A short break, and thinking (too far) ahead.

Just having a few days break fom Xevious before I get back to it in ernest this week.

Over 100 downloads of Beta 1 which I'm a bit surprised about, although I've never had any statistics on any of my projects in the past.

A bit of feedback; some issues with FREEPLAY (which I've already fixed) but no other reports of glaring bugs other than those related to sound. I will be re-arranging my sound channel allocation for the next Beta. I've also done away with masquerading in MAME thanks to Blastar who handed me a better solution on a platter!

Next task though is to take a step back and look at the code from a higher level again, to address the issue of both 'sparklies' on Neo Geo real hardware, and 'shaking ground objects' in the Amiga port. I'm not entirely sure they're related issues, but I have a few things to confirm and try out.

I should also dig into the Amiga code and try to understand more about how it works.

I've started migrated my hosted files to github, starting with my RE listings. I just need to update some of the links on my 'Projects & Downloads' page. Then I'll look at re-homing my transcodes... somewhere...

And of course looking (way too far) forward, I've started to think about what my next transcode will be after Donkey Kong. I think I'm still going to target the Neo Geo as it's one of my favourite systems and so capable. Of course an Amiga port is always on the cards, and possibly a few others, especially as I'm looking to (finally) do a horizontal title. Contenders at this stage are Ghosts 'n' Goblins and Bubble Bobble.

The possibility of doing Super Xevious also occurred to me; identical hardware, identical graphical assets - even though several new enemies appear in the game! It wouldn't require any changes to the OSD layer, only parts of the ROMs transcoded. All 6 devices appear to have different code, though I suspect 90% of the code is unchanged. So probably relatively easy to do, but I'm a bit over Xevious atm...

Screenshot for attention

UPDATE: had a VERY quick look at the Super Xevious disassembly; no doubt it's little more than an enhanced version of the original code, reassembled.

UPDATE: Curiosity got the better of me. I've taken a closer look at the disassembly...

The SUB ROM is not a lot different, but they have re-ordered some of the code and data. All the object data is still at the same location at the end of the ROM though.

I've only taken a preliminary look at the MAIN ROM, but so far it's not a lot different either. I have identified the object hander table; they've added six (6) new objects to the end of the table (rather than utilising unused slots in the table for some reason). The flying enemy table is different too.

It uses the same background map ROMs, so there's no difference in the landscape. What is different is the object data, so things appear in (potentially) different locations. There are (again) 46 Sol Towers (I wonder if they're all accessible this time?) and 4 Bonus Flags in the same areas. I have generated the maps for each area, detailing the locations of Sol Towers and Bonus Flags... I've only looked at the first few... no spoilers!!!

I was wondering whether it would be possible to simply add to the original transcode and produce source that you could build for both variants of the game. The re-arrangement of some routines and data is a little inconvenient, but it may still be possible. It would probably take a few weeks to at least add labels to all the routines and data areas, then check that nothing has changed in the existing code. It does run a bit faster though, so there would have to be some differences...

Now back to the Amiga and also getting Beta 2 out there!