Skool Daze

Silicebit. · Post by **Silicebit.** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 5:47 pm

Chema wrote:.... Also Dbug is working on a tape inlay which is looking really nice!...

Hey! I've made a tape inlay for Impossible Mission too.

Post by **Dbug** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 7:06 pm

Silicebit. wrote:
Chema wrote:.... Also Dbug is working on a tape inlay which is looking really nice!...
Hey! I've made a tape inlay for Impossible Mission too.

If you send it to me, I can add it as downloadable content for Twilighte's game.

Antiriad2097 · Post by **Antiriad2097** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 7:15 pm

Chema wrote:On another note and following Dbug's advice now by pressing 'C' during the game session it is possible to change the color combination. For now it cycles between CYAN/YELLOW, CYAN/GREEN and Monocrhome (b&w), but will test more and think about which to keep.

How about leaving it to the user?
Give us two keys to colour change, so one does even lines the other does the odd ones. This way players can have any colour combo they want if it just cycles through all 8 colours for each alternate line.

Silicebit. · Post by **Silicebit.** » Tue Oct 25, 2011 7:37 pm

Dbug wrote:If you send it to me, I can add it as downloadable content for Twilighte's game.

Inlay sent.

Chema · Post by **Chema** » Fri Oct 28, 2011 11:58 am

Antiriad2097 wrote: How about leaving it to the user?
Give us two keys to colour change, so one does even lines the other does the odd ones. This way players can have any colour combo they want if it just cycles through all 8 colours for each alternate line.

Not a bad idea, but I am not sure if it would be worth it. In addition of having only a few bytes left which I might need for solving problems, some combos won't work. Some may be difficult to play with, but others may simply show horrible pics when the inverse attributes are used.

Anyway I might try to add it just for testing which combos work and which don't. For the time being, those I said work quite well.

I have found and killed two major glitches in the game yesterday and also tweaked some timings with lesson duration, so they are close to the speccy version (though a little higher).

So still polishing so the beta version is as free of bugs as possible, while waiting for the next release of Oricutron.

Probably the game will see the light sometime next month

Chema · Post by **Chema** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 10:57 am

Hi all.

I have been tweaking and polishing things, and killing the last (hopefuly) bugs. Also testing the game in my Atmos to see if everything works as expected.

I've experienced a lot of trouble for loading the game into the real machine. I am using Audacity and a setup, which, for example, loads Stormlord at x10 speed with no problem (it auto runs perfectly). However Skool Daze loads but does not auto-run. Both were converted with tap2cd or tap2wav in the same machine and with the same tool.

I have tried several volume settings, with no success... Anybody has any idea? Could it be that I am loading from $500 to $bfff? Could this affect the loading routine somehow? I guess it doesn't, but who knows...

Anyway, after loading, you can see that the system is printing something in the screen (probably the Ready prompt), which cannot be read of course. Issuing a CALL #500 runs the program perfectly, but with some artifacts in the logo at the bottom of the screen. I guess due to what is written on the screen after loading.

I have not tested, but this can be avoided issuing a HIRES:CLOAD"" and then the CALL#500.

Which is not a solution to the missing auto-run... Has anybody tried? Has anybody found an alternate solution?

Cheers.

Post by **Dbug** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 4:59 pm

Well, you are victim of the good old Oric rom reliability issue.
It's not for nothing that some publishers (like Loriciel) had this small mini loader at the start to disable the error detection.

An alternate (EVIL way) to make it in BASIC is to have that:

Code: Select all

0 DOKE#1B,#500
1 CLOAD""

If errors are detected it will try to print READY but instead will jump to #500

Disclaimer: This code was not tested, just an idea

Chema · Post by **Chema** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:10 pm

If that works, Dbug, it is indeed evil

I wonder if it could be possible to use this and create a tap file which:
1 - Includes a loader with a small basic program such as yours, switches to hires and prints on hires something like Skool Daze is Loading..
2 - Includes the file generated by tap2cd at x10 speed.

Not sure how to include two programs in a wav file... any tool to do that?

Chema · Post by **Chema** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 10:35 pm

One quick post to state that Dbug's evil trick works

The Oric seems to write something in the screen (probably the Errors found message) and then the game is launched, though the cursor stays there as a white box. I guess it would be nice to disable it first.

I think I have forgotten if we have some info about this bug and how it behaves. I thought it was just noticed when using those auto-volume tape players, as there was some unstability in the beginning of the program, which I don't think is the case here

Post by **Dbug** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 10:13 am

Glad to hear that it works

I think there is a poke or an escape sequence that can be used to remove the blinking cursor...

barnsey123 · Post by **barnsey123** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 10:48 am

I've had the same problem with the cursor.
In basic, PRINT chr$(17) is supposed to do it.
In the AUG (PAGE 147) @ CC83 there is there is a "turn cursor off" section with a JSR to $F801. Don't work for me though...but then again I know next to nothing about asm...

kenneth · Post by **kenneth** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 1:18 pm

I had a problem with the conversion to WAV, there was always the message ERROR FOUND. I must add a silence of 1 second after the audio file using the Audacity Editor. After it works well.

Chema · Post by **Chema** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 1:28 pm

kenneth wrote:I had a problem with the conversion to WAV, there was always the message ERROR FOUND. I must add a silence of 1 second after the audio file using the Audacity Editor. After it works well.

I must have tried that first. I remember Symoon told me this several times, but I thought using Audacity this silence was no more needed and I completely forgot about it. Will try at home as soon as I have time.

Thanks for all your input. I think I need to dedicate a bit of effort into making sure the game is "cloadable" easily in real machines.

As a quick side note, the x10 speed only works on Atmos rom (it is stated in the readme file of tap2cd).

On the programming field, I have been tweaking the timings and they are quite better now. I can make Eric move faster, but I fear it would be quite unrealistic, and it is quite smooth right now. You may already know that I decided to make Eric run always (the original game let you choose to run when you press SHIFT or use the arrow keys, but everybody end up running all the time).

I also removed the squares on the bottom floor staircases, which sure will please Dbug and certainly looks better, and tweaked the code to let Eric sit on the stairs properly. There is also a small glitch there in the original game, so Eric sat in the air when in the upper stairs.

I am also waiting for Dbug's new revised version of the initial pic (the loading screen) to include it in the game.

I killed all the bugs I encountered, and tested the game a bit more on the real hardware and on the emulator. For the time being I found no other major issues. Some people making also tests with it didn't either, so I am ready for a release

Chema · Post by **Chema** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 6:38 pm

Tried adding 1 second of silence both at the start and at the end of the sound file with no success

I am still confused about what could be wrong, as I am able to load and auto run most files... Are you sure there is not any kind of hideous bug in tap2cd and tap2wav which could be the reason?

Symoon · Post by **Symoon** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 6:56 pm

Hi all,

Chema, I just tried to convert the last version I had of Skool Daze to WAV (with wav2tap), and loaded it fine with Euphoric, from TEXT screen.
Does you WAV file fail with Euphoric too ?

Have you used the -11 switch with tap2wav, for the WAV file you wanted to load on the real machine ? For real machines, 11khz files are much more reliables than Euphoric's 8khz file (which is produced by default if you don't use any switch with tap2wav).