Just a quick update on my PoP project:In my last entry I outlined a complex scheme for implementing the doors and switches. After a weekend of programming I have now implemented the doors part (see attached) and it appears to work. I have also coded most of the switches part, but it isn't linked to the collision detection yet. The attached code shows two doors being animated. The cool part is that if you go off the screen to the left or right then you see the same doors moving. The ne
I have made a little more progress on my 2600 Star Castle demo:
Ship rotation is slower.
Ring colours now match the arcade version.
Player bounces off the rings.
Centre gun tracks the player position.
The main issue now is collision detection between the bullets and the rings. I haven't yet worked out an efficient way to detect when a ring sector is hit by a bullet, and the code is starting to get tight for cycles.
Let me know what you think?
Chris
starkernel4
Here is another small update to my Star Castle demo on the 2600:
The mines now follow you around the screen. They will reset to the centre if they go off screen.
You can shoot the mines, and collisions between the ship and mines are detected (the screen will flash).
Ship rotation is now much slower.
There are still a few issues with the ship and mines at the edges of the screen, but I'll fix these later. The mines are flickered at 20Hz so that 3 can be displayed. The flicker w
I am not very good at multitasking. I find it difficult to switch from one project to another, and so I tend to give a single project my full attention for some time while ignoring the rest. My problem is that I have a lot of projects, including redecorating my house, writing a book, developing several websites, and learning to drive. I guess that my girlfriend should also be included in that list! As a result, my Atari projects tend to move along at a relatively slow pace, with occasiona
The pre-release version of the Harmony cart is now finished and is being sold at the Portland RetroGaming Expo. I expect that the bug reports and feature requests will start arriving soon! Before they do, I though I would write a little more about how the Harmony driver software works.
The Harmony driver is written using a mix of C and ARM assembly language. The ARM assembly is used for the performance critical stuff, like feeding the Atari with instructions, while the C code is used f
I'm going to be taking a break from Atari 2600 homebrewing for a while due to real-life considerations. I will still be lurking around the forums, but I won't have any time for coding for some time. Fortunately the various projects that I have been involved in are in good hands:
Chetiry will be released at the PRGE later this month and will be available in the AA store shortly after.
Star Castle is being partially rewritten by Thomas Jentzsch - he has made excellent progress and shoul
I have been spending the last week getting Hunchy II into shape for the PhillyClassic show. I think I have the final binary (barring some possible tweaks to the tile screen), jussts is nearly finished the label, and the manual text is written and being compiled by Tony Morse. With luck, my first Atari 2600 cart game will soon be released, and I can't wait to play it!As part of the testing process for Hunchy II I unpacked my Supercharger from storage. At the same time I decided to see if Po
A couple of entries back I was pondering which project to do next after Juno First. Since then, I have been working on the semi-secret Harmony/Melody cart project. This project is now close to completion, and so I think it is safe to write some details about it here. To keep things simple, I'll only talk about the Harmony cart. The Melody cart is the same, but without the SD card and USB options.
The Harmony cart project was started by batari around a year ago. As I understand it,
I've made some more progress on my Juno First game. The main change is the addition of a startup screen and the high-score table kernel from the last entry. I've also added SaveKey support, but it is commented out at the moment as I haven't been able to test it properly yet. I've left in the "Enter Name" screen, but in the final version this won't be shown unless a SaveKey is connected. The main game hasn't changed at all yet, except for the scoring which I have divided by 10 (it was too
OK, to get things moving I thought I would post a little about how I came to start programming for the Atari 2600. Unlike many of the folks around here, I have only been programming the 2600 for a short time (since the beginning of 2005), and I still consider myself to be a newbie in the scene.Although I was around in the heyday of the 2600, I must admit that it passed me by completely. I only became interested in computers, and computer games, with the later advent of the 8-bit home micros,
Last week I received a shiny new Krokodile Cartridge (KC) in the mail. I had been on the waiting list for some time, so it was great to finally get hold of one. It came at a good time, as I needed some way to test my Juno First game on real Atari hardware since exceeding the limits of my Supercharger (SC). In addition to permitting binaries over 4K, the KC has a number of other advantages over the SC: it doesn't require the weird audio setup that I was using to transfer game images, it ha
I have done a lot of work on the Juno First levels today. The aliens should spawn further apart (to reduce flicker) and they shouldn't appear directly in front of your ship any more (most of the time). I have also expanded the game to 16 levels, and I will be amazed if anyone can complete them all! Let me know what you think of these levels. In particular, are they too repetitive or too difficult? I haven't made any other alterations to the game yet - the changes discussed in the pre
The name of this blog is "The Southsider", which is the name of the pub that I frequent several times a week. I have attached a photo of the establishment below:To the uninitiated, a pub may simply appear to be a drinking house. However, this is only a small part of the picture. The British pub is a tradition here which stretches back to the bronze age, where "pub" is a shortened version of "public house". The purpose of the pub is to act a place where anyone (over the age of 18) can com
I have started to look at the Atari 2600 PoP project again now that the Harmony software is essentially done. I am making no promises on getting it finished, but I intend to do a bit more work on it to see where it goes. At the very least, I want to include the excellent sprites that LS_Dracon has produced. The first thing that I have done is to completely rewrite the kernel:
From the screen-shot, it looks almost identical to the old kernel, but there are two important differences.
It's been a while since I posted anything here, so here is a quick entry about a recent Atari 2600 project of mine.
I had an idea for a holiday-cart based around the Ultimate game Pssst! for the ZX Spectrum. For those unfamiliar with the game, here is a flash version of Pssst!, and a YouTube video of Pssst!.
The aim of Pssst! is to protect the flower growing in the centre of the screen from a variety of different bugs. The bugs are destroyed by spraying them using the aerosols positi
Now that the Juno First release candidate is out, I have a bit more time to look at other 2600 programming. I have been interested in batari basic for a while as I have several game ideas that could be done with a custom kernel strapped on. However, until recently I hadn't really looked at batari basic properly.
One thing that has been bothering me is that batari basic doesn't have a way to load playfield data directly from ROM. There are several games (e.g. Cave In) that have a high r
I'm still having fun writing text kernels. The latest version (attached) is an update to my 28char kernel to display multiple lines of text. This new kernel shows a 28x12 display without any restrictions. The kernel doesn't use any illegal opcodes, and there are still around 30 free cycles per-line, so it should be possible to display a few more lines of text with some work. Unfortunately, as before it has a 20Hz flicker, so it is essential to use the phosphor options under emulation. I
Here is another quick progress update on my Juno First game. I have now implemented the missiles, which were the final missing feature in the game. Up to 8 missiles can be shown simultaneously on screen (using flicker). There is still a bit of tearing when the missiles pass over the grid lines, but I hope this isn't too noticable. The missile firing patterns are rather boring, but I will improve this later. I was originally planning to use one of the missile sprites for regular missile
GlobeTrotter (Trotter for short) is currently visiting me here in Edinburgh as he continues on his worldwide tour. I was supposed to pick him up at the vgXpo but he didn't make it in time, so he came by mail instead. There were some delays as he got impounded by customs on the way over and I had to pay import duty to retrieve him, but eventually he arrived. If this all sounds like gibberish, then this thread should enlighten you Anyway, he will be continuing his journeys soon, but I have
There are some times in programming, particularly on the 2600, that you have to expend a lot of effort to achieve relatively little. The last few days working on the PoP kernel have been like this for me. Having now become convinced of the safety and benefits of the undocumented 6502 instructions, I decided to use them to improve the efficiency of my code. In particular, I wasn't happy with the self-modifying code used in the kernel. Although this code was working fine, it was taking 14
You need to have a thick-skin to be a gamer in Europe. Since the beginning, we have had to suffer from shoddy PAL conversions, lengthy release shedules, and a feeling of total neglect in the market. I am sure there are parts of the world that are worse off, but Europe always comes in as a distinct third place behind Japan and the US. Particularly galling is that a great many games are actually written in Europe, but are still subject to these problems. The latest insult to us Europeans was
OK, here is a small update to Juno First. The main change is the addition of sound effects to the game. I initially tried to approximate the arcade effects, but eventually gave up and just went for effects that sounded reasonable. Let me know if they sound OK, and if the background hum is too annoying (I don't want a repeat of Hunchy 2!). I haven't added all the effects yet - I'm still trying to find a reasonable explosion sound for the aliens, and a few other spot effects. This versio
The 2600 scene is still alive and well, and there are quite a few of exciting projects currently in development. I have probably forgotten some, but the ones that I am looking forward to the most are:
Hardware:
AtariVox+ - I think this has been delayed by the difficulty in getting hold of SpeakJet chips.
Project Unity - a nice project to build a portable 2600 with integrated Harmony cart.
Flashback 3/Portable Flashback - actually I would settle for a PAL version of the FB2!
I've been doing a bit more work on the Harmony project recently (together with batari and Thomas Jentzsch).
It was a bit of a struggle, but it actually seems to be working now - teaser shots below:
Chris
This will probably be my last entry for a while as I am off next week to Washington DC for a conference, and then on to the vgXpo in Philadelphia the following weekend. Fortunately things are looking better for the vgXpo now as many people on the forum have said they are still going, and AA will have a stand there after all. The Hunchy 2 carts have now been soldered by Al, and should be available for sale at the show. If there are any bugs still remaining in Hunchy 2 then it is too late!
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