Warlock's Dungeon - 1.1 Official Release - A Gauntlet-like

[The 8-Bit Guy]

I played this today. It looks really nice. I'd like to include it on the main SD card with the computer. But I need you to make the game composite-mode friendly. For example, if you start the game in SCREEN 11, quite a lot of the screen is truncated off the side. For a game like this, overscan isn't really an option due to the info panel on the right. So, the solution will be to detect composite mode and shrink the screen accordingly with the VSCALE and HSCALE registers. You can simulate composite mode on the emulator by pressing Shift-Scroll-Lock as soon as you start the emulator (which is the same as shift-40/80) on the real system.

I haven't tested the rest of these yet. But these are some other best-practices for a premier game for the X16:
-Make sure it works with composite
-Make sure it doesn't crash if the Yamaha FM chip is missing
-Make sure it works on 512K
-Needs and AUTOBOOT.X16 so that you can just go into the folder and type BOOT to start the game
-Make sure it works on the 65C816 CPU

[mwiedmann]

Sounds great, I'll work on it! I'm waiting on some final music from Crisps as well. I got some feedback that people wanted some in-game music (at least as an option). I'll take a look at all of this and get it going. Thanks for checking it out.

[ahenry3068]

So, the solution will be to detect composite mode and shrink the screen accordingly with the VSCALE and HSCALE registers.

Any pointers to example code to do this. I haven't messed with Scaling much.?

[mwiedmann]

$9F2A and $9F2B are the DC_VSCALE and DC_HSCALE settings. By default they are set to 128 which will output 1 screen pixel for 1 input pixel. This gives you a 640x480 resolution. You can lower the number to get effective lower resolutions. For instance, I use a value of 64 to get a 320x240 resolution. You can use any number in between or even higher to scale the screen up/down.

8BitGuy's suggestion here is to scale the screen down a little bit more so it fits in the reduced screen area when using composite video. The 2nd piece I have to do is to use the HSCROLL and VSCROLL values on each layer to slide the screen in place. Scaling the screen down still has it in the corner, so I have to scroll it over to the middle. The challenge for me is that I'm already using LOTS of scrolling calculations in my game. Turns out it's not too hard though as I just have to add a "scroll offset" to my values and it slides into place correctly. I've also added a settings screen where the user can adjust the values if needed.

The final effect "works" but it squishes things a little. I can live with it thought as I hope most people will use VGA mode.

[Ed Minchau]

A good rule of thumb for HSCALE and VSCALE: multiply the VSCALE value by 3.75 to get the number of rows of pixels, multiply HSCALE by 5 to get the number of columns.

[mwiedmann]

The official 1.0 release is now available. I updated the top post in this thread. It now includes in-game music (thanks Crisps!) and composite mode support. Use the Try-it-now link and zip download.

[promptcritical]

Okay, I know you said this is a 1.0 release and as such, you probably aren't looking for feedback anymore. Anyhow, I pretty good play-through of it last night and did bump into a couple of bugs. I figure I'll document them here for posterity. In both cases the bugs were experienced on real hardware using two SNES controllers and in 2-player co-op mode.

The first issue we encountered was on level 9. For whatever reason, we were never able to enter the staircase down that was in the upper-left quadrant of the map. We were able to approach the staircase as we had on all the other levels of the run, but it would never seem to trigger. As such, we timed out and died on that level.

The second bug we encountered was on a level that mentioned that it was dark, I don't remember the level number exactly but probably in the range of 11-15. We used the down 10 levels staircase on the first level on that particular run. Anyhow, when we did get back to that level, one of the two players was not able to move their character, and the level looked pretty empty so I'm not certain it was being rendered properly. Anyhow, after walking around a bit with the second character, that player also lost the ability to move.

So that's it regarding the bugs we encountered. That said, I did want to leave on a positive note by stating that this is a great game and that it was a lot of fun to play. I hope at some point you'll be able to look into those bugs I found as I would really like to play the game to completion.

[mwiedmann]

Thanks for the feedback! You are probably the first person to play 2 players much at all. I don't have hardware or joysticks on my Mac to thoroughly test 2 players, so I did the best I could and the community didn't give much feedback on 2 players. I'll take a look at these when I can though and thanks for trying it!

[mwiedmann]

Fixed bugs!
Thanks again for the feedback on the 2 player bugs promptcritical. I tried what you said and with 2 players I couldn't move at the beginning of level 12 either. I fixed that so _hopefully_ it will work for you now. It wasn't dark/empty as you described for me, but see if its better now. I also fixed the issue on level 9 where you couldn't exit the level. There is more room around the exit staircase now which I believe was the issue. I also fixed this for some of the teleporters and other levels. Due to the number of pixels that some of the characters move, its possible to not be able to squeeze through a 1 tile opening. Usually if you hug the wall you can do it but perhaps not always. In any event, I believe that is fixed.

Give it a shot again and let me know. The game is not optimized for 2 players and that was

[promptcritical]

Dude, you are amazing! I just realized that you wrote both of my favorite games for the X16. Also thank you so much for not only graciously accepting feedback, but also in fixing those bugs post-haste. Oh and while I'm blasting out some praise, I want to call out Crisps as well, for making some really killer tunes. I especially like the OST for Pixeus.

Anyhow, I'll try to get you some more feedback on regarding a two-player play-through but it's probably going to have to wait a few days until I get my daughter to do a join me for a round. That being said, I can at least check out your fix for level 9 soon-ish. I'll follow up again when I can to confirm those fixes.