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highinfidelity

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    Selling water by the river
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    Torino, Italy
  • Interests
    Fine art photography, cycling, alpinism and ski, Progressive Rock, XVIII century military reenactment

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  1. Yes, I see the point. Will a PAL60 conversion solve the issue of the game extending out of the bottom of the screen? Because TAC-SCAN is one of those NTSC games in which part of the image goes out of the screen (the score at the bottom, in particular).
  2. So, any hope of seeing this game improved dashed, is there any devout soul who may take up the task to convert the original code to PAL? 😇
  3. Yes, three angles, duplicated on the other side by symmetry (I suppose), it makes five in all if you prefer. The point is, in any case, that the rotation of the ships is so jerky that it basically defeats the feature of playing with paddles, and also very loosely conveys the "feel" of the arcade game. Then there's the difficulty ramp thing. It ramps up in all the wrong ways, in my opinion. You don't get the feeling that the game is getting harder, but basically that there's no more control, which is something that has to be avoided at all costs in a well programmed game. I'm sorry that Thomas thinks that there is not much to do in order to improve the game. Paddle-controlled games are so peculiar, it's something that doesn't exist anymore nowadays and was not fully digged back then in my opinion; I usually enjoy them immensely and I wish they had made more of them. What about the PAL ROM? Does such a thing as a PAL Sega cartridge ever existed, or is it some home made conversion, perhaps with framerate/speed issues?
  4. The game TAC/SCAN (for some obscure reason renamed TAC-SCAN for the 2600 port) in my opinion would make a terrific shooter featuring the paddle controllers, but unfortunately Sega's conversion was really uninspired and very loosely renders the peculiarity of the game. Nearly twenty years ago (!!!) we were discussing about its PAL version, but that thread ended nowhere. Was a PAL version for sale for real back then? Or are the PAL ROMs available for download the work of some eager homebrewer? I also wonder if any of the bold developers/coders/homebrewers that gravitate around this forum would consider taking up this game and improve it. The way Sega implemented only three firing angles is very disappointing, and most of all completely defeats the usefulness of the paddles. Should there be the possibility of implementing at least five firing angles, it would be a completely different story. Also, the difficulty ramps up too quickly and/or at too high steps in my opinion; the game quickly gets frantic with nearly casual dodging & shooting action until all vessels are over, quite much at the same screen or score every time, severely affecting the replay value of the game. Is there anyone willing to take the challange to triumph were Sega failed? 😉
  5. I have tried AAE. It's a very very nice "fair attempt" at trying to emulate more accurately vector games. Unfortunately it's a project that, as far as I see, has not been any longer updated since years and years, and now it shows. The window is hard-set to a fixed dimension, and it isn't even completely shown on contemporary 16:9 ratio screens; the bottom especially goes off-screen and is partly covered by the bottom bar. (As a side note, while I like 16:9 screens on TVs, I think that PCs and laptops with 16:9 screens are an offense to IT specialists and workers, and also to photographers, and last but not least also to classic gamers. However there's not much to do about this, as in the last decade I don't remember seeing any longer laptops with a 4:3 screen ratio). As the arrow pointer disappears and mouse control is completely taken over by AAE, there's no way to resize the window by pulling the corners or clicking buttons etc., or at least I couldn't find it. Unfortunately the "newer" ROM set is needed, or at least it is so with Asteroids. What a pity that this nice software is no longer being developed! I almost forgot to mention that the sound effects of Asteroids in AAE are even more terrible than in MAME: a chilling "pew pew pew" sound that compels you to leave those asteroids alone. But at this point it's clear that the inaccurate sound emulation in the older MAME releases accidentally added much to the pleasure of firing, at least according to my taste.
  6. Thank you, I will definitely give it a try and see if I can manage it to work. I have to say that when I really want vectors, rescaling, dot glow etc. I go back to my cute and beloved Vectrex. There actually is quite a nice port of Asteroids for the Vectrex, made by John Dondzila at some point in time, but it would need a bit of further tweaking, especially concerning the (crazy) speed at which the asteroids move at the beginning of each screen. But last time that I have written to John, it seemed that he had lost interest in game porting and switched to some other hobby/work, so I suppose it will stay "as is". However, although imperfect to some degree, it's still very playable and amusing!
  7. Thanks for pointing me to that website. I would have never taken that page seriously, not even to mention download anything from it, if I hadn't been guided there by an experienced fellow. The lousy "feeew feeew feeew" sound it's still there, but judging by this video of (supposedly) the original hardware, it seems that this might indeed be the correct sound effect. What a pity, the incorrectly emulated sound was much much cooler than this. Does anyone perhaps know which is the last version of MAME GUI that supports the "old" ROMs for vector games? I think I might try it, and see if it plays the ROMs that I have, while at the same time the sound wouldn't crack and pop with raster games.
  8. I actually think it's the latest "stable", non-in-development version. If you know of any more recent "official" release, and where to download it from, please be so kind to post a link.
  9. Thanks for your reply! I'm comparing MAME32 V0.53 and MAMEUI64 V0.143, for what it's worth. I remember the sound samples thing, as they were another annoying bit you had to dig the internet for, or some games would stay mute. But Asteroids didn't need sound samples in MAME32: I checked the folder and they're not there.
  10. Dear fellows, first of all happy Easter to all of you, I hope you're all safe and in good health, and the same for your relatives and friends. I went through the lessons of "the good MAME user" in this thread, and although I understand the points, I have to disagree and stand among those who think that MAME is a marvel but the organisation of software and realated stuff is unfortunately a nightmare. 15 years ago or such I downloaded a 32bit version of MAME with GUI, and although I was happy with it, the sound crashed continuously on some games. I asked about this issue, possibly here or maybe elsewhere, and also tried to contact the developers, but the common answer was that it was my hardware's fault and nobody really dug the issue. Fast forward to these days. I have been given a 64bit architecture laptop, so I thought to copy all of the MAME files and see if the crashing sound would go away on a completely different and much newer hardware. To my highest surprise, the crashing sound is still there as usual. So it was and is a software problem, full stop. At this point I thought to see if a 64bit of MAME with GUI was available, and indeed it was. I tried it, and sound finally doesn't crash and crackle with this one, but what a "nice" surprise I had when I've found out that *all* and I repeat *all* of the vector games' ROMs no longer work! As when I have a problem I usually find out that many others had the same problem before me, I performed a search and found this thread. I read the "manual of the good MAME user" incorporated in it, which recommends to trash the whole collection of ROMs it took a lifetime to put together, and download "from somewhere" a new full set of the "new" ROMs that match the version of MAME you are using. Too bad that whether the "new" ROMs match or don't mach each specific version of MAME is written nowhere. Also, it's exactly the opposite of what I'd like to do, as I put together just a bunch of ROMs corresponding to the games that I like to play, and I accurately avoided so far to clutter the ROM folder and available games list with useless stuff that I dislike. Well, enough said. I rolled up my sleeves and began tracking once again the supposedly "new" ROMs of Asteoids, to replace those that I already had since decades. After having put them all into a .zip file, the game now works also with the 64bit MAME GUI, but the sound delivered is completely different than before. The shots were a terrific and cool "puw puw puw puw", now they're an itty bitty and uninspiring "ziiiing ziiiing ziiiing ziiiing". Which one is correct? Is there any way to improve this "new" horrible sound effect? Aside from that, should perhaps any pious soul find the time to separate only the .zips of the "new" vector games ROMs and pass them to me saving a lot of search and time, I'd be very very grateful and thankful.
  11. Well... I went back to the game and in absolutely NO WAY I could have it behaving once again in the way that I described above. So, gentlemen, please excuse the completely useless thread. I have no idea about what happened, my only guess is still that I accidentally "fried" the 2600 and although the game would work the random number genaration algorithm happened to be messed up. Thanks everybody for the respective input, it has been a pleasure chatting about this great game anyway!
  12. Well, now that's some replies!!! ? Long live Seaquest!!! No, I don't see it happening in the video you posted. They cross each other coming from both directions as I would expect them to do. Only thing I can add is that I play a NTSC cart on a 2600 unit that was sold in Europe displayed on a PAL TV, with wrong colours etc. but I suppose it shouldn't make any difference. The position of the difficulty switches also shouldn't have any influence on the way in which the enemies move, or at least the manual doesn't mention this. I actually have to see if this whole thing is going to happen again the next time I play; I am now wondering if I "fried" the cart just by chance and had it behaving in that weird manner at higher stages. It possibly is so. In case, I will record a video. Coincidentally, I have also just purchased an International Edition of Seaquest at a local thrift shop and I'm also curious to see if it plays all right.
  13. Well, thanks. I suspected since the beginning that all that work to have the switch disassembled (and the case and stickers damaged while on the task...) was completely useless, internet garbage copied and pasted over and over. Will check the power supply unit. I think a good test would be to let the power supply alone pre-heat, and then turn on the cold Colecovision and see what happens.
  14. Thanks! I know very little of disassembly, however I looked at the code. Frankly, I didn't find the answer; the only code block that seems to refer to the motion of the enemies may be these three lines: lda randomSeed ; get current random seed value and #OBSTACLE_HORIZ_DIR_MASK ; keep D4 value ora tmpObstacleAttributeValue ; combine to set obstacle direction Should be more or less random. It is beyond my comprehension why at a point all "obstacles" move from left to right as a fleet. As a side note I am (negatively) impressed by getting only one reply to this thread: Seaquest is among the best games ever written for the VCS in my opinion, and I thought that many fans would join the discussion.
  15. Ten years ago or so it was common belief that a Colecovision displaying graphic garbage at startup needed to have its ON/OFF switch contacts cleaned. It didn't make much sense, but I did it nonetheless as it was suggested by many, I damaged the case and the stickers while doing so, and the problem seemed indeed to be gone for one reason or another. During Christmas I plugged in again my Colecovision after a long time in storage, and the garbled graphics are there again, but I'm definitely no longer persuaded that the ON/OFF switch has anything to do with it. If I just let it turned on for few minutes, after this "warm up" time the garbage is gone, which makes me think that there is some component that is out of tolerance but performs "well enough" after some warm-up time. Perhaps a capacitor or a resistor, or the whole power supply, who knows? Has anything new been written about this well known problem in the last years?
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