Goplanes

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 12:49 pm

Working through Virtual Box on the Mac, while serviceable, has been getting on my nerves lately.

Luckily, I found myself two old and cheap PCs a few weeks ago. An AMD 64 x 2 4600+ with 4GB of ram, 2 TB of storage and an NVidia 9600 GT. The other's an AMD 64 x 2 4200+ with 4GB of ram with an NVidia 7300 GS. Not the most beastly of machines for gaming, but way good enough for development. I've been moving over development to them.

So far, I got everything copied over, installed Visual Studio and QT (for Tiled plugin work) and everything is building and running. Took about a half day. Had to go back to the thread to find the instructions to setup the debugger for QT. Thank goodness I wrote that down somewhere

Files are copied over automatically through Dropbox. The mouse and keyboard are synced using Synergy.

I did have a few weird file conflicts through Dropbox where the PC had a really old version of a source code file while the Virtual Box version was the most recent one. Strange because it was the first time Dropbox synced to that PC. But that got fixed.

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 10:59 pm

Old PCs are great as dev boxes for things like old consoles. They also tend to have the parallel port some of the older dev tools need, like the parallel port programmer for the MD Pro flash cart.

I used my old laptop for that until the battery went dead. Stupid thing won't power on with a dead battery even with the AC adaptor "for my safety".

I'm keeping an eye out for a battery, but a battery from most laptop parts dealers would cost me more than a new (cheap) computer!

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 11:49 pm

I got a nice high capacity battery for my laptop from china. It easily goes 3 hours now ! (HP NX6125)

Old machines are good for any dev, especially PC games. When your game runs good on a crap, it will run good on anything haha

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 11:50 pm

I only require my machines to be able to run Quake III. My PC gaming needs are currently quite modest

Yurkie · Post by **Yurkie** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 11:08 pm

What happened to your game developement djcouchycouch?

Do you have any roms to share? I read though the thread and was watching your videos and it looked like things where coming along nicely.

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 11:20 pm

Hi!

Development has not stopped! It's just painfully slow. If I can just get over this hump, hopefully things will start moving again.

Not a day goes by that I don't think or do something about the project one way or another.

There are no roms available. I am still unsure what I'm going to do with that.

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 12:59 am

Lately I've been working on a few things. Nothing really sexy or video worthy yet.

- got coins to work again on large maps.
- with the new more, complex background update code spent some time optimizing it. Now I compute the row and/or column that needs updating for scrolling during game time and update the actual plane during vblank with DMA. I'm still seeing holes at the edges of the map when scrolling so I'll need to take a look at that. Again.
- noticed that updating the per-line horizontal scrolling of the B Plane was stupid slow. Changed some for loops to memsets and gained around 20 fps.
- also noticed that updating the hud is crazy slow too, around 20 fps too. Currently changing it so that it uses the Window plane and will only update when necessary. Unsure if I'll be keeping the radar arrows since they're so heavy.

That's it!
DJCC

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Mon Oct 08, 2012 7:59 pm

Working on the status bar. This is the least ugly version I currently have.

Next steps are to add text and make it functional. I'm going to have to sort out my sprite/background priorities. Certain objects go over the status bar while some are under.

I tried to set the status bar at the bottom, using the new memory addresses suggested by Stef, but I can't get it to work. I still have the same problem as originally. No idea why. I'll wait until the next version of SGDK comes out. Stef, any idea when that will be?

I also spent some time searching for 2d skeleton animation programs. I would really like to have complex multi-sprite objects like those in Vectorman or like the bosses in Gunstar Heroes. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) there's nothing out there that fits what I'm looking for. I might do some simple ones by hardcoding them and then wait for the next project to look into making more complicated ones.

oofwill · Post by **oofwill** » Mon Oct 08, 2012 8:39 pm

I really like your work

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Mon Oct 08, 2012 8:55 pm

oofwill wrote:I really like your work

Thank you so much! Development isn't the fastest right now but I try to work on it as much as I can.

Lives, health and coins in the HUD are working again.

And if anybody was wondering, the 0059 is the framerate

I'm going to have to fix the scrolling like I said I would. Man I hate revisiting that code over and over.

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Mon Oct 08, 2012 10:54 pm

It's looking great! I think most of us here fully understand about the fact that most devs are restricted to only part of their spare time.

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Mon Oct 08, 2012 11:34 pm

If I could only get the baby to do sprite art, I'd get ahead so much faster.

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Mon Oct 08, 2012 11:44 pm

This is looking so naiss !

Stef · Post by **Stef** » Tue Oct 09, 2012 2:55 pm

djcouchycouch wrote: Next steps are to add text and make it functional. I'm going to have to sort out my sprite/background priorities. Certain objects go over the status bar while some are under.

I tried to set the status bar at the bottom, using the new memory addresses suggested by Stef, but I can't get it to work. I still have the same problem as originally. No idea why. I'll wait until the next version of SGDK comes out. Stef, any idea when that will be?

I also spent some time searching for 2d skeleton animation programs. I would really like to have complex multi-sprite objects like those in Vectorman or like the bosses in Gunstar Heroes. Unfortunately (but not unsurprisingly) there's nothing out there that fits what I'm looking for. I might do some simple ones by hardcoding them and then wait for the next project to look into making more complicated ones.

Did you fixed your problem with the window ?
It's really nice to see your nice progress each time, Godplanes already look good

Also your comments about your problems (and found solutions) can help a lot people who want to develop a game on the megadrive.

We really want to add a nice and advanced sprite support in SGDK. Something that permit to handle animations, collisions, sprites chains...
I know Kaneda is working on something, i have also some ideas about that but that require many time to design and implement.

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Tue Oct 09, 2012 3:28 pm

Stef wrote:
djcouchycouch wrote: I tried to set the status bar at the bottom, using the new memory addresses suggested by Stef, but I can't get it to work. I still have the same problem as originally. No idea why. I'll wait until the next version of SGDK comes out. Stef, any idea when that will be?
Did you fixed your problem with the window ?

Nope

Stef wrote: Also your comments about your problems (and found solutions) can help a lot people who want to develop a game on the megadrive.

That's exactly why I keep posting

I've found working on the Genesis so much easier and straightforward to work with than when I spent a summer trying NES programming. With the NES, I got stuck easily into the platform's quirks and idiosyncrasies and can ever get into actual game building. Seeing that there are so few people working on Genesis homebrew, I want to make it easier for them to get started. Making Genesis games in C is really great and I wouldn't have gotten this far if it weren't for the SGDK.

Stef wrote: We really want to add a nice and advanced sprite support in SGDK. Something that permit to handle animations, collisions, sprites chains...
I know Kaneda is working on something, i have also some ideas about that but that require many time to design and implement.

The killer is making the tools. If ever I wanted to create a complex-sprite editor (and I'd sure like to) It'll easily double my development time. Goplanes development is slow enough as it is