Marius Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 (edited) Lance convinced me of the importance of sharing other people in the wealth. And I thought: hell yeah... Lance is right. Why waste my money on some unneeded polluting shipping? Today I donated the 50 euro's I had reserved for this game to a very friendly project here in the neighborhood. It's a horse-riding school where some of the employees have a physical or mental disability. For the people who are not able to work in the stables, they want to buy a so called 'Tovertafel' I must say: I never expected a V61 game bringing so much joy. Very nice! You can watch a movie about it here: Dutch information about the 'Tovertafel' is here: https://tovertafel.nl/zorginnovatie-verstandelijke-beperking/ The crowdfunding charity where I donated my 50 euros is here: http://activecues.com/crowdfunding/de-hoekse-gang Link to the (Dutch) page of the riding school https://www.gemiva-svg.nl/manegedehoeksegang Perhaps more people want to support this crowdfunding, that would be nice! Thanks in advance. p.s. The decision not to buy the game is of prowizard. Edited April 21, 2017 by ProWizard 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 24, 2017 Share Posted April 24, 2017 Today I had this very nice email conversation with Lance from Video61. This made me decide to order the real carts. I want the games and although I would have preferred the download way I want to show them my appreciation for their work. All the fighting does not make the atari hobby nicer. I must say that I am impressed by the way Lance took the time to write to me. It is time to move on and I can't wait to receive Venture and Tempest Xtreem again. I had Xtreem in the past but I gave it away. Some people here might be surprised by this move from me. Well let us say that I wanted to be the enthusiastic atari guy again... supporting everybody in the scene who does do cool things. That is my main attitude in atari life. Time to move on! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 24, 2017 Share Posted April 24, 2017 Today I had this very nice email conversation with Lance from Video61. This made me decide to order the real carts. I want the games and although I would have preferred the download way I want to show them my appreciation for their work. All the fighting does not make the atari hobby nicer. I must say that I am impressed by the way Lance took the time to write to me. It is time to move on and I can't wait to receive Venture and Tempest Xtreem again. I had Xtreem in the past but I gave it away. Some people here might be surprised by this move from me. Well let us say that I wanted to be the enthusiastic atari guy again... supporting everybody in the scene who does do cool things. That is my main attitude in atari life. Time to move on! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted June 22, 2017 Author Share Posted June 22, 2017 (edited) We just done with a round of beta testing Tempest Elite a few weeks ago. I am trying a different method of enabling those digital sound effects that waits until the game VBI is about to exit. It works a lot better, no longer seeing parts of player/missiles when a flipper gets you and drags everything down, or crashing because the having the pokey timer enabled causes a VBI cycle not to be completed within frame time. Got positive feedback on those that played the game so far. Able to play the game way past level 30. Goes into the bonus round, and returns to the game without any issues. Honestly I was never a big fan of digital sound effects. They gobble up CPU and Memory. I usually seen digital sounds being used when just text is on screen or very few animations are going on. However KJMANN12 being ever controlling really insisted that I add those digital sounds. Edited June 22, 2017 by peteym5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 Digital sound effects suck. They sound raspy and un-natural. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted June 22, 2017 Author Share Posted June 22, 2017 (edited) Digital sound effects suck. They sound raspy and un-natural. Most of all the sound effects done on modern PC and Game Systems are digital sound samples. Difference is we are going from 4bit to 16bit width and going from 5000hz to 44,000hz. Sounds like a live recording. Plus these modern sound cards have independent processors that play the sound without taxing the main CPU. The Atari 6502 has to work with playing the sound. I know MIDI music is not directly digital, but each instrument is a digital sample of a real instrument. They just vary to speed / pitch to get different notes. Despite all the issues playing digital sound effects on the Atari, I did get Tempest Xtreme to work and now Tempest Elite works better than ever. I was encouraged to complete these games to go beyond my original expectations. Edited June 22, 2017 by peteym5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 Digital sound effects suck. They sound raspy and un-natural. And synthetic sounds sound more natural? erm... synthetic <> natural. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 Really, what's the problem there ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted June 22, 2017 Author Share Posted June 22, 2017 The point is the more bit-depth and the higher rate of updating, the less it sounds unnatural. Same rule can be applied with computer graphics. We are familiar with the Atari, Commodore, and other computer systems back in the day. Then we went on to the Atari ST, Amiga, VGA PCs, and seeing how more bit-depth can allow more colors be available on screen to the point where graphics are photo real. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 And synthetic sounds sound more natural? erm... synthetic <> natural. Synthetic sound effects go nicely with synthetic video game worlds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 I think the digital effects are quite cool, especially since there are now techniques for keeping the action moving (Space Harrier, Tempest Elite). The digitized robot voices in Berzerk were reproduced to great effect, but it sucked having the action stop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted June 22, 2017 Share Posted June 22, 2017 (edited) Synthetic sound effects go nicely with synthetic video game worlds. Is that so ? Particular POKEY is almost used as some Digi Device with Atari-wave forms. Real "synthesized" sound have been sparely used.Also, if you want to use POKEY tunes in a "balanced" way by volume, you're restricted to 3 bits or even less. And the sound changes just by the changed volume an frequency setting. Using Digis means to have the 4 bits of volume for every frequency available. Using POKEY's sound generators for real synthesized sounds in music, has also never been used, except in many of my experiments. Even, if the tunes were correct, people still don't like that. Sometimes I doubt that Atari people know what "synthesizing" is Real synth on the Atari also means to have real better resolution than 4 bits... ... but no one cares... Edited June 22, 2017 by emkay 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted June 23, 2017 Author Share Posted June 23, 2017 Looks like people wanting digital sound samples is in the majority. It enhances the game. I paid attention to what people wanted and was missing from Tempest Xtreme. I added lane highlighting and the pause function. Along with Stereo Pokey and VBXE support. What I could not add is COVOX support or 65816 support. I had to market this game to a limited size group. The game still runs on standard hardware with nothing added. It just detects VBXE and sets a flag. When graphics need to be displayed, it just switches to be bank needed to place the sprites. The RMT music is set a 8 channel song, but somehow still sounds normal on standard Pokey. Something about it makes the more dominate notes play on channel 1-4. The RMT people can probably better answer how that is done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted June 23, 2017 Author Share Posted June 23, 2017 One thing I changed going from Tempest Xtreme over to Tempest Elite was I wanted to change the look of the scoreboard. The 3 Green Warp keys are now in a row instead of 3 smaller green ones made inside one Antic 6 character. I wanted something a little closer to its counter part on other systems. I also made the ship icon a little bigger using 2 antic 6 characters. The screenshot in the middle is from an earlier build of the game. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gilsaluki Posted June 24, 2017 Share Posted June 24, 2017 Gonna get this soon. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted June 25, 2017 Share Posted June 25, 2017 Is Tempest Elite available (or you can only preorder it)? http://forums.atari.io/index.php/topic/3297-tempest-elite-is-now-available/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted June 25, 2017 Author Share Posted June 25, 2017 (edited) Some people had been asking about what the game looks like while playing on standard Atari-8-bit hardware vs playing on an Atari with VBXE. I have attached some screen shots of the same level. In addition, I am including a screen shot from Tempest Xtreme. All from Web Number 6. Some differences between Xtreme and Elite are the scoreboard icons for Warp Keys and a Bigger Ship. Also I chose this particular web. The Xtreme version was 5+5+6 (16) to make up a triangle. Elite has 6 lanes to make up an 18 lane triangle. Edited June 25, 2017 by peteym5 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted June 25, 2017 Share Posted June 25, 2017 Why not just use the 640x mode with the VBXE version to give the authentic vector look? If not for everything, at least for the score part. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted June 25, 2017 Author Share Posted June 25, 2017 640x mode would had taken a lot of rework. We probably would loose the ability to keep it multi-hardware. 320x mode, the pixels are still close to an even height to width ratio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted July 3, 2017 Author Share Posted July 3, 2017 (edited) Now that Tempest Elite is available for Sale at $49.95 and being shipped. We decided to use this and the thread on Atari.IO for technical support thread. Tempest Elite is set up to by default to run on a stock Atari XL/XE computer with 64K RAM with standard 6502. Tempest Elite supports several different controllers, Joystick is default, but if you like you can also choose to use the Paddles, Driving, and Trackball. http://forums.atari.io/index.php/topic/3297-tempest-elite-is-now-available/ This is an independant review of Tempest Elite. Edited July 3, 2017 by peteym5 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted July 7, 2017 Author Share Posted July 7, 2017 Time for another post of screen shots. Tempest Elite has very much improved routines over Tempest Xtreme. Much of had been re-written do cut down size and CPU usage to make more things happen. Lane Highlighting was made possible because of my experiments with fast line drawing algorithms. I had to re-work the digital sound effect sections almost right before we announced the game is available for sale. I have the sounds not starting until the game is about to exit Vertical Blank Interrupt when nothing else is happening. When a flipper grabs you and everything gets pulled down, it plays a voice "Whoa." Sometimes pieces of the player/missile graphics were left on screen until it was ready redraw the screen. Gives the program a chance to set flags before the start of the next VBI cycle that skips some unneeded processing like stopping all the AI enemy calls. Another reason for the delay was responding to the requests to play with alternate controllers like driving controller, trackball, and paddles. I was not made aware there are several different trackball devices sending different signals. Primarily when you choose trackball, it will be the default CX-80 or WICO Trackball. If you choose joystick mode, you will need to change it back to joystick. That other Atari ST trackball, or any custom controller, I am not going to support it because only a will have them. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gilsaluki Posted July 16, 2017 Share Posted July 16, 2017 Playing my T.E. Well, this game has breathed new life into my XL. Wow! It is great! Thanks for bringing this to fruition. It is now my fav. I never played Tempest when I was young. This is fantastic. One question. When pushing RESET is it supposed to go to Atari Basic READY Prompt? That is what this cart does. So does my PacMan Arcade. The guts of both carts look similar. Anyway. This is a premium game, sold at a very understandable premium price. Love it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted July 16, 2017 Author Share Posted July 16, 2017 Thanks you a nice compliment. Playing my T.E. Well, this game has breathed new life into my XL. Wow! It is great! Thanks for bringing this to fruition. It is now my fav. I never played Tempest when I was young. This is fantastic. One question. When pushing RESET is it supposed to go to Atari Basic READY Prompt? That is what this cart does. So does my PacMan Arcade. The guts of both carts look similar. Anyway. This is a premium game, sold at a very understandable premium price. Love it. I believe PacMan Arcade also used an AtariMax like Tempest Elite and trapping the reset does not work with them. I tried several things like some programming that sets it back to bank 0 if it starts in anther bank. Also tried to find something here on the forums. Not sure if it is an issue with AtariMax cartridges. It will either go to Basic or go back to the Self Test Screen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted July 16, 2017 Author Share Posted July 16, 2017 (edited) How many people are buying the game just to play it with another controller like Paddles, Trackball, or Indy 500 Driving Controller? How many people are buying the game for its VBXE Support? How many people are buying the game for Stereo Pokey Support? We want to hear from you. I will be happy to make more games that support these things. Edited July 16, 2017 by peteym5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 Very cool. But still one question is missing. A cardinal one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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