Leaderboard

Last Squadron preview

Thank you. Here's the latest version (WIP): Indeed, I try to use the Atari's palette while trying to stay true to the source ?. Anyway, I'm going back to work on the game....

Hi everyone, Whilst I don't unfortunately have an XL machine myself I often watch various Youtube channels and videos covering these machines. I came across this channel recently called the Byte Attic where the chap (I can't find his name unfortunately) has been designing a Sally replacement which plugs directly into the socket (replacing it with a PCB containing a W65C02S and some logic and transceiver chips). He has just completed the series and has made the board available on Github here. The design starts in Part 3 of his 5 part series: Hopefully some of you might be able to resurrect a machine or two using it ?

Here we go: the time for the drawing routine has been cut in half, resulting in a frame rate of 4-5 FPS. texcaster.rpk texcaster8.bin

Here are 3 more pages done...

Someone posted what appears to be close to final gameplay over on YT. Very interesting. Could a release be near?

Hey all, As I think is reasonably well-known Daniel Bass pioneered colour multiplexing for use on the Intellivision when he was creating Tower of Mystery / Tower of Doom. This technique, named "bi-color" by Daniel, gives the illusion of more than 16 hues by toggling the colour of tiles every frame (1/60th second). The persistence of the slow phosphors on old CRTs (which were geared to smoothing the 60 fields/second of interlaced NTSC TV into 30 frames/second) would then blend the two basic colours into a third hue. Well, it turns out that quite a bit of work was done on this, which was then written up in an internal Mattel memo: rainbow.pdf As always, a hat tip to Daniel and Karl Morris for their work, and to Tom and Braxton at UCI for sharing this document from the BSR archives. As you can see, an extensive exploration was done of the 240 new colours that the technique afforded, looking at how stable they were and comparing them with standard Pantone shades. Talking to Daniel, this analysis was completed by Karl. Daniel then wrote the program RAINBOW to demonstrate some of the "best" colours that Karl found and allow developers to test how they interacted with different background colours as the level of flicker could vary significantly. We think that the original RAINBOW is probably lost to time, however, I thought it might be fun to try to re-create something similar based on the description in Daniel's instructions to show off the colours that Karl found. The results of this can be seen below (Warning - some background colours result in lots of potentially seizure inducing flicker - this is not nearly as bad in real life without YouTube doing its thing. You also have to force YouTube to 1080p60 to see the bi-color effect properly) rainbow.zip The zip archive above contains both the ROM and the source code of the RAINBOW replica, which is largely written in IntyBASIC. Instructions for the use of the ROM can be found on page 2 of Daniel's memo. As I come from the land of PAL, if anyone has an LTO Flash and a CRT I'd be very interested in seeing a video of the program in action on authentic US hardware. Whilst I have talked to Daniel about RAINBOW, there are a number of areas where artistic licence has been applied in putting together the replica. As a consequence, whilst the colour changing algorithm is replicated and should display correctly on an NTSC CRT, the UI is not accurate. Specifically, Daniel does not recall trying bi-colors on MOBs, so it is unlikely that the pattern on the right of the screen was animated (I left this in for reasons that will become apparent below) and the following are not known: Whether or not the columns and rows were labelled The shape and size of the colour swatches on the left side of the screen What static pattern was shown on the right side of the screen to illustrate the selected colour against the current background The shape and colour of the cursor How the cursor moved (whether it glided smoothly or jumped from one swatch to another) Whether any information was reported about the selected colour Having played with the RAINBOW replica a bit using JzIntv, I have found it takes JzIntv / Windows / Linux a few seconds to sort their respective lives out and get to a point where the frame rate stabilises and the flicker is minimised. Once things settle down, I agree with Daniel that the bi-color effect works well with small areas of the screen (and by extension probably less so with larger solid blocks of colour). However, I would add that when combined with the motion of a sprite the effect is very convincing, even in an emulator running on a modern monitor. Therefore, the bi-color technique might be best suited to use with MOBs in fast moving action games. This may already have been noted elsewhere, but a small extension to Daniel's technique also seems plausible. It may be possible to get 3 hues for the price of 2 MOBs with minimal flicker by using a single basic colour on one MOB, and then multiplexing a second MOB between two different highlighted areas over the top of the first, as shown below: For this to work one of the two components of each of the MOB2 bi-color shades would have to be same as the basic colour used for MOB1, and MOB2 will need to be repositioned and / or reprogrammed between each frame. Anyway, despite the replica UI being less than accurate, I think this is another nice little glimpse into the kind of tools and techniques that the Intellivision developers were using towards the end of the Mattel era. Thanks once again to Daniel, Karl, Tom and Braxton. Cheers decle

@Karl G and @jwelsh, no worries so far as buying a copy. It will be free. But, just so that I can retire someday, I will only guarantee ten copies. And just so this doesn't go on forever, let's set a request deadline for midnight September 1st. If there is interest beyond ten copies, I will have my kids draw names out of a hat after September 1st. @Prizrak and @KevKelley are guaranteed copies since they requested copies in earlier posts (these won't count against the guaranteed ten copies). Once I figure out how many I need for friends, family, and intended recipients, I may have some extra. @Albert is getting me a pretty sweet deal on the cartridges, so there may be a few more to give away. Unless you tell me otherwise, I will assume you want s NTSC version. If you want a PAL60 version, please indicate as such. For those that haven't followed this thread before or are wondering why I am giving copies away for free (or in a mood for little bit of a sob story), checkout post #14 in this thread which gives more details on the background of the game. I didn't make this game for fame, and certainly didn't make it for money. Working on this game has helped me get through the past year and a half. My next doctor's appointment is next month. If that visit goes well, I am statistically much more in the clear in regards to a potential recurrence. I am sharing my game with others as a celebration of life and to give just a little bit back.

First off, thanks to everyone for their positive comments on Doggone It!. The feedback has been much appreciated. Being my first game and new to AtariAge, I have been overwhelmed by the community’s reaction. I will be ordering cartridges soon from AtariAge. I have not modified the game design since the initial post, but I think I will bump up the volume just a little for the cartridges. I have attached images of the cartridge labels. My graphic designer is moving on to the box and manual designs, so it still may be a little while before the project is complete. For those of you that requested a free game, I will contact you via personal messenger once the entire game package is ready.

Hangman has been bugfixed, and no longer hangs. Fortunately or unfortunately, no moles were harmed in this process: Thank you Thomas for uploading the file for me as the post was too old to edit.

I like the electronic design not requiring programming of a PLD. But due to the through-hole parts being used it's a rather large board that may interfere with other upgrades depending on the model of Atari this gets used in. I think down the road what I would like to do is layout a new version of the PCB using SMD components, which should allow it to be shrunk down to a footprint barely larger than just the CPU itself. If I do this (I'm not saying that I will), I would of course release the gerbers into the public domain same as the original creator and credit him on the silkscreen for the original design. Here's an example of what I am thinking the size could be reduced down to... Unlike this example board that utilized a straight thru piggyback, it would still require an offset header similar to what was done in the original layout for signals that don't pass all the way thru, and it would need to have SMD components top & bottom in order to stay inside the CPU footprint. Overall I think it would end up with a footprint the same as my example photo.

What are you guys even talking about? I thought the Jaguar was capable of displaying 16.8 million colors pushing over 850,000 pixels a second and is 64-bit? But seriously, 256 is where it's at. Anything less would seem like a major downgrade since it appears the CoJag version is using 16-bit backgrounds to begin with.

No I'm not using SAMS yet. I copied 4 textures to RAM, and that's at least as fast as using SAMS. I also thought about optimizing the sky/floor/monochrome wall drawing, but I don't think it's worthwhile to unroll those loops entirely unless the sky/floor are also textured. In this video I doubled the number of pixels written per wall/floor iteration from 4 to 8, and maybe you can see a slight difference, but I don't think unrolling those loop any further will have any visible effect.

I don't want to brag too much (although how can you brag about being exactly average? ? ), but since I joined the HSC four seasons ago... Season 7 Taz: No one got loner Season 8 Silver Pick/Gopher: Loner = Dr Moocowz Season 9 Polaris: No one got loner Since my participation in the HSC, I can say I'm officially the best at being the most average during buddy week! ??

Docs for XB 2.8 G.E.M. are pretty much done. Now the docs for XB256, TML, TMLGA, T80 and T40 must be revised to reflect the changes. Hoping to be done by the end of August.

Clever but it's a solution in search of a problem. A new WDC65C02S runs about seven bucks at Mouser. A new old-stock SALLY is eight bucks from Best Electronics.

31,500

Worm 13,938

Hesitated to post these publicly, but I find posts of this sort interesting to follow, so I figured I'd share in case others do as well. A fellow forum member (Feel free to identify yourself if you please, or remain anonymous) got wind I was looking to build a few Skunkboards of my own, and graciously sent me a pair of spare PCBs he had lying around. Well, that was exciting enough to halt all my other projects while I put through orders for the other hard-to-find parts I'd already been tracking down. To hell with getting my more sensible projects done! I got the various obsolete chips from UTSource today, the annoyingly-hard-to-find-in-quantities-of-under-10,000 USB power supply chips direct from TI at double the reasonable price yesterday, and the rest from digikey today, and started populating the boards. I'd done a few QFP/SMD practice kits no sweat and thought I'd be whipping through it, but working with a real board proved a bit more challenging. Took me all evening just to get this far, and I may or may not have spent half that time very, very gingerly decoupling and straightening two bent pins on the corner of one of these Xilinx CPLDs that I accidentally jammed together trying to tack the very first pin into place on a board covered in overly-gummy flux ? The resulting soldering is still pretty ugly on both, but at least I managed to get the second one on on the first try without any shorts to clean up afterwards. I'll be amazed if that first CPLD ends up programmable, but fortunately, as you can see, I have a few spares and invested in a dirt-cheap knockoff 858D hot air reflow solder station to properly solder those TI chips with their annoying thermal pad on the bottom (That was last night's adventure), so I can pop it off and try again if needed. Ultimately I have plans to make a few minor modifications to the PCB layout to add a few features I've been wishing my skunk had, more in the name of improving my applied EE skills than anything else, in which case I'll be able to make use of those extra components. My other minor practice projects thus far have basically been excuses to practice for that much more involved project, and I'll probably carry on with them to gain more experience before moving forward with a custom skunk. For now, after tonight's harrowing experience, I'll be happy if I can manage to not f**k up these boards while building them! I'll post updates as I make progress on the build & bringup if I don't get flamed off the forums first for going on and on about another pointless project with the GD imminent

Doggone It! 4K – NTSC & PAL60– Assembly – One player 7/5/2020 - Added binary for PAL60 version. 1/2/2021 - Added .pdf files for manual and Nathan Strum review as well as .jpg files for notepad and box images. After growing up with the Atari 2600 in the 80’s, I rediscovered it a while back. I obtained a Light Sixer from a local gaming store and started collecting games. Soon, I became curious to see what it would take to make a game. I had an idea for one based on some real life events. Once I stumbled upon the Atari homebrew scene, I took the plunge and decided to make the game. To pay homage to those early developers that brought me so much joy as a kid, I decided to make it in Assembly and limit the size to 4K. After teaching myself Assembly, adjusting game mechanics as I learned the programming limitations, and more than just a few screen rolls later, I would like to share my game, Doggone It!, with the AtariAge community. After having an inner circle of game testers play the game and a few revisions already taken place, I am considering this version to be a final release candidate. I welcome any feedback, suggestions, and of course, discovery of any bugs/issues. Also, I would be interested in your best scores. While there is a story behind the game and my AtariAge display name, I would rather focus on the gameplay for now. My graphic designer is currently working on developing artwork and a manual that will include more background on the game’s story. In the meantime, I have thrown together a quick start guide, included in this post, presenting a condensed version of the essential information. If there are any game elements that are not clear, I will certainly attempt to address them in this forum. Thanks and enjoy. - Andrew a.k.a. “Armscar Coder” Doggone_It!.bin Doggone It! quick start guide.pdf Doggone_It!_PAL60.bin Packaging Files (added 1/2/2021): Doggone It! Manual.pdf Doggone It! Nathan Strum Review.pdf

Hello Atari Age people! I am looking to get rid of my three Nintendo games for the Phillips CD-i. I have Hotel Mario, Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon. I'm looking for $165 each for the Zelda games and $60 for Hotel Mario. I've tested these and they work! I know I'm new to the community, but I do have a feedback thread for another positive CD-i deal I did. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/310131-oddsandendsatari/ Here's what I have for photos:

Game is amazing - sound is great, graphics are beyond believe (on an Atari 2600) and most of it - it plays like a charm (fast and has a „good feeling“). It‘s not complete but yet has a great attention to detail - i can confirm that there are also hidden secrets on board like the little white flag earning an extra life (found it only once today and managed to collect it). Only wish for the future is a PAL 60 version, please!

409,419

LOL, Captain Comic was actually on my shortlist of good port candidates! That'll be awesome to see TSH, and it already looks pretty darn good.

Facebook marketplace is becoming the new eBay. No bidding though. Prices are sensible and sellers are looking to move what they have. I'm tired of people on eBay thinking they have some kind of gold mine for every little POS they sell. How can a guy post a classic console system with a beat-up box and some crushed game boxes for 2k like it was the only one on the planet. Typical eBay "ass for every seat" mentality is killing the hobby.

Utopia 2644 Mame, intellivision controller Eked out a few more points.

"Not tested" often means the seller doesn't know how to connect it to their TV or can't be bothered to do it.

I agree a slimline form factor would be better - space for a given upgrade usually steals from adjacent areas. Off topic somewhat but in the modern day why don't we yet have a plugin emulated replacement? The thought is a PIC, AVR, something, that runs a 6502 core and can behave exactly like the OEM part. Then add things like 65C02 mode, maybe 65816, and obviously why not have a 6809 mode as well?

Tiny 5 point increase over my last score. 2,607 30/45 Biff, I don’t know how you do it!

I have been admiring the beautiful graphics. Perhaps Titan would be worthy of a facelift to make it a real cart release.

The countdown begins for PRGE 2021 The dates appear to be Aug 7-8, 2021 But the official PRGE site hasn't been updated to show 2021 dates, so we'd need confirmation from them to make it really official.

shipwreck stage 32 Color spliced gfx mode: shipwreck stage 16 color 4 bit gfx mode: : Atlantis stage 32 Color spliced gfx mode: Atlantis stage 16 color 4 bit gfx mode:

Zeviouz for the Atari 2600 was unveiled today on Zero Page Homebrew channel - I highly recommend watching the show if you have not seen it already! Here is the binary version for everyone to playtest - it is around 80% complete, with the following features missing: Andor-Genesis Motherships. PAL60 support. High-score table. Atarivox support (not sure about including speech?). Attract mode. Two-Player Support (turn-based, not simultaneous). The game is a direct port from the 7800 source code, with lots of optimizations and tweaks to make it work on the 2600. The main differences from the 7800 version are: The scrolling background uses the playfield instead of tiles. The sprites (by Nathan Strum) are based on the arcade version. The ground enemies are animated, e.g. buildings open-up to fire. The level layouts are modified to reduce flicker. Note that it is a CDFJ/ARM game and will only work on a recent version of Stella or a real Atari 2600 with a Harmony cart. Let me know if you find any bugs, or have any suggestions! Chris zeviouz00_NTSC.bin

Download JAGPOWAH! PLAY! Here! -----------> JagPowah!.zip <------------- About this program: JAGPOWAH! PLAY! is a 1MB ROM Lottery Number Generator for the Atari Jaguar and is distributed free of charge. This ROM is compatible for use on both a Skunkboard and the Jaguar GameDrive, with an included MRQ file. It will also work on Virtual Jaguar but is not ideal and as always, looks best on a CRT! Controls: C – Clear Recent Drawings B – Draw Numbers A – Display Recent 5 Drawings (these will automatically overlap unless cleared or you change the region) PAUSE – Info about JAGPOWAH! Play! OPTIONS – Region select and Draw speeds. UP/RIGHT/LEFT/DOWN – Exit screensaver mode Additional details regarding the creation of this program: While this is a non-traditional program for a game console, it has been something I wanted to create for a long time now and felt like it would be fun to throw together in a matter of a few days (over the weekend) but ended up taking a few extra days to complete, because my OCD kicked in and I wanted everything to align up just right. I woke up one morning with the thought of finally making this and after lying in bed for about 25-minutes, mentally piecing together how I could write the program, decided then was the time to get up and get to it. 15-hours later, it was time to put it down with hopes of finishing up the remaining bits the day after. Of course feature creep set in, like additional regions and fine tuning the self-centering text for the balls, as well as throwing together the intro title screen, creating the sounds, etc. It was kind of a throwback to the basic programming days, like the lottery programs you would punch into your Atari, Commodore or other 8-bit computers, only I wanted to make it a tad fancier, more than just a simple text line display. Feel like I succeeded in what I'd originally set out to do and so, JAGPOWAH! PLAY! was born, which is of course a play on words over the mockery about the Jaguar's (or lack thereof) capabilities., not that anyone wouldn't have noticed without my mentioning it ; - ) For what should have been such a simple program, or is rather, it sure took a lot of time to put together. Half of that time probably dedicated to trial and error. It isn't something you can just copy and paste over from an 80s basic book either, despite the name of the program used to create it with (RAPTOR Basic+), as it required coding everything from scratch and working out how to randomize, store, and sort the numbers, all the while not having duplicate numbers pop out and following rules setup for the different regions. If all of that sounds exciting (not actually), imagine the fun of text placement and random Jaguar glitches where the screen would fizzle out into an RF scramble because something wasn't setup correctly (generally my fault) or if the Jaguar wasn't given a proper delay after a function, would then flip out in the way of bizarre abnormalities. Anyways, it actually was fun to put together. I hope some of you download, use and enjoy it! As best said by Skylar: Good Luck! Shout out to Peter for assisting with the German Lotto specifics and Rees for JagGD ROM and MRQ testing/verification. Just for fun and to help increase program use/interaction, I'm making available a single JagSwag™Pack #1 to the first person (aka. One Lucky Winner!) who can figure out how to enable “super” turbo draw and to be the first one here to post how to do it. (I've made it kind of easy to figure out I think, as it should take less than a minute to stumble upon with enough fumbling, but I guess we'll see how long it takes...) JagSwag™ Pack #1 consists of the following 6 Super Cool items: 2 Holographic Jaguar Logo Stickers (you know, so you'll actually use one of them!) 1 JagClaw Coaster for your drinks! (self destructs after 90-days, you have no choice but to use it!) 1 Super Cool Holographic Jaguar “Pouncing” Sticker (this one is worth saving) 1 JagClaw Sticker (perfect application to any vehicle or computer case) The 1 (and only) Faux JAGPOWAH! Play! Lottery Slip (as seen in the faux promo ad above)

A big box arrived at my home today. Inside are 24 Trimerous chips, 24 boxes, 24 front labels, and 24 side labels. And they all came not being precut, which means I have to be the one cutting. I did the first one with scissors, and it looked okay despite me having shaky hands. Then I remembered "I have a cutter for this type of thing!" So the second one looks much better. Unfortunately though, the labels have curved edges (of course they do.) So that part has to be hand done. But other than that, I think I can make a quality product. And I have 22 Channel F carts left to assemble. I have to get myself down to the copy shop to get the manuals printed. I printed one for the printers to copy. I had to change the ink cartridge in my printer even though it was still half-way filled up because it showed your typical "home printer lines" on the blue parts. Changing the cartridge got rid of them. And THEN, once the printer's visit is done, the labels cut, the cartridges assembled, can I be able to make a for sale thread in the marketplace and accept orders. This is hard work, but I hope it pays off in the end. My arm still hurts when I try to raise it or move it in any direction. Who knew how often I use my left arm? I'm right handed, so I chose my left arm to get the shot in. My hunch of it hurting was good.

The heroic struggle of Micro-Americans to be free This is an Infocom brochure that I came across in my stuff. I didn't see it on AtariMania. I remember, BitD, thinking it was clever, so I thought I would share it with you guys. You'll have to lay down, or rotate your monitor, though....

I like the Sears and Radio Shack models. Arguably the most aesthetic of the bunch.

Bought new when I was in college. Still have that system.

What I like about this one is that it contains actual arcade games, not SMS or Genesis "downgrades". That's the kind of thing I like to see.

For me it was two games that I knew about and wanted to play. Once I played them on a real 5200 I was hooked and started to collect from there. Those two games I've said in several other threads over the years but they were... Star Raiders and Rescue of Fractalus

Even with the original Sally still available from Best, you have to factor in a pretty steep shipping and handling fee + minimum order requirements. I could also see an advantage in the Sally replacement having a much lower power requirement due to being CMOS (Sally gets very hot - meaning it's drawing quite a bit of power), and a few more efficient OP-Codes. Cons would be no support for illegal OP-Codes, although that's rarely a problem. I just went to the GitHub link, but nothing appears to have been uploaded. Never mind - it was my browser's javascript blocker causing the problem.

I actually don't think they're blurry. I don't have any mods. It's standard definition from 1979 Compared to the HD mod, it looks blurry ... but on its own, it's very clear picture in person. Well here's my personalized pic in case anyone thinks that was a fake pic

Second Entry ... and NEW PB 343,675 This is definitely my favorite game on the Intellivision I just LOVE IT❤️ ❤️❤️

Bounce 'n Pounce - 38,514 A Bump 'N Jump clone!!!

Obligatory Worm Whomper entry. (First try)

I inadvertently did my own Schrödinger's cat (type) experiment today. I dropped a light bulb at the dollar store and then bought it. It's in the box, but until I plug it in, I don't know if it works or not. Science can be cruel, but I saved a cat!

thx! Even though this thread aims to list the non original songs played in Intellivision games I think it's right to include also the original ones p.s.: I have your CD

Expanded GRAM only works in colorstack mode.

I did all the ground work of adding the unrolled texture drawing code to the ROM cartridge before I realized there is a big problem: the textures themselves are also in the ROM cart and it is not possible to map two banks of the cart into the CPU address space at the same time. The good news is that I still have room in RAM to copy the current textures over, so I'm able to make a demo to see the effects of unrolling the drawing code, but that wouldn't work in a game with lots of textures. The only solution I can think of is to use SAMS memory, which allows multiple 4K pages mapped at different locations.

thanks rr Zaxxoin very frustrating, not made any progress but Super Z easier and 79,000 5th level.