major life changes and issues. DOA survived a 3 or 4 month long sleepy period before, this won't last too long, but by no means is DOA dead for good. I'll let you know when things settle down and I get back to work. I'm going to finish this project if it takes years but one day hopefully in the not too distant future people will be playing DOA.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: noahbaby94 on March 14, 2009, 10:34:32 am
Sorry to hear about that man but you can wait up to 16 years to re-start.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 14, 2009, 03:46:22 pm
i do hope things gets better, I would hate to see something very bad happening to you
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: kalan_vod on March 16, 2009, 09:35:46 pm
Sorry to hear about that man but you can wait up to 16 years to re-start.
Haha, I still have time too!

Hope all is going better, but if it is not I hope it does..
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 11, 2010, 11:27:19 pm
All is going better! In fact, I have a release for the public.

http://www.tifreakware.net/atg/DOA_BETAS/Release-3-10-2010.zip

If you find any errors, have any ideas for improvement, or any general constructive criticism then please let me know. Also if you like something then let me know that too please! thanks!  ;D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 11, 2010, 11:49:38 pm
Wow nice to see you're still around! Glad to see an alpha too! My TI-89T is empty right now so I think I'll load this on it when I get some time. It runs NoStub, right? (executes from home screen I mean)

I saw this on TIFW and RS earlier and was worried you wouldn't post it here D:, altough I could have understood since practically the entire userbase looks like z80 users, but yeah some of us got 89t too so I am sure some people will be interested ^^

Anyway, this goes in my programs-to-test list, now ^^

Also are you still coming on AIM and Yahoo sometimes? I haven't been there for a long while on a regular basis so I was wondering
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 12, 2010, 12:34:59 am
I should have noted that, yes it runs NoStub. and you probably need the HW3Patch for the Titanium. I don't think I mentioned that in the readme. I'll do something about that asap.

EDIT

Here's the official download link that's the newest version of the patch.

HW3Patch (http://www.tigen.org/kevin.kofler/ti89prog.htm#hw3patch)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 12, 2010, 03:17:54 am
Thanks, I might reset my calc so idk if my current patching will remain in effect afterward x.x
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 13, 2010, 02:08:50 am
as long as you don't install a new flash OS it'll stay patched.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 13, 2010, 02:24:08 am
Cool to know. I was unsure with resets and stuff.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 13, 2010, 04:02:55 am
Ok I tried it and friggin awesome intro! However, I can't figure out how to pick the weapon at the beginning ???

Also I wanted to capture the awesomeness but seems like I failed at setting Calcapture properly so I only got 3 levels of gray instead of 4 x.x

However here's screenie anyway for those who haven,t tried yet
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: ztrumpet on March 13, 2010, 11:33:39 am
That's awesome!  I wish I have an 89 to play this on. ;D

That looks great. :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 13, 2010, 01:05:49 pm
There's always TIEmu if you don't have an 89, you can download it here:

 TIEMU  (http://lpg.ticalc.org/prj_tiemu/)

Also, you'll need a flash OS for the 89 available here:

 TI-89 OS  (http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/productDetail/us_ti89ti.html?bid=8)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 13, 2010, 07:08:14 pm
Yeah that's what I used. I used CalcCapture for capturing the screenshot since Tiemu didn,t show animated screenshooting features in the menus.

Btw aaron what are the controls? I would enjoy this game more if I actually knew how to pick weapons from the ground :(
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 14, 2010, 03:03:33 am
The player already has all the weapons, this is only for the alpha so that you can see and use all the available weapons, just for fun. If you want to set your controls, you can do so from the options menu. The standard controls are shown in the options menu as well. If you don't already have a weapon, and all the ammo for that weapon, the player won't pick up the weapon from the ground. If you don't have full ammo or you don't have a particular weapon, the player will pick the weapon up automatically.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 14, 2010, 03:13:12 am
oooh ok thanks for the info, I should have looked harder at the options to see every control x.x

Suggestion in the future, though: it would be good if we could still pick up weapons even if we didn't have  ammo, and maybe do like other FPSes, have the weapon give you some ammo when picking it
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 14, 2010, 03:22:30 am
Yeah you can pick up the ammo out of the weapon if you have that weapon already and you need the ammo, if not it just does nothing. I thought of that already :D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 27, 2010, 11:55:27 pm
I finished up the story stuff for the last finished level. I'm going back over the levels and polishing them up graphically, so that they are a bit more interesting, plus I'm adding in hidden weapons and secret areas.

More to come.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 28, 2010, 12:02:20 am
Nice, more progress! Will secret areas be discovered by pushing walls like Gemini for the 83+?
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 28, 2010, 12:22:44 am
Actually yes they will ;)

In fact, DOA will be the first FAT engine game to utilize the new pushable wall feature of the engine.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 28, 2010, 01:48:40 am
Wow nice ^^ I liked these since they can be hard to see sometimes so more challenging to find secrets, altough still doable if you check suspicious areas
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 31, 2010, 11:22:19 pm
Thanks :)

Yeah definitely, all the wall textures are designed to blend in with each other so they are very difficult to find, even if they are plainly visible in the room. I plan on adding a few more types of hidden areas to spice things up as well.

Also;

I've gone through the code for my save game/load game feature and edited it. I removed some code that was unnecessary and reduced the average save file by about 2,200 bytes or so. The maximum save file size is 10,200 bytes. so its still pretty big, but I'm still figuring out ways to pare that down to a more manageable size. My goal would be to reduce that to about 6,100-ish bytes, that's assuming I can remove the section of the save/load function I've been thinking of working out of the code somehow. 

Also I've been altering the way that the game accesses some of the data that the game uses, it now requires a bit less code to access some commonly used things. I'm not sure how much ram that might save, but I'm hoping that it's significant. If nothing else it makes my life a bit easier, and makes the code a lot simpler.

Anyways, I've started coding the mini game but I don't really have anything to show for it yet, most of what I've done so far is just structure stuff to make the mini game run.

When I get more done I'll make a screen shot. 
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 31, 2010, 11:27:11 pm
Wow nice optimization :D do you use compression for save files? In Illusiat 13, you can carry 100 items and their IDs are 1 or 2 digits large. I simply stored 5 per list elements during saving and it made save files like 4x smaller in total.

I can't wait for screenshots.

Btw if you need me to make one, I think I finally fixed my CalcCapture settings, now it shows perfect colors
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on April 01, 2010, 12:56:03 pm
Actually, i just altered some code in the game engine so that the save/load function doesn't have to save so many things. If I were to compress the file, it would probably be very small, but take much longer to load. The game auto saves when you advance to a new level, so it would probably slow down that process to compress and decompress the save file a bunch of times.

I added that feature in because people forget to save when they get to a new level and lose their progress.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 01, 2010, 04:55:07 pm
aaaah ok seems nice. I like the later idea because today most shooters work this way, so people are more used to autosave features and may forget easier.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on April 11, 2010, 06:45:44 pm
I coded the basic engine behind the mini game, as it is now, all you can do is run around and kill a never ending flood of enemies, and try to stay alive as long as possible.

I think I'm going to break up the flow of enemies in a level system, just like in the Nazi-Zombies mini game in Call of Duty. And give the player a pause between the flood of enemies, to buy weapons, health packs, armor packs and ammo.

I also altered the enemies code a bit. Now when you start a level, the enemies start wandering around, instead of waiting in one spot for the player to enter a room.

And they can open doors, so you never really know where they are in the level, so it adds a bit more excitement when playing. They usually stay in the same general area, but because you can't count on them being in the exact same place every time, it makes it a bit more interesting.

I need to add a bit of menu stuff to allow you to choose to play in story mode, or mini game mode. When I have that, and the purchasable items implemented, I'll post a screen shot, or if I deem the new code to be stable enough, maybe a demo of the new stuff.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 11, 2010, 11:50:08 pm
Wow I like how enemies can open doors :D I don't think a lot of FPSes do that. It should add more challenge to the game and look a bit more realistic. Nice to see more progress on this :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: jsj795 on April 12, 2010, 02:31:12 pm
Nice job! It will definitely stay in my 89 after you release it ^^ Right now, I'm working my way in doom 89, but by looking at the screen shot and your features, I think yours is way more awesome!
Keep up the good work
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 12, 2010, 02:32:32 pm
Btw Aaron did Doom 89 too ^^
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: jsj795 on April 12, 2010, 07:11:14 pm
Oh really? Nice, I'm really enjoying your games^^ You are TI89's Calc84maniac
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on April 13, 2010, 12:38:12 am
thanks jsj795, that's very kind of you. I'm glad you're enjoying them. :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on April 14, 2010, 05:30:32 pm
Here's a screenshot of the new menu. Also it shows a bit of the minigame behavior. What you see is the basic functionality, buying weapons and such comes later.

(http://www.tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/DOASCREENSHOT0001.gif)

There are a few restarts, because I was testing the menu system while making the screenshot, but you get the idea.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: jsj795 on April 14, 2010, 06:32:18 pm
I love the little Radar on the upper left corner^^ Great job again! usually I don't play FPS, but your games are so awesome. I'm still trying to beat Doom89
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 14, 2010, 11:10:05 pm
Oooh I like it. Suggestion, though, I would make the menu takes the entire gameplay area because currently it leaves a small space at the bottom where you can still see the floor. It might be best I think if that part of the floor was hidden too since the menu alerady takes most of that screen area anyway.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on May 14, 2010, 01:50:49 am
DOA has seen a pretty good bit of progress lately, I've added two new levels, three new enemies, you can now get some items from the wall in the mini game (not completely done), the mini game now has a point system for each kill, and stage based enemy spawning, meaning it spawns more enemies each time it lets out a new wave, and has pauses between waves so that the player can buy ammo and weapons.

I still need it to cost points for the items you get from the walls in the mini game, so that it's got a bit more interest than just shooting everything in sight and getting whatever weapon you want. Also I need to add an item for the ammo for the revolving gun, as it is you can use that weapon, but there is no ammo to pick up, so it's useless after you run out of ammo.

I plan on adding a new weapon to the game, probably something that shoots projectiles you can see, I'm thinking something like an energy cannon.

The enemies I added are evil soldiers, and evil scientists, and a really tall robot thingy with guns. I'll post a screenshot when I get a chance. Basically before the soldiers and scientists were on your side, now some of them aren't. I plan on having a transition in the storyline explaining this later.

I'll keep you updated when I get more done.

Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on May 14, 2010, 02:34:32 am
Nice to see more progresss and I like how you're gonna have some plot twists. :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on June 02, 2010, 02:40:25 pm
(http://www.tifreakware.net/atg/doa_screens/DOASCREENSHOT0006.gif)

I finished the new weapon, here's a screen shot of it in action.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on June 02, 2010, 02:52:26 pm
ooooh nice :D that weapon seems powerful :D

Nice job

Glad to see you still working on this ^^

Keep us updated :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: ztrumpet on June 02, 2010, 05:15:13 pm
Wow, that's really cool!  Keep up the excellent work! :D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: jsj795 on June 02, 2010, 06:54:23 pm
Wow! You really are amazing! I can see the hard work you put into this. I can't wait to play it when you finish it :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on June 02, 2010, 08:13:40 pm
Thanks guys :-)

Next up on the list is more storyline, maybe some more boobytraps and a few tasks for certain levels so that there's more to do than just killing scifi characters, as fun as that may be.

jsj795, there's an alpha already out, it's only got a couple of levels and no energy cannon, but you can goof around with it. here's the forum link where it is. http://tifreakware.ath.cx/index.php?showtopic=1042&st=420 it's somewhere down in the posts, and you also need the HW3Patch if you are using an 89 titanium edition, which there's a link for on the next page
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: jsj795 on June 02, 2010, 11:27:40 pm
thanks ^^
I already have HW3Patch, and nice! I get to play the demo :D
I was getting bored because I don't have TI+84 back yet (my friend borrowed it and I'll get it back by next week) and playing pokemon on TI89 was getting boring frankly :P
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 05, 2012, 11:44:43 pm
Egads! DOA has seen some progress!

I just implemented the ability to save and load both the minigame and the storymode, along with the menu stuff for each. I'll post a screenshot when I get a chance. :D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 06, 2012, 12:38:44 am
Wow great to hear! I'M glad you revived this. Good luck! :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Jim Bauwens on January 06, 2012, 03:37:27 am
Yay \o/
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 06, 2012, 10:12:50 am
Egads! DOA has seen some progress!

I just implemented the ability to save and load both the minigame and the storymode, along with the menu stuff for each. I'll post a screenshot when I get a chance. :D

O_O You're working on this again! Very nice! ;D The 68k scene has been much to quite lately...
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 06, 2012, 04:32:32 pm
For some odd reason I can't get my screenshot software to work despite much effort put forth. Anyone have any suggestions? And yes, DOA is officially under development again. I kept hearing stuff around my college about how people there were playing Doom89 and it kind of stroked my ego enough for me to get some motivation. A couple of my professors know who I am because of my previous work, so I figured it would probably be beneficial to my plan to try to weasel my way into the research department there if I completed this soon.

DOA really doesn't need a whole lot of work to be completed, but I want to implement some things to make it more interesting than just running around killing things. More storyline stuff, tasks, etc. I have a couple half done already, the only thing to do now is chug along and push forward.

I'm glad to see that people are still interested in this project, that's what keeps me going with this, that people will enjoy the game when it's done.

By the way... The game... you lose! haha Oh crap so do I. O.o :p

Oh by the way, If you're curious how many levels there are right now: 16 levels, 8 transport pod cinematic scenes, and 1 minigame level. I'm working on level design right now. I'm planning to add on to the points/purchasing system in the minigame, so you can buy the next level in the minigame with the points you get from killing the enemies. It's an escape plan, and a fun way to explore another level when playing. Each next level will cost more points. I don't know how many levels I'll make for the minigame, but I've got 40-something KB of space left in my mapfile, so I could potentially put a ton of levels for both the story mode and the minigame in there.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: flyingfisch on January 06, 2012, 05:17:15 pm
Why does no one make stuff like this for casio calcs? ??? I think the closest we got to this was Wolfenstein3D, which didnt have very good AI, and that was the only one like it ever made. :(
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 06, 2012, 05:21:29 pm
@Aaron you may need to ask in the help section and give info on what version and which screenshot making software you are using and which emu/version. Hopefully someone can help there.

Also keep up the good work :)

@flyingfisch blame TI's monopoly on schools. Teachers are sold out to Texas Instruments so students are almost forced to get a TI calc instead of a Casio. :( Also they aren't as documented as z80 and 68K calcs yet due to the much smaller community. Actually the TI-89 is facing the same problem now: Almost nobody program for them anymore, since TI is slowly phasing them out in favor of the TI-Nspire series. AaroneusTheGreat is probably one of, if not the only 68K ASM/C programmer remaining in the TI community right now.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Nick on January 06, 2012, 05:21:46 pm
By the way... The game... you lose! haha Oh crap You know the rules, and so do I. O.o :p

it's really amazing.. but what are the exact problems with the screenie?
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 07, 2012, 12:06:18 am
@Nick: Nice. Yeah lol I just thought of that while I was typing because I used the phrase "the game" in the post. The problem with the screenshot is that for some reason, calccapture can't find the window to start taking the feed from. I haven't figured it out, I've tinkered with it quite a bit. I was more thinking if anyone reading this could point me to possibly newer or better software that worked easily, I'd forgo the tinkering and just use that.

@everyone: Thanks for the encouragement, it means a lot. You'll be interested to know I've poked around in the maps quite a bit today, and while I haven't done much of anything today, I did relearn how I implemented some stuff, and kind of got my place in the code again. I was running around a lot today, and saw a movie, so I haven't done much with the project other than fix a moderately annoying menu quirk.

@flyingfisch: If you could point me to a really good set of Casio C tools, I'd be on it in a heartbeat, some of those Casio calculators are pretty powerful in terms of hardware. I got mildly into HP's 50g for a while, and I most likely will start working on something for that at some point here in the not so distant future. No promises yet, but I've gotten so much better at coding than I was when I started messing with it back in the day, that I feel like I could probably handle it better now. I lacked the confidence and knowledge base that I have now to really continue what I built effectively, so I put it on hold. Now that I've got colleagues that I regularly consult at the university, I have more of a quick support base to explain some things that are better explained in person where you can ask questions more quickly.

Anyways, supposing I don't figure out a way to do this soon, and for other reasons, you can expect I'll be calling on one of you to do some screenshots and such for me before too long. I am going to need alpha and beta testers who are willing and have the time to do some stuff like that for me. Also who can make some suggestions when it comes to things they like or don't like that I should put more work into. I could use the direction. I'm kind of darting around between quite a few things in the development, testers help me streamline the focus on the most important things.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 07, 2012, 10:08:17 am
@ATG: You should check out the Casio Prizm. It's high res. and color. =)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Nick on January 07, 2012, 12:40:48 pm
i watched a movie too today, harry potter instead of studying lol

and i would love to help, but i only have 84+ and nspire, so i won't be able too, i'm sorry :s
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 07, 2012, 04:49:42 pm
@art of camelot: Wow. I will have to do that. :D

@nick: you can help with an emulator of your choice, that would be good as well because it would let me know if the emulators run my stuff right or if the bugs that might come up have to do with an emulator, and I may be able to fix them so that the game will run on any compatible platform.

Progress Update:

I focused on some optimizations and one or two minor bug fixes today, the game is now running quite a bit faster than it did before. I was in the shower thinking about ways I could avoid some more wasted cycles, and I came up with a plan to split the sprites entirely by type, and handle each category individually (sprites that move and sprites that don't) I had a bit of this setup already, but not to the extent that I've done today.

I have a couple more tricks up my sleeve for trimming some more wasted cycles. As it is, the game is pretty darn responsive, even when a lot's going on, but now it speeds back up a lot more on it's own when there's less going on. It's almost a little creepy to see it slow and speed up on it's own, but it tells me that I'm getting closer to wasting no cycles with checks.

My whole system is an event based system for the most part anyways, so it makes perfect sense why it slows up a tad when there's a bunch going on (when you're being swarmed by enemies in the minigame for instance), but I'm trying to make it not noticeable at all.

I'll see what I can get done tomorrow, I'm kind of coded-out today, I spent the last few hours on this. Probably about 3 or so hours of non stop coding, so I feel good about what I accomplished. A good step forward even if it's just tuning up what I've already made.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Loulou 54 on January 07, 2012, 05:39:29 pm
Awesome project !! I've seen the captures on the 1st page, that's really great ! :D
Good luck ! I'll have to try it. :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 07, 2012, 07:04:58 pm
Thanks! If you're really itching to try it, you could alpha test for me, if you don't mind telling me in detail about things that go wrong or things you like/dislike that could use more work.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 09, 2012, 01:55:30 am
Progress report reposted from revsoft:

I spent about 5 or 6 hours (maybe more, I wasn't keeping strict track of time, but I worked at least 5 hours total in two long sessions today) first rewriting a pretty important section of code for speed reasons, then tracking down and fixing the stuff I had broken in the process. I have successfully sped the game up a little more. I'm having slight issues still with a couple of things speed wise, nothing that is strictly problematic, but it bugs the crap out of me because I want this thing to be smooth as butter.

Speaking of how crazy this thing makes me sometimes, I am now triple backing up my progress, and I'm considering backing it up in a few more places! lol I'd be pretty upset if I ever lost anything in this process. With nearly 4 years of development and god knows how many hours of work I've put into it, I'd just about lose my mind if I lost this project. Actually... I decided to back it up to my ftp hosting on TIFreakware while I'm at it. :p

Lol the complexity is kind of getting away from me, I'm having to search through my code before writing new code so I don't reinvent the wheel. Them's the brakes with a project like this. I can't imagine what it would be like to program it in assembly. My brains would probably melt out of my ears.

Anyways, DOA's coming along nicely. I'll try and post recent screenshots as soon as I get some working screenshot software! lol I'm having issues with that and Windows 7. (dang non-backwards-compatibility horse-crap. Win 7 has irritated me mucho less than vista ever did (what a joke there, btw nested parentheses ftw) but it's still quite the irritant for sure.)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 09, 2012, 11:26:58 am
Screenies would be nice. Hopefully you can get something working. :D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: flyingfisch on January 09, 2012, 11:32:21 am
@Aaron you may need to ask in the help section and give info on what version and which screenshot making software you are using and which emu/version. Hopefully someone can help there.

Also keep up the good work :)

@flyingfisch blame TI's monopoly on schools. Teachers are sold out to Texas Instruments so students are almost forced to get a TI calc instead of a Casio. :( Also they aren't as documented as z80 and 68K calcs yet due to the much smaller community. Actually the TI-89 is facing the same problem now: Almost nobody program for them anymore, since TI is slowly phasing them out in favor of the TI-Nspire series. AaroneusTheGreat is probably one of, if not the only 68K ASM/C programmer remaining in the TI community right now.
ahh.

LOL, im probably the only active american programmer for Casio FX-9860! Just realized that.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 12, 2012, 09:54:53 am
So I just finished a major rewrite of the animation code for DOA, I shaved off 2.5kb of program size and saved probably hundreds, maybe as much as thousands of clock cycles (no way of knowing, but the speed increase is very noticeable). The code I wrote allows me to handle every animation the same way with a gigantic array of pointers to arrays which contain pointers (my brain hurts) to the images, and it doesn't matter how many frames the sprites animations have, or where they are, because they all follow the same pattern.

Despite how diabolical and huge the array is, it actually saves me a bunch of resources because the animation code no longer has to sort out which type of sprite it's animating. On top of that, everything is in one place, so the system only has to organize it once when the game starts, not every animation frame, saving a bunch of time.  

There are a few more glitches I'm working out, but I know what's causing them, and they don't cause the game to crash, and since I'm tired of programming for the moment, they'll have to wait. I've been working since 6:30AM this morning, I woke up and I didn't have anything to do for hours so I ended up tying up those loose ends in the rewrite. I'll let you know what's happening as I fix things and trim down my code to get some more efficiency out of this.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 12, 2012, 10:30:04 am
Awesome! Wow, you're really hitting this thing hard now huh? =)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 12, 2012, 10:37:51 am
I'm glad that you seem excited about the progress!

I was getting really tired of letting it sit around not being worked on, and because my life is back in order now, I'm able to focus on it much better than I had before. I think in the last week I've probably spent about 30 hours or more working on this thing. I know I had at least 3 days where I worked on it for 6 hours total that day (about 3 hours, then a break, then another 3, that kind of thing).

I also have gotten a lot of motivation from all of the people that are following this project. And at my school I've been overhearing stuff about Doom89, and how lot's of people seem to like it there. That kind of thing really makes me want to get this project done so I can really give people a quality game. DOA is so far ahead of Doom89 in implementation and detail, I think people are really going to like it. I mean DOA even has clocks on the wall in the game that change with the system time in the calculator. It will show you the correct time in the game if you set your clock in the calc's system to the correct time.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: shmibs on January 12, 2012, 10:46:39 am
this game has more style than wolfenstein ever did =D
i always loved this project and am glad to see you're working on it again =)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 12, 2012, 11:28:27 am
That reminds me... I should try Doom 89 since I have a voyage 200 now. I don't know if you remember, but I could never get it to work on my old TI-89 for some reason... x.x I can't remember exactly what the issue was either.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 12, 2012, 11:18:48 pm
Art_Of_Camelot: that's very odd. It could have just been too old to support it honestly. I think I was using code that was HW2 and up. I seem to remember something about that. And if/when you do try out Doom89, let me know what you think! I'm always open to feedback even though that project's been completed for years now lol.

Shmibs: That's a very kind thing of you to say! I've always envied the ID software team, they made so many popular and groundbreaking games. I even got in contact with them about the content of Doom89 before starting work to make sure I wasn't breaking any laws that I could get punished for. They told me that they couldn't give me permission to use the imagery and such, but they wouldn't do anything to me for doing so. That's the major reason Doom89 went anywhere past the fooling around stages. It kind of became a go ahead of sorts anyways. I thought some of them might actually check it out if I did well enough with it too, which would be a real honor. So far I haven't heard anything from them since then though. lol

I hope DOA doesn't let you down! Expectations seem to be very high these days!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 13, 2012, 11:20:06 am
Hmm... well if there were some differences in code from hw2 and up then that could explain things. My TI-89 is a HW1 model. I'll let you know what I think about Doom when I have a chance to try it. ;)

I don't think you should be too concerned about disappointing people with DOA. It's looking great! ;D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 16, 2012, 02:37:46 am
Thanks for the encouragement. :) And I hope you like Doom89.

PROGRESS UPDATE:

I just finished fixing the proximity mines system. I broke it when I rewrote the animation code. The good news is because I decided to go with a complete rewrite of the system, I managed to save quite a few cycles and bytes. I don't know exactly how many I saved, but more good news on top of this, with the new code I wrote for the proximity mines, I'll be able to more quickly rewrite the code for the energy cannon, which incidentally also was broken when I started this major rewrite.

All of this rewriting has a major purpose, that being saving cycles and bytes, but also, i was beginning to get very close to the 65k executable limit. I had to do something. I could no longer let some things get handled in a clean, but not as efficient manner, I'm just running too much now. Fortunately, I planned very well from the beginning, so the code ended up being very adaptable.

I actually didn't realize all the implications of how I planned everything out. So far, when you save/load the game, due to good planning, if the game has already booted up once, it will still work! The only problem is if you save, exit the game, boot it back up and load, it fails. Luckily I know the problem, I just have to go in and fix it when I'm done with my other more important rewrite tasks.  I've still got a fairly daunting (to me) list of things I want to retool with my new techniques. They are getting checked off at a pace I'm happy with. More to come soon!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 16, 2012, 06:12:30 am
Awesome work! :D Keep it up! :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: jsj795 on January 16, 2012, 09:03:33 am
Great! I've also realized that when coding, the planning stage is really important.

Hopefully the save problem will be fixed easily :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 17, 2012, 10:37:09 am
Thanks guys!

PROGRESS UPDATE:

As of last night, the energy cannon has been fixed. All the weapons now work correctly again. I'm still working on a few bugs dealing with the enemies. Some of their animations are getting set wrong, I know what the issue is, I just have to hunt down where the incorrect values are getting set. I already fixed two animation bugs dealing with two different characters. It's turning out to be rather easy, just very tedious. I'll let you know when I've got everything squared away. Once I do I plan on fixing the save/load feature and picking through a few more things that need rewriting.

We'll see what happens. I need to have some space opened up so that I can start writing in some new tasks for the player to complete. The game needs more to do in it. Running around and mindlessly killing enemies is not what I'm going for with this. I want it to be in depth and interesting as well as exciting.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: apcalc on January 17, 2012, 06:36:14 pm
This sounds great, and it is wonderful to hear some 89 news! ;)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 22, 2012, 04:05:22 pm
PROGRESS UPDATE:

I just finished a rewrite that puts some of the initial data for the game into a file. It saved me another 3kb of data from being stuck in the program. I've now brought the program size down to 61,900 bytes. Which means I've got quite a bit to work with still. I haven't finished putting everything I plan on putting into the data file though, so the actual amount of program data saved might be more in the future. I also implemented another system that starts to selectively ignore dead and unimportant sprites as the game cycles, thereby speeding the game up as you start playing each level. It has some quirks right now, but it should be easy to fix. Next on the list is to finish retooling the save/load feature. It appears to be working correctly right now, but I don't like the whole "appears to be" part very much, so I want to be sure.

I need alpha testers! I know I've been whining about that a lot in my posts lately, but only because it's a legitimate problem! Somebody please volunteer! I want to be able to release the alpha to my testers so I can figure out what needs fixing right away that I may have missed. That will help me streamline the development process a lot.

So much to do still! So little time!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: jsj795 on January 22, 2012, 04:10:29 pm
I wish I didn't lose my TI-89+titanium :( I don't know where it went T_T
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 22, 2012, 09:40:48 pm
Hooray for progress! \o/ I don't mind helping you test. I have a hw1 Ti-89 and a voyage 200. :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 22, 2012, 11:56:50 pm
Hooray for alpha test volunteers!

@jsj795: Super-Mega-Sadface! I hope you find it!

@Art_Of_Camelot: It'll have to be the Voyage, unfortunately the game uses too much new code to support the HW1 model 89's. The lowest supported HW revision is HW2. :( But since you volunteered with the voyage, I'll put together an install package for you. You should see it in your inbox here in a day or two. I need to get a couple of things written before giving you an alpha to start on. Try your best to make it screw up if you can. That'll tell me more about the stability of the code than anything.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 23, 2012, 01:30:55 am
Alright, sounds good to me. :) I'll do my best to break the game. ;D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Lionel Debroux on January 23, 2012, 01:40:09 am
Hey, I hadn't noticed activity in this topic :)

Quote
unfortunately the game uses too much new code to support the HW1 model 89's
TI put an ugly software limitation in HW1 calcs running AMS 1.xx and AMS 2.xx, but this limitation was killed ages ago by MaxMem (which I integrated into tiosmod+amspatch, updated to AMS 2.08 and 2.09) :)
After modifying the OS on-calc with MaxMem, or on-computer with tiosmod+amspatch, HW1 calcs provide just as much memory as HW2 calcs.
The timers of HW1 calcs remains inaccurate, but that's a hardware problem :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 31, 2012, 01:28:48 pm
Well I'm getting very close to having things working in the manner they are supposed to. I think I'm at the point where I'm comfortable releasing an alpha version to the testers. I believe I've fixed all the major problems. I need all the volunteers to send me a personal message with your email address so I can send out a mass email with the alpha attached. This version is likely to have tons of bugs just because I haven't had enough time to test every feature myself. If you discover something weird, please let me know. I think I may be missing some storyline and such with a couple tasks and things like that.

Right now I'm focusing on tying up some lose ends before I continue progressing in the development. I need to make the code more stable before trying to add to it. Please make sure that when you run the game, there's nothing important on your calculator. Please assume it will crash and you will lose your data. So make a backup and start with a clean slate so as to avoid any problems.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on February 06, 2012, 08:58:37 am
I somehow missed this in the sea of posts. x.x My email is listed in my profile, but I sent you a PM as well. :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 07, 2012, 11:20:36 am
That's alright, it happens. I sent you the alpha a few minutes ago. I'm interested to see what you find. I'm running into strange things with the code right now with new features I'm trying to add. I think I'm getting close to the limit, because it keeps giving me protected memory violation errors in weird places, and it shouldn't be. So I'm thinking what I'm going to have to do is go through the code with a fine toothed comb and try to optimize the heck out of it. It's going to be a big task, but I'm going to try my best. The problem is, the code is pretty tight for the most part and I'm still at 61800 something bytes. I am having to be really careful because I'm running out of space, and the game isn't complete yet!

I've got a couple of ideas of how to save space and such, so I'm going to give it a shot. Wish me luck!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Lionel Debroux on February 07, 2012, 11:51:26 am
Could you send me the code, so that I can spend a bit of time reading it and seeing what known optimizations could be applicable, if any ? :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 07, 2012, 01:27:17 pm
yeah sure, that would actually be a big help! I'll do that right away
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Lionel Debroux on February 07, 2012, 03:08:20 pm
Thanks :)
Meanwhile, if you've never looked at it yet, you could find some useful information on optimization for TI-68k calculators in TICT tutorial S1P9 ( http://tict.ticalc.org/projects.html#ref_tutorials ). It's distributed alongside ExtGraph (https://github.com/debrouxl/ExtGraph) as well.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on February 07, 2012, 08:04:58 pm
Good luck ATG! ;D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 14, 2012, 02:46:03 pm
@Aaron you may need to ask in the help section and give info on what version and which screenshot making software you are using and which emu/version. Hopefully someone can help there.

Also keep up the good work :)

@flyingfisch blame TI's monopoly on schools. Teachers are sold out to Texas Instruments so students are almost forced to get a TI calc instead of a Casio. :( Also they aren't as documented as z80 and 68K calcs yet due to the much smaller community. Actually the TI-89 is facing the same problem now: Almost nobody program for them anymore, since TI is slowly phasing them out in favor of the TI-Nspire series. AaroneusTheGreat is probably one of, if not the only 68K ASM/C programmer remaining in the TI community right now.
ahh.

LOL, im probably the only active american programmer for Casio FX-9860! Just realized that.
Yeah actually you might be right lol.  Most are French or German.

Also nice to see this is still progressing Aaroneus. :D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 15, 2012, 03:45:00 pm
Thanks DJ! In fact:

PROGRESS UPDATE:

So I've done another massive rewrite to the code, I managed to save quite a bit with the program size. I've gotten it down to 55760 bytes. So I've got nearly 10kb of space left for features now. :D

I've been reading up on a bunch of compiler switches, and tricks to speed up and slim down code. I think it might be time to send out another alpha version to see how stable things are. So far it seems as if my improvements have increased the stability of the code, it's having to compute less to address some things in memory, so in turn, less errors are possible with addressing.

I've still got quite a bit to do. I'll keep you all informed.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 15, 2012, 03:49:52 pm
Good to hear. How is the speed by the way now?
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 15, 2012, 08:09:39 pm
Noticeably better. I don't know how much better exactly, but it seems quite a bit more responsive. I'm still working on it though, I have a few more ideas in mind of how to speed it up more. A lot of the speed issue is in connection with the massive amounts of data it has to keep up with. The save files alone have averaged in the 6 to 8 kilobyte range, which is just the vital info to make sure you get the state of the game back, that doesn't include any of the pointers to the images, or the arrays of numbers connected with how the actions for each character behave, or any of that.

So needless to say, having a method of keeping track of all this that allows for quick addressing is vital. 
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 15, 2012, 11:16:49 pm
Good to hear. I noticed that several FPSes for the 68K series never runs at higher than 6-7 FPS, which was OK I guess but I always wondered if it was possible to have them run faster, especially considering the FAT engine dates back in 2003.

Good luck!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Lionel Debroux on February 16, 2012, 12:59:31 am
Good to see you decreased the program's size quite a bit :)
Did you get my e-mails on that topic ?
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 16, 2012, 09:14:37 pm
Interestingly enough, your emails got put in my spam folder. I didn't know you had written to me. I read through the optimization tutorial and followed several of the things it said to do in there, which incidentally was a lot of what you said in your emails now that I go to read them. I guess great minds think alike. :D

And thanks for the help. I didn't think of a few of the things you mentioned in the emails. I'll try applying those as well.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Lionel Debroux on February 17, 2012, 01:05:48 am
Meh. That spam filter is silly, it's not like my e-mails should look like spam :D
Depending on when you performed the optimizations, the spam filter may have wasted some of your time...

Since my latest e-mail, I've worked on optimizing LoadTextures further. The many calls to __stkparm__ FAT_* functions it contains make it a size disaster (it's not your fault, it's just a consequence of FAT's API and calling convention !). The idea is three-fold:
* add, above LoadTextures, wrapper __regparm__ functions for __stkparm__ FAT_* functions, such as:
Code: [Select]
static __attribute__((__noinline__)) short MyLoadTextures(TEXCONFIG* a asm("a0"), unsigned char* b asm("a2"), short c asm("d0"), short d asm("d3"))
{
    return FAT_LoadTextures(a, b, c, d);
}

static __attribute__((__noinline__)) void * MyGetGenericData(unsigned char* a asm("a2"), short b asm("d0"), unsigned short c asm("d3"))
{
    return FAT_GetGenericData(a, b, c);
}

static __attribute__((__noinline__)) unsigned short MyGetGenericDataLength(unsigned char* a asm("a2"), short b asm("d0"))
{
    return FAT_GetGenericDataLength(a, b);
}

* at the beginning of LoadTextures, add:
Code: [Select]
    register short (* loadtextures) (TEXCONFIG* a asm("a0"), unsigned char* b asm("a2"), short c asm("d0"), short d asm("d3")) = MyLoadTextures;
    register void* (* getgenericdata) (unsigned char* a asm("a2"), short b asm("d0"), unsigned short c asm("d3")) = MyGetGenericData;
    register unsigned short (* getgenericdatalength) (unsigned char* a asm("a2"), short b asm("d0")) = MyGetGenericDataLength;

* in LoadTextures, replace all occurrences of FAT_LoadTextures by (*loadtextures), FAT_GetGenericData by (*getgenericdata), FAT_GetGenericDataLength by (*getgenericdatalength).

Building the program showed that the size of LoadTextures was slashed by a further 2+ KB. But I haven't tested this optimization at runtime, and while it should not fail, watch out ;)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 17, 2012, 04:57:32 pm
Thanks for all the help! I did some modifications to the code again today and I got the program size down to 52573 bytes. I implemented your code in the above post, and it saved quite a bit of program space. I'm very encouraged with how much this has been optimized. I think I'm going to email you the current source so you can see what I've done and possibly find some things I may still be missing.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Xeda112358 on February 17, 2012, 04:59:00 pm
I saw this over on RevSoft and all I can say is O.O Superb job!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 17, 2012, 05:00:50 pm
Wow that's small, considering it's a 68K program O.O.

Once it's completely finished, someone should attempt porting this to the TI-Nspire/PRIZM or something for bigger visibility. :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 17, 2012, 08:32:01 pm
The program executable is what I'm speaking of by the 52k bytes. I think I may be confusing people about the total size of the game. The executable files are only one of several files that are required to make the game run. I have 5 graphics files with 65k of images or so in each, one map file at around 20k, the fat engine library file at 54.6k, and a data file at just over 3k. So total, the game takes up quite a bit of space.

I found a bug and fixed it today. I also redid some addressing stuff with a few structures and saved some more cycles. The game runs very smoothly right now. I'm quite pleased with how it's going. :D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 17, 2012, 09:09:38 pm
Oh ok, lol, I thought the entire game size was this low. I was kinda wondering how you managed to get it so small lol.

Anyway keep up the good work AaroneusTheGame :D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: nxtboy III on February 18, 2012, 12:15:44 am
Wow, the character in the game actually looks like it is 3D. Cool!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Lionel Debroux on February 18, 2012, 02:26:05 am
I'll try to have a look again at the source code during the week-end. Not before this afternoon, though... I'll be busy outside the computer this morning.


Slightly off-topic:
Sometimes, extreme size optimization can occur through procedural code and data generation, even without video acceleration, yielding amazing demos, even on platforms less powerful than TI-68k calculators are (e.g. "Craft", on a custom AVR platform: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=50141 ) :)

All programs appearing in Pouet's top 100 of all history ( http://pouet.net/toplist.php?type=prods&platform=any+platform&x=0&y=0&prodlimit=100&dayspans=10000&dayspane=0 , which is, for some reason, not exactly the same thing as using the list at the bottom left corner of the root page) displayed some form of trend-setting at the time of their release. Especially noteworthy are the 4K and 64K executables by RGBA, Conspiracy, Farbrausch, Fairlight, TBC, AND, Equinox, and various others. For instance:
* "Elevated", http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938 , a 4K Windows executable producing 3'36" of good-looking HD images, synchronized with sound;
* the older "Parsec", http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=16373 , is awesome as well.

I'm not responsible for the productivity loss resulting from watching dozens of excellent demos on pouet.net ;)


But these demos containing procedural code & data generation usually get away with the severe size constraints by using lots of RAM... which we don't have on TI-68k calcs. For speed and memory consumption reasons, the textures need to reside in Flash memory, under a directly readable form...
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 18, 2012, 02:28:29 pm
Oh wow I remember watching some of those. It was amazing. I also remember seeing some for the TI-82/83 calcs too before, such as Noice, and one for the TI-85, IIRC.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 26, 2012, 12:11:57 am
PROGRESS UPDATE:

I've been spending a ton of time optimizing the game, and so far I've gotten the game engine compiling down to 49816 bytes, and it's faster than ever!

Hopefully when I have the yet again rewritten save and load game features working, I'll be ready to release another alpha for testing. Right now, the save game feature works, but the code to load the game from the save file does not! :O

I'm not really sure what's going wrong right now either. :/
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Xeda112358 on February 26, 2012, 10:54:33 am
Well, my initial reaction was Ü and then it went to ö. That is really awesome! O.O I hope you can figure out where stuff got broken! :D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Jim Bauwens on February 26, 2012, 03:42:44 pm
Nice too see progress!
Maybe you could post the saving code, so maybe we can look into it? :D
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 26, 2012, 06:39:25 pm
If any of you can spot what I did wrong, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm not sure what's going on with this, but I haven't looked into it too deeply yet. 

This part works, it generates the file, with the correct tag and all that stuff.
Code: [Select]
void SaveGame(short type_of_game)
{

short i,x,y;
const char const* filename = type_of_game ? "doasava" : "doasavb";

// size of file:
short totalDataSize =
sizeof(gameglobals) + 21 +
(8 * MAX_LEVEL_SPRITES) +
((14 * NR_SPRITE_TYPE_DEFS) * 2) +
(sizeof(FATSPRITE) * MAX_SPRITES) +
(sizeof(SpriteStruct) * MAX_SPRITES) +
(sizeof(SwitchStruct) * MAX_NR_SWITCHES) +
(sizeof(GlassWall) * MAX_GLASS_WALLS) +
(sizeof(ExplodingFalseWall) * MAX_NR_DOORS) +
(sizeof(PushableWall) * MAX_NR_DOORS) +
(sizeof(LockedDoor) * MAX_NR_DOORS) +
(4 * TOTAL_NR_WEAPONS) +
(4 * gg.nr_doors);

HSym hsym = SymAddMain(SYMSTR (filename));
if (hsym.folder == 0) return;
SYM_ENTRY *SymPtr = (DerefSym(hsym));
SymPtr->handle = HeapAlloc(totalDataSize);
if (SymPtr->handle == H_NULL) return;

unsigned char *VarPtr = HLock(SymPtr->handle);

if (VarPtr == NULL) return;


*(unsigned short*)VarPtr = (totalDataSize - 2);
VarPtr+=2; // 2

*(unsigned short*)VarPtr = fc.cam_xpos;
VarPtr+=2;  // 4
*(unsigned short*)VarPtr = fc.cam_xpos;
VarPtr+=2; // 6
*(unsigned short*)VarPtr = fc.cam_orientation;
VarPtr+=2; // 8

*(short*)VarPtr = nr_item_sprites;
VarPtr+=2; // 10
*(short*)VarPtr = nr_static_sprites;
VarPtr +=2; // 12
*(short*)VarPtr = nr_dynamic_sprites;
VarPtr +=2; // 14

memcpy(VarPtr,&gg,sizeof(gameglobals));
VarPtr += sizeof(gameglobals);

for (i = 0; i <MAX_LEVEL_SPRITES; i++)
{
*(short*)VarPtr = item_sprites[i];
VarPtr+=2;
*(short*)VarPtr = static_sprites[i];
VarPtr+=2;
*(short*)VarPtr = dynamic_sprites[i];
VarPtr+=2;
*(short*)VarPtr = sprite_checked[i];
VarPtr+=2;
}

for (y = 0; y < NR_SPRITE_TYPE_DEFS; y++)
{
for (x = 0; x < 7; x++)
{
*(short*)VarPtr = sprite_action_steps[y][x];
VarPtr+=2;
*(short*)VarPtr = sprite_action_nr_sprites[y][x];
VarPtr+=2;
}
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_SPRITES; i++)
{
memcpy(VarPtr,&sprites[i],sizeof(FATSPRITE));
VarPtr+=sizeof(FATSPRITE);
memcpy(VarPtr,&sprt_data[i],sizeof(SpriteStruct));
VarPtr+=sizeof(SpriteStruct);
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_NR_SWITCHES; i++)
{
memcpy(VarPtr,&Switches[i],sizeof(SwitchStruct));
VarPtr+=sizeof(SwitchStruct);
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_GLASS_WALLS; i++)
{
memcpy(VarPtr,&glass_walls[i],sizeof(GlassWall));
VarPtr+=sizeof(GlassWall);
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_NR_DOORS; i++)
{
memcpy(VarPtr,&exploding_false_walls[i],sizeof(ExplodingFalseWall));
VarPtr+=sizeof(ExplodingFalseWall);
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_NR_DOORS; i++)
{
memcpy(VarPtr,&push_walls[i],sizeof(PushableWall));
VarPtr+=sizeof(PushableWall);
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_NR_DOORS; i++)
{
memcpy(VarPtr,&lockedDoors[i],sizeof(LockedDoor));
VarPtr+=sizeof(LockedDoor);
}

for (i = 0; i < TOTAL_NR_WEAPONS; i++)
{
*(short*)VarPtr = weapon_array[i]->have_weapon;
VarPtr+=2;
*(short*)VarPtr = weapon_array[i]->ammo;
VarPtr+=2;
}

FATDOOR *doorsarray = FAT_GetDoorsArray();

for (i = 0; i < gg.nr_doors; i++)
{
*VarPtr = doorsarray[i].type;
VarPtr++;
*VarPtr = doorsarray[i].state;
VarPtr++;
*(unsigned short*)VarPtr = doorsarray[i].position;
VarPtr+=2;
}


*VarPtr = 0;       // 15
VarPtr++;
*VarPtr = 'd';     // 16
VarPtr++;
*VarPtr = 'o';     // 17
VarPtr++;
*VarPtr = 'a';     // 18
VarPtr++;
*VarPtr = 's';     // 19
VarPtr++;
*VarPtr = 0;       // 20
VarPtr++;
*VarPtr = OTH_TAG; // 21


HeapUnlock(SymPtr->handle);
}

This part always generates a protected memory violation.

Code: [Select]
short LoadGame(short type_of_game)
{
short i,x,y;
const char const* filename = type_of_game ? "doasava" : "doasavb";

        // open file returns the pointer to the actual data in the file, past the size bytes.
unsigned char* VarPtr = OpenFile(filename);

if (VarPtr == NULL) return 0;

fc.cam_xpos = *(unsigned short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2;  // 4
fc.cam_xpos = *(unsigned short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2; // 6
fc.cam_orientation = *(unsigned short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2; // 8

nr_item_sprites = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2; // 10
nr_static_sprites = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr +=2; // 12
nr_dynamic_sprites = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr +=2; // 14

memcpy(&gg,VarPtr,sizeof(gameglobals));
VarPtr += sizeof(gameglobals);

for (i = 0; i <MAX_LEVEL_SPRITES; i++)
{
item_sprites[i] = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2;
static_sprites[i] = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2;
dynamic_sprites[i] = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2;
sprite_checked[i] = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2;
}

for (y = 0; y < NR_SPRITE_TYPE_DEFS; y++)
{
for (x = 0; x < 7; x++)
{
sprite_action_steps[y][x] = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2;
sprite_action_nr_sprites[y][x] = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2;
}
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_SPRITES; i++)
{
memcpy(&sprites[i],VarPtr,sizeof(FATSPRITE));
VarPtr+=sizeof(FATSPRITE);
memcpy(&sprt_data[i],VarPtr,sizeof(SpriteStruct));
VarPtr+=sizeof(SpriteStruct);
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_NR_SWITCHES; i++)
{
memcpy(&Switches[i],VarPtr,sizeof(SwitchStruct));
VarPtr+=sizeof(SwitchStruct);
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_GLASS_WALLS; i++)
{
memcpy(&glass_walls[i],VarPtr,sizeof(GlassWall));
VarPtr+=sizeof(GlassWall);
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_NR_DOORS; i++)
{
memcpy(&exploding_false_walls[i],VarPtr,sizeof(ExplodingFalseWall));
VarPtr+=sizeof(ExplodingFalseWall);
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_NR_DOORS; i++)
{
memcpy(&push_walls[i],VarPtr,sizeof(PushableWall));
VarPtr+=sizeof(PushableWall);
}

for (i = 0; i < MAX_NR_DOORS; i++)
{
memcpy(&lockedDoors[i],VarPtr,sizeof(LockedDoor));
VarPtr+=sizeof(LockedDoor);
}

for (i = 0; i < TOTAL_NR_WEAPONS; i++)
{
weapon_array[i]->have_weapon = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2;
weapon_array[i]->ammo = *(short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2;
}

FATDOOR *doorsarray = FAT_GetDoorsArray();

for (i = 0; i < gg.nr_doors; i++)
{
doorsarray[i].type = *VarPtr;
VarPtr++;
doorsarray[i].state= *VarPtr;
VarPtr++;
doorsarray[i].position = *(unsigned short*)VarPtr;
VarPtr+=2;
}

CloseFile(filename);

// the game engine may not have the correct number of sprites to work with, so
// set it to what we loaded from the file.
fc.nr_sprites = gg.number_total_sprites;

// this part here has to be here, because the texconfig pointers for each sprite
// may be pointing to some random place in archive memory, that may not correspond
// to the textures anymore, so I just use the function I already have to
// set the current texture frame for the current animation, to set the
// pointers back to what they should be.

for (i = 0; i < fc.nr_sprites; i++)
{
SetSpriteToCurrentAnimationFrame(&sprites[i],&sprt_data[i]);
}

return 1;
}

Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Lionel Debroux on February 27, 2012, 01:14:48 am
Protected Memory Violation is triggered when writing to NULL or nearby addresses (where the vector table is)...
I cannot see any mistakes that are all too obvious here. Check that all structs you save and restore through memcpy do not contain pointers, which must be reinitialized to match the new runtime conditions in a different run of DOA.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 22, 2012, 04:25:32 pm
I'm glad this was still progressing. Hopefully the coding issue is resolved without too much hassle. :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 26, 2012, 10:25:23 pm
PROGRESS FINALLY:

I now have the save/load feature working as long as you save/load while the game is already running. Now the task is to get it working for when you start the game up and want to continue from where you left off. It's proving difficult due to the large amount of data that has to be stored/recalled and not have any of it screw up a sequence in the loading. To give you an idea of the amount of data that needs to be stored:

Saving the game on the first level generates a save file of 15295 bytes.

That's a bit more than half of the entire ram of a ti-82. This game has a ton going on internally.

EDIT:

Turns out, the loading is pretty quirky. It works in certain situations, but there are problems in other situations. I  have some ideas on how to fix it though, so I may have a solution before too long. We'll see.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 26, 2012, 10:42:01 pm
Glad to see you (and some progress) again :)

Yeah saving can be annoying, plus you have to be careful about dependencies on variables and stuff. X.x
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on April 15, 2012, 01:10:39 am
Good to see you as always too DJ.

Progress update:

Well I made a little progress. I've got the story mode game saving/loading working 100% now, but in the process I decided it was best to take away the ability to save during the mini-game. It kind of defeats the purpose of the mini-game to be able to save, the object is to stay alive as long as possible.

I'm also working on fixing a little feature that got broken during the major rewrite. When you kill a robotic enemy, they are supposed to drop items, but it's not working quite right. When they do drop the items, you can't pick them up for whatever reason. I'm probably missing some minute detail, but haven't figured out what that could be yet.

Next on the list is more levels and tasks. I'm open to suggestions as to different types of tasks to accomplish to make the game more dynamic.

Hopefully there will be more to come soon! I am trying to focus on getting something significant done each week with this, we'll see how well it goes. :p I'll let you all know when I do though.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 15, 2012, 02:22:05 am
Yeah I still visit the chat and sometimes the forums, although not as much as a few years ago and often take breaks. I'm glad more progress was done. Hopefully you can fix the bugs without too much hassle.


New screenshot soon? :P
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Lionel Debroux on April 15, 2012, 02:47:04 am
Good to see more progress :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on April 16, 2012, 11:42:36 am
Thanks guys, here's a screenshot of the current little detail I added. When you die in the minigame, there is now a screen telling you how many rounds you survived.

I can't really do animated screenshots right now, I've had trouble with CalcCapture lately.

I'm working on a few other details right now, but they're not really visible things at the moment. Mostly internal bug fixes. As it is there's not really any major bugs. I haven't been able to make the code crash, but there's some quirks here and there I'm working out. I'll keep you posted if I make any more progress.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Xeda112358 on April 16, 2012, 11:44:58 am
Nice o.o I like the fonts, by the way :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on April 16, 2012, 09:45:21 pm
The credit for the font goes to David Randall. He designed them and wrote the function for drawing them to the screen. I was focusing on gameplay stuff at the time and he volunteered to do the font stuff. Several people's hands have been at this game besides my own. All of which will be mentioned in the credits/readme when it comes time to release the game.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Xeda112358 on April 16, 2012, 09:49:59 pm
Oh, cool :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on April 17, 2012, 02:38:25 am
Still looking good. :) By the way, did you ever send that alpha build to my email? If you did send it out I didn't get it for some reason. :/
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on April 19, 2012, 11:20:01 am
Thanks! :D I did send it, I have a feeling your spam filter got it. I resent it to you just now. Let me know if you don't get this either, then I might be doing something wrong.

Progress Update:

I found and fixed a really bad bug today. It was a bug that caused an actual crash, so it's good that it's gone :D.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on April 20, 2012, 12:19:28 am
Alright. I'll check my email when i get home. =)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on April 22, 2012, 12:47:05 pm
Art_Of_Camelot:

Cool deal. I hope you enjoy it!

Progress Update:

I added a little feature that when the marquee isn't displaying a message, it will now display the current time. This is the system time, same as the clocks on the wall in the game. Now you always know how much time you're wasting playing my game!

Also I've been spending quite a bit of time picking through the code and optimizing things as well as documenting the code really well. Documentation is a pretty big task, I just totaled up the lines of code I've written, I was blown away. 11,059 LINES! And that's the current version. I've rewritten many sections of the game too!  O.O
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Xeda112358 on April 22, 2012, 02:55:38 pm
Wow, and that time feature is a really nice addition!
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on April 25, 2012, 05:40:43 am
11059 Lines of code geeze... you are a beast man! Got around to checking my email and this was in the "junk" folder for some reason or another. >.< Gonna load it up and give it a go. =)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: aeTIos on April 25, 2012, 06:44:24 am
aaroneus: I think your attachment got lost with the corruption scandal yesterday (jk @the scandal ofc)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 25, 2013, 10:54:33 pm
unfortunately since the last update, I lost that particular screenshot to a reformat and a fresh install on my laptop. The good news is i have updates:

[reposted from tifreakware.net]
I worked on this a little today, and for the past few weeks off and on, I've made some pretty significant improvements in the speed of the game. I'm trying to focus on optimization and testing right now still, before moving on to advance the plot of the game and the gameplay. I feel like if I spend enough time on optimizing right now, I won't run into as many performance issues as I have in the past. As it is now the game runs much smoother than it did during my last serious spurt of work.

I hope to have more to show for my work soon, but I have fixed a few more minor bugs and cleaned up and commented a bunch of the code, got rid of some unnecessary steps in some of the functions that control targeting for the auto aim and a few other odds and ends.

I'll let you all know when anything else happens. I also want to release another alpha soon for some more extensive testing. When I feel like it's stable enough for this, I will make an announcement.

The short and the long of it is DOA is not dead! Still! I promise lol
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 25, 2013, 11:07:29 pm
Ouch, sorry about your data loss. I hope nothing too precious was lost besides the game. ANyway glad to hear from you again :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 26, 2013, 12:20:14 am
Nice to see you around and working on this again. ^^
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Ranman on January 26, 2013, 12:59:32 am
Woo hoo!

Ranman breakdances and moonwalks
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 29, 2013, 10:45:04 pm
DJ: Nah nothing was lost that was important.

Thanks guys! It's good to be working again.

I fixed the code to save the configuration of the customizable keys and the settings for auto aim and graphical quality.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: tr1p1ea on January 29, 2013, 11:33:50 pm
Any updated screenshots? :).
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: Stefan Bauwens on January 30, 2013, 02:32:02 pm
Yes! It's cool you're working on this.
I hope this, as well as Jumpman gets done so we may have a cool POTY this year(unlike last year :P).
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on January 30, 2013, 09:02:30 pm
Tr1p1ea: No not at the moment, there's not a lot to see in a screenshot at this moment. Most of the work I've done recently isn't very visible unless you're playing it, it's mostly speed improvements.

Thanks Stefan I hope it's done this year too. I started this project in 2008 or so, so it's about 5 years in the making... It's way overdue lol :p
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 18, 2015, 11:57:15 pm
Hello again everyone! It's been a long time. I'm glad to see some of you on IRC now and then since resurfacing from the haze of new baby and marriage and all that. I have begun work again on DOA. Lately it has been mainly bugfixes and level design, but I did square up one of the new little features for level #12, which I may or may not have mentioned previously. It involves the risk of electrocution  ;). Anyway even though this is very rough, I am going to attach a zip file of the current project to this post. So if you'd like to give it a spin, feel free to!

Please note: I can't guarantee the stability of this release, as it is not very thoroughly tested. So please don't run it on a real calc that has any valuable data on it. And if you do, back up first!!!.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: catastropher on February 20, 2015, 04:50:35 pm
Oh my god, I'm so glad you're back! There are so few programmers that make anything for the TI68k calcs anymore :( Anyway, I'll give it a test a bit later and let you know if I find any problems! :)
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 21, 2015, 09:00:41 pm
Thank you for the warm welcome back! :D

Small Update: I had a stroke of inspiration today and decided to change the level #12 task up some so that it's more interesting! I have begun work on this new feature today.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on February 23, 2015, 10:55:05 pm
UPDATE:

Today I have more or less completed the code for this new task for level #12. It's looking pretty cool if I do say so myself. I now have to do a little bit of level redesign so that you get the full effect of the feature.

Also I have done some optimizations in several areas of the game. There are more to be done, but I feel like the game is running better than it ever has. I hope to be able to implement a new AI system for the enemies this week. Also I hope to get some more levels designed. The mini game also needs some work, which I may or may not get around to addressing this week.

Anyway, stay tuned! With any luck there will be another update soon.
Title: Re: DOA
Post by: AaroneusTheGreat on March 12, 2015, 02:20:44 am
UPDATE:

Today I have made a pretty significant RAM savings. 3144 bytes saved in RAM with this new change. I haven't had a lot of time to do much else right now except work on some old bugs. I hope I get some time to work on level design and the mini game soon. I just had a bunch of work dumped on me this week, and subsequently, I don't have a whole lot of free time at the moment, but I will try my best to get some stuff done.