Conversion of Ouranos! (Weather War) from PET (VIC +16K)

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 2:20 pm

YES

this last version works with sound right from the start.

But what was the problem?

Also, one final "bug" or "bad feature" to point out. A single keypress of the RESTORE key exits the game and it cannot be continued. Since RETURN keypresses are required a lot in this game, and it is quite easy to mistakenly tap the key above RETURN (being RESTORE), is there any way to fix or remove this "feature"?

A five-year old is hard to console when a she is winning but daddy "mistakenly" presses the wrong key and destroys the game!

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 2:40 pm

That "RESTORE alone works" is a misfeature of FAT-40.

It might be sensible to disable the RESTORE routine completely as with:

Code: Select all

FORI=0TO3:READA:POKE11847+I,A:NEXT
DATA44,17,145,64

which overwrites this part of FAT-40 (called by the NMI vector):

Code: Select all

.C:2e47   A9 D2      LDA #$D2   ; setup BRK vector
.C:2e49   8D 16 03   STA $0316
.C:2e4c   A9 FE      LDA #$FE
.C:2e4e   8D 17 03   STA $0317
.C:2e51   00         BRK        ; call BRK vector

with

Code: Select all

.C:2e47   2C 11 91  BIT $9111   ; Acknowledge NMI 
.C:2e4a   40        RTI         ; End NMI

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 5:24 pm

Since this appears to have become a really popular game, I spent a few hours tonight trying to make a real VIC-20 version. I haven't come very far yet, but given enough time I'm sure it'll be possible to squeeze into 22 columns without losing too much gameplay.

However it definitely looks like +8K memory expansion will be required, perhaps it will be playable with +3K. If anyone wants to help out (or completely take over the project, who knows?), let me know.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 5:50 pm

Very Cool!

Will I be able to switch the native VIC version to have green on black as well?

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 1:38 am

ral-clan wrote:YES this last version works with sound right from the start.

TWO THUMBS UP

.

ral-clan wrote:A single keypress of the RESTORE key exits the game and it cannot be continued. Since RETURN keypresses are required a lot in this game, and it is quite easy to mistakenly tap the key above RETURN (being RESTORE), is there any way to fix or remove this "feature"?

A five-year old is hard to console when a she is winning but daddy "mistakenly" presses the wrong key and destroys the game!

Good to read that a young baby is playing this game... I'm sure she's more demanding than the average Denial member here

.

carlsson wrote:Since this appears to have become a really popular game, I spent a few hours tonight trying to make a real VIC-20 version. I haven't come very far yet, but given enough time I'm sure it'll be possible to squeeze into 22 columns without losing too much gameplay.

Very nice idea Carlsson, unfortunately I'm losing a lot of time with other VIC things, so I can't be of much help - maybe someone with better programming skills... Thanks in advance for your effort BTW, I agree with Ral-clan about the possibility to switch to the green on black mode. Furthermore, the VIC native version can be multi-colour: blue clouds, green lightnings, and red houses would be SO nice!

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Mar 03, 2009 4:38 pm

22 column version of Weather

I have made the houses smaller: 6x4 instead of 7x4 characters which means the game should end a bit sooner. I also made the display 21 characters wide, so lines wouldn't get merged resulting in all sorts of weird stuff. At least the dreaded Act of Nature in itself shouldn't corrupt the screen.

Edit: Download links and screenshot removed due to new version released later.

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 1:53 am

Great job, Carlsson! Houses are quite huge in this version though, looks like it's much easier to destroy them, but it's an help for both players, so the game remains balanced and it lasts less.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 4:28 pm

This is probably my final version of Ouranos for the VIC-20.

As you can see, I chose a default colour scheme green on black, but added some colours:

Houses - red and blue
Cloud and tornado - cyan
Hail and lightning - white
Rain - yellow (don't drink yellow rain...)

I also studied the sound generation on PET and fixed the small machine code routine at $033A. I think it is a rather faithful adaption of the PET game, hopefully without any major bugs.

Download here: http://www.cbm.sfks.se/files/weather-20.zip (+8K RAM)

By the way, I spotted (*) one straight port and one improved remake of this game on the "brown machine". While graphics were somewhat hotted up in the remake, it doesn't seem to add anything more than my version does.

Have fun, and say hi to Kathy Higby if you see her!

Edit: Oops, I never checked end of game calculations!

Anyway, I think it works better now.

(*) On Moby Games.. since someone already added me as a games developer on their site, perhaps I should point them to this port as well.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 8:28 pm

This looks great!

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 2:31 am

Thanks Carlsson, it's very well done (and fun). Why don't you add it to the new software releases fo 2009 in General topics? It is a brand new game!

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 3:07 am

Perhaps your Fat-40 and my 22 column versions can share one entry..

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:25 am

Nope, it's good to separate the PET-like one from the VIC one, which is very "VIC" (colours and big chars)

.
This version should also be better for children (this is for Ral-clan

).

PS- hey, it's always hailing on my little blue house!

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:36 am

I calculated this game would leave about ~600-700 bytes left if run on a +3K expanded VIC-20. It means it would have room for a 64 character custom generator, however not really space for the DATA statements.

On the other hand I'm not sure custom graphics would add very much.
One small improvement I'd consider though is filling the colour memory with white and also make all the spacing out white. It would make the lightning look better, although it does look like a typical VIC-20 game with traces of previously plotted graphics shining through.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 6:32 am

Carlsson, I noticed that you put this game in the 2009 announcement thread. I agree with that. However, don't you think you should give it a slightly distinguishing name? I did notice that the binary, at least is called "Ouranous-20" or something similar. This is just to avoid confusion with Orion70's port in GB20, Zimmers, and other places it gets uploaded.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 6:54 am

The other way around, first release I just called weather.prg but this one unzips to weather-20.prg.

But yes, I can rename it to keep them apart.