+MrFish Posted June 17, 2007 Share Posted June 17, 2007 Is there anywhere I can download the game itself? (I know it won't run without the hardware.) Steve Hmmm... actually it does run... partly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_Fandal_ Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Ladies and gentlemen, here we go. All HW calculations were replaced by SW ones so now you can play this (average) game without Super Charger cart. Enjoy! F. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deathtrappomegranate Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Nice work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Great work, Fandal! Meanwhile, Nosty has supplied that Super Charger cartridge and maybe it will be unraveled shortly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seban Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 (edited) Hi Fandal! Great piece of work! I have some questions about SuperCharcher. Now probably You know everything about supercharger can you tell us more details about it? (e.g. register map, commands, math). Can You tell us what kind of calculations done by the hardware? Looking at game code, we can see that the game code puts some values at $d5xx page, wait some time (nop,nop,nop), and read the result from $d5xx. Please tell us more I'm very curious about that. whooops... i have noticed that HiassofT described registers and commands of supercharger at post #14 in this thread so my question in that case does not have any sense sorry with greetings Seban/Slight Edited August 2, 2008 by seban Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_Fandal_ Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 (edited) Hi Fandal! Great piece of work! I have some questions about SuperCharcher. Now probably You know everything about supercharger can you tell us more details about it? (e.g. register map, commands, math). Can You tell us what kind of calculations done by the hardware? Looking at game code, we can see that the game code puts some values at $d5xx page, wait some time (nop,nop,nop), and read the result from $d5xx. Please tell us more I'm very curious about that. whooops... i have noticed that HiassofT described registers and commands of supercharger at post #14 in this thread so my question in that case does not have any sense sorry with greetings Seban/Slight Just one note: HW multiplication or division is called on 19 different addresses in the code of AF3D as it is NOT necessary to use construction STA $D503 NOP NOP NOP NOP LDA $D50X. You just must wait at least eight cycles for results after storing value into command register and it does not matter how the code spend those eight cycles. F. Edited August 2, 2008 by _Fandal_ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Locks up for me when I press start in Atari800Win. What speed for the emulator is comparable to the game with the chip installed? I'm assuming the patch takes more cycles for the multiply/divide than the hardware so it is running more slowly? Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_Fandal_ Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Locks up for me when I press start in Atari800Win. What speed for the emulator is comparable to the game with the chip installed? I'm assuming the patch takes more cycles for the multiply/divide than the hardware so it is running more slowly? Steve Yes, SW calculations are slower than HW ones, but I was able to save 512 cycles per frame via some optimalizations in the original code so I would say that my hack is running on the same speed as original game. But I'm not sure. No benchmarks were done. F. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nosty Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 (edited) Congratulations Fandal! I always thought that this game shoud works without hardware multiplicator. Seban has my cartridge so he can compare speed. Edited August 2, 2008 by nosty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deathtrappomegranate Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Incidentally, does anyone know why this game always seems to be referred to as "Assault Force 3-D"? Surely it's just "Assault Force"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Yeah, maybe because of the fact, that this "3-D" is a part of a slogan written next to the name of game on the cover of disk (and it's written in similar size as the title), so it has "became" part of the name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deathtrappomegranate Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Yeah, maybe because of the fact, that this "3-D" is a part of a slogan written next to the name of game on the cover of disk (and it's written in similar size as the title), so it has "became" part of the name. I see what you mean. I suppose that a casual glance at the box might allow someone to misread the title. Perhaps the fact that Andrew Krieg's cartridge list called it that also helped to propagate the idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Awesome Fandal That's an impresive modification / rewrite! Great stuff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devwebcl Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 congrats Fandal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allas Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Incredible mod ! , Thanks for the new release ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+David_P Posted August 3, 2008 Share Posted August 3, 2008 I suspect the intent in offering the Cart was as a form of copy protection. I think Best is still offering the cart/disk combo for sale- and MyAtari may have a few as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted August 3, 2008 Share Posted August 3, 2008 This does sound really interesting, too bad the concept of adding a math co-processor to an 6502 based computer became more popular. My fastest multiply routine took over 100 cycles to complete. That is cheating by un-rolling the routine 8 times, and doing away with a CLC (clearing the carry flag) instruction and decrementing the multiplier by 1 at the start of the routine. The other solution is have pre-calculated tables. It was cool if someone did build a cartridge, but they could have gone for an ECI/PBI expansion or an internal upgrade as well. Would leave the cart port free. The Sublogic Flight Simulator would update the screen much quicker. A much better port of the Star Wars arcade game could be done. Just to name a few examples, any vector based game would run more smoothly if this technology was more wide spread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted August 3, 2008 Share Posted August 3, 2008 It would be pretty easy to interface a simple microcontroller to A8 to speed up math operations. While I'm generally against modernizing the A8 too much, it would be cool to see some fast 3-D action. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted August 4, 2008 Share Posted August 4, 2008 So, was the A8 'supercharger' based on the same idea's behind the equivalent 2600 version (i.e improving the graphic capabilities) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted August 4, 2008 Share Posted August 4, 2008 So, was the A8 'supercharger' based on the same idea's behind the equivalent 2600 version (i.e improving the graphic capabilities) Do you read the forum posts at all, ever? Or have you only found the 'reply' button? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted August 4, 2008 Share Posted August 4, 2008 LULZ! I can't wait to play all those 2600 games on mah XL! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qix_maniac Posted March 28, 2012 Share Posted March 28, 2012 anyone have a picture of this super cart they being talked about in this thread? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted March 28, 2012 Share Posted March 28, 2012 You can still buy it at Best Electronics: http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/xe_game.htm#BL (about half-way down the page - $19.95) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qix_maniac Posted March 28, 2012 Share Posted March 28, 2012 You can still buy it at Best Electronics: http://www.best-elec.../xe_game.htm#BL (about half-way down the page - $19.95) cool thx, do you have a pic of cart handy? site does not have one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted March 28, 2012 Share Posted March 28, 2012 You can still buy it at Best Electronics: http://www.best-elec.../xe_game.htm#BL (about half-way down the page - $19.95) cool thx, do you have a pic of cart handy? site does not have one. Pitfall Jones has it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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