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FLOP 61 - New Issue of the Floppy Disk Magazine


baktra

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A new issue of FLOP, an electronic floppy disk-based "magazine" for Atari XL/XE computers has been released at the Atariáda 2018 event.

The publisher of the magazine, Atari klub - spolek příznivců historické výpočetní techniky (Association of Historical Computing Enthusiasts), proudly announces that issue 61 is the first issue ever that provides contents also in the English language. The contents of the magazine is now accessible to any English-speaking Atari enthusiasts around the world.

Flop_61.png

To get more information on the magazine, and to download issue 61, visit FLOP's website.

The magazine deals with various topics related to the world of Atari 8-bit computers. The textual part includes news, interviews with famous personalities, information about events taking place, descriptions of programs and hardware, guides for games or matters of interest for programmers. Furthermore, FLOP includes demos, utilities, and games.

Edited by baktra
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Thank you for sharing this information and a link to FLOP 61, baktra. :thumbsup:

 

I have only checked out some of the disk A contents and taken a peek at B and C so far.

Lots of different, interesting content for both reading and A8 use.

Planning on delving in more this weekend.

 

Thank you Irgendwer for pointing out the creators of the BBC port of ZIGGY.

Thank you Fandal, Posion and Irgendwer for making and sharing the BBC port of ZIGGY; looking forward to trying it! :grin:

Edited by Fingolfin
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I was just checking out FLOP 61 more: I read the Stefan Dorndorf interview and learned a lot about his QMEG A8 OS. Very interesting reading!

For this alone I recommend checking out FLOP 61. I also played ZIGGY a little bit and checked out the Nemo demo as well as the version of Laura on Disk C.

These are all wonderfully done and presented!

 

Thank you very much to all at FLOP 61 for considering expanding the reading audience to include English: your floppy disk magazine is very well done (I have some desktop publishing background from when the term desktop publishing was still used ;) ), very much "hits the spot," and as indicated in the editorial on Disk A it definitely "fills a void" (i.e. by being the only current English inclusive floppy disk magazine still actively being created and published)!

 

To me FLOP 61 is very user friendly and professionally edited, developed and published. Excellent work by all involved!

 

Thank you to all listed as current staff of FLOP 61:

 

- Editor-in-chief - Bohdan Milar

- Technical editor - Zdenek Burian
- Technical support - Robert Petruzela
- Webmaster - Jan Krupka
- Proofreader - Michael Kalous
- Translators - Michael Kalous , Petr Kouril
- Authors - Frantisek Houra, Antonin Holik, Petr Postava, Rudolf Kudla, and others

 

Thanks again, baktra and Bohdan Milar for making FLOP 61 and sharing it here at AtariAge! :thumbsup:

Congratulations on your first English inclusive issue! :-D

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Sorry, but I have to point out the following section it totally wrong:

 

>"It's just a simple one [intro], not effects,just text and some music"

 

The intro is brilliant, the mix PM/hires logo looks 100% Amiga-ish and the Starwars scroller is wonderful and and do graphics and has stars spangled background.

 

You really should have fixed the text before the release :-)

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Thanks for kind words, it means a lot for the team. Glad to see it was worth the trouble ! :-)

This year was though, not only we decided to include English version, but also the team changed. The main editor used to be Fandal, as if he wasn't doing enough for the scene already. Changing the team AND expanding to English at the same time proved to be bad idea, but in the end we made it. But we learned a lot and we hope next issue will go smoother.

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Sometimes context can be everything.

Thank you baktra for sharing this video and illuminating further the incredible effort it took to make FLOP 61.

And letting all see how much it meant to those involved in making FLOP 61!

 

Again, thank you very much to all involved in the herculean effort of creating, editing, translating and publishing FLOP 61 and equipping it with a "passport." ;)

Thank you very much to all who contributed to FLOP 61.

 

Thanks also to PG for the amazing scrolling intro. :jango:

Edited by Fingolfin
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I did 30 minutes talk about the scroller, but it's kinda information dense and I don't feel like subtitling it all. So maybe I just put some info here ..

 

The basic idea is to scroll the image up as usual, but to remove 2 pixel on every line, so the new line is 1 pixel shorter from both sides.

 

The first problem is to choose the right pixels. It has to be done uniformly, you must not remove near pixels in successive lines. I also tried to make it so that when 50% of the pixels are removed, it's exactly every second pixel, so the font is kept readable as long as possible.

I need to remove 1 pixel each line in both left and right half. I use recursive approach for pixel selection. If I use decimal position along the line, the positions would go like this:

 

0.5 | 0.25 0.75 | 0.125 0.625 0.375 0.875

 

and so on. You can treat the sequence as binary tree, 0.5 being the root, 0.25 and .75 being first level and so on. Like this you can compute now values as parent/2 and parent/2+0.5.

Another problem is you have follow the original pixels as they keep changing positions, so in the end the code to pick the pixels was surprisingly complex, but whatever, it works.

This code was written outside Atari code, in VB6 (still my favorite for small stuff), and it outputs macro calls with parameters at what bytes and at what bit the pixel should be removed. The macros are then expanded into one huge unlooped code block, which does the transformation.

 

Next is the problem of speed. To correctly do the perspective transformation, the scroller needs to slow down as the texture is getting away from you, and the texture has to get denser. First I tried just dividing the scroller into 3 zones, the top zone being scrolled at 50% speed, and the middle at 75% speed. At the boundaries the extra pixel lines got lost, and it looked kinda OK. But once the pixel line was gone, it was gone for good, you could see the transition, and I wasn't too happy about it.

So in the end I used different approach. There are invisible lines in the picture. On the bottom there are none, but they are inserted and getting denser. On the top there is several invisible lines for every visible line. This allowed me to change the speed gradually and actually not loose any data.

 

This however brought another problem. The code was too slow and large. So there is another trick. I only use the code make the line narrower, in-place. To remove the 2 pixels. But to scroll it up, or to hide the line, I just use display list. Only rows which end up visible on the screen must be narrowed, and on average only half of the bytes has to be touched. Lines which are hidden don't have to be processed at all, just their address is removed from display list. This shortened the code and made it all lot faster.

The VB6 just generates a bit more complex macros list, like this:

 

ScaleLine -79 139 19 3 21 0 17
ScrollLine -78 -79
ScrollLine -77 -78
ScrollLine 138 -77
ScaleLine -76 138 18 7 20 3 17
ScrollLine -75 -76

ScaleLine takes arguments: source line, destination line, byte/bit to remove, byte/bit to remove, and number of bytes from both sides I don't have to process (this is the narrowest part, hence 17 out of 20 is not processed).

ScrollLine just takes source line and destination line. Whenever the line index is negative, it means invisible line in temporary list, when it's positive, it's line in the display list.

 

In the final version I even brought back the zone approach to speed .. the top third of the scroller is refreshed less often, for better speed, less transformation code, and less invisible lines.

 

There are other minor problems I talked about, but this is the core of the problem.

 

The video is here, but it's really poor quality, sorry about that ..

 

Some interesting time points:

 

1:38 - I talk about different approach in some C64 demo .. boring

12:05 - random pixel picking demonstration

13:20 - recursive pixel picking demonstration

16:29 - demonstration of how exactly every 2nd pixel is removed first

18:11 - early version of the scroller, zone based slow down

18:28 - taller version, still zone based, but first version of in-place transformation and display list based scrolling up

20:25 - demonstration which shows hidden lines of the image

 

Edited by R0ger
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With regard to the great scrolling long time ago in a galaxy far, far away intro :jango: and the cool quad/stereo levels graphics which matches the intro music --another very nice touch :cool: -- I apologize to R0ger and HardCore!

 

Previously I only addressed thanks to PG, misunderstanding R0ger's first post; I thought R0ger meant PG alone had made the intro. Sorry for my mistake!

Before today I had only watched the scrolling intro in Czech, fascinated by watching it scroll. :-o

Now I've watched the whole scrolling intro in English and hope to address my lack of properly identifying the intro's creators.

 

JAC! is of course correct, as usual ;) , that the intro's details are too modest, even to the point of being inaccurate (?).

The intro is really cool and I'm glad for baktra's post of the video of the momentous release of FLOP 61 and R0ger's posting info and video documenting the creation of the scrolling intro. :thumbsup:

 

Would it be okay and appropriate, to ask all of the staff of FLOP 61 who are members here and who feel comfortable doing so to identify who they are: real names and AtariAge user names? I am not sure who is who and do not wish to mistake identities or misidentify anyone; I ask this only for understanding and getting to know who is who and who makes what. Thank you for considering this request! :)

 

FWIW, everything I have tried so far works great in NTSC.

 

Thank you again R0ger, PG and HardCore for the intro to FLOP 61 and for all the hard work put into making issue 61 by all staff and contributors!

Edited by Fingolfin
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PG/pseudografx et al at FLOP, I would prefer not to continue to play incorrect guessing games. :)

Might be fun/funny to you all but it is not fun or funny to me. ;)

 

Being as polite and as genuinely kind as I can be, here and in the coders and creators thread, I am/have been trying to get to know who does what so that I am more knowledgeable and better able to thank everyone. I am trying to get to know the A8 scene better and learn more from and about so many talented, creative and generous people.

 

I make a lot of mistakes in properly attributing stuff to the right creators: it'd be easier if someone would just let me know...

 

This will make some of you mad I know but I have to say that playing guessing games seems like child's play and is more than a bit obnoxious: I've seen enough of the English posts made here at AtariAge to know that you guys know what you're doing by ignoring and slighting new people who just want to say thank you. Not sure about elsewhere in the world these days, but in Colorado treating others in public like you have/are doing to me would be considered rude and disrespectful and in this specific context rather ungrateful as well.

 

The impression I'm starting to get is that some of you at FLOP -- some of the Czech coders and creators don't want thanks -- at least not from a lowly American AtariAge newbie as myself. :thumbsdown:

 

I thought FLOP and company were interested in English speaking friends: evidently not new English speaking friends, just people who speak English who you already know or know you already? I thought that FLOP would be more than another Atari club with exclusive membership...hoping it still is/might be.

 

Just trying to figure out who is who. Would be helpful to know.

 

Sorry for adding negativity and criticism here, but "goofing on the new guy" has gotten old and enough's enough. ;)

Thank you very much! :thumbsup:

Edited by Fingolfin
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Don't overthink it Fingolfin. Everybody is happy and thankful. Both authors and consumers. Just not many express it as much as you do. There are many secluded communities inside our Atari family, Czechs, Poles, Germans .. mostly the language barrier is to blame. Some people from FLOP team don't even have account here, or don't visit often. But don't worry, I'll convey all reaction on our weekly meeting :-)

And I'm especially sure PG doesn't take anything in a bad way, not his nature really ..

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Thank you very much for your reply R0ger but I disagree that my last reaction is one of "overthink"ing things.

 

That seems like both an oversimplification and being a bit euphemistic on your part. However, you are certainly correct: I do genuinely want to thank others who make, share and sell stuff with the A8 community. So thank you very much for passing along thanks and appreciation to all involved with FLOP 61! :thumbsup:

 

I apologize for not being so amenable now and for continuing to speak up as I am: however, I am tired of being goofed on and/or slighted when over 50% of what I try to do here at AtariAge is thank people like yourself, PG and all who created, edited, translated and published FLOP 61 and all those who contributed content to it. The other rest of the 100% of my time here I am a) trying to learn from others, b) trying to help others where and when I am able or c) putting my foot in my mouth. ;) (Like I am continuing to do right now! :-o )

 

In my previous reply I merely attempted to politely and respectfully ask for names of people who are part of FLOP who have AtariAge memberships; I entirely understand if all of you who are part of FLOP and do have AtariAge memberships do not want to share your real names. That's fine; obviously, it's your right and your privacy. I respect that.

 

PG's response seemed like he was playing with me at my expense; not sure why he'd want to do that though. I don't know him and he certainly does not know me.

My interpretation of PG's reply might be/have been a misread on my part but it doesn't feel like it.

 

Quite capable of being a wiseass myself I have a decent sense when others are doing the same. ;) Language barrier(s) doesn't/don't seem to be the issue here either...

 

Edit/addition:

If I am wrong about the nature of PG's reply, I sincerely apologize for making an "issue" of it.

 

Anyway, I really do appreciate your reply R0ger and hope we can all get along! :thumbsup:

 

Please do not misunderstand what I have tried to convey here: I very much do enjoy FLOP 61 and all it has to offer; I think it's a wonderful disk publication and cannot express in words how much it means to me that you guys included the passport and went bilingual! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

Hope what I am trying to convey makes sense. And I hope some light, positivity and appreciation are still coming through from here in Lakewood, CO and being received by all who were a part of FLOP 61's being published! ;)

 

Anyone who feels the need to continue this conversation, I suggest we try to do so via pm so as not to take away any more than has already been the case from the grand occasion and momentous publishing of FLOP 61! :)

 

Again I apologize that I have distracted and detracted from FLOP 61's launch by replying as I have in my last post and this one.

 

Here's to there being many, many more issues of FLOP with passports! :thumbsup:

As long as the passion and commitment to continue to deliver FLOP is with you all, I wish you all the best: a very high standard's been set with issue #61! :grin:

 

Best Regards

Fingolfin

Edited by Fingolfin
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Hello Tonda

 

In two videos I see at least four people I know from the Fujiama meeting in Lengenfeld. (Bohdan, Jan, Zdenek and Zdenek) Something tells me, Fandal and Marek were at the Atariada too. Will you join us this year?

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

PS since baktra is the topic starter and he's from the Czech republic too, the same question to you: Will you be joining us this year at the Fujiama 2018?

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Thank you very much for your reply R0ger but I disagree that my last reaction is one of "overthink"ing things.

 

That seems like both an oversimplification and being a bit euphemistic on your part. However, you are certainly correct: I do genuinely want to thank others who make, share and sell stuff with the A8 community. So thank you very much for passing along thanks and appreciation to all involved with FLOP 61! :thumbsup:

 

I apologize for not being so amenable now and for continuing to speak up as I am: however, I am tired of being goofed on and/or slighted when over 50% of what I try to do here at AtariAge is thank people like yourself, PG and all who created, edited, translated and published FLOP 61 and all those who contributed content to it. The other rest of the 100% of my time here I am a) trying to learn from others, b) trying to help others where and when I am able or c) putting my foot in my mouth. ;) (Like I am continuing to do right now! :-o )

 

In my previous reply I merely attempted to politely and respectfully ask for names of people who are part of FLOP who have AtariAge memberships; I entirely understand if all of you who are part of FLOP and do have AtariAge memberships do not want to share your real names. That's fine; obviously, it's your right and your privacy. I respect that.

 

PG's response seemed like he was playing with me at my expense; not sure why he'd want to do that though. I don't know him and he certainly does not know me.

My interpretation of PG's reply might be/have been a misread on my part but it doesn't feel like it.

 

Quite capable of being a wiseass myself I have a decent sense when others are doing the same. ;) Language barrier(s) doesn't/don't seem to be the issue here either...

 

Edit/addition:

If I am wrong about the nature of PG's reply, I sincerely apologize for making an "issue" of it.

 

Anyway, I really do appreciate your reply R0ger and hope we can all get along! :thumbsup:

 

Please do not misunderstand what I have tried to convey here: I very much do enjoy FLOP 61 and all it has to offer; I think it's a wonderful disk publication and cannot express in words how much it means to me that you guys included the passport and went bilingual! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

Hope what I am trying to convey makes sense. And I hope some light, positivity and appreciation are still coming through from here in Lakewood, CO and being received by all who were a part of FLOP 61's being published! ;)

 

Anyone who feels the need to continue this conversation, I suggest we try to do so via pm so as not to take away any more than has already been the case from the grand occasion and momentous publishing of FLOP 61! :)

 

Again I apologize that I have distracted and detracted from FLOP 61's launch by replying as I have in my last post and this one.

 

Here's to there being many, many more issues of FLOP with passports! :thumbsup:

As long as the passion and commitment to continue to deliver FLOP is with you all, I wish you all the best: a very high standard's been set with issue #61! :grin:

 

Best Regards

Fingolfin

Hey I see that you like icons also.. :? :) :-D ;) ;-) :grin: :arrow: :mad: :D :P :twisted: :thumbsup: :thumbsdown: :_( :-o :spidey: :sleep: :skull: :( :woozy: :lol: :o :cool: :roll: :lolblue: |:) :idea: :sad: :jango: :!: :evil: :dunce: 8) :???: :love: :lust: :yawn: :?: :?: :ponder:

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Having also a little part in development (SFX), you can find on disk B the BBC port ZIGGY:

 

attachicon.gifziggy.png

 

Code: Fandal

Music: Poison

I have the privilege of reviewing Ziggy and Stunt Car Racer for the next issue of Excel.

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Yes, Fandal and Marek were at Atariada too. You can check my photo collection here:

 

http://www.krupkaj.cz/xgal/Atariada2018

 

And I would like to visit Fujima :)

 

Hello Tonda

 

In two videos I see at least four people I know from the Fujiama meeting in Lengenfeld. (Bohdan, Jan, Zdenek and Zdenek) Something tells me, Fandal and Marek were at the Atariada too. Will you join us this year?

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

PS since baktra is the topic starter and he's from the Czech republic too, the same question to you: Will you be joining us this year at the Fujiama 2018?

Edited by krupkaj
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