Cyrano Jones

Hi everyone,

Well, its the 'day of Outline 2010' which means we can now take the covers off what we've been doing.

Head on over to the Superfly DX Website and start playing.

Featuring:

50/60 FPS gameplay (PAL/NTSC)

Full screen, 11-layer overlapping parallax scrolling.

Pseudo-random terrain generator (Each time you play, while the general trend of the level will be the same, no two levels will be identical)

Two terrain modes - blockers and islands

4 channel music, plus one additional channel for sound effects

4 themed worlds to play in

16 levels spread over the 4 worlds

9 collectable items

16 playable characters & vehicles, (8 with 8 alternates for 2nd player)

4 different game play modes (2 of which are unlockable features)

Story mode with set challenges

Intermissions and Game Complete sequences

Simultaneous 2-player action

Unlockable features earned via in game achievements

Stat Exp load/save without additional hardware

Webcode based highscores for competitive play

Credits/greetings screen with music jukebox

Over 30 minutes of audio

The website will get updated with more info early next week following the party, and the store will be open next weekend (the 8th) - unfortunatly the manuals are still with the printer company, so we are unable to start shipping immediatly. However, we promised you the game this weekend and we will keep that promise.

Enjoy!

Did the SNASM2 kit actually have their own assembler/linker? If so, can those also be used with the atari kit?

Would be really interesting to get my hands on them.

 

Do you have a SNASM2 kit? If so, how is it compared to the alpine?

I recently found out that cross products, the developers of the snasm2 kit actually developed the official dreamcast dev kit, too.

I honestly can't remember, sorry! I use a skunkboard now ;-)

Thanks Cyrano!

The problem was my nmake.exe which was not the original provided by atari. Make doesn't work in dosbox for me, but your nmake file does.

I think it came with the SNASM2 assembler/linker - but I'm not 100% sure about that.

I'll see if I can ZIP up a working config for you if you'd like?

Here you go...

Not a full \BIN folder - you can copy your own files into there, but ALN, MAC and NMAKE work :-)

DOSBOX_NMAKE.zip

Has someone managed to get the latest sln version from Subqmod website?

Every time I use SLN I find errors in its assembly. Subqmod fixes them really quickly, but I'd rather just use the original tools and know something is crashing because of my code, and not some random assembly error.

Cyrano what version of dosbox are you using?

DOSBOX 0.71

works flawlessly. I'll see if I can ZIP up a working config for you if you'd like?

Although CJ codes in pure asm using that principle, it's mostly the same thing.

At the bottom of the dosbox.conf file theres the AUTOEXEC section, where I add:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.

mount c d:\dosbox\dosbox-c
mount d y:\ -t cdrom
path=C:\JAGLAW\BIN
SET MACPATH=C:\JAGLAW\INCLUDE
c:
cd \JAGLAW\TRIS
ajag

"ajag" is a batch file that does:

@echo off
nmake /a > errors.txt
copy *.cof c:\VJAG\ROMS\TEST.ABS
EXIT

I keep the source open in notepad++ and set up a hotkey macro (Like ctrl-a) with the following:

"D:\DOSBox\dosbox.exe" -conf d:\dosbox\dosbox.conf

Note: You can have multiple named .conf files all references with different hotkeys.

This way, all the source can be open at once in a fantastic editor (Notepad++) and a single key-combo (in the case CTRL-A) runs DOSBOX, assembles, links and moves the binary to the Virtual Jaguar\ROMS folder for testing. If there are errors, they are redirected to ERRORS.TXT (for which you can put a shortcut on the desktop!). It then closes DOSBox (Which prevents the bug where multiple runs of MADMAC will crash DOSBox!).

If you set the cyclecount to somethign stupidly high you can have your source assembled, linked and running in under a second!

Hope this helps.

CJ.

No rush. I will check it out when he posts the source. I don't encrypt many JagCD's anymore, but would be willing to port it to Linux/OS X if people want. Course if you guys are handling that, even better.

We won't be releasing the ULS source code, only the builder application. ULS Pro will most likely ship with a relocatable binary for 'incbin'ing into your applications which will contain all the functions.

Great...I just need a jagcd now (I've test my test.cdi file with Tempest and it runs)

Hey, if we can make this without owning a Jag CD I'm sure you can live without as well

In that case,

All you Jagware folks - get together, decide what you want, and give us the bitmap. And we'll create you a ULS Custom+ installer from that. Deal?

Thanks We'll be making a version with a 'Jagware' boot splash that any of the Jagware groups can use. Any suggestions for the warning audio track? I don't mind making multiple Jagware versions, but if it gets to be too many it kind of defeats the point of the app, I'll be swimming in coasters again

Why don't we do them one with the Jagware logo at the top, and all the individual group logos under it?

We have just succesfully booted the first few CDs created using ULS. All your CD-Creation woes are now over.

More info to follow shortly.

Not bad for 2 coders who don't even own Toilets, eh?

Great news

And now you'll never need it. I've got Jaguar ULS working ;-) Will post more soon!

Well, that won't work, but I've got another idea ;-)

If you wanted to be really clever, you could split it up into say 200k chunks, so each 2mb image is 10 tracks.

checksum each track. Save each track 5 times.

On loading, if an error was encountered, go to the next available track for that chunk and try again.

This could seriously reduce "bad" disk burns.

The way I'd do this is:

Have a PC app thats got the image of the loader internally and asks for an unencrypted binary (of any length, but load/run at $4000). It pads and converts it to audio data then injects that into the image it has, and dumps out a .NRG file.

Simple, easy and quick.

Maybe even ask for a load/run address, put those infront of the binary file as a header. Have the loader load it at, say $4100 always, then copy a routine down below this, and relocate/run it. That way *any* binary/cof/bjl file could be put on a cd-rom as long as it loaded at $4000 or above.

If we do this can we please call it "Jaguar ULS" :-)

I'm up for helping with this any way I can, but I don't have a CD-Rom... Got a Skunkboard here.

But before it loads it could put up a bitmap saying "Jagware/Reboot Universal CD Loader" or something, so if others use it we get the credit :-)

(And don't give out any source for the loader, just the completed image, and a tool to inject the unencrypted binary)

Hi

Just a thought.....

From what I understand, the Jag skips an audio track, then loads a binary from session 2, checks a random block from that binary is encrypted, then runs it. I understand it doesnt check beyond the data track, if it did, we'd have to encrypt those, meaning CD-Audio wouldn't work.

Meaning making CD's is a royal pain in the arse....

Is this possible:

Make an encryted CD that loads an extra unencrypted track (stored as audio data) of a fixed length, (eg, $200000-$4000) so that the TOC is always the same each disc, and then jumps to $4000 to run it?

That way, we could have a standard imagefile and we could just insert our data file into it as the audio track. No messing around, no encrypting (more than once).... bish bash bosh... done?

Now, I'd be really interested in helping with that, except I don't have a JagCD Someone who does maybe could comment?

Fantastic release! Now even complete n00bz can load all those ROMz

The original Beebris was released in 1991 on the Atari ST as part of a mini-demo called "Apathetic Games" released by The Law of The Bad Brew Crew. The full source code for this is already available and can be found at the official D-Bug and Automation website.

Our 'tribute' version was done in roughly a week to celebrate not only Beebris turning 18 years of age, but also 'Tetris' celebrating it's 25th anniversary! We have enhanced the graphics in the game, and are now using the introduction music during gameplay, as was always intended by the original musician, Floyd. Also, for everyone's additional enjoyment and continuing fun, we have added a web-based high score system, which you can access from the links below this text.

And finally, to make things even nicer, we have included the full source code for our version, so you can compare it with the original ST code if you get really bored! At the very least, someone might find this useful.

We hope you all enjoy playing this game as much as we have whilst making it.

Grab it at our website now!

PS. Can one of the admins please change Mr Morden into Cyrano Jones? ;-)

Aww, what's wrong with Free Jaguar Project?

Thanks for the kind words guys. We worked hard on the game and are very proud of it, and hope all those who actually play it as a game enjoy it.

We all need a looooong break now. Recent events have left a sour taste in our mouths, it'll take a while for it all to wash out. Both Project One and Tapper are officially cancelled.

The source code release WILL still go ahead. We promised you a free game WITH source code, and we WILL deliver it. Please, be patient with us on this one tho, as said above we need a break. I should be able to get the source code for the pause game "Bad Moodies!" online for everyone shortly though. There's enough in there for anyone to pick up and run with.

The wait is nearly over. Project One [Level One] *will* be released this week, it's currently in *final testing*

If it works, it works! :-)

The way we do it in ProjectOne is:

Create a "shadow object list" with all objects 32 bytes apart regardless of what they are - this assures an object is always phrase aligned. The links in the shadow are computer for where the live list is.

Store the creation address of each object all in a table.

During the VBL, use the blitter to copy the shadow to the live.

During the game you can then work on the shadow patching x/y/bitmap addresses. If you dont want something, modify a branch to skip it (eg, change the branch before a long string of objects from always to never) or just move its x/y to offscreen (if you have enough objectlist time to do this)

If you are doing object culling (Y-sorting) - we do this for the bullets - then you can loop around the shadow list changing just the link addresses.

I can mail you the code if you like?