So many games - so hard to find...

[Irgendwer]

Hi,

 

I've done some icons for A800 games, just to place them on the desktop of my son

(so most of them are related to learning games).

 

I find the idea very nice. What about an icon for every game? Browsing the collection

of A800 applications would be much easier! (An additional entry for the Atarimania database too?)

 

I've restricted the creation to the 32x32 std. size & the usage of the default 16 window colors only.

So they should be usable for many machines/operating systems (Atari 16bit... ).

 

Please feel invited to contribute some more....

 

CU

Irgendwer

Icons.zip

[Irgendwer]

Here are some more icons...

 

BTW: Some feedback? If no one else is interested in this stuff I stop posting it. I don't like to bore you...

 

CU

Irgendwer

Icons.zip

[Rybags]

Nice - but it'd be a nightmare assigning hundreds/thousands of icons to individual files under emulation.

 

But, it does present an idea - how about a games loader for the actual Atari 8-bitter that does something similar.

 

Maybe small APAC icons for games or something. Could be done in a horizontal split screen using a kernal routine.

[Urchlay]

Nice-looking icons.

 

A couple of thoughts...

 

It might be nice if the icons were done in 64x64, using the color palette from one of the Atari emulators. They can always be scaled down and/or converted to the 16-color windows palette later. You could offer zip files of the large, hi-color ones or the small 16-color ones (which would be automatically generated from the full size/color ones. I'd probably use a perl script, but any language would do).

 

What's really needed is a database of games, with md5 or whatever kind of checksums, and a script/program that reads all your emulator files and automatically assigns the icons based on the checksums. Not being a windows programmer (or even user), I don't know what you'd use for this (presumably icon assignments are stored in the windows registry, but then vista has done away with the registry or something). The database would need all the variants of each game floating around out there on the net (xex/atr/rom file versions, plus the various cracked copies).

 

Out of curiosity... how are you making these? Drawing them by hand, or taking screenshots of an emulator and copying a 32x32 area out, then doing palette conversions and rounded corners?

[Irgendwer]

Out of curiosity... how are you making these? Drawing them by hand, or taking screenshots of an emulator and copying a 32x32 area out, then doing palette conversions and rounded corners?

 

Sorry for the late answer.

I draw them by hand, 'automatically' dithering them to the 16 standard windows colours.

 

For all replies concerning about the hard work to assign them on the desktop - I can provide now an alternative, nicer solution (Windows, Linux guys should be able to perform the same steps on their own ).

I wrote a little protocol handler, which calls an 'Atari800Win.exe' in the same directory, providing given arguments.

You can register the handler via RegEdit (just update the .reg file in the archive according your needs and add it by double clicking it).

When now calling the handler out of your browser, the game just starts. A sample HTML is also in the archive.

 

Here a demo vid:

 

Have fun!

 

Edit: Maybe it would be a nice enhancement for 'Altirra' too, to handle the A8 protocol... (without an additional application)

A8ProtocolHandler.zip

Edited October 21, 2010 by Irgendwer

[Hatta]

I don't follow. Why are you using an html file? Seems like a folder full of shortcuts would be a more natural solution.

 

Edit: Forgot to say, nice work on the art.

Edited October 21, 2010 by Hatta

[Irgendwer]

I don't follow. Why are you using an html file? Seems like a folder full of shortcuts would be a more natural solution.

 

* system independence (at least with e.g. Atari800 (without Win+))

* shortcuts are (at least for me) more complicated to handle: register ICO to filename, provide parameters (OS, Basic etc.) needs several clicks

* no overload of the Windows-Icon cache

* much more freedom for designs & structures, game pages with documentation, maps etc. (think about Java Script "Play random game")

 

Think about an offline 'AtariMania' with a click to start the program.

 

(Thank you for the accolade.)

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hmm,

 

if you have a lot of these A8 game icons, maybe with some effort you can import them into the PM Quiz that was released for the A8 some years ago at the annual Abbuc meeting (namely Abbuc JHV 2004)...

 

-Andreas Koch.

pmquiz.zip