During a discussion with @SvOlli about how to optimize calculations required for a low-res, playfield based plasma effect within a 512 byte demo for the 2600, I started coding myself to verify my own ideas. This eventually led to the current code.
Usually the plasma effect is created by combining sine waves. Since one of the goals was to use only minimal ROM space, I started by using precalculated, small sine tables. This worked OK, but still needed some ROM space and also a lot o
The PC I bought ~10.5 years ago is still up and running.
I only doubled the RAM and bought a new 4 TB HDD (which I plan to continue to use) when the 2 TB Seagate HDD died early. But the small SSD does still well:
63 TB total writes bytes means ~500 writes per byte. The wear level count is at 55, so it could last more than twice as long. I wonder if my next Samsung will do as well too.
Anyway, even though the SSD is still healthy and the CPU is also fine for most ta
I had a few hours to test the console and I must say, I am overall disappointed.
Positives first:
Very good HDMI output (it even remembers the last 16:9 or 4:3 setting, which is a surprise)
Convenient form factor and nice design (though I wonder why the woodgrain is orange?)
Convenient to use IF it works
Very little lag
The CPU seems powerful enough for newer Stella versions
PAL ROMs work well too (though the picture is somewhat small for PAL50)
I realized that there is no place where people can download my ROMs. So I decided I should use my blog to provide them.
There will be ROMs of all my homebrews. And maybe I will add some demo or unfinished stuff later too.
I was a bit bored this weekend, so I had a closer look to some games. A lot of games, especially from Taiwan, contain garbage data, which is unsed by the game itself. Often this garbage contains traces from the game development, sometimes even snippets of source code. In this entry I will post some source code findings.
Since Chris is busy with his RL, I will continue his blog entry about Star Castle Developments here.
Source code can be found here.
Note: There are still some occasional glitches which I have to sort out. And maybe even a crash. So if you find one, please let me know. Especially if you can reproduce it.
Attached is the final build from October 2015 and here the (never ending) DONE and TODO list:
; Explanation:
; - = open
; o = partially
; + = done
; ? = debatable
; x = cancell
After some time, I started to wonder about Paradroid again. The droid transfer game looks like a nice challenge. The kernel looks pretty busy, the level creation and evaluation seem complicated too.
I started with the kernel and soon found out, that a simple score mode kernel (color #0 left, color #1 right) won't work here due to the so called "blockers" with the opponent's color. Those are displayed on the "wrong" side. After some experimenting with variable mid-scanline color chang
I just had the "pleasure" to listen to the terrible remake of a better unnamed trash musician. So I dug out the gorgeous original from Matia Bazar. Enjoy!
Since Logitech announced to stop further development of the Squeezebox series (the server is promised to continue, and you can update the firmware to their new UE system), the devices have become much cheaper lately. So I decided to buy myself a Squeezebox Radio (limited red edition incl. accupack) for 111€.
Yesterday it arrived and I have immediately started playing with it.
The device seems really powerful, but the software is lacking quite a lot. E.g
Something I wrote this weekend inspired by the arcade game'Tunnel Hunt'. You can control the speed with the joystick (up/down).
Maybe I'll make a game out of this. Or maybe not.
EDIT: Here is how a turn may look like. Now fixed (v0.03)!
Tunnel__v0.01_.bin
Tunnel_001.zip
Tunnel__v0.03_.bin
Ok, that's the name of the game I am trying to develop now. :)It still a very long way to go. Attached you find a first (still slightly buggy) demo, which shows the kernel and the horizontal scrolling over one deck ("Repairs").Next planned steps are debugging and improving the kernel (especially getting rid of the annoying stripes in space) and allow vertical scrolling too (this one is going to become pretty tricky). Since I am pretty busy with my daily job again, progress might become very slow
Question: What do you get when you combine interleaved flicker for mixing colors with horizontal scrolling? See attachment! (scrolling left every 2nd, right every 3rd frame)
ParaTest3.bin
After "some" time, I recently decided to have another look at Robot City. Since the Minigame Compo deadline for 1K is coming soon, I decided to try again to squeeze the gameplay into 1K. Last time I failed, but now I have some more experiences in compact coding. Still I had to strip down the game massively, but finally I managed to keep the important gameplay elements intact.Attached you find the current version. It is almost complete, except for missing sound and some polishing (especially betw
After reading Manuel's blog and trying out Uridium after a long time again, I wondered if that typical Braybrook look could somehow be transformed to the 2600. For the dreadnought, we'd have to use playfield grahics. Obviously we would need more than just two colors (foreground and backgroud) there. From Andrew's experiments we know, that flicker can help here.By mixing the constant background with two different foreground colors (changing every line) and switching the order of the foreground co
Following this thread, I though I might be able to make a game out of my friction code.The (unnamed) result is maybe best described as an action version of Simon Says. Attached is a first version, showing all elements and very basic gameplay. Scoring, enemy collision detection etc. are missing.As always, opinions and suggestions are very welcome.
Noname.bin
Pixelboy's Sudoku game got me thinking. Now I am wondering about a Sudoku game and especially a generator for the 2600.
Some initial brainstorming:
Display: Has been discussed multiple times already. Should be able to display the digits (doable), annotations (tricky, 2^9 combinations!) and a cursor. Later...
RAM: 10 different values per cell (~3.4 bits), should be easily direct accessible, so no fancy compression algorithms. So 2 cells/byte, 40.5 bytes in total. After ge
After a longer break, I finally took the time and decided for a kernel. Many thanks to John for providing the basic idea of it.
SudokuKernel.bin
SudokuGridKernel.bin
Ok, it was "only" a big rack.
Yesterday morning, just a few minutes before I had to get up, I woke up by a loud crack noise followed by a big rumble right beside me.
When I switched on the light, I saw this. Sometimes collecting computer magazines can be dangerous...
EDIT: New picture I made when I cleaned the room. Lock at the crack of the desk standing right besides my head!
Homebrews
Synthcart
Lady Bug
Thrust+ Platinum
Medieval Mayhem
Star Fire
Seawolf
2005 Minigame Multicart
Skeleton+
Conquest of Mars
Fall Down
Climber 5
Marble Craze
Go Fish!
Strat-O-Gems Deluxe
Gunfight
Crazy Balloon
Dark Mage
Oystron
SWOOPS!
Testcart
Colony 7
Space Instigators
Hunchy II
A-VCS-tec Challenge
Space Treat Del
Inspired by this blog entry, I spend spend some time with the line drawing part of Elite.
Since there is no double-buffer (like Elite), I experimented with 3 ways of line drawing:
1. Clearing the whole screen and then drawing all lines.
2. Plotting pixels with XOR, erasing the old and immediately redrawing the new line
one by one.
3. Plotting pixels with XOR, erasing all lines first and then redrawing all new lines.
The constant clearing time in variat
Looks like my new games take about as long as it takes to make me buy new hardware.
So I spend the last days to browse the Internet and magazines to select the components for my new PC. Didn't think this would be any fun anymore, but it turned out to be quite interesting. Today I finally ordered it, and it really felt good (hope this feeling stay when I build it together ).
For those who are interested in details:
BitFenix Shinobi SB 3.0 Midi-Tower USB 3.0 black
During my work with Space Castle I have to manage quite a lot of graphic data. Especially the castle explosion is very big (currently 16 frames, each 5 blocks of 40 bytes = 3200 bytes) but there also is a lot of other graphic data needed for the various messages and the scores.
All data is compressed by overlapping the data blocks. For the explosion this was done by Chris before I took over from him. When Nathan asked me, if there is enough space for frames to improve the explosion,
Last Wednesday morning I smelled some burned rubber in the kitchen. But I was unable to detect the origin. A few minutes later, my whole flat lost power. Since all my fuses where on, I thought about a power loss in the building. But the light outside my building was OK. So I informed my landlord who send an electrician pretty immediately. Meanwhile my power had come back (and the smell too). The electrician checked my fuse box and electric meter and found... nothing! But he identified the orig
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