Commander X16

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This looks great! I'll have to try it out some more when I have some time. I actually wanted to create a game like this for the X16 just so it would exist, but it got pushed too far back on my priority list. Thanks for doing it and doing such a nice job!

Even though it's a prototype, I agree it's fairly well done! There seems to be a small bug that sometimes the walls can be replaced with the background tile, and it seems to be possible for the ball to sneak past the paddle in the bottom left corner. But overall, very good, and thanks!

Thanks @StephenHorn. Yes - the collision detection is still a bit shaky. I tried to optimize it as much as possible by just using the character positions when checking for a bounce. That's an issue if the ball travels over a corner by more than 1 pixels at a time...

If first wanted to use sprites for the bricks coming up in the trajectory and then have Vera detect collisions...  until I read that the emulator doesn't detect them, right?

Correct, the emulator doesn't do collision detection yet. I submitted a pull request quite a while back to address this, but I may have implemented it backwards and as far as I can tell nobody has looked at it, much less accepted it.

It may be difficult to implement the blocks via sprites, anyhow, as you may find yourself bumping up against the VERA's per-line sprite limitations. The emulator does replicate that behavior. If you wanted the background to be visible behind the tiles, you might consider using the second layer to display the bricks on their own tilemap.

Trusting the hardware collision detection is risky, anyway. It's best to implement your intersection formula yourself. There is plenty of time to have the CPU do the math.

1 hour ago, StephenHorn said:

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It may be difficult to implement the blocks via sprites, anyhow, as you may find yourself bumping up against the VERA's per-line sprite limitations. The emulator does replicate that behavior. If you wanted the background to be visible behind the tiles, you might consider using the second layer to display the bricks on their own tilemap.

I just wanted to use a maximum of 3 potential sprites in line with the trajectory at the same positions as the tiles (just using the same bitmaps as the sprites). The player would not notice.

The 2nd layer I'd like to make use of to do some parallax effects - just because Vera can ?. I struggled getting it to work (black screen only), so I left it out for now.

34 minutes ago, SlithyMatt said:

Trusting the hardware collision detection is risky, anyway. It's best to implement your intersection formula yourself. There is plenty of time to have the CPU do the math.

Ah I see - your're probably right. Doing it myself also teaches me someting. And at 8MHz... if we just had this speed back then... Ok my trusty Atari ST did, but it didn't have any hardware acceleration like Vera provides. 

Ok, I've uploaded a new version with improved collision detection. I hope I understood the way I'm supposed to replace the PRG in the software library with a new version ?.

1 hour ago, AndyMt said:

Ok, I've uploaded a new version with improved collision detection. I hope I understood the way I'm supposed to replace the PRG in the software library with a new version ?.

The updated version appears correctly here ?

Love the mouse support!

Uploaded a new version (0.2). This one now uses BIN files to load the palette, sprites and tile set. I managed to create some artwork which (in my opinion) makes the game already appear to look a lot more like Arkanoid back in the days ?.

I made it more difficult for myself by using 4bpb tiles in a 256 color palette I've designed myself. Then using color offsets (multiple of 16) I now can easily recolor all the bricks just by moving them in the color palette :).

Next topic is sound... Something I have zero experience.

I consider changing the layout of the playing field to be more square and show score, lives etc on the right hand side (similar to Arkanoid). Right now I think there are just too many bricks on the screen - it takes ages to complete a level...

What do you think?