hacktix / chroma-invaders Goto Github PK

The original arcade machine features a watchdog, running seperately to the CPU, resetting it if it starts hanging at any point. There's no real reason for this to be implemented, other than "accuracy".

For an even cooler looking experience, it would be great to be able to toggle a CRT shader for the emulator (as suggested by @Ciastex).

Since the colored screen is an additional feature, it may be interesting to some to be able to turn it off, for an authentic black-and-white experience.

The original arcade machine features a few I/O bits for settings such as the amount of ships the player starts with, whether the player gets an extra ship at 1500 or 1000 points and whether or not Coin info is displayed in the demo screen. This could be used in combination with a seperate config file, which should be easy to read and modify.

As Space Invaders doesn't use the AC flag anywhere in it's code, the fact that the CPU emulates the flag behavior incorrectly doesn't affect gameplay. However, for potential re-usability of the CPU emulator for other purposes, it may be useful to fix these issues.

Using the borrow bit in subtraction operations currently yields incorrect results, as the Carry bit only increases the value to be subtracted by 1 rather than act as an actual borrow bit.

Currently the Performance Meter is updated with every Update() call, making it practically unreadable. This could be improved by storing measured times in a ring buffer and calculating an average, rather than displaying every measurement seperately.

The original console features an I/O bit in order to display a "TILT" message. This could be added in just for fun.

After playing the demo twice, the game doesn't function properly anymore. As soon as a coin is inserted, the screen goes blank (as it should), but leaves one alien on screen. Following that, the game instantly ends and takes the player back to the menu screen, prompting to push the start button, despite having no credit. Any further attempts to start the game do the same thing, decrementing the credit number each time.

With controller support having been added, it may be useful to have a warning for low battery charge displayed ingame.

While the game is entirely playable in it's current state, there are two main effects of incorrect interrupt timing:

1. Player Beams aren't capped at the top of the screen properly, allowing the player to shoot and destroy the score labels as if they were destructible shields.
2. All player-related actions (such as moving and shooting) are much slower than they should be.