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Thanks! First an S-video mod ... then FujiNet .... 🙂

To be fair, you're probably the one that posted it in the most relevant section.

At a certain point, too much detail and textures makes it harder to play a game like Warlords (or Asteroids or Centipede) because there's more visual noise getting in the way of trying to be accurate about seeing what is going on - the targetting pip, where exactly the enemies are, where their shots are, etc. Imagine a new Centipede that is the exact same game but now with realistic looking centipedes and other bugs, realistic mushrooms and realistic textured dirt/grass ground. I mean, have you ever looked at the ground where there are insects? You know how hard it is to recognize them all, keep track of them? They can hide in plain site depending on their coloration and shape. But the original games are very stark, even the ones with some detail like say Bosconian or Sinistar or Rally-X or whatever, the playfield is usually one solid color (black, mostly), the enemies are the same consistent shapes with the same basic colors, the shots are simple and easy to see, etc. The goal isn't to try to recreate reality, it's to try to make a fun simplified game that requires you to aim and shoot (or whatever, jump over things, grab things, etc.) accurately at things that you can easily pick out. They're the video equivalents of shooting galleries or ring toss games, they're skills games, not visual treats. Imagine being an air traffic controller with a radar display that had a bunch of high-rez textures for the ground and mountains and plants, of what use would that be when all you're supposed to care about is which planes are moving where? On the other hand sims can be detailed. Even something like Virtua Cop that is old, it looks like a (primitive) movie scene but you're not doing anything really precise, you're just targetting bad guys with a lightgun, so you can have textured bad guys, walls, streets, sky, whatever. Same goes for racing games because you're not doing anything on-screen like aiming/shooting, you're just using hand/eye coordination to avoid crashing into shit so having cars that really look like cars, sidewalks that look like sidewalks, etc., makes sense. This gets even more "useful" with PC 1st person shooter/adventure games, all the detail is needed because you spend half your time walking around nothing important in order to get to specific fun areas, or you're exploring dangerous areas. It would get boring if there was no detail, like those old video games where you're walking through a dungeon but it's just flat tile walls and ceilings that are all the same. You could even get lost because all the hallways look identical. Yes, video gaming, not visual gaming, not graphics gaming. "Video" just means a video display (I suppose as opposed to the previous electromechanical games that projected lights into actual physical cavities or onto molded shapes, or pinball) and we can all agree that original arcade CRTs weren't high-rez enough for detail we take for granted today. Are you telling me all the original games are not fun or entertaining because they're not realistic or don't have textures? Even something like Donkey Kong, are those realistic running/jumping animations? Does the fire look believable to you? Where are those platforms, anyways? What the hell is a Pac-Man? What are those maze walls made out of? Nobody cares, just make fun games that are challenging, simple obvious recognizable shapes, accurate collision detection. I'm not against better graphics, but they have to be there for a reason, otherwise you're wasting CPU cycles for bullshit. Again, PC gaming can have all sorts of eye candy and Easter eggs and gigs and gigs of rendering world to explore, sit on your ass for hours at home (or work, hahaaha) figuring out your next moves. An arcade game is something that should be making money and that means lots of relatively quick plays, right? Kind of simple and repetitive, sure, with increasing difficulty. So, gameplay first, gameplay second, eye candy after if there's time and it doesn't interfere with playing the game. Get the right controllers, too. The weirdness is these modern minimally interactive movies that many "gamers" want to spend money on, not much accuracy or challenge, just get to the bright colors and explosions and power-ups and goofy music. There, I agree, you need more detail to keep them engaged because the gameplay itself isn't going to do it. Shiny objects. But is that Warlords? No. The only way you could "modernize" Warlords and make those clowns happy would be... a 1st person version where you are moving a warrior along a platform at the edge of the castle tower blocking fireballs that are coming down at you from the dragon flying above. Could be fun, who knows, but it wouldn't be Warlords, not even close. Guilty as charged. My form of "purism" is insisting that the thing you present is the thing you say it is. Period. Otherwise, call it something else. How hard is that? This applies to movies/TV shows as well, especially adapted from known books. Also to specific car models as well, usually. The point being that, yes, you can change some things to the particular game, add this and that, so long as the core gameplay remains, if you're going to keep the same name but add Recharged or Super to it. I think Marble Madness II is horrible because they removed the trak-ball control. Heresy. Space Duel is basically Super Asteroids in terms of gameplay but since the actual asteroids are gone (replaced with geometric shapes) and there are new bits of gameplay added (those dual saucers, the tethered ships, the bonus levels) they changed the name, right? Galaga is very similar to Galaxian but different enough to change the name. There's no hard rule there, of course, but you get the idea after seeing enough examples. True. A giant screen, 8K or whatever, could allow for more players on a bigger playing field with more options, more castles or different shapes, more dragons that can be in more areas etc. Much like that Mega Pac-Man game, bigger/more of everything. Ya, Pong and Breakout combined. I was thinking Pong more because of the bounce the shot at the other players aspect but of course there is the brick breaking aspect, too. Keep the core, of course. But most of these Recharged games don't. Either they use joysticks instead of the correct controller (more heresy) or they slow down the gameplay in service of having more power-ups to deal with, they sometimes change how the enemies move (for the worse, usually), at some point, it's a similar game but not what the name said it was going to be (think really bad old 8-bit home ports of arcade games that really missed the mark). You say without changing the core but "the core" aspect is a challenging game (if we're talking about updating an old arcade game), not a casual game for hoarding power-ups. So long as you are not willing to acknowledge that, you will keep getting into arguments with people who are trying to explain to you why that game isn't the game it claims to be even though it's called that game and has some familiar shapes and sounds in it. You are forgetting one of the key aspects, which is an analog controller. Paddle or spinner. Without that, forget it. But, ya, there are many possible additions. That is the challenge, isn't it. Go too far, it's not that game anymore. Go not far enough, why did you even bother? "Needs"? Why? What's wrong with the originals? I think that some of the games do lend themselves to "recharged" versions that would be fun in a modern arcade, bigger screens, more players (co-op) for those games that were only ever single player at a time, more levels. But then there's the argument of keeping the controllers/gameplay and adding on top, or changing the gameplay to that lazy power-up recharged mess that ruins so many of these older games. My view of this is trying to imagine what a sequel game would have looked like if the early '80s never ended, we never got the newer CPUs and shaded textures and all that. But that's not what the average arcade "gamer" wants today, apparently. Where are my redemption tickets? Where's the droning music? Agreed. The really good arcade games I think are timeless. So long as it's a video monitor, it's shooting pixels with other pixels. Just more of them and more detailed shapes/colors/textures. The question is do you want to play a skills game that isn't very deep (because it's in an arcade) or do you want to immerse yourself in some type of adventure game with a wide open world? You cannot have both. I'm not much of a chess player but I don't think I've ever cared what the pieces looked like or were made of so long as they were distinguishable. My strategy and skill were never affected by the pieces or the board materials. Do you think that would even matter? Sure, to brag, look at my amazing chess set, but otherwise, chess is chess. This the solid gold bathroom fixtures problem. So what. Exactly, though I have no idea what most chess players prioritize in terms of game pieces. Now, if you want to update the game, that would be cool but it wouldn't be chess anymore. Chess is a simple analog of warfare, I always wondered how adding off-board artillery would change the game, hahaaha. Or, something like Archon, which was like halfway between chess and dejarik. I think I could make many "new" arcade games or updates to existing arcade games that would be fun/challenging, but they would always be arcade games, not these recharged, sleepy, over-rendered, slow animated messes. Which is to say, probably not very successful in modern arcades. But my friends who grew up going to arcades would probably love them.

Never ment to be harassing. I love to see the GUI having progress. What I mainly ment was that the limitations in hardware have to be implemented in software (use relocatable code only, instead of an MMU in hardware; ...). Those occupy memory, and main memory is limited. Multitasking might run well but how much memory is left for applications? You could put it into The Cart or comparable memory-monstrouse products, or reload as much as possible from RAM-Disk or storage on the parallel-port. But still all the active code has to fit into less than 64k main memory. The framework for the Window-Management and GUI widgets is eating up memory too ... ok this is what you save when the app itself does not need to have this implemented separately. And the last thing is time. You are one of the most genious programmer who writes the official firmware for other products. You said that time is missing. Contrary I also said that once the GUI framework is ready, writing apps itself should be doable relatively quickly.

I have two 8620er at full work here since 10 or more? years. The defective print head seems to be a "wanted" standard problem for these printers after 10 or 20.000 printouts. and I tried a lot of ways to "repair" that in the past. There are many videos on youtube for how to reanimate (clean) the print head, but none of them ever worked for me. Also buying a (chinese) new print head did not fix the problem. Some month ago I was lucky in buying a badly used 8620er for 50eu on eBay, I just wanted to swap the print head, but it turned out that it was used for 500 prints only, so for now, now I have a new printer 🥰 Still looking for more machines

Thanks for the offer. I would like to have a look at them for learning purposes. At the moment, I try to "recreate" the exact sound as in the goat tracker file. Unfortunately, you cannot specify two frequencies for one tick in goat tracker instruments. In fact, its a restriction of the SID Chip, not the tracker. You can only specify noise OR tone, so this is one of the restrictions when converting files. However, SID composers managed to create a lot of beatiful drum sounds with this limitation, so its not a big problem I think

Now the game runs at a steady rate of 20FPS and all known bugs are fixed. I'm refining a couple of things in the game. then I'll add the train modes ("Platform only" and "Puzzle only") and the beta version of the game will be ready.

I have a few 8-bit Ataris and I have to admit having chips cream out of sockets was a common issue. Thanks for reminding me 🙂

Updated ROM for Canyon Escape is here. Corrected one bug slowing down the game in some conditions and added the covered distance in Game Over screen. CanyonEscape.rom

Thanks! Fun fact: Raiden's body torpedo is actually only 7 pixels wide- the fewest horizontal pixel count in the game!.. but the VCS has 2 very rudimentary scaling options that let each pixel be stretched twice or four times as wide. All other sprites are 8 pixels wide- but they stretch double when attacking. Goro is fixed at double stretched for proper proportion. As a result I've altered some of his melee attacks to be a Shao Khan like shoulder smash instead. (because quad stretching him lost too much detail and looked awful) Also when doing Raiden's flying torpedo against the edge of the screen he will push through the opponent instead of going off screen. This is because the 2600's memory is so limited there is no room to "hide" sprites off screen, they just wrap around. So he pushes faster until the opponent is at his hands then matches speed, always ending up in the correct position. It was the most elegant solution I could come up with and I think it works.

The idea of making an easier SwordQuest game is excellent, and the symbols that you drawn work very well. I would say that the challenges are a LOT easier ! And to me, they are not too easy, they are just fine. The original game was so hard that it is a real pleasure with your new version to solve the clues in less than a week (in fact in about one hour). Did you give a name to the rooms and items ? I would like to have the names of this four symbols, I am not sure what they are : (I see a Christmas tree, a firework, the waves of the sea and a kind of svastika or a little character ?) SwordQuest was one of my favourite game, Swordquest Jr will be one of my friend's ! Great job.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but the "advanced tech" of the giga cart is just a larger flash chip on the cart instead of a 128m or 512m chip.

I don't really have any details on the board itself, just that it does +5V & -5V and I'm using a 12V-2A power supply from an old 1TB WD external harddisk. But this arrived today So I am now able to use the original power supply board and see what happens - I'm just a bit worried that the +5V is reading as 5.25V when it's not plugged in to anything. But I'll see what it reads when it's back in the console, they say the Pico digital pins won't like 5.5V but is happy with 5.0V or below, but I think the 74LS chips I've got connected directly to the Pico will only go to around 4V for logic high anyway.

Latest download above

The 7800 version of Pete Rose Baseball.

@nanochess Thank you

sure, I will add the command line to a window title. I will return to previous naming (without 32) so the 32bit version will work with the Larek's GUI. There is also this super simple GUI library for SDL2 https://github.com/rxi/microui/tree/master that could allow to make a proper UI (not just a launcher) for the RC. Will consider trying it, but if we have C++ developers here, any help is welcome! Since the release C++ also added a multi-threading to the language natively, so dependency on pthreads could be removed, but I think it's not a priority for now. Generally the code got super optimized for speed by @phaeronwith caching of intermediate results for reuse which now makes it harder to introduce changes (like addition of 5 color char-mode instead of 4 color bitmap). To make it possible the code will need to be significantly reorganized. Oh, I also forgot to add a Generator folder to the release on Github, will add it in the next release.

Also as a cost saving deal I'm sure, it looks like the new VS doesn't have the cool color-changing LEDs...But I'm just going off of what it looks like.

Hello all! A friend of mine is moving in less than 1 week and needs to let A LOT of his stuff go ASAP. There are hours posted in the message below, but he has told me that if someone needs to meet up at a different time, he is flexible and you'd just need to contact him. His email address is: rockotiger@gmail.com Here is the treasure trove of stuff, as emailed to me: an itemized list and a link to the Craigs List ad with pics. https://orangecounty.craigslist.org/sys/d/anaheim-vintage-retro-computers-crts/7738285452.html I'm letting go of most of my vintage/retro computers and electronics as I'm moving soon! The sale will be this weekend: Saturday, April 20 - 9am to 4pm Sunday, April 21 10am to 4pm Browse or buy early by appointment 9am to 8pm Wednesday, Thursday and Friday The Sale will be at: 1401 N Batavia St Orange, CA 92867 CRTs: 5" Panasonic B&W TV & FM Radio $10 14" Sony PVM-14N5U - $200 20" Sony PVM-20M4U HR Trinitron CRT Monitor - $700 20" Sony KV-20TS27 - $120 11" Panasonic CT-1111D $80 12" Zenith ZVM-121 (Green Monochrome) $80 12" Zenith ZVM-123A (Green Monochrome) $80 15" Commodore 1070 Analog RGB Monitor for Amiga Computers - $100 14" Commodore 1084S-D1 Stereo RGB & Composite Monitor for Amiga or C64 - $200 14" Commodore 1960 MultiSync RGB & VGA Monitor - $300 14" Compaq VGA Monitor & PS/2 Compaq Keyboard & Compaq 486 Motherboard, RAM & HDD - $100 17" Compaq 7550 1600x1200 VGA input Flat CRT Monitor + Original Box $150 Goldstar ViewMax VHS Cassette Player & 5" Color CRT Portable - $100 Unisys Mini Pentium 133MHz PC 32MB RAM Win98 KB/Mouse/Monitor - $150 Asus Eee-Top All-in-One Touchscreen PC (Windows XP) + Keyboard & Mouse $80 Commodore PC40-III 286 PC with Commodore Keyboard - $200 Poqet PC Handheld IBM Clone 8088 MS-DOS 3.3 Computer (with box & adapters) - $200 Compaq Presario 5528 All-in-One Pentium Multi-Media PC with Original Accessories - $200 Gateway 2000 486DX/33MHz Windows 95 PC - $100 LAPTOPS: Toshiba T1200 Early Laptop - $20 Gateway 2000 Colorbook 486 Laptop with matching laptop bag + AC Adapter - $40 Other laptops - $10 and up Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer 64K with Box, book, joystick, & Audio Spectrum Analyzer Cart - $100 APPLE II COMPUTERS: Apple IIc + 9" Monochrome Monitor + Imagewriter II + Manuals & disks - $300 Apple IIgs Computer with Upgrades! - $350 Apple IIe - Complete but needs Power Supply to be repaired or replaced - $50 COMPACT MACS: Macintosh Plus + Keyboard + Mouse + Manual - Has issues - $50 OTHER MACS: Performa 475 + 13" Apple M1212 Trinitron CRT (CRT has been re-capped) + Keyboard + Mouse + SCSI SSD - $400 Power Macintosh 6500 + Keyboard & Mouse - Needs re-cap - $50 Power Macintosh G4 500MHz, 1.5GB RAM, 9GB SCSI, SuperDrive, Zip100 + KB & Mouse - $100 Original 2006 Mac Pro with 2x Dual-Core Xeon 2.66GHz, 32GB RAM + Keyboard + Mouse - $100 iMacs: Original Bondi Blue iMac G3 + Keyoard & Mouse - $150 Snow iMac G3 600MHz + Keyboard & Mouse - $150 iMac G4 800MHz + Keyboard & Mouse - $100 I have some Commodore 64 computers and probably a few 1541 drives. Amiga 500 not working for parts - $50 Nintendo Super Famicom with Original Box, 2 Controllers, AV Cable, SD2SNES loaded with all SNES & SFC Games. Also includes Hard-sided Carrying Case. - $200 Boxed Software for PC, Mac, Amiga and C64 - $5 to $10 CD Software in Jewel cases for PC or Mac - $1 each Computer and video game books - $1 each Wyse WY-55 Data Terminal - $40 Heathkit Terminal H19A - $200 Lear Siegler LSI ADM-3A Terminal - $200 Smith Corona Manual Typewriter circa 1950 WORKS - $100 Brother portable typewriter with extra ribbons - $10 Western Electric and other Landline Phones - $10 Each Technics Digital Organ Musical Keyboard & MIDI Sequencer - $20 Texas Instruments Speak & Spell - $10 Commodore Adding Machines - $20 each Calculators - $1 each Early Calculators with VFD Display - $5 Digital Cameras - $5 and up LCD Monitors - $5 Radio Shack Realistic APM-200 Audio Power Meter - $100 Routers - $5 PDAs - $1 to $10 Joysticks - $1 Computer Speakers - $5 to $10 USB Computer Keyboards - $1 Mechanical USB Keyboards - $10 PS/2 Computer Keyboards - $1 USB, PS/2 or Serial Computer Mouses - $1 USB Gaming Mouse - $10 Apple ADB or USB Mouse - $5 Apple ADB or USB Keyboard $5 to $20 Radio Shack Catalogs - $1 each Sears Catalogs - $1 Each Cassette Recorders - $5 VGA Cables - $1 DVI Cables - $1 Composite video cables - $1 Apple 8 Pin Serial Cables - $1 Apple ADB Cables - $1

Sorry, I must have missed your post the first time I went through. Added!

Actually the Microsoft minimum specs for running Windows 95 are: - 386 DX processor - 4GB RAM - 50-55MB IDE HDD - 5.25” FDD The 386 SX has internal 32-bit architecture, but only has 16-bit BUS which slowed response. I think the SOC nature of this machine and CF Card in IDE mode overcomes poor response to a larger extent than an original configuration would have exhibited. That said, you could do as I intend and backup the included card and then add another formatted with DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 and get snappier performance.

It'd make more sense if you saw the ending in the arcade version. Just... trust me on this one.

River Raid (high score): 58,080 River Raid (1-4 high score): 7490

Great, I will check this out tomorrow at some point thank you!

whackem_game.rom Fixed the previously mentioned issues, and added some extra graphics for when Byron gets bonked. Oh, this is shaping up pretty darned well!