Jump to content

chesterbr

Members
  • Posts

    34
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Contact / Social Media

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Toronto, ON, Canada
  • Interests
    Playing and creating Atari 2600 games!

Recent Profile Visitors

3,261 profile views

chesterbr's Achievements

Space Invader

Space Invader (2/9)

20

Reputation

  1. Hi! Just started playing with my PlusCart, loving it! I was wondering how I could suggest the addition of Homebrew that isn't on the Homebrew folder (at least I could not find it, even searching on the nextcloud web client). Specifically I looked for 2048 2600 (which I wrote a few years ago and had contributions from other forum users). It can be downloaded from https://github.com/chesterbr/2048-2600/blob/main/2048.bin Of course I can upload to my Private ROMs folder, but I would like to have it available for any users. How could I do that? Thank you!
  2. My old Harmony still works fine, yet the software only recognizes it if I boot my 2015 Intel Macbook on Windows. Big Sur Mac OS won’t accept legacy drivers indeed. It isn’t the only retro peripheral that was nixed by Big Sur, so I didn’t look further.
  3. And indeed, now the TV recognizes the signal as NTSC and the image on the TV doesn't scroll anymore. But it's still super unstable; which brings me back to traditional composite mod issues that I can debug ?
  4. It's kinda obvious that my knowledge of PAL x NTSC is too tied to software ?, but I am figuring it out. Hope these notes help more than hinder! It seems that the part of the circuit I built is just the luminance signal, and that would not vary between systems. The color signal is what would differ (and hopefully, my TV will "understand" it's NTSC - like it does with my regular, modded 4-switch). Also: for reference, the circuit above appears (with a lot of explanations) in https://www.atariage.com/2600/faq/index.html?SystemID=2600#composite (scroll to / search "chroma/luma output for 4 switch 2600") - minus the "Atari parts" (blue border) and the fact that it doesn't mix the chroma and luma (with the 470pf cap). Here is a screenshot for reference:
  5. Hello from Canada, @parafin! Hope you are still around ? I am building an Atari 2600 from "scratch" (as a learning project), and your circuit is a great fit for the video part - thank you for sharing! ?‍♂️ I started with the "top" part (everything above the 470pf capacitor), expecting a black-and-white image (with a minimalist test program expected to run on my partially built 2600) - which I got ?... but scrolling. Did a lot of head-scratching, until I re-read your greetings... from Ukraine! That means PAL, right? Checking the menus, my TV indeed detected a PAL signal! (which explains the scrolling on my test program, it is doing a different frame size/rate!). Given my carts are all NTSC, I wonder if you (or anyone) would know what to change on this circuit for it to work with NTSC. Thank you!
  6. Appreciate the clarification! Two questions: a) If I install a .bin with the "Development" tab, will it run just like a traditional cart (i.e., no Harmony code running prior)? Asking because I want to test a very customized Atari-frankenstein and I'd need my test code to be the onlly thing running upon turning it on (which doesn't seem to be the case, say, if I put the game on an SD card as AUTORUN); b) Is it possible to revert the cart back to non-development mode (so I can enjoy the games on my SD card again)? How do I do that? Thank you!
  7. I really like the graphics on your version - they go closer to Thomas Jentzsch's Three.s than to my 2600 (thanks for the kind words on the other post, btw). They are an eye-opener on how my stubborness (on keeping the playfield "grid" the way it was originally designe) made the colored tiles harder to implement and less detailed than they could have been. Jittering is likely caused by non-standard frames, as you suggest. Best way to debug is to configure Stella to break into the monitor whenever you reach a scanline number that is past the maximum frame size. E.g., for NTSC, something in the lines of: > breakif _scan==#263 This is useful to keep on your configs, since it's something that is so easy to break. Such default breakpoitns are as close to a test suite that you'll get on 2600, I guess Anyway, this is great stuff, keep on going. Also, don't be *too* shy with the source code - of course, you want to tidy it up a bit before going public, but that job is never over, so don't over-stress on it! (I got lots of good advice and patches once I went public, if you need more incentive).
  8. Heh, I didn't know it, but had a blast googling and finding this: http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/unknown1/unknown1.htm It seems to be a cool concept. And focusing on colors makes life easier (even with the reasonable number of color changes sync-ed with the beam)... makes me think of other possible games in that style!
  9. I considered it, but I wanted to keep tiles and digits on the same 256-byte page, to avoid dealing page crossing penalties during the crucial scanline. Right now I have 18 tiles (14 for the game + 4 only used on title screen) x 11 = 198 bytes for tiles, plus 5*10 = 50 bytes for score = 248 bytes. Sure, I could split tiles and digits into separate pages (with a small RAM penalty for using separate pointer tables, or a CPU penalty whenever switching between a score and the tiles), but I'd still need to come with the better graphics. Also, 8x11 keeps them square (in Atari pixel proportions), so I'd have to deal with that also. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion! Cheers, Chester
  10. A bit late on this one, but it worked on my mac Mac (OS X Mavericks 10.9.2, Late 2011 MBP) after installing drivers from here: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm I downloaded the 2.2.18, x64 .dmg, and ran the "FTDIUSBSerialDriver_10_4_10_5_10_6_10_7" installer. No restart required, just closing, reopening and connecting from the Harmony software and it recognized the cart.
  11. I had not associated how the Robotron 2084 number is almost an "anagram" of 2048... I spent a unhealthy share of my youth playing the Apple II version
  12. And thanks to this thread I found an odd bug, which would repeat the 2048 "party" effect after a reset in certain situations. Fixed and here is the new file (also on the repository) Btw, thanks people for the cart maker suggestions... guess I'll wait a few days till I make one, so these final nasty bugs show up :-) 2048.bin
  13. Also, if you want to know what each RAM position does, check the highlighted lines here: https://github.com/chesterbr/2048-2600/blob/f1156e0c574cd4055726cce0b423901c92bd3f14/2048.asm#L282-L356
  14. Arenafoot, the first data cell is at $85, so putting the $0A value at, say, $85 an $86 should do the trick (you'll have two 1024 tiles that you can left-shift to form 2048 after leaving the debugger the same way you entered it, i.e., typing "~"). See this screenshot for the right positions in Stella debugger:
×
×
  • Create New...