Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved!
Chris Pile wrote: I've updated SAM Defender! snipped huge list Awesome! I'm amazed you found so many things to improve upon, as I don't remember any real differences from the arcade version. The Williams startup screen was a nice touch too - couldn't help but laugh at that :-) * Saving of the ALL TIME GREATEST scores to non-volatile RAM if you have Edwin Blink's Dallas real-time clock interface. I have support for the NVRAM saving in SimCoupe now, but the emulator is still in pieces after a rash of tweaks and enhancements. I'll get you an updated version once it's suitably back together and tidied up, but that might be a little while yet... Si
Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved!
snipped huge list Awesome! I'm amazed you found so many things to improve upon, as I don't remember any real differences from the arcade version. There are still one or two areas left which I could tweak - but I probably won't as they are pretty trivial. Well, until the mood takes me again! ;-) The Williams startup screen was a nice touch too - couldn't help but laugh at that :-) It had to be done! ;-)) I was tempted to add a virtual coin input too - complete with a CREDITS X message along the screen bottom during the attract sequences, like the arcade version. But that would have been taking things a little too far!! * Saving of the ALL TIME GREATEST scores to non-volatile RAM if you have Edwin Blink's Dallas real-time clock interface. I have support for the NVRAM saving in SimCoupe now, but the emulator is still in pieces after a rash of tweaks and enhancements. I'll get you an updated version once it's suitably back together and tidied up, but that might be a little while yet... No problem! I notice you bundle Defender with SimCoupé - which is great! If you could bundle the latest version with future SimCoupé updates that'd be brill... :-) Chris.
Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved!
Hi Chris. Great work! Now I know what I saw on the Bunnik new years party what Edwin wouldn´t tell me. Was a secret?! Keep on good work. Wolfgang Chris Pile schrieb: Hi SAMsters, I've updated SAM Defender! Why? Well, basically I did all of the things I *should* have done back in '98. Things that have been annoying me for years! Below are a list of the things changed, plus any new features and also a link to where you can get this - finally (probably!) final - version! =
Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved!
Hi Wolfgang! lol - yes, you may have seen the NVRAM stuff as I sent Edwin a test copy to make sure the NVRAM save/load code worked on Edwin's actual Dallas interface! It wasn't really a secret - just a test version! ;-) Chris. - Original Message - From: Wolfgang [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 9:42 AM Subject: Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved! Hi Chris. Great work! Now I know what I saw on the Bunnik new years party what Edwin wouldn´t tell me. Was a secret?! Keep on good work. Wolfgang Chris Pile schrieb: Hi SAMsters, I've updated SAM Defender! Why? Well, basically I did all of the things I *should* have done back in '98. Things that have been annoying me for years! Below are a list of the things changed, plus any new features and also a link to where you can get this - finally (probably!) final - version! =
Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved!
Hi Chris, Exellent job ! Maybe now I have a better change on getting a real high score ;-) you had me fooled with the crash effect. I though the diskimage was corruped until I saw the initial test message :-) Edwin - Original Message - From: Chris Pile [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 8:08 PM Subject: Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved! Hi Wolfgang! lol - yes, you may have seen the NVRAM stuff as I sent Edwin a test copy to make sure the NVRAM save/load code worked on Edwin's actual Dallas interface! It wasn't really a secret - just a test version! ;-) Chris. - Original Message - From: Wolfgang [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 9:42 AM Subject: Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved! Hi Chris. Great work! Now I know what I saw on the Bunnik new years party what Edwin wouldn´t tell me. Was a secret?! Keep on good work. Wolfgang Chris Pile schrieb: Hi SAMsters, I've updated SAM Defender! Why? Well, basically I did all of the things I *should* have done back in '98. Things that have been annoying me for years! Below are a list of the things changed, plus any new features and also a link to where you can get this - finally (probably!) final - version! =
Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved!
Hi Edwin, Hi Chris, Exellent job ! Maybe now I have a better change on getting a real high score ;-) lol - me too! I was always hopeless at the game! :-) you had me fooled with the crash effect. I though the diskimage was corruped until I saw the initial test message :-) Edwin :-) That's supposed to be a simulation of the RAM test the real coin-op does on start-up! Have a look at the real coin-op version (under MAME) to see what I was trying to achieve. I took on-board what you said about the older Dallas modules only having 64-bytes. Now I do my initial is there a Dallas module there test in address-space than 64-bytes. So it should reject older modules (and resort to defaults) but on the later modules you should have data persistence across Defender boot-ups! Thanks again, Edwin, for testing my initial code! :-) Chris.
RE: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved!
Many thanks Chris! spt -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Pile Sent: 20 March 2007 19:47 To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Subject: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved! Hi SAMsters, I've updated SAM Defender! Why? Well, basically I did all of the things I *should* have done back in '98. Things that have been annoying me for years! Below are a list of the things changed, plus any new features and also a link to where you can get this - finally (probably!) final - version! = List of things changed to match the arcade coin-op: * Hyperspace is now a 25% chance of death on re-entry - was 50% before. * Homing enemies do not home to the hyperspace re-entry position - they did before! * Landers appear in groups of five, as they always have. When you shoot the last Lander in the current world state, the next available group is warped in immediately. Before, you could have an empty world while the counters for the next group timed-out. So, now its never an empty world! :-) * Climbing Landers that once carried a humanoid (which you've now shot!) that reach the top of the screen will now warp in at a random world X position. Before, they would warp in at the same world X position they disappeared at. * Hunting Landers will now pick a new humanoid target if their current target gets captured or destroyed. Before, if their target vanished they would hunt blindly over potential victims and *never* pick them up... Total pants! * Humanoids are now scattered randomly over the planet surface. Before, they were put at a uniformed distance apart - depending on the number of humanoids in the world. * Enemy shots now have a little randomness to their ultimate destination. Before, every shot was deadly accurate to the player's ship. * Swarmers - their logic has received a major overhaul. Before, they fired in any direction using the same shot-logic as the rest of the enemies. They also flew around the player like a swarm of bees. This was bollocks - nowhere near the same as the coin-op original, and something that's annoyed me for years! The coin-op Swarmers will *only* fire when they are flying *toward* the player - they also use a different shot style and sound. This means you can let Swarmers fly past you, quickly turn and chase them in the knowledge that they won't fire at you - providing you keep close to them. They only change direction when they go beyond a certain distance from the player. In SAM Defender it wasn't possible to use this chasing trick... But it is now - as Swarmers now mimic the coin-op. :-) * Upon player death all screen contents are preserved - including any warping enemies and explosion fragments. Before, all fragments and warpers were erased due to the way their engines worked. Not good - and not like the coin-op! Fixed! :-) * Baiters and Mutants now mimic the coin-op more closely - slight changes to their logic. * Background stars now twinkle faster - a closer match to the coin-op's twinkle speed. * Some sound priorities rearranged, to closer match the coin-op. Even though the sound is still shite! ;-) = List of (internal) things changed from the last version: * Faster and more random random number generator. * Faster processing of the linked-list used to handle the world entities. * Optimisations of the sprite engines and scanner dots engine. * Cleaner final stage to the merging Defender logo on the attract mode. No empty block! * Coin-op timing for the appearance/disappearance of the 500 sprite during attract mode. * General removal of redundant code - such as... * Removal of light-pen detection code. I doubt this was needed - how many had a light pen! * High-score table is now 8-slots, and contains the same initials and scores as the coin-op. = List of things removed from the last version: * Initial Persona logo. * Rotating Digital Reality logo As both of these were seen once only - at initial game boot-up - their code and data have been removed, saving around 8k on the final program size! = List of things added to this version: * Coin-op style rug test-pattern during initial game boot-up! As per coin-op power on! * Coin-op style INITIAL TESTS INDICATE UNIT OK message! As per coin-op power on! * An ALL TIME GREATEST high-score table! As per coin-op. * Saving of the ALL TIME GREATEST scores to non-volatile RAM if you have Edwin Blink's Dallas real-time clock interface. The coin-op saved the ALL TIME scores to NVRAM. * Saving of your control key choices to NVRAM too. See the readme.txt file in the Defender .ZIP for information about SAM Defender's NVRAM saving capabilities. = So, there you go! Some improvements and changes I've been meaning to do for years! If you carry an image of SAM Defender on your
Re: SAM Defender - Updated and Improved!
*Very* cool. Thanks for your work Chris! On 20 Mar 2007, at 7:47 PM, Chris Pile wrote: Hi SAMsters, I've updated SAM Defender! Why? Well, basically I did all of the things I *should* have done back in '98. Things that have been annoying me for years! Below are a list of the things changed, plus any new features and also a link to where you can get this - finally (probably!) final - version! = List of things changed to match the arcade coin-op: * Hyperspace is now a 25% chance of death on re-entry - was 50% before. * Homing enemies do not home to the hyperspace re-entry position - they did before! * Landers appear in groups of five, as they always have. When you shoot the last Lander in the current world state, the next available group is warped in immediately. Before, you could have an empty world while the counters for the next group timed-out. So, now its never an empty world! :-) * Climbing Landers that once carried a humanoid (which you've now shot!) that reach the top of the screen will now warp in at a random world X position. Before, they would warp in at the same world X position they disappeared at. * Hunting Landers will now pick a new humanoid target if their current target gets captured or destroyed. Before, if their target vanished they would hunt blindly over potential victims and *never* pick them up... Total pants! * Humanoids are now scattered randomly over the planet surface. Before, they were put at a uniformed distance apart - depending on the number of humanoids in the world. * Enemy shots now have a little randomness to their ultimate destination. Before, every shot was deadly accurate to the player's ship. * Swarmers - their logic has received a major overhaul. Before, they fired in any direction using the same shot-logic as the rest of the enemies. They also flew around the player like a swarm of bees. This was bollocks - nowhere near the same as the coin-op original, and something that's annoyed me for years! The coin-op Swarmers will *only* fire when they are flying *toward* the player - they also use a different shot style and sound. This means you can let Swarmers fly past you, quickly turn and chase them in the knowledge that they won't fire at you - providing you keep close to them. They only change direction when they go beyond a certain distance from the player. In SAM Defender it wasn't possible to use this chasing trick... But it is now - as Swarmers now mimic the coin-op. :-) * Upon player death all screen contents are preserved - including any warping enemies and explosion fragments. Before, all fragments and warpers were erased due to the way their engines worked. Not good - and not like the coin-op! Fixed! :-) * Baiters and Mutants now mimic the coin-op more closely - slight changes to their logic. * Background stars now twinkle faster - a closer match to the coin- op's twinkle speed. * Some sound priorities rearranged, to closer match the coin-op. Even though the sound is still shite! ;-) = List of (internal) things changed from the last version: * Faster and more random random number generator. * Faster processing of the linked-list used to handle the world entities. * Optimisations of the sprite engines and scanner dots engine. * Cleaner final stage to the merging Defender logo on the attract mode. No empty block! * Coin-op timing for the appearance/disappearance of the 500 sprite during attract mode. * General removal of redundant code - such as... * Removal of light-pen detection code. I doubt this was needed - how many had a light pen! * High-score table is now 8-slots, and contains the same initials and scores as the coin-op. = List of things removed from the last version: * Initial Persona logo. * Rotating Digital Reality logo As both of these were seen once only - at initial game boot-up - their code and data have been removed, saving around 8k on the final program size! = List of things added to this version: * Coin-op style rug test-pattern during initial game boot-up! As per coin-op power on! * Coin-op style INITIAL TESTS INDICATE UNIT OK message! As per coin-op power on! * An ALL TIME GREATEST high-score table! As per coin-op. * Saving of the ALL TIME GREATEST scores to non-volatile RAM if you have Edwin Blink's Dallas real-time clock interface. The coin-op saved the ALL TIME scores to NVRAM. * Saving of your control key choices to NVRAM too. See the readme.txt file in the Defender .ZIP for information about SAM Defender's NVRAM saving capabilities. = So, there you go! Some improvements and changes I've been meaning to do for years! If you carry an image of SAM Defender on your website, or if you bundle it
Re: SAM DEFENDER
The game images plus some general background information can be found here: Since no-one else seemed to have, I'll just say : thanks for this! Since all my other commercial games are long dead, this will be about the only thing I have that actually works correctly all of the time on my SAM. And that also holds true for the power supply unit. Of course, if it requires 512kb memory, then forget the above sentiment entirely! -Thomas
Re: SAM DEFENDER
-Original Message- From: Thomas Harte [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Date: 27 August 1999 00:38 Subject: Re: SAM DEFENDER The game images plus some general background information can be found here: Since no-one else seemed to have, I'll just say : thanks for this! Since all my other commercial games are long dead, this will be about the only thing I have that actually works correctly all of the time on my SAM. And that also holds true for the power supply unit. Of course, if it requires 512kb memory, then forget the above sentiment entirely! Thanks for the thanks!! Oh, and it runs fine on a 256k!! Chris.
Re: SAM DEFENDER
Ok... so what did you do to it that breaks SimCoupe? :) Simon
Re: SAM DEFENDER
-Original Message- From: Simon Cooke [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Date: 26 August 1999 02:08 Subject: Re: SAM DEFENDER Ok... so what did you do to it that breaks SimCoupe? :) A seasoned 'hacker' like yourself will have no trouble cracking it! ;-) I warn you though, the end result (on Simcoupé) isn't pretty. :-( Chris.
RE: SAM DEFENDER
But anyway, good on you for uploading that! Remind me to buy you a drink some time... speaking of which, doeS aNyBody know whether there is a Quedgeley show planned for this October?? I realise Bob's the person to ask, but has anyone managed to contact him recently? I'd hate to think that Sam's tenth birthday may go by without a proper party... Andrew We could all pile into a pub/club somewhere instead... Justin.
Re: SAM DEFENDER
On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Simon Cooke wrote: Ok... so what did you do to it that breaks SimCoupe? :) Well, it isn't *that* long since I posted a little timing routine which prints a repeatably different result on SimCoupe (up to 0.78) and Sam Coupe... it wouldn't be hard just to have automated that! Bet he didn't though? Andrew -- -- Andrew Collier ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --My other -- http://mnemotech.ucam.org -- .sig is a -- Part 3 Materials Science, Cambridge -- PDF file --
RE: SAM DEFENDER
On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, Justin Skists wrote: But anyway, good on you for uploading that! Remind me to buy you a drink some time... speaking of which, doeS aNyBody know whether there is a Quedgeley show planned for this October?? I realise Bob's the person to ask, but has anyone managed to contact him recently? I'd hate to think that Sam's tenth birthday may go by without a proper party... We could all pile into a pub/club somewhere instead... Heh - might be nice to have one or two Sams around the place though, surely? You never know, someone might even have programmed something for the occasion... Andrew -- -- Andrew Collier ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --My other -- http://mnemotech.ucam.org -- .sig is a -- Part 3 Materials Science, Cambridge -- PDF file --
Re: SAM DEFENDER
In message Pine.SOL.3.95q.990826085542.26407A- [EMAIL PROTECTED], Andrew Collier [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes I'd hate to think that Sam's tenth birthday may go by without a proper party... Don't you mean wake? Graham Goring -- /\ | Ber-Limey! There's not even enough | |room to swing a cat in this sodding-| \=== ICQ: 5333545 ===/
Re: SAM DEFENDER
Original Message- From: Andrew Collier [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Sam Users Group sam-users@nvg.ntnu.no Date: 26 August 1999 09:41 Subject: Re: SAM DEFENDER Not that I want to be unnecessarily picky, but on the site you say: LEGAL JARGON: I'm releasing SAM DEFENDER into the public domain. The copyright remains mine and the game must not be sold for profit or gain. This is actually a contradiction - since you want to retain copyright you shouldn't be calling it Public Domain (Public Domain is a well-defined term, legally speaking, which precludes copyright ownership by any individual). You should probably term it freeware. HTH. Fair enough, thanks for pointing it out!! Consider it changed... Chris.
Re: SAM DEFENDER
Andrew Collier wrote: I'd hate to think that Sam's tenth birthday may go by without a proper party... Graham Goring wrote: Don't you mean wake? Well, I'm glad you didn't organise _my_ 10th birthday party. ;-) -- James Gasson
