Denial

merman wrote:Got a mention in issue 170 of Retro Gamer (along with a link to this thread, so hi to all the RG readers!)

Oh, wow! Hi there! So I better don't post Friday nights' song lyrics here.

The Google search results for "Arkanoid" and "Arukanoido" changed a lot recently – very much to our favour!

Am totally baffled that a search for "Arukanoido" now brings on t-shirts.

But the very, very best is a ROM disassembly which finally gives the answers one couldn't possibly figure out by just watching videos, like when the ball accelerates, etc. http://acmlm.kafuka.org/board/thread.php?id=6031

Guess this makes my dream come true: to make the game play barely distinguishable from the arcade version.

The current version deserves being called a "teaser". Expect confusion and crashes after a couple of rounds. But it got a lot more like the original (again ball speed and directions). As soon as you get to round 3 you'll see...

Obstacles made it in. But:
* They don't move like they do in the original yet.
* They don't bounce off each other yet.
* They don't follow the Vaus (bat) yet.
* No gate to the right yet.
* Accidentally spent an hour on 16x16px sprites, so you'll see just half of them (8x16px).
* They might move through the border.

As it turned out:
* It'll be a +24K program.
* The obstacles won't look good.
* The sprite engine does better than expected although nothing has been optimized. In fact nothing has been optimized at all in this game.
* If you order replacement contact lenses and they say it'd take "5 days" they actually mean "5 Sundays in commemoration of the dead".

Things missing:
* Obstacle/explosion sprite sheets
* Vaus animations
* Title screens
* DOH (last round) + sprites.
* Intro animation
* Thinking through sprite movements and collision detection at least once.
* Correct scores.
* Hiscore table.
* Lots of fine tuning.
* Manual screen position adjustments

And then the NTSC version requires the whole screen to get rearranged... m( But when I get Mike and Tokra right 28 lines are too much for CRTCs, aren't they? One could also shave off the top border for 27 lines. That's all to keep it in the range of doable things, I guess.

Seems like you are at the fun stage of development where things start coming together quickly.

Might as well make it 32k, 24k is uncommon these days.

beamrider wrote:Seems like you are at the fun stage of development where things start coming together quickly.

Nah. I lack patience.

beamrider wrote:Might as well make it 32k, 24k is uncommon these days.

Yeah, you're right. I shouldn't worry about it as long as it's getting finished.

Soon…

Thanks again, Mike! It fits perfectly.

Bad news: that psychopathic turbo capitalism got me by the balls once too often now. If you want to play the full version of "Arukanoido" you'll have to buy a tape. No downloads. Sorry.

pixel wrote:Bad news: that psychopathic turbo capitalism got me by the balls once too often now. If you want to play the full version of "Arukanoido" you'll have to buy a tape. No downloads. Sorry.

I will buy a tape, but will you include a .prg file in it so that we can avoid to use a tape? Retrogaming it's good, but we can avoid to wait for long time loading (and possible errors) even with real hardware so why don't do it?

pixel wrote:Bad news: that psychopathic turbo capitalism got me by the balls once too often now. If you want to play the full version of "Arukanoido" you'll have to buy a tape. No downloads. Sorry.

How/when can we buy?

Spectrum wrote:I will buy a tape, but will you include a .prg file in it so that we can avoid to use a tape? Retrogaming it's good, but we can avoid to wait for long time loading (and possible errors) even with real hardware so why don't do it?

Because not doing it will multiply sales and that would really help to do more stuff you like.

The loading time will be well under a minute and you'll get a 90min tape stuffed with copies. You won't have to rewind the tape nor worry about loading errors. Besides: you'd want paddles.

mrr19121970 wrote:How/when can we buy?

I hope by the end of the month the PAL version will be ready to go. Probably the first release offered on tapesondemand dot com. PayPal or UK wire.

You mean Monday ?

We will also get a digital version (and any updates too ?)

mrr19121970 wrote:You mean Monday ?

What!? No, sorry. August.

mrr19121970 wrote:We will also get a digital version (and any updates too ?)

No, sorry. As I just wrote in the earlier postings…