Woo, sorry, busy work week!

@mips5000
I just used Notepad++ at the time in the old VB dev environment, and that was about it. I’d write up the C code and call the compiler. I also used an old paint program to adjust the color palette for importing the sprites too. Otherwise it was all generally stuff from scratch, though I’m sure I used the examples for reference too – particularly for auxiliary type of code like getting the framerate control and setting up the ‘mirror offsets table’ (forgot the exact name at the moment)

@V-SNES
Thanks!

And if speedyink doesn’t get a video, I can also look into recording one. I do need to setup a new VB environment since getting this new computer after all. Though I don’t have a great way to get the video of it running on the device, so it’d just be an emulator recortding.

Oh wow, thanks for the neat post about this – it’s flattering. 😛 I should have shared this a few years ago. It was just one of those cases where I was like “well, I could share it… or add this, and this first…” haha.

And the game is still in the works! It’s had some rewrites, and expansion to include other systems, but still slowly coming along. Hopefully not too far down the line I can show the game this demo was made for.

Very cool! I haven’t played with the debugger much yet, but no doubt I will be getting to it sooner than later. So, a preemptive thanks for this!

That really sucks, also sorry you had to deal with such a sub-human. :\ Sadly I don’t have much more to add than that, but just wanted to share some sympathy.

Though, I’m also glad to hear it isn’t deterring you from continuing to repair systems. Definitely an amazing service to offer to the good members of the community. And good idea on limiting the number of consoles you’ll take at a time and sticking to a specific place to conduct business.

Really awesome work on all of these translations! Great getting to read everything, and seeing the interesting tone in the ads.

After a tragic accident where my first VB’s video cables got lost in the mail… I went out and purchased a second unit.

Lucky No. 2:
VN10439284[1]

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I’d be interested for sure. Especially for some of the translated games. It’d be nice to have their own dedicated cartridge, so I can keep the flash boy for development.

Speaking of, once I finally finish up my own game (finally stopped re-writing the code to make actual progress), I’d love having it made to a cart like that – so certainly another reason I’d be for it.

I’m sure others are on a similar page too, in either or both cases.

Whoa, did I correctly see the mention in your other topic? Is Insecticide finally completed? Congratulations! You been admirably at work for quite some time on it.

Here’s mine!

Vn100204049 – EXT

EDIT: Whoa, that pic was just a little unnecessarily big. 😛

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I definitely agree with you on your reasons for loving it. It’s certainly a unique little system, so much more personality than a typical one!

Alongside those, I too have a few other reasons I love it so much.

Besides the obvious 3D effects which are quite neat, I feel the system has a way of being immersive in such a way most consoles never can. With some head phones on and your eyes peering inside, you become completely submerged into the little red 32-bit world within. Combine the 3D with the immersive factor, and it sports a kind of believability you can’t really quite get elsewhere. I feel I almost teleport when going in and out of the system.

The other factor, which is completely development sided, is the relative “horse power” it touts compared to other systems of the time. The processor is more than twice the power of the SNES or Genesis, and is capable of running at a smoother 50 fps compared to 20-30 typically, among other aspects.

Really though, there is much to love about the black sheep of the Nintendo console family. I know the 3D aspects aren’t for everyone but I still can’t quite get why the system isn’t loved, or at least appreciated, more than it is (outside of maybe the library size and low amount of major software). I mean the most beloved handheld in the world, The Gameboy, only had 4 colors as well so it’s strange I often hear that as a major complaint “in the wild”.

Aw, don’t let those artificial deadlines get to you, I myself am more excited to hear that development is going great on it and that you’re putting in the effort to make this in the first place!

Sound and music has been one aspect I’ve still yet to really do a lot with, and your audio system is virtually mirroring what I was planning to eventually (try to) do in the end, so I definitely appreciate this project and can patiently wait for it. I guess it helps I got about 90% of a game still ahead of me yet, so plenty to distract myself with in the meantime. 😛

Keep up the great work!

@HorvatM
Ah, thank you for that nice rundown there! Very nice! You should see about having that added to the development wiki under the CPU section or something. I was always confused about those first five for the longest time.

@thunderstruck
That topic was pretty fantastic, I actually did see it a few days ago. I been toying around with that compiler, but I must have messed up my makefile for it and ended up with a compiled rom the same size as the VBDE one would produce, but it would not seemingly run on any emulator. I ought to look into that some more, but I was just interested in trying assembly so I quickly dropped it and went back to the other compiler for the time.

Do it Robert! You know you want to. 😉

Hmm, I’ll have to check out that GCC patch you made there! I have a makefile that utilizes the -fomit-frame-pointer already so at least that means I have one more free register. Coincidently, a brief look at that topic already gave me insight how to assign variables in c from specific registers, so thanks for that!

I never knew that r11 also had the possibility of being used as well, I’ll have to watch out for that.

And I guess saying “OS” before was probably misleading, I was more just referring to whatever is managing the stack as the “OS” since I’m not doing it manually.

Interesting about the heap… I always thought the compilers may have snuck in a simple heap manager. I should look at the disassembly of my code more closely to see what’s going in it I suppose. 😛 Also sheds light on how my pointers into memory were never overwritten by anything. …But I’ll cut it right there, before this becomes my pervious memory topic again!

Thanks for the input though!

Now this part is unrelated, but I just realized I was missing the optimization option on the VBDE compiler in the makefile, and wow… one function of my C code went from 115 ticks to 32 ticks… simply beautiful. Just had to share that in my excitement!

bigmak wrote:
Bust out the check book 🙂

http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e146815828

It’s all so beautiful…. Time to start playing the lottery again!

[16-Bit]

SRAM starts at 0x06000000 if I’m not mistaken. So you should be able to just make a variable like this:

int *val = (int*)0x06000000;

And then assign to it like this:

*val += IncrementAmount;

Probably the best thing to do if you end up storing a lot of values in the SRAM is to create a class instead of a bunch of standalone values and save it in there.

*Edit
Though of course, if anyone has a better or more efficient way to get into SRAM, maybe sans a linker file, do share it! 😉

• This reply was modified 10 years, 5 months ago by 16-Bit.

According to the manual for the processor, the VB should be able to add a full int to another within approximately one cycle, though this can depend on exactly how often the code is called of course. 😉

To help add more ‘randomness’ to it too, here’s an idea I had a bit back. Do your original idea of constantly adding to a value. Then, save this value into the save ram, and then reuse it every time you do this. That way even if they leave that screen at the same time each time, you’ll end with a different value.

Taking a step further, you can use this number as an index into a lookup table of random values. That way when you call your Random() it won’t be so linear in return value.

DOOM used a similar lookup table technique actually for random values… uh, as a random fact-of-the-day I guess. 😛

That’s so interesting… I should definitely start using that since I always kind of just leave the Game Pak cover around when I play and frequently almost loose them haha.

Don’t give up on it yet! When I first got it, I was in a similar situation. I thought it was ridiculously hard too! But after I played it a few more times it just kinda ‘clicked’ or something. Now it all makes sense and is MUCH easier!

Give it a few more tries, maybe the same thing will happen to you too.

PS
Toad FTW ( obviously 😛 )

Haha I’m glad I’m not the only one who immediately thought of that when I got to the tower too. Then again, I’m always in good company here for things like this. 😛

But yeah, the game made a TON of references to others, though of course the Galaxy games certainly had much more of an impact. Certainly was nice to see some Mario World enemies roaming around again too.