Castaway


Arutha

Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2003
Messages
251
Not trying to just open 100 topics about castaway, but the announcement one is so very full...

I'm not sure if this is the emulator, or the way ST joysticks work, but when I'm using the joystick I have two "weird" things happening... 1) when I press in a direction, the character continues going in that direction even when I've released the joypad and 2) I can't seem to fire continuously by hitting the B key to fire... I have to move the character between fires (i.e. fire, move, fire, move, etc.)

The two games I've played the most and that have these issues are Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Shinobi.

Overall, an AWESOME emulator, thank you very much for your hard work... this isn't complaining (heck, it may be this way on the ST), but merely bug-finding for an early release!

Lastly, two suggestions for the emulator (future features, some people have suggested at least one of these):
A - Gamma control, its fairly dark. Not sure how hard this is, I know Rlyeh added it to his MSX emu and may be able to give advice on the coding of it if needed.
B - An easy key combination to switch between a low and high frameskip (such as switching between 2 and 25 by hitting R+Start or something)... this would make it easy to speed up the decrunching times.

Thanks again for your hard work!
 
4) Joystick may be screwy

My bad... and I usually pride myself on reading readmes... but I skipped the TODO section in my hurry to get it running.

Anyway, the post is still valid in specifics for problems and a couple easy games to test it with for the authors info.
 
I experienced another problem.

After playing my first round of bubble bobble in joystick mode, mouse mode wasn't running
anymore. I tried to load different images but the mouse cursor still didn't want to move. I
had to restart the GP32 to fix this. I'm sure that this is a minor problem though.

I'm not the first, but I just have to say that this emu is simply amazing. A "very usable"
ST emu after such a short amount of time, this gives us all an idea of what can _really_
be done with the GP32 if you have the skills and the passion. I'm sure that your work
will be an inspiration for others!
 
Arutha posted on Apr 30 2003 said:
Not trying to just open 100 topics about castaway, but the announcement one is so very full...

I'm not sure if this is the emulator, or the way ST joysticks work, but when I'm using the joystick I have two "weird" things happening... 1) when I press in a direction, the character continues going in that direction even when I've released the joypad and 2) I can't seem to fire continuously by hitting the B key to fire... I have to move the character between fires (i.e. fire, move, fire, move, etc.)

The two games I've played the most and that have these issues are Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Shinobi.

Overall, an AWESOME emulator, thank you very much for your hard work... this isn't complaining (heck, it may be this way on the ST), but merely bug-finding for an early release!

Lastly, two suggestions for the emulator (future features, some people have suggested at least one of these):
A - Gamma control, its fairly dark. Not sure how hard this is, I know Rlyeh added it to his MSX emu and may be able to give advice on the coding of it if needed.
B - An easy key combination to switch between a low and high frameskip (such as switching between 2 and 25 by hitting R+Start or something)... this would make it easy to speed up the decrunching times.

Thanks again for your hard work!

bubble: Try again; does it always get screwy?

A few times the mouse can get stuck on the one side or the other.. I'll be adding it so if yo push "start" or the like, it resets the mouse to center and re-calibrates the width of the mouse playfield.

jeff
Hey, bug reports are okay. I'm a professional developer, so I dont' take it seriously.. critique is good. Hell, its what I live for.. I make software because I love to do it, and because I like to make people smiloe; hearin gabout it, good or bad, is important.. I like to know when it works, and I like to know when it doesn't work so I can make it work. When I stop hearing about it, it means its done enough and I stop working on it :)

The joystick is "sticky" riught now, my bad in a rush to get 003 out the door. I'll be fixing that tonight or tomorrow. So when you let go of a direction, it stops without hitting backwards. Woops :)

Firing continuously shoudl work.. Ive' found it comes and goes. It works pretty well for me. PErhaps the sticky-fix will repair it.. the emu core might be going mental with the stickyness of the fire button.

As to frameskip.. hmm.. I'll likely add shoudler buttons to frameskip-mode.. right shoudler being +1-, and left-shoulder being -10, or something. I coudl add a secret combo like starT+select, but then no one would find it anyway :)

As to gamma.. I'll brighten it another 10%.. its slightly darker than a real ST. However, most of the gamma issue is the GP32 needing a light.. its not a problem on my frontlit GP32, but its darker on my normal GP32.. We'll see. GAMMA is easy.. its an 8bpp palette, so I can just add an offset to the palette allocator and voila

jeff
 
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Didn't figure you'd mind, more just wanting to make sure you know how much your work is appreciated... this emu as is is 1000x more than most of us expected!

I played around with the firing a bit and here's what I've noticed in more detail (tested on Ghouls 'n Ghosts):

When you just press the joystick to the right and your character is going right, then you hit fire, you fire, but then cannot fire again (even when hitting the button) until you do another action (move, etc.) If you hold down the joystick, you can keep firing continously, and your character just "fires on the move" as such.

I've been using the joystick mode for the game... no idea if the mouse causes any problems with that or not. Games are still playable, just a bit more difficult, great work!

BTW - saw another post with the idea of using the A button as a joystick up - I'd have to agree, that would make sidescrollers like this easier at least. Glad you enjoy working on it - with your great skill and love, I'm sure everyone will keep giving you suggestions - probably many more than you can use!
 
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