Asteroids come in all shapes and sizes

I added the code for the various asteroid sizes; that was a simple matter of checking the global scale value in effect and adjusting the asteroid bitmap table index accordingly. That entailed 12/19 'rocks' in Norbert's source file.

As for the remainders, turns out they actually comprise the small/large saucer, 4 shrapnel (explosion) patterns, and one bitmap of the player ship at '0 degrees' rotation. Since there only appears to be a single function in the DVG ROM to display the saucer, I'm assuming that the global scale is used for the 2nd saucer - but I need to verify that.

But for now, I've added the large saucer and now I'm at the exact point where I left off the text version. But it's a good indication of how the final game will look on the IIGS. I'll likely retain the 256x192 display area, but center it on the IIGS 320x200 SHR display.

All 3 sizes of asteroids and large saucer

It should be straightforward to render the shrapnel patterns next. Although the DVG notes online suggest the global scaling factor may also be used for explosions, I can't see where that's the case when I run the arcade emulation, and certainly Norbert is not scaling them at all.

I think that just leaves the ship, shots and ship explosion. As I've mentioned in a previous entry, these (mostly) manifest themselves in the display list as component vectors, and it's not possible to differentiate the actual objects from them alone. Again, at this point I will need to decide how to optimise the process - either tokenising the display list or bypassing the list altogether.

I've also had a few more thoughts on the erasure. I'm thinking dirty rectangles is going to be easiest to implement and I'm hoping fast enough. Each time I render an object, I'll add the coordinates and dimensions of the bounding rectangle to a list. When it's time to wipe the frame, I'll iterate through the list and wipe the rectangles. After all, this is what Knight Lore did...