Currently finding it difficult to work on Xevious due to other commitments, but I should have some free time in the coming week and hoping to be able to release a Beta by the end of it.
In the mean time I've been doing bits and pieces on Donkey Kong, updating all the tilemap accesses so they are done via the OSD layer. Not quite as efficient as simply writing to video ram, but a lot more flexible and allows the choice of either on-the-fly updates or, for example, dirty tile updates during VBLANK. It also makes it much easier to rotate the screen, which I am planning to support on the Neo Geo. I don't think the Neo Geo or Amiga will have anywhere near the performance concerns of Xevious for this transcode.
Not being "in the zone" for Donkey Kong does makes things a little more difficult. There are things I've done in the code that I am now questioning; things that will take more time to analyse. It has been around 10 years since I touched it last... but I can't afford investing that time until Xevious is done and dusted.
Regardless of the countless changes, it is still mostly working. I've broken the intro animation where Kong has kidnapped Pauline and climbs the ladder before stomping on the girders - it loops endlessly. But the attract mode demo runs - for a while before rebooting. It's annoying that I can't simply coin up and start a game to test my OSD changes, but it's nothing to be overly concerned about atm.
Hopefully my next post will be announcing the next beta release of Xevious!?!
UPDATE: I fixed the broken intro sequence; I had recently 'optimised' one of the RST routines, not realising that some callers relied on a side-effect (setting the HL register pair). I can coin up and start a game, but there are multiple gameplay issues now.
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