Re: Cinemenu round 2!

On Sat, 28 Mar 1998 18:45:56 -0800, Clay Cowgill <ClayC@diamondmm.com> wrote:

>> Nope, never saw your Sega Menu :-) I just knew I couldn't display all
>> the
>> games and move a pointer around. The "useless" text was to balance the
>> display and prevent spot killing.
>>
>:-)
>
>> But Clay, you never said if you could select different games... Well?
>> Or
>> were you correct in saying your inputs don't work (hardware problem).
>> If
>> thats the case, I need another tester Mark! Also, is the LED off now?
>> (Zonn, I'm reseting WDTimer *once* and doing 2 WAIs) If it resets, the
>> game will revert to AA.
>>
>I did the test super-quick during lunchtime, so I didn't mess with the
>control inputs. I'm testing in a RipOff cocktail machine with a dubious
>input system... I have to find my other Cinematronics boards in the
>attic or fix what I've got.
>
>> Since a space has no lines, it doesn't move the beam around at all, so
>> I'll
>> add a delay at the start of the string drawing routine. I'm wondering
>> how
>> much time it's actually taking to draw this stuff - What if I set the
>> intensity bit to bright after drawing the text until the next frame.
>> Then
>> someone (Clay?) could check the duty cycle to see what % of the CPU
>> time
>> it's using. May as well gather some data while were at it :-)
>>
>I can do the timing test if you modify the code. Can a "space" in
>Cinematroics-land be a draw with the beam off? (that's what I did with
>the Sega stuff for experimentation-- just draw a character-width line
>with the color guns off...)
>
>> As for DC offset, I wondered if that was an issue, so I tried to keep
>> things somewhat semetric. I'll put asterisks around "MULTIGAME" and
>> take
>> them off Cinematronics to balance them better. The drawing order is:
>> Cinematronics, Multigame, Select, GameName - I thought it might be a
>> good
>> idea not to just go from top to bottom (not sure why). I was a bit
>> scared
>> when Clay said the first rev was only drawing at the top... Then
>> again,
>> I'm not sure I buy that whole DC thing - as long as you exorcise all 4
>> transistors, each one will have a rest.
>>
>Hmmm. From my experiments (admittedly on Wells-Gardner monitors) you're
>better off making short-jumps and being asymmetrical that trying to make
>big jumps and be symmetrical. If there's any residual effects from
>magnetism on the yoke I haven't been able to really notice them.

Clay's probably right here. The jumps in the Star in Solar Quest are very
small, (I doubt if anyone in the arcade noticed it much, it's just when your
repairing a monitor you notice *everything*)

I also didn't talk with Scott Boden directly. I think he was just making the
point that if you go back to a position to draw a star and the star seems to be
jumping around, take into account the residual magnetism of the yoke before
spending a few hours debugging your program -- I get the impression that's what
happened to Scott!

You'll certainly be able to draw more vectors if you keep the distance between
vectors small.

-Zonn

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Received on Mon Mar 30 10:43:27 1998