Re: [stella] RPG progress

["Paul Slocum" <paul-stella@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Here's an animation I created, just going upwards from the start:

Hehe, that looks really weird, and kinda cool.

> Take a closer look at the water coming in on the last three sprites on the 
> right.

Okay, I see what you mean.  Well the "grass" tile is what I consider the 
blank tile.  It is tile value 0 and I "OR" in any other tiles from the map 
data.

The map definition is divided into 10x10 cells.  So each time you 
move/scroll and a new row or column has to be filled, usually map data has 
to be read from TWO different map cells (unless you happen to be standing 
right in the vertical/horizontal middle of a cell).  Each move, the first 
frame is used to scroll all the visible tiles over 1 and clearing an empty 
row or column, the next frame the program fills in tiles from one of the 
10x10 cells, then the third frame it fills in tiles from the other 10x10 
cell required to complete the row or column.  So often you'll see the new 
row/column filled partially, then the following frame it will be completely 
filled.  Since the color shading is done on the fly in the kernal, it won't 
shade anything until the tiles are actually there.

Keep in mind that in the real game, you won't be able to move as fast as 
you are now, so it won't be as obvious.

I've considered just removing the grass and making that tile blank.  The 
flicker really isn't that bad at all on my TVs, but removing the grass just 
means less objects on the screen flickering at any given time.  And maybe 
it would make the scrolling look less odd?

I've attached the source.  The main stuff you want to look at is in 
rpg.asm.  The water wrapping to the right is a kernal problem, although I 
looked at it on my TV last night, and it's barely visible.  But the problem 
Manuel showed in that GIF is just a characteristic of the scrolling 
system.  Without a HUGE improvement in the speed of the map generation, I 
don't know of a way to fix it.  And rewriting the map generation system is 
not something I'm too excited about.  It is pretty complicated, and there's 
not a lot of memory to spare.

I just hacked that new character display system into the second 
bank.  Should have an inventory/status screen working soon.

-paul

Attachment: rpg_source.zip
Description: Zip archive