Leaderboard

And now... it's a game! I put all the tables in for object to object interaction, and now boulders and diamonds fall and kill stuff (butterflies, fireflies, YOU!). Also, butterflies and fireflies have correct proximity detection to amoeba and YOU! and they blow up properly. Basically the whole fundamentals of the gameplay are now in, and it's actually quite fun. I did a bit of a longplay video to show it off. I put in a "cave select" so you see me cycle through a few of the caves now and then, as I select which one to play. At the end of the video I waited in vain for the amoeba to get trapped, but forgot I had a bug in the "turn into diamonds" code, so that didn't happen, so I went to the bottom, let the amoeba grow super big and it did correctly turn into boulders at the end. Also, I've worked very hard at getting that "overview" screen as close to the main screen in visuals as I can. 1-pixel-wide animation/graphics are a hoot. It's all coming together. Sprites next>?

Classic99 399.043 - Minor bugfix - don't switch to slow mode after pasting http://harmlesslion.com/software/classic99

When you die the people that love you ask God "Why him?" and wish you'd come back... but when you do there's a lot of running and screaming...

Thank you for your kind words, your trust and your understanding. Rest assured that once we can count on a steady supply of carts we will continue developing new games for Intellivision. We enjoy developing for Intellivision A LOT.

If you ever have to stuff stuff on top of other stuff, to make room for more stuff and stuff.. You prolly got too much stuff.

Hi everyone, finally dug out my old Atari 2600 to get it up and running again and thought I would officially join the site after a few years of lurking. Was able to get my old baby running again after fixing a broken solder joint on the power plug, reseating the IC's and adding a composite video mod to connect it to my Commodore 1702 monitor. Fun fact, in Grade 6 we had to keep a daily journal, which I kept. So based on the journal I was able to pinpoint getting my Atari 2600 (Woody) on January 5th, 1984

I want to put this out there. Between @InsaneMultitasker and myself, summer is approaching and I know we both have various things that will distract our time from programming unlike the winter months. I know we will both try to address any serious issues or concerns should they arise, but the "extras" will be on limited basis. I really don't anticipate any serious issues as Insanemultitasker and myself have put a lot of time in testing the new code. I know I will be doing some traveling for work, plus other "fun" traveling this summer and fall so I know time is going to be reduced on my end. Anyways, that is why I have the "list" of things on 9640news.com so we can track them so they are not forgotten. The focus right now is to resolve any Geneve boot eprom issues for the new devices added and identify those fixes and barring any other significant issues, take a breather. I hope everyone understands!

Here's a better bubbling. Subtle, but that's good, right? I'm working to a new metric. Instead of hours/day on this project, it's hours per pixel. Edit: oh, I abandoned the shimmering boulder thing. They're just solid now, no flickeryness. bubble.mp4

I posted this in my collection post when I got a Genesis, 32x, and Jaguar from eightbit. I am genuinely depressed because nobody laughed at this joke.

The PCBs arrived yesterday evening, at the last hour of delivery. I was eager to start building, but no energy left at that point. Instead I just used a multimeter to check the board. At least everything is not shorted and this PCB fits into a cartridge case nicely! My silkscreen design job is far from perfect, but much better than with the previous boards.

One of my sons is practicing his video editing skills, so he offered to do a Songbird montage for me. He did the filming and editing for the first part all on his own, plus of course he edited various clips I gave him. Really happy with the final product. Hope you enjoy it! P.S. There is at least one upcoming game for this year NOT featured in the video... stay tuned.

I think somebody at Atari was eating a pack of Necco wafers, set a few on the proto console, and then said, "hey, check this out!"...

I figured I'd finally check back on this place. Nice to be back. I recently started work on an hdmi mod for my atari vcs cuz it looks nasty on the new bigscreen.

Just got it! I haven't tested it yet but the card and origami are an adorable touch! ?

Yes that should be fine. I did some recalculation of the BOM, the range I provided before was lacking the PCB price and VAT I needed to pay for the parts. I think I will set the price of the prototypes / first batch to around 50 EUR each + shipping. That would enable me to recoup the price of the components and prototype boards. I can't really put a price on the manual assembly and testing work, otherwise the price becomes stupid.

With one bit in a dedicated status byte set for projectile inflight, I say no. If anything, he saved managing just one bit. The approach of staying inside a bullet movement sub-loop causes the game to stutter. He could have moved the bullet a little, maybe 1-to-4 pixels per pass, at a rate of 60 (or 50 PAL) passes per second. Resetting the bullet inflight status bit (to zero) if there’s a collision or off-screen event. This means he could have returned to the main game loop after moving the bullet (a smidgen) and checking for collisions and screen edges. The rate of travel for the bullet would be 60-to-240 pixels per second, or 50-to-200 PAL rate pixels. Plenty fast. Picture code running at about 600 commands/operations per pass, at 60 or 50 passes per second. That’s the beauty of assembly. Of course this criticism comes after 40 years of technique sharing and improvement. The author wrote a great game for its era. Another big problem with TC shooting is the schooner can’t turn or retreat while shooting. You’re stuck in one position while firing. A twin-stick control scheme would be ideal here. Something Robotron-like or perhaps a two player version: one player moves the schooner, another player shoots in all directions. Has anyone developed one of those twin-stick couplers for the 99/4A controller?

I keep this 15khz link on my phone for whenever I’m thrifting. Easily found two NEC MultiSync 19” 4*3 LCD monitors — 1970gx and 1970nx. Both work great with classic Macs, Atari ST, etc. No add on or converters needed. With this the list I was able find them in a few months during weekly stops at the local Goodwill. Cost: $9.99 each. Very impressed with the quality of NEC MultiSync monitors. Especially considering they’re both over 15 years old.

I listened to several of Count Dankula's "Mad Lads" podcasts while playing. I couldn't have done it without some sort of external distraction.

I finally did it,hooray!!!?? Another game that if I actually take 5 minutes to read the instruction booklet it makes all the difference in the world. Hey Rick,I believe I just qualified to play Atlantis,am I correct? Thanks for verifying. ?

I was gonna offer $22 but afraid I'll win it!

Audacity is not Activision. David Crane is doing more to alienate other programmers from our friendly community right now than attract them. Did Audacity they make a really neat game? They sure did. Are they putting down others saying that they are less than cause they are only homebrewers which makes them less professional? Your damn right they did. And when you boil it on down what Audacity is doing is exactly what so many others have done for many years. They are not some great second coming with an all new flavor coming back from days of old as they present themselves to be. As far as quality goes, Albert has been doing that much and more for close to 20 years and so have a good number of others. They are at a smaller scale than Albert but the thing is Albert doesn't go around saying that those others are doing something less than he is cause Albert isn't a douche.

Got this in today from Gaz. I think my ST Port set is now complete. It was kind of bittersweet knowing he won't be making these anymore...luckily i got in all the ones i was missing in this order before i knew that. It's been long road; with many dollars spent and much fun had with these games. I hope more are ported someday (by CJ) and produced (by Gaz) down the road a bit. Cheers to all involved.

Early CD game support is now available with the latest firmware. Any game ISO's (CCD/IMG, CDI and CUE/BIN) will need to first be converted into JCD files before they can be run on the GameDrive cartridge. To do this you will need to run your ISO's through this Windows command line tool: https://www.retrohq.co.uk/product/jaggd/cd2jcd.zip You may also need to install the latest Visual Studio runtime libraries from Microsoft if you don't have them already: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads-2647da03-1eea-4433-9aff-95f26a218cc0 The JCD files need to be stored contiguously on the memory card for the CD support to be able to work. Basically this means you need to use a freshly formatted memory card to copy the images onto. The launcher will tell you if there are any issues with the JCD image when you try and run it, if the file is not contiguous it will not try and run it. You will also need to make sure you have the latest firmware installed on your Jaguar GameDrive cartridge. To do this press OPTION when prompted as the cartridge is booting and visit the URL given to you on-screen. If (and only if) you do not have the "Press OPTION for firmware update." prompt come up during boot and you bought the cartridge directly from me a long time ago, then grab the firmware update from the product page. This is early support for CD games, there are issues, but it's at a point people can start playing with it and get something out of it. There is currently no memorytrak support either (yet), so you will not be able to save progress in this way on any CD games. Also be aware I have had reports (and experience myself) of some memory cards not working with CD support. I believe this is due to the cards being too slow to respond to data requests and starving the data through to the Jaguar and causing games to fail.

Bitcoin mining on C64 https://decrypt.co/66226/you-can-now-mine-bitcoin-commodore-64

I promised that I would talk about a way to make vanilla arrays faster in Forth. This is applicable to most Forth systems but it requires that you understand a little assembly language and that you understand how your Forth uses the CPU registers internally. A Little Background Most Forth systems for TI-99 use an idea called Indirect threaded code. (ITC) Without delving into all the dirty details we can summarize by saying that every Forth word has an internal structure that includes the address of some real machine code (native CPU instructions). We can call this address the CODE FIELD address (CFA) and I call the code it points to the EXECUTOR. (I asked on comp.lang.forth what it is called and there seemed to be no consensus on a good name IMHO so this is my choice) In the text below is a simplified illustration of the dictionary entry for a Forth word. The name of the word is a string with the length typically kept in the first byte. Each <word> below is the address of another Forth word and the definition ends with the address of <EXIT> which is some code that works like RETURN in BASIC. The <EXECUTOR> is special. It is the address of real machine code and is actually the interpreter for whatever follows in the Forth word. <"FORTHWORD"><EXECUTOR><word><word><word><EXIT> Each type of Forth word points to its own EXECUTOR: Constants contain the address of a little routine called DOCON Variables contain the address of a little routine DOVAR Colon definitions have the address of a routine call DOCOL Those EXECUTORs are predefined in your Forth system but wouldn't it be cool if you could plug in your own EXECUTOR code for words that you write? This can be done with the word ;CODE . Here is the definition of CARRAY (For Camel99 Forth only) where we change the EXECUTOR code to do what we really want, which is, add the index from the data stack to the base address of our array: : CARRAY ( n -- ) CREATE ALLOT \ compile time ;CODE ( n -- addr) \ RUN time W TOS ADD, \ Working register W has parameter field NEXT, ENDCODE Just as before we CREATE the name in the dictionary and ALLOT some memory bytes for the array. We end that FORTH definition with ;CODE which turns off the compiler (because we are done with that) and so now we are interpreting the text that follows. (That's correct, the Forth Assembler is interpreted) Notice there is only one instruction which adds W to the TOS. What does it mean? W is the "working register" of the Forth system. (R8 is used in Camel99 Forth) What is important is that after ;CODE the W register holds the data address of the last word that was "CREATEed". - The data address is the next cell after the CFA and was called the parameter field in earlier years but is now called the DATA field. TOS is another name for the top-of-stack in Camel99 Forth. It is actually R4 so another way to understand that code is: R8 R4 ADD, So at the end of CARRAY after ;CODE we have assembled one machine instruction into memory. Camel99 Assembler requires that we add the NEXT, macro before ENDCODE so our code returns to Forth. (Other systems may do this differently. Check your docs) Here is the trick: When we declare a CARRAY, ;CODE knows the address of where we assembled our little ADD instruction It takes that address and stuffs it into code-field-address of every CARRAY that we declare This means that when we RUN a CARRAY it automatically takes a number from the top of the data stack and adds it to the array address leaving the result on the top of the data stack The net effect is that our character arrays are about 90% faster. In practice we don't always want to compile the assembler into our Forth system just to assemble one instruction so we can replace the assembly language with machine code like this: ( The comma "compiles" a number from the DATA stack, into the next available memory in the Forth dictionary and advances the dictionary pointer) : CARRAY ( n -- ) CREATE ALLOT \ compile time ;CODE ( n -- addr) \ RUN time A108 , \ W TOS ADD, NEXT, ENDCODE Integer arrays require only one more instruction to multiply the index by 2 which is easily done with another add instruction : ARRAY ( n -- ) CREATE CELLS ALLOT \ compile time ;CODE ( n -- addr) \ RUN time A104 , \ R4 R4 ADD, \ 2* ie: CELLS A108 , \ W R4 ADD, \ base-address+tos=address' NEXT, ENDCODE In the next release of Camel99 Forth the code above will be in DSK1.ARRAYS Remember that Turbo Forth and FbForth also have a W register, but it is a different register number and they do not keep the top-of-stack in a register. You will use the stack pointer register for that purpose. Something like this for CARRAY. W *SP A, The effect will be the same. Much faster array access. Keep the Forth

The manual contains errors and differences, many are not recent changes. A space is required.

Oh, my TI BASIC is so damn slow today ... someone's doing mining on it, or what? ?

Cased

I believe I have ordered from that exact same seller. While polite notes from Japan are not totally unusual in my ebay stuff from Japan, I had a guy send me origami several times with PC-E gear.

Can you hold an electric drill safely? Seems to work for the criminals.

Continuation from earlier, after a bit of math I figured out what I wanted to do earlier today, so here's a spreadsheet that calculates both PAL and NTSC, Distortion A, 16-bit, 8-bit 15-64khz and 1.79mhz, All of this is going to be really useful soon This was based on @ivop's sheet, so most of the formating is the same but I adjusted the equations for the new columns I added. I should start a new thread sometime... I also was supposed to test some RMT2LZSS stuff but kind of got carried over oops. Good thing I don't need to get up early tomorrow hahaha Atari Tuned A4=X (8-16-bit-15-64khz-1-79mhz).ods

I felt generous and offered him $40. Hope to hell he refuse my offer. LOL.

I got real busy with work and will be ordering boards next day or so (hopefully). I wanted to finish a couple of designs up on other boards so I can order more than one batch. I did get the power connectors in finally and was able to match them up correctly to the 99/4A power supply and motherboard connectors. So I chose wisely!

I would highly recommend not listening to the Thunder Force music until you've played the games and heard every track as you play the games, as it might take away from the experience if you hear it before you play them. Gold Packs 1 and 2 have the same music as the 16-bit versions, so don't expect completely new music like I did or you will be disappointed, but it's high-quality CD audio instead of being produced by the sound chip (Saturn's sound chip is incredible, in case you've never heard it). I did notice one difference recently, though, which is that because of the way the YM2612+Z80 combination handles sound, sometimes the music channels on the Genesis/MD versions will cut out to play sound effects instead. This doesn't happen on the Saturn since it can do the sound effects with its sound chip (I'm assuming that it uses its sound chip, which is why the sound effects are different from how they are on the Genesis/MD versions) while the music is streamed from the disc simultaneously. Voice quality is noticeably better on Saturn as well and the music doesn't stop to play the voices, but you still probably won't understand anything that she says.

These things you're asking for, really need their own file management tool. CONFIG is much too big at the moment to take on new features. -Thom

For anyone that's genuinely interested in creating new adventures for the Atari 8-bit, you can certainly use AdventureWriter, but there are more modern alternatives available nowadays. These allow you to create an adventure on your Linux, Mac or Windows PC and deploy to a wide range of 8- and 16-bit platforms, including the Atari 8-bit and Atari ST. First off, there's DAAD. This is a souped up version of PAWS, which is itself a souped up version of The Quill/AdventureWriter. Unfortunately, this only supports Atari ST at the moment. See https://github.com/daad-adventure-writer/daad. Then there's PunyInform. This is a fine-tuned version of the standard Inform 6 library that makes it really easy to create Infocom-like games for a wide range of platforms, including the Atari 8-bit and Atari ST. It does have a steep learning curve, but it's worth the effort. I'm creating my first PunyInform game for PunyJam #1. The jam page has links to the library and there is now a PunyInform Discord server. Even if you're not interested in creating your own game, you may want to keep an eye on the jam for new games to play. If you just want to create adventures to play in a browser, then you should try Adventuron. See this topic for many Adventuron links, see the Adventuron games on my itch.io home page to see the sort of games you can create or play and rate the Text Adventure Literacy Jam submissions. For more on these and many, many other authoring systems, playing hints and tips, reviews, authoring questions and answers, competitions and more, see the intfiction forum.

Ya beat me! After I offered it I thought the same thing. But I i figured $20 would be worth the "eff you" the offer gave the person.

These look fantastic! Glad to see the UAV made it onto the board.

Version Update: 1.38 (Lets hope is the last one) I recently increased the breaking speed in 20%. While it felt more responsive at top speeds, also caused over breaking a problem, and was not ideal at slower speeds. What I did was to have different breaks for different speed ranges. Lets consider the old break (before the 1.36) as 100% Form 0x80 to 0xA0 you break at 120% giving you the extra breaking boost you need to not crash miserable. From 0x40 to 0x79 you break with 100% From 0x0 to 0x39 you break with 80% giving you a more fine grained control and making harder to over break. I kept the heel and toe at constant 60% (half of the max break). The more important, it feels good, this is a hard feeling to describe...

Hi guys, Charlie Cat 12m @Neo_Geo_Forever. Continuing on with the Neo-Geo Presents series, here's more to view and enjoy. 8^) Anthony..

No. The CD launching at the moment is from a very small stub loader I wrote which simulates what the CD BIOS does to boot a game CD. I do have the full CD BIOS compiled for the GD and can boot into VLM but have not tried getting it to work with audio CD’s yet. It’s something I will look into, though!

Dishaster, Game 2--Rollage!!! I think this is my first rollage, so pretty happy about that!!! TBH... I "gave it a shot", wasn't prepared, and just figured out pretty quick "what to do", so I just kept playing. I don't have my beer helmet yet, and I'm not supposed to smoke inside, but figuring out how to use my chin to move the Gal while I was sipping a brew was the toughest challenge... 'Bout 100K, I realized I was in for a long haul, so I shot to the fridge...barely made it back in time to save the game, but I did, so honest to goodness, this was my one and only ever attempt at this game. Thank God. (Actually, that was what was in my head..."just finish it, move on".)

Thanks a lot, buddy. ? I'll be back active again at some point. It's been a year and a half since my last software release, so I kind of need to get something out soon. And I'll be hitting Beryl back up at some point too. Adam's RoA has inspired me. ?

Or the RG350P Handheld Game Console with Opening Linux Tony System HDMI Output, 64Bit 3.5inch IPS Screen Retro Console with 32G TF Card 2500 Classic Games Portable Video Game Console (Transparent black) for $99.99 and have $15.01 left over for a SoundBot SB210 HD Stereo Bluetooth 4.1 Wireless Smart Beanie Headset Musical Knit Headphone Speaker Hat Speakerphone Cap, 5Hrs Music Streaming & 7Hrs Hands-Free Talking, Built-in Mic (Black) SpeakerBeanie! With the remaining $0.02 you may assign a monetary value to your opinions of these devices.

The new boards.

Just finished up the copies of Xenon 2, should have Brawn and Brains carts done today, and Last Strike and reBOOTed by the end of the weekend. Goal is to get most of the Jaguar pre-orders shipped at the end of next week. ..Al

The pages format well on a C64, I wonder if I can apply this method to the A8.

So that's what my living room was missing all this time, an Atari!

Updated WIP: Space Peril by Karl Garrison @Karl G | WIP Binary (20210413) PLAY ON JS7800 | Updated: Apr 13, 2021