CD32 finished, needs testing. FM Towns progress.

I added the last of the functionality to the CD32 version of Frog Feast. The sky changes color over time, and it should display correctly on a PAL display. The PAL change involved changes to more code than I expected. The allocated display memory is now 256 pixels high, instead of the 224 it was before. I will be testing on a real CD32 player over the next week.

I started implementing the sprite functionality into the FM Towns version. Understanding the functionality of the sprite system will take some investigating.

CD32 near complete

The sound issues were resolved. Sounds are properly stopped before starting another one. CD audio playback was added. A few gameplay problems were fixed.

There are two features left to implement. The background color needs to be changed based on time, and implement support for PAL mode. Once the features are implemented, this version needs to be tested on a real CD32 to ensure it runs at full speed.

Slight CD32 progress and FM Towns delay

I added preliminary sound support to the CD32 version of Frog Feast. Sound support wasn't too difficult to add. The audio hardware supports sound at almost any playback rate, up to about 13,000 khz in 8 bit signed pcm/raw format. The most difficult part of playing back a sound is preventing it from repeating once the sound ends. This is solved by setting the sound channel to play an empty sound after the audio hardware has queued the information for the sound. The audio hardware has shadow versions of the sound registers. Once the information is stored in the shadow registers (8 scanline appears to be long enough), the registers can be changed. The trick now is to find a way to stop the current sound to start another one, without a delay. And I need to change the sound routine to use both channels, so that the sound doesn't just play from one speaker. The last thing is a small change.

I also changed the blitter to handle blitting a 24 pixel wide sprite. This was messed up before. Before the source stride was hard coded into the routine.

Setting the gcc optimzation to -O3 was causing a fairly random crash, using version 2.95.3. Using -02 removes the crash. That had me scared a little. I thought it was bliting fix causing the problem.

I am delaying the release of the FM Towns version to add in sprite support. Sprites are handled in hardware, which will speed up the game even more! The recent changes have made adding sprites worthwhile.

Frog Feast two year anniversary.

Frog Feast was first released at Classic Gaming Expo 2005 (in Dallas and San Jose) two years ago. A 'brief' story, of the first two years of Frog Feast, is now up at:
http://frogfeast.rastersoft.net/2Year.html

CD-I Frog Feast Interview and game information posted.

Devin Shockwell has posted an interview and CD-i Frog Feast game information on 'The Black Moon Project' website (http://blackmoon.classicgaming.gamespy.com/default.asp).

The interview can be found here:
Black Moon interview

And, the game information is located here:
Black Moon Frog Feast Game Info

Thanks Devin, the interview was a pleasure to do, and reminded me that it's time for my annual playing of 'Z' (Bitmap Brothers Z info page). :)

FM Towns Frog Feast

The FM Towns version of Frog Feast has been updated to use a 256x240 double buffered front plane, and a 320x240 static backplane. This was inspired by the CD-i version.

I initially tried a 256x240 mode for both screens. The only problem with using the 256x240 mode, is that it leaves a blank area on the sides of the screen. And, using a 320x240 mode for the foreground screens doesn't allow for double buffering. Without double buffering, the sprites flicker near the top of the screen.

Jaguar CD Frog Feast, and FM Towns reworking

The Jaguar CD version of Frog Feast is available for pre-order from OlderGames.com:
http://www.oldergames.knurdz.com/shop/pre-order.php

The FM Towns version is under going some changes, to improve the speed. The speed of the old version wasn't bad, but I want it to work near perfectly.

Inspired by the methods used in the CD-I version, I've modified the FM Towns version to use the back plane as the background and the front plane for text and sprites. This makes it faster to clear the sprites, and removes the need to clear the text layer. I am in the process of changing the resolution to 256x240, to allow double buffering the front plane.