F-Cycles

There is a low-cost plastic injection system I found... for 1500$ US http://techkits.com/ However, the molds is a bit too small for a cartridge and as I look more carefully about the plastic injection process, I found out that the surface of plastic is proportional to the pressure you need to apply and that per square inch.. it could be up to 5 tons! I wonder how we could reduce the pressure? As the ABS plastic need to be at 400F (200C), I wonder if the aluminium mold would be around 210F (100C) instead of room temperature during the injection.. if that could help the plastic to flow correctly using a lowest pressure. I am thinking about having a contact water system where hot or cold water could be use to keep the mold warm during injection and cold water once the injection is completed. Without having access to a factory or lab for experiments... I think so far the best for producing injection plastic with your custom mold + small productions could be a website like this one: http://www.protolabs.com/production

Hi everyone, I was not sure if I should post that news... as the project get cancel. But, you might wonder why and what's next??? Or, it might be a thread which we can discuss about copyright? Do you get agreement of the author first? here is my article...(below) You might be interested to get a look for other type of projects, as I describe other idea of projects from AI, Sound Synthesizer to hardware projects as well... http://superdoriath.blogspot.com/2014/05/super-doriath-cancelled-why.html Thanks,

I never though about it, but crossing it again... I got an idea what can be hard when it start to swing a lot, that night is falling and have to watch for holes...

This idea of querying the 5th sprite flag is very interesting. I guess we can even determine the exact scanline by doing a binary search on screen (as long we make sure we are in the visible area). The first idea I was having... One article I read about security was mentioning that time spent in a function to decrypt could be use to analyze which path of the code was used. According to the article, that was a security failure in an early version of Internet Explorer. And that today, writing code to decrypt or encrypt something also involve to make sure that any path of the code give the exact same CPU cycles. That could also be a way to solve it... if the main loop of a game is coded in order to always produce the same number of clock cycle for each function (like: play_music, update_screen, update_ai, ...). Then, you can divide the screen based on each function. The additional delay in the CPU introduced by other components could not be control, but if the resulting jitter is inside the tolerance, we can still cope with that. One other feature that can be done when you have precise control over what happen on screen. The music will sound better as the update will be periodic. We can also start to call update_music a few time per interrupt and start modifying the audio structure instead of being modifying the rhythm structure. (interesting video about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEjcK5JFEFE)! For me, all ideas are interesting and depending of what we need to do, one method will be more suitable than another one else. I will try to keep in mind this 5-th bit... and collision bit.

Sorry, which profile in the machine editor I should pick? I select it with MSX, Coleco or MSX2... but did not seem to work.

The Coleco has no interrupt setup elsewhere than at the bottom of the display area. For this test, I setup a delay to reach the area where the sprites 17 to 32 are display and change the sprite attribute address. (see my reply below to hardhat for more info. ). About the two screen pages in graphic mode 2. Hum, I did a test with graphic mode 2. At first I got hard time to setup the screen. I am not sure anymore if I have test more than one screen page, but I count on it for what I want to do... Now that you are telling me that, I should double check my stuff when I have time. Yes... hardhat that's how I do it in my test. Ahh.. interesting to know that some controller trigger additional interrupt which cause unpredictable delay to be introduce. I thought that I could measure the time I spend in my code... can does interrupt caused by other type of controller be handle in software (like can we have it call our code or it's fix to some address in the ROM of the machine?). For the 48 sprites, there is a big gap of 64 scanlines so it might be manageable to have it while having those interrupt. If you use 8x8 sprites, you can go for a 96 sprites, but then you need to change things every 32 scan line.

Well, sad to say that the one who will get all the money might not be the one making the game, but the one selling it. One of my friend told me how much money he receive from a game he made with one of his friend in the '80... 0$! The company selling his game was arguing that they have sold none. But, he saw his own game in his local game store! They did try to get a lawsuit against the company, but turn out that their contract was not filled correctly, lack of proof about the sales and expenses required to market their game and so on.

Just got a chance to see the trading card project on your website! Wow.. really look promising, as looking to all the features a card can display, I can imagine how nice this collection can become!

Hi kl99, Currently, the extended colors are simulation with 2 combined colors out of the 15 available. I have not program anything yet on the Coleco for that test but the best render would probably consist of drawing a pattern of color 1 & color 2 where each adjacent pixel is the other color. Have these two color swap at each frame and check it on a CRT. This trick can work with the vertical interrupt, unlike the other stuff I code which need to be in sync with each scan line. I tested the other first in order to verify when the video chip is reading the VRAM and that there are no shadow registers. The hardware I have show that no... the registers are not shadowed and that a bit change on them will have immediate effect on the circuit.

Wow.. I did not know that. Did someone also made a ROM with some feature to rip/debug stuff on Adam? like this cartridge? http://ar.c64.org/wiki/Super_Snapshot

Yup... well, I was just thinking like that.. but having a Basic language IDE based on PC is more useful nowdays than if it was a new ROM... But, seeing all different sort of projects and remake.. anyway.. a bit out of topic!

Well, for me when I think about old computer, the one I was use was the C128. Back then, inside the ROM you got Basic (and even a sprite editor). I think the Adam was more like the Apple II, which the rom was containing the basic stuff to operate the computer and you got to load a software for doing Basic or any other computer language. I admit that nowdays, it's a different story... most developer are using PC to program their stuff on other machine. But, back then, I think it would have been super cool to get a ROM upgrade (as long it's not buggy and that it's popular enough to become the standard that most people use).

I don't know about trading card stuff. I guess it's similar to hockey cards collector? Did you manage to spend the required time you were looking at for Basic Vision? As you plan to have your own language, that was making me thinking if some people ever wanted to replace ROM of old computer.

Happy New Year 2014, Luc! I just read this news, I think sometime it worth it to make a big decision in life. I saw that the upcoming activities for Team Pixelboy did shrink a lot compare to before.. I mean, looking to the upcoming release list. But, I am sure your passion for Coleco Vision will remain intact! =) Your release inspired me to jump back to the first electronic game machine I got... Your website remain a source of inspiration! Again Happy New Year 2014 and may you have a very good time break before moving on to another job!!! Best regards,

Wow... On my side, I remember me and my brother got a ColecoVision for Christmas with 2 games: zaxxon & smurf. The year.. 1987. Dad told us later that he got the machine and 2 games at 88$ at Canadian Tires. He was not sure to buy it... but he told us that he ask the saleman.. How much it was originally sold? 300$... Then he got suspicious about the drop of the price from 300$ to 88$, he though maybe that thing cost 8$ to make!? The reason which decide him to buy that kind of entertainment was to know the company was in bankrupt... okay that's why they sold it that low. That Christmas, we did not receive any other gifts... and that was the concern of my parents... would we play 5 minutes and get bored? Then any other gifts we asked for was... ColecoVision Games... We end up with around 24 games...