Wednesday 4 May 2016

Bonus bugs!

Well my prediction of a half-dozen bugs is looking pretty shaky already. I've had to fix three (3) bugs just to get the saucer to appear, and in the correct position. Then for the first hit of the saucer I got 300 pts (dubious), and for the next hit I got "CLE" points. That'll be bug #4 already...

UPDATE: Bug #4 squashed. Saucer working now.

UPDATE #2: Bug #5 - 2nd and subsequent waves of aliens not appearing in the correct position - squashed at lunchtime. Next bug - extra alien added when player dies.

UPDATE #3: Couldn't help myself, squeezed in another two bug fixes before finishing lunch.

Bug #6 - extra alien added when player dies, as mentioned above, fixed.

Bug #7 - bonus ship icon not displayed, also fixed.

Next bug - program freezes on 2 player game after player 1 dies.

Another bug I've noticed - and I can't explain how it's even possible - the invaders are dropping 3 and (I think) even 4 bombs at a time!?! IIUC there's only provision in the code for two at any one time!?! Certainly an interesting one, and the game is definitely more difficult because of it!

So we're at 9 bugs now, although I'm not aware of any others, so it's close!

5 comments:

  1. I don't think the 3 and 4 bombs at a time is a bug. I just played a round on MAME and was able to pause the game a few times with 3 enemy bombs on the screen at once. Just to be clear, none of the shots were mine and all of the enemy shots were in the air -- none were splatting against the ground or a bunker.

    I didn't confirm 4 bombs but seems clear you need to review the code more closely to determine the actual limits.

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  2. Interesting. You're right, I need to take a closer look. My disassembly was at least 10 years ago, and I've been using the Computer Archeology one for this, so perhaps I need to dig a little deeper.

    It's probably the case that the 'difficulty' is being set too high too soon; in MAME I've only seen 2 at a time, though lately I've only being playing the 1st wave. That's good to know, I was starting to think I'd accidentally discovered a way to enhance the game with more bombs! :O

    No doubt things will become clear soon!

    Thanks for the heads-up BTW!

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    1. Doh! Couldn't be more plainly obvious. My head was buried too deep into the code.

      There are three (3) bombs, not 2.

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  3. Bug #6 sounds more like a feature. If you make enough of these bugs, you'll be halfway to a conversion of Satan's Hollow. :)

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    1. Unfortunately it was indestructible!

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