CreatiVEmu Forum

Hi,
i will test it on real hardware, on both the CSL and the Salora.

In my games i hold a complete SAT (sprite table) in the RAM , in the game i change here the datas like x and y pos, sprite-nr. etc.
Then in the VBL i need only to move ALL the datas to the TMS, here i rotate the sprite nr. to avoid the 5. sprite flicker.

This all is very fast and done i a lot ColecoVision and Ti games.

I thought I'd share how I have been testing my Q*Bert skills on the ColecoVision version.

There is a magic byte at offset $805B. If you look at the rom in a hex editor, it will be offset $5B On an original QBERT.BIN rom this is set to $19.

It is broken down to LLLLIRRR, so high nibble is equal to 1 - that's the starting level. So to start on level 2, round 1, you would just change to $29.

The I bit is a boolean to decide whether to show the level intro or not. The lower 3 bits are the level number.

Enjoy - and have a great Christmas!

@username@ wrote:high nibble is equal to 1 - that's the starting level. So to start on level 2, round 1, you would just change to $29.

The I bit is a boolean to decide whether to show the level intro or not. The lower 3 bits are the level number.

So in the end how to setup a level?

is this correct? -> high nibble sets the "level", and the low nibble (3 bits) set the "round".

does this mean that there are 16 levels, each made of 1-8 rounds?

does every and each level have 8 rounds, or are the earlier levels shorter? and how is the number of rounds bound to the specific level?

gonna try your rom now. edit: oh it's not a rom, it's a cheat. will try it too

i wish you a very happy christmas, too!

I think there are only 4 rounds per level, with a maximum of 5 levels.

Of course, you can try higher and lower values - sometimes it gives interesting graphics

The Ti99 cheat is useful - as I can "play" the game through each round / level.

So will the game restart fron level 1 soon after completing level 5?

OK, here I am writing in this forum again after a long time. I just downloaded the WIP version of this game, but it seems like development has stalled for almost a year now.

Anyway, here's my take on it so far:
The pyramid looks correct, and the graphics that are visible on screen look OK so far. However, it seems like the sound and music is played at a higher pitch than on the other systems... maybe this is because the Creativision sound chip is clocked at a higher frequency.
Then you have the sprites of the TI-99 version visible on screen. They look good so far, as does the rest of the graphics, but I actually think the monochrome Q*bert to the top right of the pyramid looks better than the multicolor one. I know that the multicolor one is the original graphics used in the TI-99 version, but it looks a bit too tall for me while the monochrome one looks more rounded. I think it would look better to have the monochrome one (maybe with added colors) as the main character in the game.

Other than that, nice work, but it's not complete by far.

You can also take some inspiration from the BBC micro, that also used a 6502A and SN76489: http://bbcmicro.co.uk/index.php?search=Q%2ABert&on_S=on