Karl G

This is not the case. You can specify pfheights as many times as you need to to change the definitions. Yes, the tables are stored in ROM, but under the hood a RAM pointer to the current data is updated. It is the same way that changing the shape of a player sprite or playfield works with a new playerX: or playfield: definition.

That's definitely good news, then. Thanks!

Has anyone else gotten something like this? It appears to be from "AtariAge" (but is actually from requests@judge.me) asking me to review my "recent" purchase of "The Byte Before Christmas". I did purchase that cart...about seven years ago. I'm not sure how that site got that information though, and I'm concerned about them posing as AtariAge. Tagging @Albert just so he is aware as well.

It says that a password is required to access the page, and I don't have one. This happens regardless of whether or not I'm logged onto my itch.io account.

I think you will probably get more feedback when you get far enough to post a demo version. Right now there is just a couple of seconds of video footage, so it's hard to get a sense of how the game will play. I hope you are having fun with Atari development, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with. 🙂

Thanks for posting these! The Game Boy link seems to be broken, though. I found a Game Boy port, but by a different developer than the one you listed: https://oscarbraindead.itch.io/paku-paku-gb-gameboy

Here's what I got via email:

I really love the mechanics of this one.

Mine, and I think most of them, came with a NEC v20, which is 8088 compatible, and runs at the same clock speed, but is somewhat faster due to some optimizations. You can see it on benchmarks that compare to a standard PC/XT. For that reason, I swapped it out for a genuine 8088 so that software that assumed PC/XT speeds would run at the correct speed. I did get an 8088-2 so I could still use the turbo feature if I needed it, though.

I managed to compile a7800 for my Raspberry Pi 400, and it works, but the pokey audio output sounds bad. I suspect this is a speed issue, though. Mame is pretty beefy, and maybe my poor Pi can't keep up. So, my questions are: Is anyone else running a7800 on a Pi? If so, any tips for performance or audio? Is there a way to disable pokey sound support when running something via a7800?

An update was emailed out yesterday.

I know what is causing this, and how to fix it. The section of the manual on pfheights says there's a known issue if the first row in pfheights isn't set to 8. When I set it to 8 myself, I got a stable picture when I set it to 8 in your code. However, the other issue is that the numbers already added up to 92 instead of 88, and up to 92 after making that change. It still works like this, but it expands the size of your visible screen, so takes processing time away from your game. This is less of an issue if you don't use the score or a minikernel, however. Anyway, I suggest that you set the first pfheights entry to 8, then subtract 1 from 8 of the other lines to make the total equal 88.

JFYI to anyone else who may be interested in discussions of DOS, DOS games, vintage PC hardware, etc. I have made a club for those kinds of topics. https://forums.atariage.com/forum/434-dos-discussion/

JFYI I have made a club for this: https://forums.atariage.com/forum/434-dos-discussion/

This looks amazing! The gameplay is smooth, and the graphics look great! My one suggestion so far would be to have more of an indication of when you are hit. Maybe your ship can flash slightly when you take damage, or perhaps just the shield indicator?