[stella] Give me one more cycle

Subject: [stella] Give me one more cycle
From: "Gonzalo Fernández" <horcas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 03:15:58 -0300 (ART)
Hello everybody! Too many time since my last post, so excuse me if this
message is too large.

Things was very different when I joined the List and my game had chance to
be an attractive project, but today amazing things are happening to the
2600. Video, audio in the PCM style, multiple-multiple sprites,
against-the-federal-law amount of RAM, 24 bits sprites (from Manuel the
great)... so, nothing new can I offer with my demo. The only thing I can
do is to work hard on the gameplay, graphics, nice colors... I knew that I
had to hurry up (but thinking it better, I started this just for fun).

Well, I think the kernel almost is done (aleluya!). Just a few timming
problems still are. You may not see too much difference from the last
binary I have posted, but I changed all the kernel code and now is cleaner
and not like one made by a newbie (wich I am, by the way). No more
sections in the kernel (like River Ride), just one smart loop. The funny
part that amost every cycle in the scanline is used, and when I tried to
get different types of islands I was running out of 1 (ONE!) cycle.
Previously a made a lot of optimizations (oh, I worked hard..) but not
enough. The last one was the use of an illegal opcode: ATX, wich saved me
2 cycles. I can't belive how useful could be that op. It replaced my old
AND # - TAX (4 cycles). Finally, this allowed me to have tree types of
islands (Big single and double, and small double).

Questions must be made: Do you thing speed is too high?
Does the islands shape suck?
I downloaded DASM Version 2.20.07 from Andrew's site, why doesn't support
illegal opcodes? (I tried ATX, DOP, TOP but in the end had to use the
.byte #$XX syntax)

Thanks for your attention.


-- 
Gonzalo Fernández.

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