Ultra Air Hockey (Sega Ports)

[Tamkis]

I would like to officially and publicly announce to the BEX community my development on a new, high-quality, BEX project, that being Sega homebrew ports
of my original QB64 PC game, Ultra Air Hockey (SD). The game is currently being developed for the Sega Genesis, and soon, the Sega CD, just in time for the year of 2014, which is the Mega Drive's 25th birthday . When finished, the game will be released both digitally and physically, as ROM and ISO downloads, and, if enough interest, sold as repro carts/repro CDs on my website. ETA of game is Thanksgiving or Christmas 2014.



For those who do not know, Ultra Air Hockey is my original air hockey video game, featuring exciting music, an announcer guy, original real-world sound effects, original pre-rendered 2D & 3D art, intelligent CPU AI, fun multiplayer, and most importantly, powerups! The genesis version utilizes the BEX port of the Echo Sound engine, and its DAC for sound effects while the Sega CD version will utilize only the DAC of the Echo Sound Engine, and high-quality CD music. Furthermore, this project serves to be my launch title to use my GSpriteLibrary. GSpriteLibrary is my in-progress, functionally-equivalent, BEX port of a QB64 SpriteLibrary. The library, when released to the BEX community, should end most beginner programmers' difficulty with handling sprites, low-level VDP features, and dealing with collisions. It will also allow me to port other QB64 games written with the library to BEX as future homebrew titles, such as Asteroids, and more

Full details about the project can be found on my webpage. Also, the VGM and CDDA OSTs of the game has bee released on my music page.

Pics:






Preview Video:
youtu.be/WcI7p4tc7Ew


I'll update this thread as the pending release gets closer.
C&CC on the current progress welcomed!

[sega16]

Wow this is awesome. Good graphics, music and game-play. I will be very excited to see this released.

[fl]

good game ! really good sound effect
i'm happy to see it will be easy to convert qb64 games to BEX
bye

[zenac]

Congratulations, Tamkis! The game seems very good. The music is fantastic! Go on with your game development.

[Sg]

Sound and music are very good
graphic too

it seems the animation is the most difficult to do in game

have you resolved the fps drop problem ?

[Tamkis]

The FPS was a lot slower, before I reduced the SLEEP commands used before polling the joypad() from 5 to 2, though, with the drawback of rapid, sticky keys. Also, it slows down, due to the complex loops, functions, and sub programs used. Probably the best way for me to speed it up is to reduce the modularity and complexity... after the majority of the game is written.

[sega16]

Here is an idea. Don't use sleep at all. Instead use vblank for timing. Have a counter and try and do everything as fast as possible. When there is nothing left to do wait until the timer increases. Also if you are animating tiles do that during vblank.

[Tamkis]

Due to very a heavy University workload this year, and due to strange development and compilation bugs, the planned release date of the MD version has been pushed back to Winter of 2014, and potential Sega CD port to the early 2015 year. Academics first (so that I can become a software engineer, and get hired at 1 of the 2 video game design companies located in the Pittsburgh area.)

Due to the strange BEX bugs, and having no clue how to get around them, I would like to ask for someone knowledgible to join the development as a co-developer. I recently created a GitHub account, which we could use to collaborate. I'll also occasionally post for help in my own help topic. I especially could use some help in creating the GSpriteLibrary, for which the game is utilizing for sprite management.

[Tamkis]

Currently on Christmas break from Uni, and am ready to work some more on Ultra Air Hockey!
However... I am having some severe issues with the BEX Compiler currently with the game, which have halted development
Upon compilation, I keep getting this error below:



According to an older forum topic, the 1st error is due to poor assembly generation and code being too big .

Oddly enough, despite this error, the game compiles .
However, in a subroutine called StickMove, the game freezes for NO REASON.
This routine makes the sticks move, and is called directly after selecting the # of players from the player select screen.
Below is the function call to StickMove in the main game loop

Code:

'Code Line #96:
'MAIN GAME LOOP
E_ID=0:E_act=0:E_bank=0:gosub Echo 'Init Echo
FMV
DrawBG 1 'Clear some VRAM
Do
Title 'Title sequence
MainMenu 'Main Menu screen
DrawBG 1 'Clear some VRAM
Freeallsprites

Initgame (#FALSE) 'Init game variables
Do
Stickmove
Loop
Loop



[/Code]

If somebody could please help and find out the best way to fix the game, and WHY it is freezing for no reason
in that routine. Otherwise I am giving up and moving the project to C with SGDK. The compiler is blowing up.

Attached here is the entire project. Let me know if there are any compilation errors with respect to filepaths,
and I'll reupload and fix them here.

[Tamkis]

Unfortunately, due to those unforseen problems and BEX limitations, I am cancelling the BEX port of the game, but am recoding the project to SGDK. Also, the GSpriteLibrary is also cancelled. (I managed to get Code::Blocks working yesterday with SGDK, and it works marvelously.) Probably a good thing too, since it has various needed features straight out of the box, and I will not have to reinvent the wheel by coding such features myself, including its fix16 and fix32 virtual decimal datatypes, advanced spritesheet support, trigonometry support, etc. Programming in SGDK will also improve my C skills, and such projects are more practical to go on my resume (employers would just ROFL if I put BASIC projects on there, since BASIC is not a real professional language and rarely used in industry).

Although the BEX port is cancelled, I will still have it available for download at this link. At a bare minimum, the project files should serve the community as example sprite management and Echo code for BEX.

Any questions on the code in the future, don't hesitate to reply.

[fl]

what a bad news !
your project was a big project
you could make a downgraded version of your project rather than cancel it...
BEX has no limits, but rather it's we who have limits to master BEX
good luck for the next

[Deleted]

Jan 4, 2015 13:57:48 GMT -5 Tamkis said:

Unfortunately, due to those unforseen problems and BEX limitations, I am cancelling the BEX port of the game, but am recoding the project to SGDK.

Sorry to hear that. Hope you have better luck with SGDK

[zenac]

That is a pity that you have stopped the development of your game with BasiEgaXorz. I hope that you finish your Sega Genesis game. Good luck!

Thank you for sharing your code.

I am trying to make a game using BasiEgaXorz. Now I'm afraid after reading your commentaries, but I am still trying. And I didn't find a real good tutorial for Sega Genesis programming using C language.

[Deleted]

Jan 6, 2015 16:33:21 GMT -5 zenac said:

I am trying to make a game using BasiEgaXorz. Now I'm afraid after reading your commentaries, but I am still trying. And I didn't find a real good tutorial for Sega Genesis programming using C language.

No need to be afraid. Just because he got stuck with his game and gave up doesn't mean that everybody will get stuck. Besides, stating that SGDK is more powerful and stable than BasiEgaXorz is like saying SNES is better than MegaDrive ( or the other way around ). It's just preference + the grass always looks greener on the other side.

[zenac]

Jan 6, 2015 16:54:29 GMT -5 @moon said:

No need to be afraid. Just because he got stuck with his game and gave up doesn't mean that everybody will get stuck. Besides, stating that SGDK is more powerful and stable than BasiEgaXorz is like saying SNES is better than MegaDrive ( or the other way around ). It's just preference + the grass always looks greener on the other side.

moon, thank you for you comment. That is a good motivation!