mirror of https://github.com/deater/tb1.git
169 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
169 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
Q. Why?
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A. My friend <A href="http://www.deater.net/john">John</A> got a Gameboy
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Advance for Christmas. He suggested I port my game
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<A href="http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/tb1">Tom Bombem</A> to it.
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In actuality the specs of the GBA are similar to the machine I
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originally wrote TB1 on. It was on a 386-33 with 320x200x256 graphics
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and constrained to 640kB of RAM. The game was written in 16-bit
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PASCAL with some 32-bit assembly.
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I thought I should attempt a x86 assembly version before I go and learn
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ARM assembly.
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Q. How did you do the graphics.
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A. With <A href="http://www.thegimp.org">The Gimp</A>. Used 16 color indexed
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palette. Saved as xpm. Edited with text editor.
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Q. Why text mode?
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A. Because doing graphics in Linux is a pain. And I didn't feel like
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messing with the framebuffer. This was a proof-of-concept, not a
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designed-for-release game.
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Q. Why 40x20 resolution?
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A. Because I'd like to port it to Apple IIe low-res graphics mode.
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Q. Why not a DOS version?
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A. Should be technically possible, although it's been a while and gas
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isn't the best assembler for it. Also doing things like reading
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the keyboard/getting timestamps/speaker noise are more complicated.
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More interesting would be a version using Windows console syscalls.
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Q. What is the high score?
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A. A bit of a silly question as anyone can edit a text file and lie. The
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highest score I've gotten is 14170 on level 4.
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But this isn't saying much, I tend to be debugging more than playing.
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The highest _possible_ score is 2^31 or about 2 billion. Actually
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it might be 4 billion, I am not sure how my int->ascii code handles
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signed numbers.
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Q. Why does the ship have its engines constantly on, even though
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it is moving at a constant velocity?
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A. Ummmm... friction. Yeah... space friction.
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Q. Why are the stars moving so quickly? Are you going faster than light?
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A. If you look closely you'll notice the stars repeat. Hence you
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are really flying very fast in a big circle. Hey, maybe that's
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why the engine is constantly firing!
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Q. Where in that tiny ship are all of those missiles stored?
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A. In the seventh dimension.
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Q. Why the seventh dimension?
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A. The others were all full.
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Q. Why is there a guinea pig in the game?
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A. A local guinea pig threatened me with violence if I did not include
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a picture of her.
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Q. What have you learned from all this assembly programming?
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A. I'm just reminded what Professor Jacob always said...
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A computer is just a state machine.
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Q. What do you hate most about the GNU Assembler "gas"?
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A. It doesn't warn you when a "loop" instruction overflows
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128 thus causing your program to go off into la-la land.
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It also doesn't do type checking causing you headaches if
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you forget the "b" on cmpb.
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But you can't really blame it, it's used to dealing with
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gcc which is a very good and proper assembler-producer,
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unlike the author.
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Q. Why are there only 6 enemies / 2 missiles / shields go up at 320/ etc?
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A. Game balance. Just trying to keep it challenging yet not overwhlmingly
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so. [For the original tb1 it was "because my 386 can't keep up" but
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that should be less of a problem these days].
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If you _must_ have it some other way, feel free to mess with the constants
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on the first page of the tb_asm.s file, but I cannot guarantee what
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the consequences might be!
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Q. Will there be a sequel?
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A. Yes, it will be released shortly before either the release of
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"Duke Nukem Forever (tm)" or the heat death of the universe,
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which ever happens first.
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Q. Why can't Vince stay consitent between "HISCORE" and "HIGH SCORE"
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including all possibly variations of "HI-SCORE" "HIGH_SCORE" usw?
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A. The world may never know.
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Q. What does "usw" mean?
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A. Und So Weiter.
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Q. That wasn't helpful.
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A. This isn't a question.
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Q. What's the highest level you can get to?
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A. No matter how you try, once you get to level 7 it will
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keep repeating. This is because I multiply the level
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by 16 in various places for enemy movement, and it it goes
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above 7 then the byte will be negative causing
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Bad Things(tm) to happen.
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Q. Well why don't you modify the code so it doesn't go haywire
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after level 7?
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A. I am lazy. Also it should be too hard to get to level 7 anyway
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Q. What are the enemies supposed to be?
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A. An envelope, a clip-board, a cigarette, a telephone, a dollar-bill,
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and an un-identified yellow thing, possibly a banana. All things
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malicious marketers might have in excess.
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Q. How come the stars appear in straight bands insteas of scattered in the
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sky?
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A. Because my pseudo-random number algorithm is at times more pseudo
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than random.
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