Main Menu
Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - LamerDeluxe

#1
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 24, 2019, 04:37:03 PM
Using FAT to format is correct, right? And I'm using a cluster size of 512 to save some space.
#2
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 24, 2019, 04:21:37 PM
I will do that.

There's still a weird bug in there that makes everything fly off the screen after a short while (quit before that happens or it will crash). Maybe I'm using wrong syntax somewhere.
#3
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 24, 2019, 03:49:40 PM
Ooh, good news. I found some obscure software that was able to recover the deleted file. Wow, what a relief, I was so disappointed. Going to find another cable and use Notepad++ to see if that improves things.
EDIT: That doesn't change anything. Still stuck at loading the second time I try to load my demo.
EDIT2: Wow, actually the drive got corrupted again with this load freeze and now after a drive check all the files are gone. This made me lose my earlier demos, but they weren't as much work to make. It is also unrecoverable now. Something seems to be very wrong with my cart.
#4
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 24, 2019, 03:41:34 PM
Good to hear you've found a fix.

My cable runs directly from the computer to the cart. I haven't had any other troubles with this port. I could try another cable, but I would need to find one first, because most of my cables are micro USB. Would that even explain the freezes while loading?

I lost my program because I thought of trying to switch between programmer's notepad and notepad++, during that switch the file got erased by the Vectrex32 after the drive got corrupted again. I should have made a back up on my PC.

I've tried undeleting the file, but there doesn't seem to be anything that could be undeleted.

I really just want this thing to work, because I liked the whole concept of it a lot. I was very much looking forward to completing my demo, it was starting to look pretty interesting.
At the moment I'm not looking forward to starting all over again, as development has been so frustrating.
#5
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 24, 2019, 03:11:45 PM
I'm still getting freezes when loading my demo, even after waiting minutes after saving. It happens maybe one in five times, if I wait a long time before loading every time. If I then reset the Vectrex it is stuck on waiting. This doesn't seem to corrupt the drive.

EDIT: Strike that, it happens much more often. Trying to develop anything is taking ages this way.
EDIT2: And now the drive got corrupted again.
EDIT3: And now I've lost the demo I've been working on for a lot of hours the last three days. I'm giving up.
#6
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 24, 2019, 05:04:43 AM
Cool. I hope you'll be able to fix it.
#7
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 23, 2019, 05:25:00 PM
Come to think of it, a reset button on the Vectrex32 would really help. Then if it crashes, I don't have to turn my Vectrex off and on. I'm starting to worry about wearing the power switch out.

I don't know if one could be added to the current version somehow, or if that would also need a redesign of the board.

The 3D demo off-screen crash and similar crashes I've had seem to be caused by all sprites being off-screen. So there's still a sprite list, but no actual lines to be drawn.
#8
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 23, 2019, 04:25:37 PM
Thanks for the advice, I will try that. Will see tomorrow if it helped. It is time to stop programming now :)

Missilebreak Outvaders still crashes on first ball contact, found out it then works fine after a reset. Yankee crashes after briefly flashing a display.
#9
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 23, 2019, 04:02:13 PM
Well, the obscure error went away after letting windows do another drive check on the Vectrex32 storage device. I find I have to do this every time the Vectrex32 crashes now, which is pretty annoying, as it crashes easily. I have been doing drive checks every few minutes.

I'm starting to think my Vectrex32 might have some kind of defect after all.

edit: Loading even often freezes when waiting a good amount of time for saving to finish. Then I have to recheck the drive again. All this is making development slow and frustrating.
#10
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 23, 2019, 10:13:29 AM
Okay. This demo won't need any clipping, but that is good to know.
I'll keep an eye on what is going on exactly that causes files to get locked here.

That makes sense. Being used to other programming languages I tend to forget to add the call command.

I'll have a look tonight at what could be causing that, it is not one of those. It is just a normal function. Maybe the system got confused because I didn't get the syntax of one of the commands inside the function right.
#11
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 23, 2019, 09:18:12 AM
Cool, I'll try the fix.

I was working on my demo yesterday and had all the objects that used sprite translation fly off the screen, then the Vectrex crashed into Mine Storm which was corrupted and really odd things were happening on the screen.

I thought when you use translation the line sprites are clipped? Or do I have to set the display boundaries?

Sometimes when the Vectrex 32 crashes, or when it freezes while loading (this can happen even if saving was finished), the basic file will stay locked and can't be overwritten or even deleted anymore. I have to do a windows drive check to get the flash drive to be able to remove the files.

While working on the demo I've experienced some incorrect error messages (for instance about a missing '=', when the call command is missing).
And my session yesterday ended when I kept getting an error message about endfunction being an illegal command, even though the same command was used to end a function above it without any problems.

I've started keeping a list of odd things happening while developing, which I will share later on.

I really have to get used to developing in basic again. For instance adding a 2D velocity to a 2D position, you can't just add two arrays together.
#12
Really cool, that should give you maximum performance. That explains the code sprite as well. Must have been a lot of work to develop.

I talked to someone who makes demoscene demos and he was really interested in the Vectrex 32. He said it is pretty inexpensive for homebrew hardware. Should you create one with more RAM or even the full 32KB, if that could be utilized, I would order one right away.
#13
Cool, I think that is similar to how the Gameboy uses cartridges. How many bytes are the commands that are sent to the Vectrex? Three for move/draw commands?

Will post something to the code swap section when I have something worth sharing.
#14
32K that is pretty luxurious. So the Vectrex can access that memory directly? I wonder how much memory it would take to max the Vectrex out in what it would be able to draw at say, 25 fps.

To me that even seems like a pretty good failure rate, I haven't dared to even solder any kind of SMD component yet.

I've been working on a more extensive demo. If I wanted to post a demo, would I do so in the games section? Or would it be an idea to have a separate demo section? It would probably be educational to have small demos there as well.
#15
General Discussion / Re: Stuck on "Waiting"?
September 21, 2019, 05:06:52 PM
Yes, I have that exact same behaviour now. I hope this is something that could be fixed in software then.
EDIT: Does your 3D demo crash when you move everything off screen by moving the camera? And by adding more than ten ships?