Lab46 Wiki

Scoring in pong is as simple as checking if the ball has left the screen; if it crosses the left side the right player gets a point, and vice versa.

For our purposes, we can check if the ball's x position has exceeded 640 or subceeded 0

Displaying the player's scores is where things start to get more complex, as we no longer have built in 'itoa' or 'print' functions, so we will have to build them manually.

First off, and debatably more complex portion, is creating an itoa function
To do this we can break down what we need to get printable characters from any arbitrary number
That process requires getting each digit from our number, ie to print 104, we need to have print a 1, a 0, and a 4, as they are all separate regions is the BIOS texture
One possible way of doing this is to use math to pick apart a number from right to left, converting each digit to its ASCII value, and store them, in a process that may look like:

   MOV  R0,   104
   MOV  R1,    R0   ; Store a copy of the original into R1
_itoa:
   MOV  R2,    R1   ; Store a copy of the number into R2
   IMOD R2,    10   ; Retrieve the last digit from the copy
   IADD R2,  0x30   ; Convert the number to its ASCII value
   PUSH R2          ; Store the digit onto the stack
   IDIV R1,    10   ; Remove the last digit from the original
   MOV  R3,    R1   ;                   ;
   IEQ  R3,     0   ; Repeat until zero ;
   JF   R3, _itoa   ;                   ;

Once we have each character we want to print, printing them is a simple matter
The process may look like:

   %define SELREG  GPU_SelectedRegion
   %define SELTEX  GPU_SelectedTexture
   %define DRAWX   GPU_DrawingPointX
   %define DRAWY   GPU_DrawingPointY
   %define GPUCOM  GPU_Command
   %define DRAWREG GPUCommand_DrawRegion
   
   ...
   
   OUT  SELTEX,        -1    ; Select the BIOS texture
   MOV  R0,             0    ; Place a dummy value onto the stack ;
   PUSH R0                   ;                                    ;
   CALL _itoa                ; (assuming itoa has a RET instruction)
_innerloop:
   POP  R0                   ; Retrieve the first character
   MOV  R1,            R0
   IEQ  R1,             0
   JF   R1,       _return
   OUT  SELREG,        R0    ; Set the region
   OUT  DRAWX,         RX    ; Set the x position (whatever register contains the xpos)
   OUT  DRAWY,          #    ; Set the y position
   OUT  GPUCOM,   DRAWREG    ; Draw the character
   IADD RX,            10    ; Move xpos to next open space
   JMP  _innerloop
_return:
   RET

The simplest version of a computer operated player has the bot moving the paddle to the same vertical position as the ball.

First we need to get the difference in position between the paddle and the ball.

NOTE* we want the center of the paddle to hit the center of the ball, so we must make sure to compensate for the distance between the hotpots and centers of the paddle

This will tell us the direction and magnitude the paddle should move, but we will want to cap the movement speed of the paddle so the bot isn't too good.

We can also add a small multiplier to further limit the movement of the bot.

_npcMovement:
   ;RY is the register containing the ball's y pos
   ;RP is the register containing the paddles y pos
   ;RT is a temporary register
   
   mov   RT,   RY    ;Store a copy of the ball's ypos
   isub  RT,   RP    ;Get the difference in position
   iadd  RT,   20    ;Compensate for any differences in sizes
   
   imul  RT,    2    ;Optional slow down on bot movement
   idiv  RT,    3    ;This will make the bot 2/3 the responsive
   
   imax  RT,  -10    ;Limit the speed to -10 pixels and 10 pixels
   imin  RT,   10
   
   iadd  RP,   RT    ;Move the bot's paddle acordingly
   
   RET

The difficulty of the computer can be tuned by changing the max speed and responsiveness during their movement step