I've just completed 70% of my planned 50+ deep dives into The Sentinel, Geoff Crammond's epic #BBCMicro game
Batch #7 is now ready: 4 new articles about drawing the 3D landscape, ray-casting and quadrants
https://thesentinel.bbcelite.com/deep_dives
Batch #8 coming soon
Enjoy!
@bbcmicrobot I should have thought this up before the Basic 10 liner competition, because it is _actually_ a 10 line game. When you press space, this really does generate new puzzles that it knows the solution to. Press the wrong number, and it knows you've made a mistake. But how?
Easy: every sudoku puzzle is also valid if you swap 3x9 columns, 9x3 rows, 1x9 columns within the same 3x9, 9x1 rows within the same 9x3, or transpose. That means I can use one puzzle to generate 6x6x6x6x6x6x6x6x2 of them! Well, easy-er, I just needed a few more tricks to fit it in, but
that's the root of it.
The base puzzle is the NYT "easy" one from a couple of days ago, so they should _all_ be easy.
Left image: The Sentinel and four sentries, taken from the landscape preview in the classic game of the same name. Astonishingly, these are not sprites. They are fully rendered 3D objects, using the exact same code as the game.
Right image: a robot, drawn by the same routine.
Micro *and* macro excellence! Very impressive from the same routine.
I remember a poll once that asked 'do you think of yourself as a robot?'
I understood it was a fun 'you might be autistic' type questiion because i had seen similar before and recognised some of the pixels.
I couldn't answer it.
It hadn't said *when*
Walking with purpose i'm a timberwolf mech. My legs go in the direction i'm moving, my torso rotates to track the objective, i don't rotate at my neck.
Driving, i'm a transformer chosing not to stomp traffic today - maybe Prowl, maybe Miirage depending on how much i'd rather be elsewhere.
Coding, i'm a brain in a mainframe.
Manipulating stuff, i'm the robot arm you plugged into the bbc micro at school but with a worn actuator.
Around people i'm a battered C3 protocol droid having a hard time of it.
I explained this to my wife who said it's remarkable how good my protocol droid is that i'm only getting diagnosed at 45.
What robots are you?
#autism #robots #transformers #C3P0 #battletech #mechwarrior #bbcmicro
Documenting The Sentinel is really growing my collection of disassemblies at https://www.bbcelite.com
Five projects: Elite, Aviator, Revs, Lander, The Sentinel
1,038,891 words of source code commentary
507,016 words of deep dives
All Shakespeare's plays? 835,997 words
Or as the Bard himself may have written, if he were into 6502 assembly:
LDA #&2B
STA temp
EOR #&FF
ORA temp
STA question
I think that works? π
Time for some more deep dives into The Sentinel, Geoff Crammond's epic #BBCMicro game!
Batch #6 is now ready: 3 new articles about screen buffers, panning, scrolling and dithering
https://thesentinel.bbcelite.com/deep_dives
Batch #7 (drawing the landscape) coming soon
Enjoy!
Just found this game from 1987 called Virus (or Zarch) for the Acorn Archimedes.
It was made by David Braben and it looks like such a "missing link" between Elite and Frontier: Elite II to me.
The ship design is very original Elite but the solid shapes, the 3D lighting techniques and the pivot to realistic physics all point towards where Braben's interests where going into the 90s.
Super impressive for 1987!
Brand new weekend reading: even more deep dives into The Sentinel, Geoff Crammond's #BBCMicro epic
Batch #5 covers the unique equirectangular projection system, drawing filled polygons, the screen mode and more
https://thesentinel.bbcelite.com/deep_dives
Batch #6 soonβ¦
Enjoy!
I'm (slowly!) releasing 50+ deep dives into The Sentinel, Geoff Crammond's epic #BBCMicro game
Batch #4 is now ready: 5 new articles about 3D objects (defining, drawing, managing)
https://thesentinel.bbcelite.com/deep_dives
Batch #5 (drawing polygons) coming on Friday
Enjoy!
Just released: 6 brand new deep dives into The Sentinel on the #BBCMicro and #C64
This is where it gets interesting!
Generating 10,000 3D landscapes; tile data and shapes; enemies and trees; secret codes
https://thesentinel.bbcelite.com/deep_dives#latest
Batch #4 coming soon
Enjoy!
Mark Moxon
bazzargh
Bloognoo
Luke Miller