New Release: Tank Battalion

[joshuadenmark]

Great game - very stressing - love it

Score 4220

[beamrider]

Thanks

What level did you get to? I've only ever made it to level 3 so far...

Plan on repairing my Competition-Pro joystick tomorrow and have a good go at it..

[bills442]

Ok, this got me going; on VICE under linux with my core two duo at 2.6GHZ
which claims full frame rate

I got to level 4 with 18xxx darnit the screen flashed over before I could read it, is there no way to see the running high score?
boy was level 3 hard, then it went back to the bricks on 4 and I got too greedy trying to kill a tank and that was the end

[bills442]

I got addicted playing your game tonight

One odd thing happened; I don't know if VICE got mad at me, or something, but I'd been playing the game _quite_ a while and it seems like it ended up in a loop? The screen stopped mid game
The monitor says it's looping in 25f8,25fb
something like:
.loop
LDA $1a44
BEQ .loop

the tank engine sound was at a single note.

[joshuadenmark]

I am not sure but one shot gave 1600 point was playing on Vice x64 windows with Pooyan running in a 2. window, controlling with a usb gamepad.

Will play this more today, to see if I can reach a higher score and take a snapshot of the scoreboard.

[beamrider]

I got addicted playing your game tonight

One odd thing happened; I don't know if VICE got mad at me, or something, but I'd been playing the game _quite_ a while and it seems like it ended up in a loop? The screen stopped mid game
The monitor says it's looping in 25f8,25fb
something like:
.loop
LDA $1a44
BEQ .loop

the tank engine sound was at a single note.

Sorry about that - that's strange really strange.

[edited:]
I think I've managed to reproduce this. It's one of those nasty bugs that only seems to occur after the game has been running for a very long time, hence your discovery with the high scores. Not exactly sure what it is yet though unfortunately and one of the drawbacks of being in 'c' is that its more difficult to debug.

I think the loop you were refering to was the framerate lock just wating to be signalled - eventually it drops through.

Can you confirm that the eagle was still flashing and whether you broke into the Vice monitor yourself?

[bills442]

I feel like a kid again destroying 8 bit tanks over the christmas holidays ; too bad this cool game didn't come with my VIC which I got for Christmas in 1982, lol. Nope, it was tank vs UFO after typing it in;ha.

I saved a snapshot of the game; which ( I assume ) is just a memory dump and restores the virtual machine to exactly what it was?

Anyway, I just now loaded the snapsot; the eagle is not flashing. I had broken into the monitor myself; just curious to see if VICE was still running the program.

I've never looked at the C65 compiler's output. Well, hopefully it's better than looking at the x86 garbage that still to this day burns my eyes when MS products trip ; but at least the 'segment' notation is gone, lol.

[beamrider]

I just remembered, it looks like it's payback time for when I reported that bug in Panicman, that only occured under Vic+Megacart...

[bills442]

I just remembered, it looks like it's payback time for when I reported that bug in Panicman, that only occured under Vic+Megacart...

heh maybe so. I am still thankful for all the help you gave me on that one.

[beamrider]

I've updated the OP with a new version (1.01) that should fix the bug identified by bills442 (many thanks for extended testing). I've also added a high score facility (displayed during attract mode) so you can post some evidence of your shooting prowess.

Happy new year!

[Mayhem]

Nice! I shall have to remember to download anew to add to GB20

[beamrider]

Nice! I shall have to remember to download anew to add to GB20

Thanks, is there a website anywhere that lists what's currently in GB20? Only asking as last time I downloaded it [about a year ago], Pooyan wasn't there.

[Mayhem]

No website sadly. Just don't have the time. I suppose I could try to compose a list myself...

As for Pooyan, it came out just after I'd packaged and completed the most current release of GB20. So it will be in the next release, whenever that is...

[beamrider]

OK, so after my first serious playing session I achieved a score of 29,260 and got to level 5. I think it's a bit easier with a retro style joystick too.

[joshuadenmark]

Amazing score, congratulations