Saturn Dev Contest

[slinga]

What's up guys?

Just wondering if anybody's made any progress with their contest entry. I'm hoping the extra two months doesn't cause people to push back on developing stuff. As for me, I've implemented support for the saturn's floppy drive (or so I think, I have no way of testing at the moment...) on my save game copier. I can't dev in Win2k3 yet (direct x problems damnit), so progress will be slow.

I gotta redownload all the docs again, but I had a quick question. How do you clear the input from a controller? I think it was some intback function. Oh well, later.

 

[mrkotfw]

Yah, Great job on the game save copier. I myself have been scraping demos like hell... i have a great idea then i code it then i realize it can't be done or it's too much work

well these 2 months will do me some good! also, what type of conneciton is the PC COMMS LINK? MALE or FEMALE?

ACTION REPLAY <FEMALE----------MALE>PC COMMS LINK ??

i didnt know saturn had a disk floppy device! wow... but i dont think you'd want to enable that... because no one has it probably! win2k3 ? heh they came out with new windows ... :bs i got a longsssss way ta go!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[RockinB]

Hello guys!

Concerning my MineSweeper game I've finished the 2 player support and implemented a replay functionality!

The replays are recorded automatically and can be watched or saved after finishing one game. Replays support 1 and 2 players. Those replays are all organized as 1 player replays. You can load and watch saved replays. And you can combine two arbitrary replays as if it were a 2 player match and compare them!

The save/load support for replays is not completely finished. Also a separate highscore table for 2 player matches would be nice.

What's really making me angry is the weird format of the current system time that I get this way:

SmpcDateTime startTime = Smpc_Status->rtc;

I just can't get this time displayed properly, whether with slDec2Hex nor with any other thing I tried... .

@slinga:

It's just a suggestion: try to make the usage of your SaveGameCopier as comfortable as possible. The functionality of copying and deleting could be assigned to buttons instead of menu selection.

You probably could display the system memory on top half of screen and the current selected external device on bottom half of screen(in the spirit of the PAR menu on Saturn and on PC or even the norton commander).

When it would be possible to switch between top and bottom half and furthermore to switch the external device(CD, Cartdridge, Floppy) on bottom half(and to scroll up/down), then you could make all possible on one screen!

What do you think about it?

bye @ all coders

The Rockin'-B

 

[AntiPasta]

well, as the guy I was supposed to work with doesn't reply to my PMs nor shows up on the board (very nice, I bought a Comms card for him and he still hasn't sent the payment

) I've got a request for whoever has organised the contest - can I, like, resubscribe? Instead of the media player with wonder_k I intend to write a 2D shooter on my own.

This 2 month deadline extension really helped my project, btw. I haven't had time to code in weeks because of my exams, which have now almost ended

 

[mrkotfw]

Well, I wish I had a PC COMMS LINK+ACTION REPLAY-- Im so jealous of you guys... mainly because im on a 475mhz, slow computer, i have no money im a high school student... so basicly im stuck with girigiri freezing my computer. that is what slows my dev ALOT

 

[AntiPasta]

well, I have a spare PAR too

If you wanna buy/trade, lemme know...

 

[Daniel Eriksson]

well, as the guy I was supposed to work with doesn't reply to my PMs nor shows up on the board (very nice, I bought a Comms card for him and he still hasn't sent the payment ) I've got a request for whoever has organised the contest - can I, like, resubscribe? Instead of the media player with wonder_k I intend to write a 2D shooter on my own.

Ofcourse you can rejoin!

About the PAR-stuff. Isn´t the pc-link included with the cart? I thought about buying one, but then I have to buy a pc-link to. Or?

 

[mrkotfw]

Cool man, can ya sell me that PAR real cheap please?

PAR = Action Replay & Pc Comms Link ?

Maybe like $15 ? LMFAO

 

[Alexvrb]

PAR just means Pro Action Replay. AR would just be short for it. I think the PC comms link only came as ISA cards, I dont recall a PCI version, anyone else know?

 

[AntiPasta]

there is no PCI version as far as I know... however it wouldn't be hard to build as it's a really simple (i.e. 4 small IC's (74 series or sth), 2 resistors, 2 caps and a few jumpers.

Took a pic of the whole setup:

nescphp: 15$ is a bit low... I paid 25$ for the comms link alone and I've never used it.

Daniel: great! I will write a new submission. Where can I send it to? About the PAR stuff, the AR cart has a 25-pin port

on the back that looks exactly like a normal parallel port but it isn't... so you'd have to buy a comms card too. They're not that rare as they can be used for PSX too.

 

[Daniel Eriksson]

You can mail info about the project to : daniel_e86@hotmail.com

Great about the PARs. Ill try to pick one up then. Another question though, how big can the games put on the PAR be? There is an example game on the dev page that has PAR-support, and its about 500k. Whats the maximum? Can it cover all available memory on the PAR?

 

[AntiPasta]

putting games * on * the PAR? Do you mean actually flashing the eeprom on the cart with your own code? It has been done on PSX, afaik, but it was limited to 128k in size. But maybe you mean running games through the PAR, then you just upload your program (the PAR only acts as an intermediary) to the Saturn's main RAM... so it's limited to 2mb I believe, or maybe you could upload it in parts so the 4mb extra memory on 4-in-1's can be used (not sure how that can be done, tho)

 

[Alexvrb]

Remember, only 4in1/AR/PAR plus (called 5in1 as well) cards have the extra 4MB. The regular ones have 1MB.

 

[antime]

This might interest some of you with ISA-less machines:

A guy on a psxdev mailing list mentioned that the CD64 parallel port adapters sold by Success Compu support the Playstation as well. He had bought one, but hadn't tested it yet. However, even if they do work, there's still the problem of Saturn support but if it works similarly to the Freewing/Exstand interfaces it should not take long to put together your own tool for it. (To see the details on the adapter, click N64/Backup&Tools/Parallel Port Adaptor.)

 

[AntiPasta]

hehe... it's a small world isn't it? :cheers (saw you on the PSXdev list, my name there is Tux)

Anyway, to write such a tool, wouldn't one need some doc on the protocol used by the AR's firmware? Where can that be found?

 

[antime]

The protocol is documented in Charles MacDonald's document. What you need in addition to that is info on how the adapter is hooked up, but that can quickly be found out from the tools coming with the hardware. (It would be easiest to modify Charles' program uploader, so that's already half the work done.)

 

[vreuzon]

Le sPin, my game for the saturn dev contest is almost finished: it is now playable and has sound (and some bugs). As nobody should be able to understand what happens while playing (that said, it's fun however), i'll write a little doc before posting it.

How about some news about other dev contest projects ?

 

[AntiPasta]

I was heading over to a friend last monday, with my Saturn, to port our PC game to the Saturn for the contest - when I got there I noticed his TV tuner card wouldn't do PAL60 so I decided to undo my 60hz mod. It ran fine for a few minutes but then the Saturn's PSU died

After hours of tinkering we gave up and just improved the PC version

So no contest entry from me, I'm afraid...