RedBeard

Does he keep up with "The Atari Scene" at all any more? In particular, has he seen some of the amazing VCS demo-scene stuff?

Re-howdy, all. Wow! 71 pages! This is fantastic. Saturday morning. Reading page after page of this, getting my geek on. Love it. You-all are fantastic. Keep it up. It is nice to have Atari back in the news in some way. Shame that (as discussed earlier) the news is distorted or slanted, but, hey "any publicity is good publicity" as they say. :wq!

An excellent tip! Thanks again, Jeff. I really appreciate the help.

SOLVED! Remember how I always say, "Never underestimate Operator Error?" Apparently, my files were saving into Atari_OLD folder that I created when I started over. Yay! They aren't gone after all! Alas, my program really stinks - but I can work on it... :wq!

Thanks, Jeff. I will look again when I get home. It was very strange, KNOWING that I had saved several times, then not finding the file. But computers acting strangely doesn't surprise me any more. I gave up that illusion a long time ago. I guess I was hoping that someone would say, "Oh, yeah. You just need to go to the C:\Temp\Whatever directory and Show-Hidden-Files, then look for the file that starts with 'vbb'..." or something. Either way, I'll survive. I remember, many years ago, a computer professor saying to us, "There are two kinds of computer users: Those who have lost data and those who will lose data." :wq!

OK. I'm about to have a heart attack. *staggers, raises left arm to the sky, right hand clutching chest* "Elizabeth, you hear that, Honey? I'm coming to join you!" As many of you know, I had troubles getting Visual bB up and going, but was finally able to get it going late yesterday. So, Hooray! Life-long dream accomplished, right? I worked on it more this afternoon and again tonight. Change this color, save, compile, run. Change that x/y position, save, compile, run. You know, very "trial and error", 'cause that's the way I code roll. Well, I freely admit it wasn't much, but slap a cool picture on the box and I could have sold me some bargain-bin, play-em-once, lousy, market-about-to-crash-from-crap-oversupply cartridges back in the day. You know what I'm talking about. Well about 10:00 pm (translation: 22:00 hours) or so, something burped and it is all gone! I think I hit the X (Close Window) button, but I'm not too sure about that, even. All I know is that when I reopened VbB, all I had was sample code with "[ TITLE ]" in it and one of my sprites, basically. I was able to get my screenshots out of the desktop garbage can, but I cannot find the .BAS file, nor a working .BIN of it. You can see by the screenshot, that there are very few ".BAS.BIN" files from tonight. Believe me, I check all the ones that looked promising. I guess I was wondering if there is another way of getting back some of those files... does VbB keep a ".BAK" file somewhere, for example? Or, maybe a Temp/Working file open like InDesign does, just in case of a crash? I don't know, just some idea? I'm crushed... :wq!

Post Scriptum: I used the Game Wizard to begin my game and kept working on it last night. I need to put some more work into it today, though I had church earlier and a couple other things later this evening. If it turns out to be any good, I'll share it here. Otherwise, at least, I know that I did, indeed, create an Atari game this weekend! Many thanks to y'all here at Atari Age. A pair of screenshots, just for fun... :wq!

I like the new version. Level 1 has a good amount of piggies and enough time to complete it. Level 2 has new pretzels -yes!- and I like the tune. As a (sometimes) musician, if I may offer a bit of musical "constructive" criticism: don't be afraid of including "rests" in your tune. A slight pause in the melody, like where a singer would take a breath. For example the slight pause between "...gently down the stream" and "merrily, merrily, merrily..." Regarding Level 1, is it too late to add clouds or something? (The sky seems a bit plain as you concentrate on the platform, I think.) As I said, though, I think you did well on the music for Level 2. The bats are a tad challenging, too. So, overall, I like where you have this going. :wq!

You all rule! ISSUE SOLVED! Basically, I started over. A fresh download of bB into a brand new C:\AtariVCS\bB folder, used the above steps to put it into the Windows System Variables, fresh download/unzip of Visual bB into the same (new) folder... I have since successfully compiled from the Command Line, Crimson Editor and Visual bB! OK. So now I must do the actual work of making a game...setup/goof-off time is over. I think I can still do it within this four day weekend, too - nothing fancy, just a little project to prove that I can... :wq!

I believe that the one I tried was an early version, like 2 or 3. I did not realize that so many things like title screens wouldn't be within the source code itself. But anyhow, I will be more careful. Rereading the READ-ME file did help, however, thanks. (Funny thing, Notepad came up with some garbage characters, but Crimson editor they came out fine...crazy.) So now I am testing zombie_chase.bas, which is the official, known-to-work test file from bB. I got the command line command from the READ-ME file and now I get different errors. I typed in "2600bas zombie_chase.bas" and I got this error (at least it is telling me that it errored-out. That's better than before when it was telling me everything was fine...) - <87>: Error: Unknown keyword: player1color Compilation failed So, I have decided to rename my C:AtariVCS folder to C:Atari_OLD and start over. First, grab the bB version 1.0 from the bB website. Then grab the Visual bB from the post here at Atari Age. I have already checked that my .NET framework is up to date, so I'm just afraid that one of my files is missing or corrupt. Then again, I never underestimate Operator Error! :wq!

Hey, thanks. Those are both great resources. Truth is, debuggers scare me, though. Most of it I don't understand (yet...), and the other parts I am afraid that I'll break something. :wq!

Yes. I went to bataribasic.com and double-checked that I have ALL of those files in my folder. I also checked that I have ALL of the VbB files in there. I am really considering deleting the folder and starting over, but it seems like such a waste... :wq!

OK. Update. I decided to start over, sort of... I went to the bB web site and downloaded the files over again, making sure everything is in my bB folder. I then set up Crimson Editor as the tutorial explains. I figured that I could use Visual bB, with the sprite editor, etc. to make up the source, then copy/paste into Crimson for final compilation. I used the zombie.bas test file as instructed but it errors out as follows: ---------- Capture Output ---------- > "C:\AtariVCS\bB\2600bas.bat" C:\AtariVCS\bB\zombie_chase.bas bB environment variable not set. Compilation failed. > Terminated with exit code 0. I am down to three more things to try: FIRST) If you will tell me how to compile it with the command line, I will give that a try. B) I will try that "other" 2600bas.bat file again. 3) I could trash the folder and start over from scratch as there isn't really anything I cannot replace. Thanks, all, I really do appreciate your help. :wq!

It looks like you meant "2600bas.bat" file...I have tried it and now the compiler gives me this Compile started at 11/26/2011 8:58:27 AM Compiling C:\AtariVCS\bB\Projects\GAME3\GAME3.bas and then just sits there. What it the "ALT Batch File" for? Should I put something in there? Oh, and thanks Philsan. I'll remember that. But it seems to give up no matter what code I put in. Also: the binary that it produces (when working) should be 4k, right? If I see another 0k file, I know it's bad, correct? :wq!

Howdy, SeaGtGruff. Long time, no chat. Well, I checked the indentation of the REM lines, deleted them altogether. Still No Go. I even downloaded the code for L.E.M. and 50 Foot Celery which we know work, but I still end up with a "Error creating console (check ROM file)". Makes me wonder if local setting are OK. As I said: I think that my paths are set correctly. It appears to find DASM and SED and STELLA and Z26 just fine. I'm running WinXP, so I needed to check the .NET Framework. It said my version was newer, so did not install over top, maybe that is something? Does it make any sense to go back to an older version of bB? I don't NEED all the bells and whistles of Visual bB, I suppose. So isn't there an older version (without the word "Visual", IIRC) that might be worth checking out? :wq!