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C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

RockinB - May 2, 2005

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vbt

Dec 9, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by vreuzon@Tue, 2005-12-06 @ 01:32 PM

vbt, reinhart, (others) what did you program for the contest ? Screenshots ?

[post=142260]Quoted post[/post]

PS : what is the end date to send pictures for the C4 CD ?

Amon

Dec 9, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by vbt@Fri, 2005-12-09 @ 04:59 PM

PS : what is the end date to send pictures for the C4 CD ?

Rockin-b suggested a week after the deadline ie the 8th.

		RockinB	Dec 10, 2005
		C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion The end date has passed right now , as I'm going to create the final C4CD right away.

vbt

Dec 10, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by Rockin'-B@Sat, 2005-12-10 @ 09:20 AM

The end date has passed right now ,

as I'm going to create the final C4CD right away.

[post=142380]Quoted post[/post]

ok my picture wasn't finished

I've just sent you the complete picture

RockinB

Dec 10, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by vbt@Sat, 2005-12-10 @ 11:08 AM

ok my picture wasn't finished

I've just sent you the complete picture

[post=142390]Quoted post[/post]

I was just done with everything when it arrived, but no problem I included the new pic.

vbt

Dec 10, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by Rockin'-B@Sat, 2005-12-10 @ 04:34 PM

I was just done with everything when it arrived, but no problem I included the new pic.

[post=142392]Quoted post[/post]

Thank you Rockin'-B :cheers

		Mask of Destiny	Dec 10, 2005
		C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion I'd like to congratulate all those who sent in entries to the contest. I was really impressed with this years entries compared to what I've seen in the past. You've all made my job of juding rather difficult. Great work guys. Some comments on the Atlas boot-loader. The soft-reset feature of the games on the C4 CD doesn't really help those who do the swap trick. When the Saturn resets I have to get up and reswap after each game. It would be better if Atlas left a small program resident in memory that the gamepaks would jump to when they exit. This little program could reload the bootloader without resetting the console so a reswap is not required. The zooming instruction text moves a bit too fast to read easily and goes off the screen just a tad on my TV (relatively new 27" NTSC set). It was also a little confusing when a game woudl switch from being in the circle to being the one at the bottom. This will obviously be easier once the programs have pictures, but it would help if the pictures moved over there smoothly rather than just teleporting. Still a very cool bootloader. A number of the entries had text that went off the edge of my set. I'm guessing this is probably a PAL vs. NTSC thing. I don't plan on letting this small detail have any impact on my judging, but it would be a good thing to good thing to be a bit more sensitive to in future efforts.

RockinB

Dec 10, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Thanks for your words, Mask of Destiny!

Originally posted by Mask of Destiny+Sat, 2005-12-10 @ 08:25 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mask of Destiny @ Sat, 2005-12-10 @ 08:25 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'>Some comments on the Atlas boot-loader. The soft-reset feature of the games on the C4 CD doesn't really help those who do the swap trick. When the Saturn resets I have to get up and reswap after each game. It would be better if Atlas left a small program resident in memory that the gamepaks would jump to when they exit. This little program could reload the bootloader without resetting the console so a reswap is not required.

[post=142401]Quoted post[/post]
[/b]

That's right, I discovered that, too. It's because the Atlas app is booted the usual way with it's IP.BIN being at the start of the CD. All booting stuff is controled by the demo demo loader lib (FLD) which comes without sources. If there is a way to work around this would have to be examined.

<!--QuoteBegin-Mask of Destiny@Sat, 2005-12-10 @ 08:25 PM

The zooming instruction text moves a bit too fast to read easily and goes off the screen just a tad on my TV (relatively new 27" NTSC set).

...

A number of the entries had text that went off the edge of my set. I'm guessing this is probably a PAL vs. NTSC thing. I don't plan on letting this small detail have any impact on my judging, but it would be a good thing to good thing to be a bit more sensitive to in future efforts.

[post=142401]Quoted post[/post]
[/quote]

I was looking for someone like you with a NTSC setup. Speed is because of 50Hz -> 60Hz speed increase. Out of screen might be because of too high vertical resolution (the old Atlas should be NTSC friendly). Although, only 256px is said to be PAL only, 240/480 like used in new Atlas are not reported to display incorrect on NTSC screens. Well, seems like the only resolution compatible with NTSC is 224/448 and I'm absolutely not happy about that. I was expecting this and decided against 448 because I hate decreasing resolution again and entries might not be NTSC friendly either.

Thanks for clearing this up!

		Mask of Destiny	Dec 10, 2005
		C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion Well the big problem with television is that it's an overscan device so the useable signal area goes beyond the physical edge of the screen. To make this more complicated, not all TVs display the same portion of the signal. Best thing to do would probably to stay at 240/480, but just move text slightly closer to the center of the screen. With Atlas it wasn't too bad on my TV. Maybe the top half of the first line of instruction text went off the screen when it was fully zoomed in, but that's about it. At least one of the entries had an entire line of text that was cut off on the bottom of the screen. For the bootloader thing, here's what I would do. Write a small program in assembly (mostly to keep it small, C would work too I suppose) that reads the bootblock and runs the IP.BIN. Stick this program in a part of memory unlikely to be used by a game. Then have the individual games call a small function that sets the hardware back to some known state and jumps to the address of the little assembly loader program.

Amon

Dec 11, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by Mask of Destiny@Sat, 2005-12-10 @ 05:32 PM

Well the big problem with television is that it's an overscan device so the useable signal area goes beyond the physical edge of the screen. To make this more complicated, not all TVs display the same portion of the signal. Best thing to do would probably to stay at 240/480, but just move text slightly closer to the center of the screen. With Atlas it wasn't too bad on my TV. Maybe the top half of the first line of instruction text went off the screen when it was fully zoomed in, but that's about it. At least one of the entries had an entire line of text that was cut off on the bottom of the screen.

I noticed that problem with my entry. The text at the top of my game was cut off. It worked fine on emulators but on my ntsc it was cut off. So I moved it down and hopefully moved it down enough. Not sure. Didnt have time to burn it one last time and test it. So hopefully it was fine

. Anyways I cant wait till judgement

vbt

Dec 11, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by Rockin'-B@Sat, 2005-12-10 @ 11:26 PM

That's right, I discovered that, too. It's because the Atlas app is booted the usual way with it's IP.BIN being at the start of the CD. All booting stuff is controled by the demo demo loader lib (FLD) which comes without sources. If there is a way to work around this would have to be examined.

[post=142403]Quoted post[/post]

I didn't test yet and and I'm not sure I've understood the problem

but with the FLD lib and Sys_exit, a game should return to the demo demo menu. Then a game is started without checking the IP.

Well I test the current behavior.

EDIT :

Code:

    +---------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Function Code | Description | +---------------+--------------------------------------------+ | | Executes IP check and run during Demo-Demo | | 0 | use. (Starts up the Demo-Demo based menu) | | | For all other cases, activates the | | | Multiplayer. | +---------------+--------------------------------------------+ | 1 | Activates the Multiplayer unconditionally. | +---------------+--------------------------------------------+ | 2 | Executes IP check and run unconditionally. | | | (Starts up the demo-demo menu) | +---------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Negative | Infinite loop | | Value | | +---------------+--------------------------------------------+ | Other | Same as Function code 0. | +---------------+--------------------------------------------+

It seems there is an ip check but I did not notice this on real demo cd. I don't see the difference between sys_exit (0) and sys_exit (2), Rockin did you test the difference ? I may make a test.

Mask of Destiny

Dec 11, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by Amon@Sun, 2005-12-11 @ 09:29 AM

I noticed that problem with my entry. The text at the top of my game was cut off. It worked fine on emulators but on my ntsc it was cut off. So I moved it down and hopefully moved it down enough. Not sure. Didnt have time to burn it one last time and test it. So hopefully it was fine . Anyways I cant wait till judgement

I had no problems with text placement on your entry. Of course, just because it works on my TV doesn't mean it will work fine on someone elses TV. I think Planet de Pon and Stephano Karate Maitre were the only ones that had problems in that area, but I would have to go back and check to be sure.

		RockinB	Dec 12, 2005
		C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion My friends, it's done! The final C4 results are determined and published, as well as the C4CD. Here are the links: C4 - 2005 results website... The C4CD: C4_2005_CD.rar... C4 - 2005 main website... The news I posted at a couple of places can be found here: www.rockin-b.de... I'm so glad :banana the C4 got to such a good end. There are so many people I'd like to thank...the prize donaters, the contestants, the judges, everyone else who helped with translations, screenshots, testing. I owe you so much! Congratulations everyone!

		Duce	Dec 12, 2005
		C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion I'm new here and just learning to code C but I really gotta give you guys all props. When I owned the saturn and it was label a dead system by many hardcore gamers I never thought people on the 'net would actually want to code for it or be able to. Seeing all the progress in emulation of the saturn and seeing contest like this really inspire me to keep learning C and maybe do some of my own work, and/or help. :cheers Here's to ya!

		madmalkav	Dec 12, 2005
		C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion Rockin-b, the url of my store in the CD is wrong... Now sure my advertisement will have no effect at al Oh, well, tell the winner to mail me to pedidos@frikidonia.com... to get the prize.

RockinB

Dec 12, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by madmalkav+Mon, 2005-12-12 @ 09:27 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(madmalkav @ Mon, 2005-12-12 @ 09:27 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'>Rockin-b, the url of my store in the CD is wrong...

[/b]

Ups, you're right, I'm sorry .

<!--QuoteBegin-m
admalkav@Mon, 2005-12-12 @ 09:27 PM

Now sure my advertisement will have no effect at al

[post=142457]Quoted post[/post]
[/quote]

No, on the websites the URL is correct and the banner and link is not only placed on the C4 website like we agreed to, but also on a couple of other places where I posted the news.

The screen is just a credits screen, I'll fix the image now.

Thanks for pointing me to this.

		vreuzon	Dec 13, 2005
		C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion Hi Good to see that people did program games this time, not only demos. I downloaded the contest cd and there are a few bad things happening to my game : in the intro screen, the plasma effect won't show and the title, players and options screen are messed up, making it impossible to know what you do. Rockin'b, was it the same in the standalone version a gave to you ? (I played the winner's tetris, and the score stays at 128 points, no matter what I do . Is this normal ?) Is there a place for everybody to download the games sources ?

RockinB

Dec 13, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by vreuzon+Tue, 2005-12-13 @ 09:08 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(vreuzon @ Tue, 2005-12-13 @ 09:08 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'>I downloaded the contest cd and there are a few bad things happening to my game : in the intro screen, the plasma effect won't show and the title, players and options screen are messed up, making it impossible to know what you do. Rockin'b, was it the same in the standalone version a gave to you ?

[post=142477]Quoted post[/post]
[/b]

The only difference I found out was the plasma title screen, but I already told you about that and send you a preview version (did you check it out?) before even the judges got to see it. I also asked you if you would like to have a standalone version judged. Please note that neither you or I know whoose fault this is.

The judges CD has been modified with customization data to become the final C4CD. I have not yet tested this one (I'm away, sort of), but I will check and compare all 3 versions again.

Originally posted by vreuzon@Tue, 2005-12-13 @ 09:08 AM

(I played the winner's tetris, and the score stays at 128 points, no matter what I do . Is this normal ?)

[post=142477]Quoted post[/post]

Currently, the score system is WIP.

<!--QuoteBegin-v
reuzon@Tue, 2005-12-13 @ 09:08 AM

Is there a place for everybody to download the games sources ?

[post=142477]Quoted post[/post]
[/quote]

Not yet. Personally, I got some of the sources, but it's not my decision to publish it.

All contestants who want to publish sources, please do so. :agree

Maybe some will apply further improvements and publish sources afterwards. I plan to publish a couple of sources, soon.

cafe-alpha

Dec 13, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Hi everybody !

Thanks for all for the contest, everything wouldn't have been possible without help from segaXtreme (for docs, tools, and so on) !!

I'm happy for my game to be rewarded, and hope you will like it.

Please note that the game is still in (earlier) development, so that it can seem hard to play or incomplete ...

Originally posted by vreuzon@Tue, 2005-12-13 @ 11:08 AM

(I played the winner's tetris, and the score stays at 128 points, no matter what I do . Is this normal ?)

[post=142477]Quoted post[/post]

Well ... score is displayed, but not initialised/updated ^^

Sorry, I wanted to make scoring system the night before the deadline, but couldn't make something good in time.

I will make something better soon.

vreuzon

Dec 13, 2005

C4 - 2005 & 2006 discussion

Originally posted by Rockin'-B@Tue, 2005-12-13 @ 11:36 AM

The only difference I found out was the plasma title screen, but I already told you about that and send you a preview version (did you check it out?) before even the judges got to see it. I also asked you if you would like to have a standalone version judged. Please note that neither you or I know whoose fault this is.

Sure. (i just didn't expect to see no plasma effect at all, and some other things are suprising. I did not make much testing of basic things at the end)

and no one is to blame : it's only a game.

...