Source code

Marcer · Post by **Marcer** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 6:57 pm

same ironic when I got stZip for first time. guess whot. it was .ZIP

// Marcer

dlfrsilver · Post by **dlfrsilver** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 10:40 am

Ok, here is the edspr and mapeditor :

http://download.yousendit.com/76BF7D053D6A3577

cheers

mcoder · Post by **mcoder** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 12:13 am

dlfrsilver wrote:Ok, here is the edspr and mapeditor :

http://download.yousendit.com/76BF7D053D6A3577

cheers

Thanks !

I uploaded my collection of tools in the folder 10-20-2007 (DESSIN.ZIP)
Enjoy !

JC

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 2:15 am

Thanks for all that stuff!

punkrulesok · Post by **punkrulesok** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 10:47 am

hi, and thanks for all this stuff

. so have we any way of loading the Toki GFX into and editor to view them?

mcoder · Post by **mcoder** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 4:57 pm

punkrulesok wrote:hi, and thanks for all this stuff . so have we any way of loading the Toki GFX into and editor to view them?

If I remember correctly, you have to unpack the files (sorry, I don't remember with which tool I packed them. I guess it's my Pack35.s code).
Then you get a .WRK file, and you can load it within the editor.
Try to load easier to unpack files.
And no, I won't spend time on this, since I've a lot of different projects and I'm not so nostalgic.

JC

Maartau · Post by **Maartau** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:48 pm

Many thanks JC

.

Always a pleasure to see "the crazy coder" bringing good stuffs

dlfrsilver · Post by **dlfrsilver** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 8:12 pm

*.wrk are created with the EDPSR editor.

wrk for WoRK space. Can you tell us what program is used to create or decompress *.cmp files ?

i found nothing about them.....

is it huffman crunched ? a bit of help is required i'm afraid

mcoder · Post by **mcoder** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:49 am

dlfrsilver wrote:*.wrk are created with the EDPSR editor.

wrk for WoRK space. Can you tell us what program is used to create or decompress *.cmp files ?

i found nothing about them.....

is it huffman crunched ? a bit of help is required i'm afraid

These are either LHArc without headers, or my PACK35 program.
The source code should include the decompressor...

JC

dlfrsilver · Post by **dlfrsilver** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 5:16 pm

i have tried your pack35.prg program. it only allows to crunch files....

i know how to export with edpsr to PC1 file format, but CMP files doesn't appeal to me...

mcoder · Post by **mcoder** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 6:05 pm

dlfrsilver wrote:i have tried your pack35.prg program. it only allows to crunch files....

i know how to export with edpsr to PC1 file format, but CMP files doesn't appeal to me...

Try UNPACK4.S, which is the decompressor.
Sorry, I don't think I can help more. I wrote tons of code (I uploaded only a few sources), and frankly, I'm not very interested in them anymore.

JC

dlfrsilver · Post by **dlfrsilver** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 10:06 pm

which assembler must we use to create unpack4.prg ?

devpac or Genam ?

jace_stknights · Post by **jace_stknights** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:24 am

great stuff...

Will take a look to all these

by the way, I am very happy that one of my prod is in your 'EXEs' selection

punkrulesok · Post by **punkrulesok** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 5:41 pm

It would be MEGA to get these files into a state were we can load them into the Maped.prg. Full maps for this game would go down well with the Atari Wiki me thinks

.

Also, any coders up for trying to inprove on the code released here for Toki? I know Leonard likes old school coding challenges for example!!

dlfrsilver · Post by **dlfrsilver** » Tue Oct 23, 2007 10:26 pm

yes it would be just great !!!!

mcoder · Post by **mcoder** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:21 am

punkrulesok wrote:It would be MEGA to get these files into a state were we can load them into the Maped.prg. Full maps for this game would go down well with the Atari Wiki me thinks .

Also, any coders up for trying to inprove on the code released here for Toki? I know Leonard likes old school coding challenges for example!!

I think this is purely a waste of time.

The game screen was reduced because my boss (Marc Djan) did not want to take a risk by using a larger screen

, so the blocks are 16x16, but the maps are tricky (the original arcade has 16x16 tiles too, but the graphists respected the ratios and we had 12x12 blocks).
It would be a hell to optimize my routines, since I spent a lot of time to code them (I doubt you can save 10%, and the game won't run in 50 images per second).

If you want to start something useful, I suggest that some guys form a group to write a vertical shoot-them-up, using the graphics of my unfinished game.

Here are my suggestions:
- use the nice graphics from my game (from a guy who is now director of marketing of Eidos !), or maybe rip some from an arcade game
- implement a hardware scroller
- use my realtimeshifting sprite routine for the player
- use preshifted sprites for all the enemies and missiles on the screen (the sprites may be preshifted before an attack, since there is a pause between each attack)

I think this would result in a nice game, and would be much more interesting to code than to compile an old game.
Also, the challenge is to have it in 50 or 60 frames per second.

JC

dlfrsilver · Post by **dlfrsilver** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:23 pm

i bet that that the amiga if we had the source code too could be enlarged
to full screen since toki is not that power hungry

what is that ratio thing about block size ? is it related to the screen resolution ?

Edit : i forgot, since you know well amiga and ST machines, what are their limitation about coin op conversion in terms of sprites, colors, map sizes ?

leonard · Post by **leonard** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 1:05 pm

Hey Jean Charles!

I just get some of your code (which I know since a while coz I spent hours looking at code on debugger when I was joung

)

People now me as a "extreme optimizer", as you. Maybe people don't know but when I learned asm, I'd loved to look at your code, just because you were a bit "paranoid" about optimisation. Maybe my optimisation love came from looking at your code

(I remember a very cool screen you release with 3 bitplans sprites and a 1 bitplan scrolltext at the bottom). Maybe it's because of that screen that I loved to write sprite record many years after

(btw did you see my TCB 16*16 sprite record? I worked very hard on that screen

)

And last but not least, I just get your Nick's letters, it's awesome ! I love "demo history", and we learn so many things in that file!

Thanks to release Nick's letter, it's a jewel for me

Cheers,
Arnaud

leonard · Post by **leonard** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 1:11 pm

just if you want to look at the little contest we organize for 16*16 sprite record. The fun part is that I heard some month ago that that screen is now famous because AMSTRAD scene is doing the record too

http://leonard.oxg.free.fr/record16/record16.html

terence · Post by **terence** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 4:23 pm

Hi there JC,

you letters to Nick, and his answer , are really fun.

what big egos you had , him and you

Sorry you left games companies, you are the kind of man able to code games as impressive as Crysis

mcoder · Post by **mcoder** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 12:01 pm

Salut Terence !

terence wrote: you letters to Nick, and his answer , are really fun.
what big egos you had , him and you

This is because we were very shy (in fact, I guess we had no social life, spending our life behind a computer).
Now, I'm married, so I'm a lot worse at programming. I think having social life kills the faith in coding.

terence wrote: Sorry you left games companies, you are the kind of man able to code games as impressive as Crysis

No, I'm not interested in 3D.
I'm very good at optimizing, and writing fast algorithms, but in game programming, you rely a lot on libraries or frameworks, and the work is a lot less exciting.
When I started, we had to code everything alone, and this was very interesting, since there were a ton of things to write.

As years passed, games became larger, and the work has to be split between a team, but coding games was still fun, because you could still choose one part of the game (I always chose the most technical parts, like the scripting language, or working on the AI).
Now, everybody tends to use the same tools, this is why a lot of games are very similar.
They use the same 3D engines, the same AI libraries, etc...
Now, coding games is more an architect's job, no more a programmer's.
I'm not a very good architect, and I find that coding this way is boring, so I still work on personal projects to keep some fun in programming (programming is necessary for me, or otherwise I just could die).

Oh, I guess the only people that still enjoy working on games are graphists and designers (coder and musician are bad positions in game programming).

JC

Kalms · Post by **Kalms** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 12:28 am

Hello sir,

I just wanted to stop by and say thanks for sharing all those old sources. It's very interesting to see how screens which I marvelled at 17-18 years ago really worked.

mcoder wrote:Oh, I guess the only people that still enjoy working on games are graphists and designers (coder and musician are bad positions in game programming).

Not at all, not at all. The coder + game-designer dual-role is pretty much gone these days, but some companies are still developing a lot of technology internally (usually because existing 3rd party libraries are not that hot for consoles). I switch between developing new technology, doing performance work (battling both memory and CPU cost) and fixing bugs / doing "gameplay code" and I enjoy every day of it. It's just a matter of finding the right place at the right company.

mcoder · Post by **mcoder** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 8:57 pm

Kalms wrote: Not at all, not at all. The coder + game-designer dual-role is pretty much gone these days, but some companies are still developing a lot of technology internally (usually because existing 3rd party libraries are not that hot for consoles). I switch between developing new technology, doing performance work (battling both memory and CPU cost) and fixing bugs / doing "gameplay code" and I enjoy every day of it. It's just a matter of finding the right place at the right company.

Well, I agree that game programming doesn't require libraries, but the problem is that the work is a lot splitted, compared to old times.
When I started game programming, I had to code everything, and years after years, my job became more focused.
Of course, you can spend a lot of time on a very small part of a program, since a lot of other people will code the other parts, but I loved maintaining the whole code, mainly because it was possible to generate very good code.

Now, a lot of coders participate, and the quality of code varies a lot.
In my job (not game related !), we use VB.NET, so all my experience about optimization is lost forever !
It's very frustrating, since I really loved programming. Now, I'm mainly putting pieces together, and pieces that I didn't even code !
It's boring.

I guess this happens also in games from large companies, like EA or Atari, except if you work for the R&D.

Post by **simonsunnyboy** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 9:45 pm

A good reason why coding on PC is boring :>
And why I personally won't pursue any job in PC application programming.

Get back to Atari in your freetime and enjoy oldtime style with all the fun behind it

C-Rem · Post by **C-Rem** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 10:29 pm

MCODER : u like optimisation ? Tired to fix pc code ? yeah it's cool ... we've one cool challenge around : Try to beat leonard with his sprite world record

i'm sure Léonard will appreciate the compétition !

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Source code

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