Gatherer of Data

I'm not particulary knowledgeable about Apple emulation, the filesystems, etc, but haven't run into unsolvable issues until now. I'd like to use the ingame save option in SSI's Superpower series of games. Emulator snapshots might be an option, but I'd like to use the actual game save options, so save games are transferable between emulators etc. I have done most testing with Germany 1985, the first in the series, and AppleWin as well as MAME(MESS) emulators. Once you start a game scenario, you can bring up the save screen with control +b. The game wants you to initialize a save disk, after which you can choose to save a game by name in a list. I've only managed to come that far with the .nib file from Asimov, haven't had any luck with the other versions. That HDV file looked promising, but it boots up a whole bunch of different SSI games. 🤨 Anyway, with the nib file, I can enter a save name, and return to the actual game, but the saves are not permanent, bringing up the save screen again, nothing is there. Now, I've searched a bit, and found this RDOS page, which suggests these games might indeed be troublesome. There's blank disk available in the RDOSstuff archive which was tested with North Atlantic '86. It does indeed work with that game. But makes not difference for Germany 1985 for me.

Sid Meier's Pirates! I think this is well known.. I just looked it up in case if I misremembered it, but it seems that it was indeed even partially coded in basic. At least on C64. Psi-5 Trading Company. Fantasy. Me and a friend played this a some time ago while going through some SNK PC compilation. There was no home release as as I know, but there's a Ti-99 Prototype out there.

Yeah, I guess it wouldn't work. Some people recommend to try it, but I've never read any verification. I did route a Wii's composite signal through a Philips DVD recorder some years ago, and the result was slightly worse. The Wii's output is very clean to beginn with though, and already PAL60. It didn't occur to me to test it with an NTSC signal, and I don't remember if the recorder had specific settings for changing norms.

PAL VCRs have often the known feature to playback NTSC tapes as PAL 60, but what happens if you route a NTSC composite console (or computer) signal through them or similar devices like DVD recorders or receivers?

Have there been any new developments or recommendations regarding C64 NTSC palettes since this? Pepto has been superseded by Colodore, but there is no specific NTSC variant afaik.

It was my understanding that colors should be consistent when you switch PAL and NTSC output on a console when connected through RGB, so it's really mostly a 50/60 Hz respectively resolution switch. Hence the "Tint" control has no effect. I do get different colors however, but the behavior is inconsistent between displays. I've tested this recently mostly with a PAL Playstation 2. When switching from PAL to NTSC output, the reds get notably more intense on two CRTs of mine. This does not happen on a Sony LCD I tested with. Cable used is the same for all of these (RGB Scart of course). Tint control has as expected no effect. So what is going on, is it wrong that there is no color encoding going on, or is something faulty?

Okay, I successfully booted it with the default config under Altirra 2.5 instead of 3.9, there seems to be something wrong with my ROM configs..

Thanks, but this still crashes for me. Debug windows says something about CPU Illegal instruction Hit 0056. I've got hardware set to Atari 800XL, Firmware to OS-B / Basic enabled, Fast Boot. I've noticed that Altirra says the the OS-B Rom is patched, is that a potential problem?

Is there anything special that one has to keep in mind to make it run with Altirra? It always crashes for me before I see any game screen. It works fine for me with the Atari800 emulator, and other Basic games work also for me with Altirra.

I'm feeding my SDTV custom resolutions through a VGA - SCART setup for emulation. Looking at the dot clock rates listed over at https://pineight.com/mw/?title=Dot_clock_rates I was surprised to learn the CoCo is supposed to have a NTSC PAR similar to the Amiga. That would mean the screen is supposed to be rather tall because of the smaller resolution. On PAL, the screen is so small I have a hard time believing that's somewhat realistic if I'm using my PAL Amiga modeline for the CoCo/Dragon. The ZX Spectrum has the same 256x192 res, but the different pixel aspect makes everything a bit wider so it's not that bad. The videos I've seen from real hardware seem to be using adjustable monitors, was this the norm and normal that a TV picture was so small, or do PAL CoCos/Dragons also have wider pixels?

Some other decent early SSI games require Basic as well, e.g. Rails West and Tigers in the Snow. Also the two Snooper Troops games by Spinnaker.

Googling around, I found that other visitors discussed it here: http://toronto.livejournal.com/7739200.html A quote: I also thought that there might be a connection Conway's LIFE. Maybe there's more info in connection with that.

I was taking a look at the Forest Fire game by Artworx/Dynacomp today. It's a turn based BASIC game about fighting, well, forest fires . It reminded me of another game I used to play on C64, Fire Fighter 64: These games are supposed to been published around 81/82 . They're not quite the same, but very similar. I recall also seeing a description for a similar PC DOS game coming out some years later. This got me thinking that this kind of game is maybe available on a lot more platforms and actually may have some older origin, kinda like the Star Trek games in which you battle the Klingons with the Enterprise? Does anyone know?

C16/Plus 4 had some nice looking platformers coming out in recent years, The Lands of Zador kinda blew me away when I first saw it. The predecessor is called "The Majesty of Sprites". Not sure if that title has a double meaning

Yes, I didn't realize this before, but the majority of these early computers stuck to the 8 color model because monitor options were limited. The most color capable of home systems (outside of specific ones for CAD etc.) before the later PC-98 models seems to have been the DEC Rainbow, the palette was extended to 4096 and it could display 16 colors in medium resolution mode, which meant in this case 384x240. The 7220 was apparently modified in various ways, e.g. some docs I've seen mention a scroll map.