All over bar the Z-ordering

By my reckoning, the C port is complete except for a single routine - the Z-ordering algorithm.

Although the exact purpose of a handful of routines and flags are still unknown, I do understand the gist of them (i.e. what they are trying to achieve) and it is of course still possible to complete the (rest of the) port; which is exactly what I've done. Naturally a few more mysteries were uncovered during the process. As it stands, all bytes in the graphic object structure are known (interestingly 4 of them are unused, and another 4 have dual-purpose), although some bit flags are still to be decoded. All but five (5) global variables are known, and having a quick look at those just now it looks like they've simply escaped my attention, rather than being difficult to deduce.

UPDATE: All global variables have been named

So the game is playable in the sense that you can move around, interact with objects, move from screen to screen, drop/pickup special objects and be killed. There were, however, one or more bugs introduced when I added the object interaction routines that have affected the object movements; guards spin on their heels, balls don't bounce, gates don't move up/down. Whilst not easy to find in 4,200 lines of code, they'll likely be simple typo's.

UPDATE: The bug that prevents objects from moving correctly has been fixed. The game is pretty much playable now, with perhaps a couple of minor bugs that occur infrequently.

[Oh, there's no audio yet either. There's a surprising number of audio routines, some of which have quite a lot of code in them to produce what appear to be semi-random sounds.]

I'm going to stick to the plan of completing the game (fixing the bugs) before tackling the Z-order code. Having done some analysis of the Z-order routine, it doesn't appear to have any effect outside rendering, so it should be possible to have a fully playable game without it. I'll endeavour to decode the last remaining bit flags during the process.

It's exciting to be so close to having a fully-commented disassembly and a fully functional direct C port of the game. It's been a lot of work, but the subsequent porting to 16-bit platforms should be almost trivial in comparison. The Amiga will probably be the best candidate, although I'm still very keen to attempt a Neo Geo port, if only for the challenge! I don't dare think of the work involved in a 6809 port at this point...

I'm hoping my next post will be to announce a fully-functional game, sans Z-ordering.