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peteym5

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I also love Solar Fox on the 2600, it's one of my favorites actually. The C64 port is awesome so would be very intrigued by an 8-bit port. Also mentioning pinball, I want as many homebrew pinball games on as many systems as they can be made - 2600, 7800, 8-bit NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. I'll buy them all.

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As a huge fan of Klax, I'd prefer a proper arcade port if you're doing one instead of just porting the 2600 version (which is really lacking and I thought it wasn't impressive as that's my first contact with Klax. I became a fan only after playing the GBC version - I didn't understand the weird size-changing thing was supposed to represent perspective). The tile scream is definitely the 2nd best part about the game, after the varied gameplay.

 

Also the arcade version of Solar Fox never got a proper port did it? I saw it in the arcades and also in a video and saw that you could shoot in the arcade version. Now the Atari 2600 game is an OK standalone game on its own, but if you're doing an Atari 8-bit PCS port I'd think it'd be worth a better rendition.

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http://atariage.com/forums/topic/101457-looking-to-do-an-atari-game/?hl=+peteofborg

 

indeed....welcome.


I have one question to start with:

I know that expanded/decompressed levelmaps are much faster to handle...but then your game will only work on the machines with more extended memory...why do you aim at these machines? A.f.a.i.k. the most standard setting is the 800xl or 65xe (XE GS e.a.)

maybe it's an idea to make your game runnable on the 800xl by putting your code into a ROM cartridge and use extended memory that's also on the cartridge...there are some people on these boards that might want to help you with producing cartridges.

the extended RAM of the 130xe and higher (rambo) is a 16kB bank at $4000-$7fff and the cartridge can be selected at $8000-$bfff (also 16kB)

Imagine a kind of mixed RAM/ROM cartridge with 512 kBytes ROM & 512 kBytes RAM....you can do a lot with it....and it's easy to plug into your standard machine (even the atari 400/800 and 600xl).

I wish you luck and wisdom to do this project.

 

This post is golden. Here I was with my original intent of making an Atari 8-bit game with extended memory and loaded from floppy or some type of image. Then Analmux comes along and states that I should consider doing cartridges. You can probably read I rejected the ideal because I was using the extended memory for one giant screen that needed to be in RAM. Having the screen memory in ROM would mean it would be read only so it would be a static image. Also there would be issues with cartridge bank switching causing that image to be altered, and with the amount of processing my games to do, accessing data across several banks, that will not work. I wanted this to be a side scroller more like Super Mario Bros. over Pitfall, did not want to do something that is one small screen at a time. But what I did not know then that I know now is how to work with cartridge memory, bank switching, and compression.

 

What I am doing is a game that could work on a 64K machine and divide the big 64K RAM screens down into smaller 16K screens for levels. But if you plug into an Atari with 128K or more, it will connect the 4 levels into one mega sized screen. I am trying to figure out how to get some fast action moving also.

 

I was going between this scroller game and doing a 3D RPG maker on the Windows PC with my computer connected to the internet. At the time Yahoo Messenger was the Texting of the day. Then this guy named Sal I did not know what the person was replying to. Thought he wanted to do some type of business with me. Then he bought up the Atari Game and he knew people that can help me, and he can do music. But ("He wanted") me to do this game called Battle Squadron first. Later I found out Battle Squadron was Video 61s ideal. I did some quick tests, but it seemed not be working and Sal disappeared for a few months. The Battle Squadron source disappeared long time ago.

 

 

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TBH no word there tells that it should be physical cartridge and not its image.

An ROM image will certainly exist first before it materializes into a physical cartridge, however ROM files will be for my internal use only. I still have not fully figured out the layout of the game yet, but this one will be for either 64K machines and if detected, can play an extended RAM game. I am considering avoiding using RAM under ROM and limit it to 48K for 400/800, but many people updated their machines that modification with that makes it run XL/XE software.

Edited by peteym5
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Everybody here knows I want games to download. I am not going to repeat myself one more time.

 

Lance (video61) convinced me to buy his carts. So I did. I paid him an awful lot of money for two games, but OK ... I wanted the games, and he only wanted to sell them on cart... so okay I finally said: ok 'you win' ... I will buy the carts.

 

It must be said: Lance was kind enough not to charge shipping costs.... ok so far so good you would think.

 

But then it happened....

 

While I already paid the Jackpot for two games, I obviously hadn't paid enough money yet... I had to pay 35 euros for customs.

Thirty five euros!

 

Well ok... that is what you get when I have to receive huge packets with physical objects. Ok... I wanted the games... so I'll live. No real problem so far.

 

Once I received the games, I wanted to play them. First game to try was Venture (this was one of the two games).

I am talking about the newer 16K version of the game. Within a few minutes I had the game crashed on my PAL atari 800xl. A stock 64K Atari.

 

post-14838-0-19237400-1497201009_thumb.jpg

 

Although stated that the game was seriously tested on real hardware, I have my doubts the game is tested on PAL hardware.

 

Then I tested Tempest Xtreem. Also problems there. The ingame BONUS-round does not work at all. Obviously I had a 2010 updated game with a major bug. In the meantime I also found a bug that already existed since 2009 in this game and no one had reported so far.

 

When I received the carts, I first dumped them so I could play and test them on emulator. It took me less than a minute to dump them. (Still do not understand why Lance does not simply sold me this romdump... It was so easy for me to obtain what I needed and wanted... what a loss of (custom) money).

 

summary:

Two games, at least 3 bugs.

 

After that I reported the issues. I found Peteym5 kind enough to talk with me about the code, the games... Peteym5 was VERY helpful, and thanks to his explanations, I was able to do some 'ugly' fixing myself here, using Turbo Freezer and a hex-editor.

 

I also reported the issues to Lance (Video61). Lance offered my money back. Well that was the least thing he could do, and yes it was a good thing that he offered that.

 

But I do not want my money back, I simply want these games to work like they should work. So I asked Lance to send me the bug fixes so I could repair my own cart (The Tempest Xtreem cart is a Flash cart... come on, simply send me the flasher... I accepted your story about helping each other, sharing wealth and all that... now please help me, simply by sending the flasher). You even could send me the parts of the code that I have to replace and then I'm ok too.

 

 

Unfortunately Lance is not going to do that. I have to receive new carts and RETURN the wrong carts. I am not so happy with this solution, since this again means shipping costs, again unneeded shipping-pollution (yes charliechaplin I am bringing this up again)... and worse of all, when I am going to receive the new carts... I will probably be charged for 35 euros Custom fees AGAIN. No thanks.

 

In this post you simply see what the issue is with this 'I only sell carts attitude' of Video61.

 

1) Bugs can not be fixed easily

2) Shipping (customs) can be very expensive

 

I have nothing against carts on itself. I do not demand for disk versions or .XEX versions.... If I have to buy a cart, simply sell the rom-file.

 

And in this case... where Video61 did sell me two non-working games (full of bugs), simply send me the BUGFIX and I am fine too.

 

Although I had some serious discussions in the past with peteym5, I do not blame him for this at all.

He has been very supportive to me, and thanks to him, I eventually even might be able to fix all the bugs myself.

 

 

I hope Video61 will improve and will change the attitude about this.

 

In the meantime I also hope Video61 will improve their cart-labels and the glue-solution. Look at this:

post-14838-0-05257500-1497201432_thumb.jpg

 

Do I need to say more? Come on!

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How about a decent racing game that has fluid motion and actually FEELS fast? The only one that actually does this, is Elektraglide...but the really shoddy controls ruin what is otherwise an exhilerating experience.

 

And yes, I am saying the A8/5200 port of Pole Position sucks due to inconsistent motion, road stripes are fast, everything else, isn't.

 

and don't even get me started on the travesties that are Pitstop and Pitstop II.

 

or Richard Petty's Taladega....

 

or even The Great American Cross Country Road Race, which just feels like a warmed over Enduro.

 

-Thom

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Does there some real racing game exist? Particular a game with roads that go up and down. From the Atari's hardware, it must be a piece of cake to manage such...

We can aspire to pole position or elktraglide with hills. But soft sprite routine will be slow on top of that
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Kjmann contacted me a few years ago (before he disappeared from Atari Age.) about enhancing Pole Position. I basically said I probably could not do much better because of the limitations of the Atari Player/Missile Sprite system. The cars needed to be the overlaid 2 player mode and quad width. I discussed with others about ideals of using screen graphics, but that won't work because of how Pole Position uses HSCROLL + LMS + WSYNC to shift each pixel row lift or right. Anything you put in that playfield would get distorted.

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Kjmann contacted me a few years ago (before he disappeared from Atari Age.) about enhancing Pole Position. I basically said I probably could not do much better because of the limitations of the Atari Player/Missile Sprite system. The cars needed to be the overlaid 2 player mode and quad width. I discussed with others about ideals of using screen graphics, but that won't work because of how Pole Position uses HSCROLL + LMS + WSYNC to shift each pixel row lift or right. Anything you put in that playfield would get distorted.

The Atari has the double scanline modes. Everything is possible there. And you were not restricted to have double scanline resolution 4 colors everywhere, with some clever PM overlay.

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The Atari has the double scanline modes. Everything is possible there. And you were not restricted to have double scanline resolution 4 colors everywhere, with some clever PM overlay.

I thought about a display list trick of a combination of modes 13 and 14 (single and double line resolution) to generate the illusion of hills. In a section where you want to appear going up hill, can have more mode 13 lines. probably can be mixed with pole positions HSCROLL + LMS trick. It would be a highly complicated thing to do with player/missile graphics.

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I thought about a display list trick of a combination of modes 13 and 14 (single and double line resolution) to generate the illusion of hills. In a section where you want to appear going up hill, can have more mode 13 lines. probably can be mixed with pole positions HSCROLL + LMS trick. It would be a highly complicated thing to do with player/missile graphics.

Outrun on Homecomputers/Home Versions (yes, even the Amiga Version) has the problem of a spare vertical movement/presentation. On the Atari , this wouldn't happen. Similar to Space Harrier or Rescue on Fractalus, things can get very impressive. If it's possible to have at least 12 fps.... things would be perfect.

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Currently I am tied up with several projects and may be awhile before starting up anything new. I am working on porting some games for other platforms also. Been trying to get a group of programmers together to assist on some projects. I understand a few may not to be involved because of my current and past associates. Have to make a deal that works with everyone. I have been spending little more time debugging stuff before release and got a new group involved after KJMANN left because it was only me and him beta testing games like Tempest and Venture. It is really tough to debug thousands of lines of machine language and why I am strongly considering this MAD PASCAL for future game projects, and only use ML in parts that we need extra speed.

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Debugging can be tough, but you can't debug until you find a problem, and ProWizard seems to have found a problem within minutes of starting the game. Is the stuff tested on actual PAL hardware for more than five minutes, if at all? Managing large amounts of assembly language does not seem to be the issue so much as a lack of testing. I can - again - recommend ProWizard as an enthusiastic tester. Sending him betas of your games would immediately solve half of your problems.

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I am going to keep things positive here. KJMANN was working with someone on an Atari port of Outrun, but I am not sure what happened. I was suppose to help with player/missile routine to keep it running at a reasonably good speed. There are tricks I do know about like unrolling code or multiprocessing loops, self modifying code, and memory reducing techniques like RTS and BIT instruction tricks.

 

I had put Jungle Quest and the next Secretum Labyrinth games aside to work on porting some existing games for other platforms. Also to do more detailed tests on some games myself to make sure they are running properly.

 

With Secretum Labyrith (3). I see many people had been calling for Adventure, Role Playing Games, Games like Zelda, etc. Last year I did a few tests on modifications to the Secretum Labyrinth program code to make thing look smoother and not have the player/missile graphics do that stretch thing when you exit a room. I want to add more Role Playing Game elements like a few more character attributes, trading things with money, upgrading armor, magic, and spells. Things to make it interesting.

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I am going to keep things positive here. KJMANN was working with someone on an Atari port of Outrun, but I am not sure what happened. .

 

Just forget that.

All those "tricks" won't help, because, the Atari doesn't have the C64's sprite engine.

If you have a closer look at that "alpha version of a tech-demo preview" ;) .... On an NTSC machine, you won't even have the street working correctly. Creating the street, using character mode is absolutely the wrong way.

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I take that as a "no" to the PAL testing question.

 

I had people test Secretum Labyrinth Kings Gold and specifically asked for PAL mode testers. I also had Delta Space Arena tested. KJMANN12 had the XEGS version of Tempest Xtreme beta tested by Fandal on an European machine, and he was handling the beta testing for Venture. All the other games that run on 16K cartridge use the Atari OS NMI and use the Immediate VBI vector, do a check to make sure the game runs the same speed on both NTSC and PAL. They are designed not to be as CPU intensive so they will not crash if the VBI takes up too many cycles. There is a VBI overload check, that holds game up from one frame, but is almost never tripped. One of the tests is make the background flicker red if overloading. Venture and Tempest were both made before I did this PAL-NTSC sync thing.

 

I notice some NES games slow down when many objects are on the screen. I wonder if they did something like I am doing with the Vertical Black Interupt overload check.

Edited by peteym5
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OK: So you asked for PAL testing to be done, but I'm still not sure from all that if it was or not. Take-away point is this: Murphy's Law (or perhaps Sod's Law in this case) dictates that nothing works until you see it working on real hardware, regardless of whether the source code looks like it will work or even if it works in emulation.

 

Thanks for the answer though.

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Today I got the refund of the games.

 

For me it is end of chapter.

 

I will change my focus from now on to other games and producers.

 

I wish peteym5 all the luck in the world with his projects.

 

I'm no longer available as a beta-tester for Video61.

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Some of the best Atari versions of games have been built on "graphics 7" ....

 

Starraiders, Rescue on Fractalus, Yoomp! , Space Harrier....

 

Particular Space Harrier should make people "drop the penny" ;) and to see the possible stuff.

Fullscreen action, clean digis, rather complex "DLI" colour animations ... and so on.

 

For games like Out Run this could result in a more playable game than even the Amiga version is. ( Yes , I know, the Amiga could do even better) ...

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