Panel Review

Got the panel displaying nicely now. Just the border around the main menu to complete, then that's the graphics done except for the title screen.

Panel graphics complete

The scrolls and the frame comprise a complete bank of FIX layer tiles covering the bottom 8 lines of the screen. I patched the Knight Lore C source code to display only these elements of the panel, with some extra flood fills for masking around the frame so it doesn't have the same issue with the other C ports, namely the sun showing on the left of frame. Then updated the graphics conversion tool to generate the FIX layer tiles, and it's good to go.

The lives graphic, objects carried and sun/moon are all sprites that appear through the FIX layer panel's transparency mask. The number of lives, "DAY" and day counter are FIX layer tiles that replace the panel tiles when printed.

It's looking the business now. As mentioned, main menu border, title screen, and sprite Z-ordering to be done. Then there's the issue of the few auto-initialised arrays that need to be copied to RAM for modification by running code so that it plays correctly.

I should be able to add colour to the Neo Geo port quite easily. I'll tackle that when everything else has been sorted.

I'm also considering porting the directional control option from the original source; I'd omitted that until now because it was only ever running on keyboard systems. I'll also have to re-work the menu operation for the Neo Geo if I do that, or simply add a DIPSWITCH option instead.