Advice needed on how things have changed since the 80's

[Nojeee]

Things have changed so much since my last A8 game was released in 1986 that I thought it wise to ask the knowledgeable people on the forum for some advice. I’m starting do some more 8-bit programming and aim to create a single disk that contains a number of games … both original, enhanced and (maybe) new. I’m quite familiar with creating bootable disk menu code but wondered how this would work with SIO2SD devices and multigame cartridges. Ideally, I wanted to be able to save the player’s progress and high scores to a couple of sectors on the disk … I realise this would be a problem with cartridges but don’t really know how an SD device would cope. To be clear, this wouldn’t involve DOS of any flavour, just low-level disk access. The games would run perfectly well even if they weren’t able to update their save state.

 

Back in 1981 (in the UK) the norm for 400/800 users was cassette storage before floppies became available at reasonable prices. Now, it seems, there’s a wide range of ways to load and run games - SIO2PC, SIO2USB, SIO2SD, assorted cartridges, emulators and good old-fashioned cassette and disk. Is there any way that’s regarded as the norm nowadays? Do more people play using an emulator than real hardware?

 

At this stage, I’m only tinkering around with my old source code so each will run in 48K (maybe 64K tops). What’s the accepted minimum memory nowadays? I appreciate there are lots of memory upgrades available but have they been fitted by the majority of users? I’ve seen a few threads which discuss the pros and cons of different upgrades so don’t want to open up a can of worms. I’m just genuinely interested to see how the market has changed and where to aim any future games.

 

NB: There are some very clever people on the Atari scene now .

[Gunstar]

Just create .xex (..exe, com., etc.) files and ATR (Atari disk images-best to use single density 90K format to cover the most peripherals) and we'll do the rest... With just .xex's people can make their own ATR's too. So unless you want to put a compilation on a real floppy disk or tape to sell, really just the standard .xex file will work. .Xex is what we use as an extension for pretty much anything like .exe or .com type files, which are all interchangeable on the Atari anyway, to differentiate from PC .exe and .com files since PC's are often used to store and loadtransfer Atari .xex and .com(still used occasionally) files to be used with emulators, SIO2PC, SIO2SD devices.

Edited July 19, 2018 by Gunstar

[Rybags]

Raw sector writes are fine for images run from SIO2SD and similar devices.

 

In the modern day multiple filetypes are appreciated. Raw executables that don't do further access are desirable since they generally have best compatibility with turbo mode SIO and with IDE class devices, plus they can also be run from cartridge.

 

Save states - for sure appreciated but thanks to the architecture of our machine it's hard to do it in a portable sense.
One classic game I do remember that had a really good system was Megalomania. It gave you a 25 or whatever character sequence that you just wrote down and entered again later, which was enough to restore the game state.

Of course that's not a lot of information. Probably a couple of check characters then the remainder gives you about the equivalence of 5 bits per keystroke. Not really practical to expect someone to record much over 30 characters, so say 150 bits = just under 20 bytes of information. That would be sufficient to keep score, level and a few stats.

[xxl]

Jet Boot Jack?

 

one of my favorite games from my childhood...

[Nojeee]

Just create .xex (..exe, com., etc.) files and ATR (Atari disk images-best to use single density 90K format to cover the most peripherals) and we'll do the rest... With just .xex's people can make their own ATR's too. So unless you want to put a compilation on a real floppy disk or tape to sell, really just the standard .xex file will work. .Xex is what we use as an extension for pretty much anything like .exe or .com type files, which are all interchangeable on the Atari anyway, to differentiate from PC .exe and .com files since PC's are often used to store and loadtransfer Atari .xex and .com(still used occasionally) files to be used with emulators, SIO2PC, SIO2SD devices.

 

Thanks for the reply, I've ripped all of my old Atari floppies into ATR format, some were in poor condition but I managed to salvage most with a KryoFlux board. The original source now assembles to .xex and works fine.

 

I guess I'm really looking at creating a personal compilation disk which contains original and updated versions of my earlier games. It wouldn't be with a view to selling it but it feels that it would benefit from having the titles together and loaded from a single menu.

 

Would an ATR be restricted to single density or can devices handle enhanced density? I'm only asking as I doubt if I could squeeze it into 90K ... and I've a couple of 1050 drives that I can use for testing on real hardware.

 

Raw sector writes are fine for images run from SIO2SD and similar devices.

 

In the modern day multiple filetypes are appreciated. Raw executables that don't do further access are desirable since they generally have best compatibility with turbo mode SIO and with IDE class devices, plus they can also be run from cartridge.

 

Save states - for sure appreciated but thanks to the architecture of our machine it's hard to do it in a portable sense.

One classic game I do remember that had a really good system was Megalomania. It gave you a 25 or whatever character sequence that you just wrote down and entered again later, which was enough to restore the game state.

Of course that's not a lot of information. Probably a couple of check characters then the remainder gives you about the equivalence of 5 bits per keystroke. Not really practical to expect someone to record much over 30 characters, so say 150 bits = just under 20 bytes of information. That would be sufficient to keep score, level and a few stats.

 

The saving of game state just comes about as it's something that always frustrated me years ago ... I hated losing progress and high scores when powering the machine off. I realise it's easy now to save the state in an emulator but I was just interested in trying out something I would like to have done at the time. It wasn't really considered when the majority of games were cassette based but writing and reloading data from a disk sector is easy.

 

The idea of printing up a code that gets loaded back in next time is interesting though. We did a similar thing to allow players to skip levels on consoles but it's interesting if it could be expanded to high scores too. The data would be very small.

 

Maybe one solution would be to just build it as an ATR that works in the way I'd be happy with and have each separate program available as an .xex.

 

Thanks again for the information.

[Nojeee]

Jet Boot Jack?

 

one of my favorite games from my childhood...

 

It was my first released game back in 1983 - I'm glad you enjoyed it.

 

I've always wanted to revisit it at some stage.

[xxl]

try:

 

http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=6859 (START - save scores)

http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=7578- (it automatically remembers the progress on the disk. additionally generates the datamatrix code for HiScoreCafe http://xxl.atari.pl/hsc/hsc-minotaur-16k/ )

Edited July 19, 2018 by xxl

[+Stephen]

Nojee - you can use larger than 90k ATRs. 180k, 360k, etc. There are even some up to 16MB.

[80s_Atari_Guy]

 

It was my first released game back in 1983 - I'm glad you enjoyed it.

 

I've always wanted to revisit it at some stage.

 

Seriously ? Wow, you my friend brought me many memorable days gaming on my A8 XL. I used to collect English Software games, I loved them all. But Jet Boot Jack, was the best.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hmmm, as long as you do not want to load/save things (highscore, stats, etc.), then a simple bootloader for your COM/XEX file is enough. Attached are two bootloaders, Auto-Bootloader works with 90k/130k/180k, whereas Picoboot works with 90k up to 16 MB (DOS 2.x and MyDOS compatible).

 

If you want to avoid using DOS, maybe some kind of micro-DOS would work with your ML-file that allows saving a few bytes to the normally unused sector 720... think there were a few (e.g. in Compute! magazine), but never needed them and therefore did not keep them in my collection...

 

Auto-Bootloader will ask you for the density and the file to load (if there is more than one file on the disk, press the desired number), while Picoboot only boots the first (ML-) file from a 90k-16MB diskette...

Bootload.zip

Edited July 19, 2018 by CharlieChaplin

[Nojeee]

Nojee - you can use larger than 90k ATRs. 180k, 360k, etc. There are even some up to 16MB.

 

Thanks for the information, I did have a look into the ATR format but didn't spot that it supports ED 130K as well as double density. I've just created one so that will work fine and allow better compatibility.

[Nojeee]

Hmmm, as long as you do not want to load/save things (highscore, stats, etc.), then a simple bootloader for your COM/XEX file is enough. Attached are two bootloaders, Auto-Bootloader works with 90k/130k/180k, whereas Picoboot works with 90k up to 16 MB (DOS 2.x and MyDOS compatible).

 

If you want to avoid using DOS, maybe some kind of micro-DOS would work with your ML-file that allows saving a few bytes to the normally unused sector 720... think there were a few (e.g. in Compute! magazine), but never needed them and therefore did not keep them in my collection...

 

Auto-Bootloader will ask you for the density and the file to load (if there is more than one file on the disk, press the desired number), while Picoboot only boots the first (ML-) file from a 90k-16MB diskette...

 

Thanks, I appreciate the bootloader.

 

I'll be fine creating the bootable menu disk, I'll use a subset of my Multiboot XL code from many moons ago. That used a couple of sectors to store the game names and pointers to starting sector etc. I do intend to save and load simple game progress and high scores which is really what prompted my post. I have no problem getting the games to boot and load from a floppy (once I've refreshed my memory a bit) I'm just aware that things are very different now and I wondered how this approach would work with devices other than floppies and their ATR equivalent.

 

I'll take all of the advice on board and hope to come up with something that's as compatible as possible.

[Nojeee]

try:

 

http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=6859 (START - save scores)

http://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=7578- (it automatically remembers the progress on the disk. additionally generates the datamatrix code for HiScoreCafe http://xxl.atari.pl/hsc/hsc-minotaur-16k/ )

 

Many thanks for the links, I'll take a look later.

[Level42]

I also like the games that display a QR code for entering hi-scores in an online database.... yes...that is REALLY something we didn't have in the 80's..... LOL

[Monk]

Bootable ATR-disks are fine - I have a SD2SIO-device, that can load pretty much all those ATR disk images.

 

However, I also happen to have a SIDE2-device, that allows me to make directories and have a 'best games' list in one directory, for example. It would be nice to have this disc collection also as xex-files, so I could just create a directory for them, and put them all there.

 

That way, they would still be 'all in one place', although the highscore saving thing would probably not work with xex-files. But those things don't always work anyway - I played International Karate on the C64 the other day, over 30 minutes straight, and got 105300 (the highest score I ever got, my previous record was 67500). The version I played was supposed to save the high scores, but in the end, it didn't work. Thankfully, I took a photo of it (:

 

That's just the nature of these older computers, not everything sophisticated, like highscore saving, will always work. But that's okay. Back in the olden days, we didn't have that feature, but we did have cameras even then. So we can always just take a photo of our high score, and it'll be just as good (and more nostalgic, perhaps).

 

What I am trying to say, is that it doesn't matter if there's no highscore saving, the 'score' competitions were based on the honour system anyway. Who would cheat on that stuff and falsely claim high scores they never got? What kind of satisfaction would anyone get from that? I worked hard for that International Karate score, and I do feel good about being able to get such a score, even if no one in the world believes me. I know I did it.

 

(I don't recommend it, though, it seriously took so long that the music looped a few times, and my hands were starting to hurt like crazy from that intense joystick waggling, and I lost concentration at some point, which lead to the ending of the game).

 

Anyways, it's excellent that you are still working for these old computers that I happen to love so much - Jetboot Jack wasn't one of my favorites (it was too difficult for me as a kid), but I'll certainly revisit it on both Atari and C64 now.

 

If you make any games for any of the following platforms, I would be delighted to play them on my real machines (no emulation):

 

- Commodore 16

- Atari 800 XL

- Atari 2600

- Commodore 64

- Commodore VIC-20

- Super Famicom

- DOS with AdLib support (I have a real OPL3 in my DOS machine)

- Amiga 1200 (or Amiga 500 with a WHDLoad version for my Amiga 1200 (: )

- Sega Dreamcast

 

As a sidenote, I just played 'Paperboy' on the C64, and then on Super Famicom, and I have to say, the C64 version was better. I just wish Atari 8-bit computers also had a version.

 

What a weird game that is - can anyone imagine doing a modern game today, where all you do is cycle around a neighbourhood and throw newspapers at people's houses? (:

 

Back then, 'anything' was possible in a game, and that's one thing I really love about these old, innovative times and computers - the older systems offer so many different worlds and activities that the modern games lack. So when you got a new game, you were excited, because it could be ANYTHING! Nowadays, if you get a new game, it's a very narrow, limited selection of things you do.

 

BTW, would something like Maniac Mansion be possible on the Atari? I don't mean identical, but something similar, where you explore an exciting mansion with some word commands at the bottom?

[Mclaneinc]

I'm sure these SIO2SD devices emulate direct writes to disk of all types Jon, pretty sure so as long as a full disk is being used that contains the complete sector layout it should be ok..

 

Can't find my SIO2SD at the moment or I'd offer to test it...

 

Nice to see people ate still spotting you and I hope you had fun with Retrogamer

Edited December 12, 2018 by Mclaneinc

[Wrathchild]

 

http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-400-800-xl-xe-p_total-page-step-genre-order_2-1-25-1-dump_8_G.html

[Nojeee]

Thanks for all of the input. Since my original post I've been working on straight forward single-load conversions of my older games and saving game states hasn't been necessary.

 

The conversion I'm currently working on will have passwords to allow level skipping as that seemed a simpler solution.

 

I'm still contemplating a few new ideas that would need sector loading but that's for another time

 

Regards,

Jon