AMCOG: Beta testing request

Hi,
Does anyone have any time for a little bit of beta testing?
I’ve been burning the midnight (and early morning) oil and am working on a 3D first person space shooter (inspired by the BBC Micro game Star Maze) with vertical motion/360 motion. The engine is based on the one I used for Island of the Undead. So the engine is fairly stable.

As usual the limit is 4 testers. Rick/David Feugey – It’s very late? But would you be interested?

Yep!

Now I’m having a nostalgia rush for the game “cylon attack” by, I think, A&F Software on the BBC. I remember that was a lot of fun :)

That looks really interesting. I’d be up for being a beta tester. I use both emulatation (Virtual-RPC DL) and a Raspberry Pi. (I’ve also recently ordered AmCog gaes development kit.)

Thanks David, Andrew and Paul.

Before I started coding it – I was tempted to just leave it in open space like Cylon Attack. However, the dog fighting with the ships – flying up & circling to avoid their bullets is really good fun, even with the ‘laser marked ceiling & floor’.

Thanks for buying the development kit, Paul. I really appreciate it. Please would you send an e-mail to the address here: http://www.amcog-games.co.uk/about.htm and I will sent the beta to you sometime this evening or early morning UK time. A lot of this game seems to have been coded around midnight actually…

Thanks Anthony, email sent.

I have sent out the beta testing e-mail.

Please let me know if you downloaded it ok.

As usual, please do not redistribute the file.

The game is a 3D first person space shooting game. The object of the game is to collect the required number of jewels by mining the asteroids.

Five In game music tracks are included.

Controls are described in the game and enable:
-—————————————————————

• 360 degree rotating

• Thrust to gain momentum in the direction that you are pointing

• Braking thrusters to stop

• The ability to ascend and descend

To collect a jewel, once it has been released from an asteroid, fly over it. There is a wormhole where aliens and asteroids enter the mine.

Known issues:
-————-

Minimum specification:
-—————————

—

Thanks and Regards,
Tony
www.amcog-games.co.uk

Downloaded!

Have downloaded and had a couple of quick plays. Initial impressions are it’s an impressive feat of programming in BBC BASIC. Initial thoughts re: gameplay; ascending / descending seems to be the best approach to dodging enemy bullets. Left / right movement feels a little sluggish. Have played it on Virtual RPC so far but will fire up my Raspberry Pi RISC OS and give it a play on that too. Very impressed.

Thanks for the feedback Paul. Much appreciated. It needs a Pi 2 to run at a good speed. The pi 1 is a bit too slow for Star Mine to run well.

I have sent out an updated beta.

This version lets you press 0 in the game to jump to the next level. There are now 6 levels in total.

I have fixed a number of bugs including:

1) The aliens being able to shoot through walls

2) Vertical position not being set for spawned asteroids and jewels etc

3) Music restart missing

4) Ship cockpit omitted on level jump

5) Level code typographical error

and a number of others. Not finding any more at the moment.

Code cleanup has been performed

Testing is on going so I can release an RC for the London show on Saturday.

I’m now going to have more caffine…

Best Regards,

Tony

I’ll make more tests tonight… But it seems good so far.

Hi,
Whilst the game played well at the London show, I felt that I needed to ensure plenty of game control options existed. So

• I’ve added user definable keys
• I’ve added support for USB Joysticks – although I’ve put the module load behind a toggle in the game, in case there are any compatibility issues I don’t know about
  – So far, this has been tested with a Raspberry Pi compatible SNES style controller on an ARM X6. We plan to retro-fit this to older titles as well.

I’ve also sped up the player’s ship firing in the game and fixed a couple of minor bugs.

As its now nearly 3am, I’ll leave release until at least Saturday (day time).

The beta testers will get their release copy then as well.

Thanks for your patience & also thanks to everyone who bought StarMine version 1.00 at the London show.

Best Regards,
Tony
www.amcog-games.co.uk

I’ve added support for USB Joysticks

Presumably this is any kind of joystick using the existing ADC/Joystick APIs?

I wonder if it is my USBJoystick module? I put together a module to bridge the RISC OS 5 USB stack and the old Joystick APIs (mainly to allow games running under ADFFS to use joysticks).

It is an not particularly mature, and I admit I have not touched it for a long time (despite a long to do list). Oops…

Hi Richard,
Yes it is. I have put the module load behind a toggle in case there are compatibility problems, so it will not load unless someone chooses to turn it on. However, hopefully with more exposure we can mature this further.
I’ve also:

• Updated my license file with the proper attribution (including your permission & credit) (as per your comment previously on this forum regarding due diligence on code licensing)
• Included source code in a separate ZIP file in the game package.
• Included a record of testing that I’ve performed – including the cheap SNES style controller that I’m using.

Looking at what it is based upon, I’m optimistic that it works sufficiently well. I have currently incorporated version 0.12

I’m continuing to ‘hammer it’, will do a further code review and run it on a few more test systems.

Currenly, going one step at a time – I’ll only make that button appear on RISC OS 5, with a view to including RISC OS 4 as well – once I understand support for USB Joysticks on that platform via further beta testing. I can also then record further known working devices.

I think that making this an optional feature – i.e. not even loading the module unless the user enables the feature provides sufficient protection against customers having game loading failures.

It certainly a lot of fun flying in 3D space with a game pad :-)

Jolly good. USB is a passing fad you know. ;-)

USB is a passing fad you know.

For sure. The only question is how long it will take to pass. Constipation rules okay!

Hi Anthony,

It’s nice to hear someone’s using it! I know I’ve been a bit slack in not working on it for a while. Further down my todo list, I did intent to buy your dev. kit and knock up a couple of simple demos of how to use Joysticks. A sort of demo/test application. Come to think of it, perhaps joystick handling would be something that could be assisted with your dev. kit?

Gazing even further ahead, I was thinking that it would be nice to have a more fully-featured API (rather than the simple Acorn one, which was largely for two axes and some buttons). For example, controller names, axis names, understanding ranges returned by controllers (rather than boiling everything down to 127 or 16384), steering wheels and pedals, and perhaps even force feedback. Yikes. :-o

If you have any comments/bugs, please shout up here or on the JASPP forum. I can’t promise when I’ll take a look, but it would be useful to have a record.

Hi Richard,
I’m glad that you are interested in buying the AMCOG dev kit.

Would it be okay if I included the USB Joystick module within the dev kit?

Within Star Mine’s fork of my common library, I have wrapped it with a simple API:

DEF FNJoyStick
A% = 0
IF gkit_joystick THEN
SYS &43F40, 0 TO A%
ENDIF
=A%

DEF FNJoyStickLeft(joy%)
= (joy% AND 33024) = 33024

DEF FNJoyStickRight(joy%)
= (joy% AND 32512) = 32512

DEF FNJoyStickUp(joy%)
= (joy% AND 127) = 127

DEF FNJoyStickDown(joy%)
= (joy% AND 129) = 129

DEF FNJoyStickButton(joy%, B%)
R% = 0
CASE B% OF
WHEN 1 : R% = joy% AND 1048576
WHEN 2 : R% = joy% AND 2097152
WHEN 3 : R% = joy% AND 65536
WHEN 4 : R% = joy% AND 262144
WHEN 5 : R% = joy% AND 524288
WHEN 6 : R% = joy% AND 131072
ENDCASE
= R% <> 0

So far I’ve run it on a Pi 1,2,3 and an ARM X6.
I’ve had no dropped key hits and no issues so far.

(Assuming those numbers above look plausible). Looks correct to me. https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Joystick_Read%200

Total playing time is roughly 6 hours over 3 days.

Gazing even further ahead, I was thinking that it would be nice to have a more fully-featured API (rather than the simple Acorn one, which was largely for two axes and some buttons). For example, controller names, axis names, understanding ranges returned by controllers (rather than boiling everything down to 127 or 16384), steering wheels and pedals, and perhaps even force feedback. Yikes. :-o

Can we map joypad keys to keyboard keys?
It would be useful for a lot of games :)

Anthony, your direction detection is not right at all – Josytick_Read supports analogue joysticks so you must treat the coordinates as being anything in the range -128..127. You mean something like this:

DEF FNJoyStickLeft(joy%)
= (joy%<<16) < &C1000000

DEF FNJoyStickRight(joy%)
= (joy%<<16) > &3F000000

DEF FNJoyStickUp(joy%)
= (joy%<<24) > &3F000000

DEF FNJoyStickDown(joy%)
= (joy%<<24) < &C1000000

Also note that there’s a 16bit version of the Joystick call:

> R0  256 + joystick number
< R0  &XXXXYYYY
  R1  &000000SS

David: that is also on my ‘to do’ list… allow the joystick to emulate keypresses and mouse movements/buttons. The keyboard emulation can be achieved if you use ADFFS, so any keyboard-only games can be made joystick-friendly.

Anthony: no idea when I’ll get around to any of this of course… And what nemo says sounds sensible regarding the ranges. Have you seen the two (admittedly horrible) sample BASIC programs bundled with USBJoystick? I have no objections to the code being used/re-used/bundled with anything. If I was more organised, I’d have some sort of plan to finish it properly and submit it to ROOL for inclusion in RISC OS 5. In theory, it shouldn’t need to be bundled with applications: the Joystick SWIs can simply be tested for and joystick code enabled as necessary.

Thanks Nemo. I have added support for ranges, so that when this becomes available in Richard’s module, that will work. It seems correct to make that code future proof and conform correctly to the API specification.

Hi Richard, thanks for granting permission for me to use your library. It really does help make the game more playable.

For now , I’m simply including the module with the application rather than setting a system directory dependency. I am including your source code in a ZIP file with the example BASIC programs in Star Mine’s package as I prefer to keep all source code open and always include all my own source code with the games.

I will update the AMCOG Kit and previous titles in due course based on feedback I receive from this title. Hence, I’ll take a drip feed approach & will update the games with a system install location in due course.

I have sent Star Mine RC 1.09 to the beta testers.

I plan this version to RTW either later tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks for your patience. I have fixed various bugs, although some remain which I think are non-critical.

Based on your feedback and suggestions at the London show, I have:

• Added user definable keys
• Added support for USB Joysticks on RISC OS 5, although I have only tested this with
  https://www.amazon.co.uk/GeeekPi-Controller-Joystick-Raspberry-Retropie/dp/B01N0TERP4

I have also:

• Increased gun fire rate and allowed multiple bullets to appear on the screen
• Improved the wormhole graphic
• Adjusted the level 1 map
• Improved performance

Please let me know when you have downloaded it. Thanks for your feedback and I hope that you enjoy playing it.

—
Thanks and Regards,
Tony
www.amcog-games.co.uk

Anthony looking forward to the release of Star Mine and great news that a SNES style controller can be used. Well done