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Map 128x128, view range=24, char mode. Too short music

Tested here, and sure enough the custom SIO loader completely ignores PBI devices and ends up stuck in a loop polling the serial bus: Well, the user wanted to run Prince or Persia and can't because it uses a loader which is totally incompatible with PBI-hosted disk images. Quite who benefits from this (and XXL's continuing efforts to ensure nothing he produces runs on U1MB machines) I do not know, but fortunately as someone who doesn't play games and is even less inclined to play any title which is deliberately designed not to work with ubiquitious modern storage solutions, at least I don't personally have any skin in the game, so to speak. That being said, it's highly ironic that while the author of XBIOS has referred to me as 'Snowflake' in the past (supposedly because I am 'over-sensitive' to criticisms and bug reports regarding my firmware), here I am explaining it's the chosen boot loader and not a firmware bug which prevents PoP from working with U1MB/SIDE3. If I was feeling grumpy, I would think back to the list of 'firmware bugs' as long as my arm which turned out to be bugs in third-party software (or hardware... like accelerators, *cough*) which wouldn't work. Any developer who doesn't want to hear about bug reports is a damn fool, but it seems that my earliest invitations to 'please report any issues' were misinterpreted by the people you would expect to know better - i.e. other developers - as 'please jump to the conclusion that the firmware is to blame the moment you encounter a problem'. Of course, there are a number of older games which use custom SIO loaders and these will never work on a PBI hosted solution. But didn't I hear of an XBIOS version which works with PBI devices? It's up to the developers, anyway. By all means use PBI-exclusionary solutions so that I have to repeatedly go through the formality of confirming things don't work for the usual reasons they don't work. I will try not to get too grumpy.

The next PoP version will support various cart formats... I'm not worried though, someone will complain?

Just checked out the pages for Eight feet under. Nice mix of text and Graphics available on other platforms. Sorry to go off on a related tangent. I happened to clock that within the page zbyti posted in the link above there is a link to the Daad Adventure Writer. https://github.com/daad-adventure-writer/daad Interestingly the list of targeted machines (inc 8 bit's like the C64) doesn't include A8. I am just generally imaging text adventure utilising the full graphical potential of our A8s with Rastaconverted images (Full or 1/3 or even 2/3 top half of a screen). I convert a lot of rasta images and am amazed at what the A8 is more than capable of in that respect. Whilst they use up a lot of the A8 resources, (DLIs, PMGs, data etc), to display them, for a graphical text adventure there is certainly potential. Especially considering compression techniques can vastly reduce the space needed for them and now storage really isn't an issue for most when running games off carts like Side3, AVG, or devices like SIO2SD. Loading each would be virtually instantaneous in some cases. (I often browse Rastaconverted images on Side 3 and they take less than a second to load). FYI: DAAD Adventure Writer (Linux, MacOS, Windows) DAAD is a multi-machine and multi-graphics adventure writer, enabling you to target a broad range of 8-bit and 16-bit systems. It was written by Tim Gilberts in the late 80s as an in-house solution for the legendary adventure forge Aventuras AD. It allows maintaining a single source file and then compile a database that is runnable through the interpreter of the target machines. BTW one of my fav images which was posted on the Rastaconverted images pages over the last few years is MistsofSagorious. Imagine this in an A8 graphical/text or even point and click adventure game: MistsofSagorious Here's an incompleted attempt of mine at visualising a graphical adventure/point and click, where likely the icons at the bottom would be in 2 x colour Hi res graphics mode: XEX files of both attached Anyway - apologies for going off on a tangent. I'll check out the new text adventure sometime - love the box art - thanks barkeeprpgsmincomplete3.xex MistsOfSagorious.xex

Playing a bit more. This is fun

It's alive!!!! It works, I'm sure you've added dozens of users with this!!! jk. Seriously hat's off to you and Thom. Really cool to have 80 columns with the XEP80 and CP/M. (the font is nicer, perhaps not clearer ,but nicer than the Sophia2 output and software 80 columns). Running WordStar as I type this.... For anyone else interested...I'm using Avery's Ultra XEP80 Driver on an NTSC system with VT850B1 (available from AtariOnline, probably elsewhere too). I'll test other configs/terminals in the future, including Bobterm but I know VT850B1 does full VT100 emulation. Challenge complete!!!

I have, and there are some interesting ways of going about it. For instance, one thing I considered would be to work with one or more homebrew authors to create a unique title that would only be available as part of the Kickstarter (or at least only available in some deluxe form). However, I'm just going to finance these myself. It won't take long to get the carts once I have the design finalized. ..Al

Many years back I created a framework to create point&click games: Unfortunately nobody at the time was willing to make a game using it and the project got abandoned. However this year for Global Game Jam a team from Poland did a PoC game using it https://globalgamejam.org/2021/games/asteroidy-przyczyną-nieszczęść-życiowych-9 . According to information from the forum https://atarionline.pl/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=5850&page=1 they want to finish the project in near future, expanding the game engine further.

Since Fujidude has not logged on for a long time now, I have incorporated these scripts into the Toolkit disk so that they would not perish. I have now updated the comment. Also, there is a 4.49 already

Watch for ordering details very soon! July is almost here.

Got this in today. Spectacular package with all the extras. No time to play or rip to .cdi at the moment for the GD but coming soon. Thanks a million for this Clint! Much appreciated

It's really easy as well to guarantee PBI support in one's software: JUST ? USE ? SIOV ?

Experts of the Brotherhood! I need help identifying a genuine factory seal. Please help!

Road safety ...

Same deal with the Evercade, really. It’s nice to see that approach is still feasible.

OK, Rich (@RXB), here is the complete suite: I have not had time to test it. The roll routines can probably be tightened up because there is quite a bit of redundancy, especially in UROLL and DROLL. ...lee

I have the perfect idea for the game that should be created. It's based loosely on the Atari 8-bit game "Pieman." You play as Albert, frantically putting game carts together as the orders roll in. The cart shell appears on screen, then you have to remove the label, build the PCB and install, apply the new label and then box the game for shipping. All the while, the orders keep coming in, faster and faster. Don't let the cart fall off the conveyor belt. Too many dropped orders and AA shuts down. Too much on the nose?

Never really know what to think of this thing. Part of me wants it. The best thing they could do for me is probably produce it rather than ask for pre orders. I most likely would have impulse bought on pay day if I knew in a week I was going to get it. Companies like Atari (but let's be honest, plenty of other guilty parties here) have burned the idea of hardware pre orders for me.

LOL, this isn't PC, Xbox or Playstation. Although I still get emails and PMs from people who want a free copy to review on their channel.... which when you look has <10 subs ;D

I see this is the grumpy people's thread ?

If you turn the DMA off, it will put the CPU into the powerband though, and really get things cooking!

Hello guys A small routine I wrote years ago at the Fujiama, that'll show you what the driving controller does: 100 A=STICK(0)-11 110 B1=(A/2>1) 120 B0=(A-(2*B1)>1) 130 ? B0,B1 155 GOTO 100 Sincerely Mathy

Glad to say that some days ago I've broke the one hundred books sold

It's not a "true" Infocom game but it sure hits a lot of the same buttons. As discussed on the most recent Retrocomputing Roundtable show, a new interactive fiction game was just recently released by developer Stephan Vogt, Hibernated-1 (Director's Cut), is now available as a pay-what-you-want titled on itch.io: https://8bitgames.itch.io/hibernated1 The suggested amount is only £4, which comes to a few cents over $5 at today's exchange rate. The game has been released for a ton of retro-systems, from 8-bit Atari, Apple and Commodore systems to Speccy's and classic Macs. Even more impressively, the download ZIP archive contains disk images for all the supported systems. The Atari version is a 130K ED format ATR and loads and plays great on real hardware via my FujiNets and from the built-in CF card interfaces on my XEL/XLD and Incognito machines. A boxed physical release styled after Infocom titles of old is being prepped for later this summer.

My new OLED tv is so good, it makes PS3 games look as good as Dreamcast games! (heh heh heh). But srsly, picture is exquisite, go OLED if you can.

I had the exact same idea.

I would say "funny you should mention HHGTG", but it's not really since your AA handle is Beeblebrox. It's a favorite of mine in any media form. I have a shrine to it including Infocom's game and goodies on display, and a large print edition of the Illustrated HHGTTG. I've been a fan for decades, but never got the Infocom game back in the day, it was a gift along with Zork I and The Lurking Horror from @Timothy Kline a few years ago that got me interested in the old Infocom and Synapse Electronic Novels again. I only started playing Infocom's HHGTTG in recently though, as I always assumed it would be too easy for me since I know HHGTTG inside and out. I never even read the back of the box, just put it all on display with the intention of playing it "some day." However, while glancing through one of my old Analog or Antic magazines I had stumbled upon a review of the game where I learned it was co-written with Douglas Adams and contained new material. So I've been intermittently playing it for the last couple of months. I saved and left off the last time just as Ford and Arthur were being blown out the air-lock and about to be miraculously saved by Trillian and Zaphod. The weird looking "thing" on the right in front of the order for destruction is a bronze piece I made back in college of an Alien plant pod sprouting. I never did finish sandblasting or grinding it properly, and now, after decades in storage has started turning green like any bronze or copper does...I just thought it was fitting for the display when I found it in storage.

for the point&click game gfx in RastaConverted you would need to disable Player/Missile GFX for the cursor. RastaConverter is ready for this: Command line option: /onoff=OnOff File Text file that describes where to turn on and turn off usable registers. The format of each line in "OnOff file" is: REGISTER OFF|ON FROM TO REGISTER is one of the following registers: COLOR0, COLOR1, COLOR2, COLBAK, COLPM0, COLPM1, COLPM2, COLPM3, HPOSP0, HPOSP1, HPOSP2, HPOSP3 OFF turns off the usage of registers in lines, ON turns on. ON is default for all the registers in the whole picture. FROM is line number in picture starting from 0 TO is line number in picture up to Picture Height-1 Every line in "OnOff file" is processed one after another. Example: To turn off usage of player 0 and player 1 in picture of height 240 pixels use the following OnOff file: COLPM0 OFF 0 239 HPOSP0 OFF 0 239 COLPM1 OFF 0 239 HPOSP1 OFF 0 239

Yeah that doesn't seem to be what they care about, but not something they are against. They come across as more just wanting neat and quirky games than directly saying we only want this and this. I think directly saying we don't want "X" on this will hinder the creativity. This is more like here is the hardware and here is a weird crank (that you aren't forced to use). It would be fun to operate a gattling gun with the crank in some type of shooter.

I was just speaking to one of my programmers, and we were talking about the art for the new game that we're releasing. My graphic artist is doing the art and I told him about the process of how the initial pencil rough sketches come in and then we make changes and when we have what we want, it gets coloured in. I showed him the Robot Army art as an example and figured that it might be interesting to post.

Personally, I think that AVGN reviews were fairly spot on. Granted, some of it was hyperbole and/or exaggerated. But, honestly, not too bad. I think he did more of a disservice to the CD32 than he did the 3DO. But, again, just my thoughts.

I think it goes to show you if you have a plan you don't need to crowdfund. It also means they believe in it enough that instead of risking your money they are risking their own.

F U robo-callers!!

Well, any eclipse is better than no eclipse, but that wasn’t much of an eclipse.

LEVEL1 and LEVEL2 done: https://xxl.atari.pl/sfx-engine/ LEVEL3 - in preparation - as soon as the code is worthy I will publish it

Today an Australian user group magazine that is missing on wht- this is a gap filler, please add to wht... TISHUG NEWS DIGEST V9 N1 Jan/Feb 1990 - PART ONE. 32 pages of A4 means this is a two parter! Part two tomorrow. The zip file contains each page as a separate tif image for you to ocr, read, pdf or print. This first part includes a colour monitor interface for a specific monitor (Blaupunkt), notes on Superbug II, Extended Basic Tutorial, a review of The Brain, and instructions and listing for Pewterware's "Up Periscope". Also the subject index for Tishug ND for 1989 (author index continues in part 2). tishug news digest v9 n1 JanFeb1990_Pt1.zip

So I redid most of the official carts and prototypes, as well as the Skunk/GD Atari ST conversions to fit the same box art format that AlejandroGMC_ used. Tested all on my GameDrive, although you will have to rename your roms to match the MRQ file names I used, or vice versa. Furthermore, I think all of these roms have been distributed freely on AA or other prominent sources (my archive contains no roms!). I didn't get to many of the betas because there's just no game art out there on them, as they were Jag only projects that never saw the light of day. Sorry took me so long to post. I do have templates I created for these if anyone was interested. G2600_MRQ_v1.0.zip

Nice, time to boot my VCS back out of Windows 10 and get this game updated!. I recently picked this game up for Switch to since I’ve been enjoying it so much, great game.

While the game loads at purist snail's pace...

Here's a batch of approximately 160 Atari 2600 carts drying after I used Goo Gone to clean the exterior of the carts (in particular, the two label surfaces to remove any label residue to ensure they are nice and smooth). Half of these have already been used to build games, the remainder today, and there are many more carts elsewhere. ..Al

Not a recent buy, but something I found in the bottom of a box of Apple II stuff I bought probably 25 years ago. Just got around to unpacking it after a recent move. Near as I can tell, Creative Computing sold an Apple II disk of Spacewar back in 1980 so this shirt probably dates from around then. It's kid size so I'll never wear it, but in surprisingly good shape for 40 years old.

That's why I highlighted it in my list.

To be fair, this has been exactly my impression of the console from the get go. Then again I am also the biggest fan of the game.com and R-Zone on here

Got my copy today, which was much earlier than I thought. Unfortunately, no idea of when I'll be able to play it, as setting up my Jag CD won't be a quick matter, but it would be nice if someone posted a video of it.

XXL and U1MB, they benchmark, errm, do NOT like each other. Regarding XBIOS, you can see the same behaviour (which you describe for POP), several years earlier with Stunt Car Racer.

I usually convert the 16Bit stereo WAV into 8Bit mono WAV with Wavosaur or Audacity, then transfer the WAV to the Atari and there convert the 8bit mono WAV into a 4Bit mono sample... just for fun. (And some days ago I also converted approx. 20 MP3 songs into 8Bit mono WAV and kept only the first 5-10 seconds of them, then transfered them to the A8 and saved them on ATR images together with The Sound Utility by CTH/Tom Hunt which is a WAV player for 8bit mono WAVs on the A8; it supports XRAM up to 1MB.) There are many other ways to convert a WAV into an A8 sample, e.g. I have some old PC files that work under WIN XP command prompt and a) convert WAV into sample (and sample into WAV), named WAV2SMP.EXE as well as b) convert 16Bit mono WAV into 4Bit mono sample, named Convert4.EXE. wav_conv.zip

$200?!!?! It's a workable solution and quality product. But I'd hate to see the OP pay $200 for what was once outmoded e-waste. Especially when the seller likely got these for free or under $30. These things were likely put in systems and then those systems put curbside. Or sent to china for stripdown. Or given to others that strip them for parts - something that's increasingly happening. It's nothing new. Lot's of sellers trying to make bigbux. Sucking in nostalgia seekers. Because they can. 'Tis like that in many hobbies. And I'm beginning a one-man crusade against high priced parts. Just don't buy them at these exorbitant prices.

i split up my main asm file (it was 2.7k lines) and it's helped me get out of my funk:

Just wanted to give a brief update on my progress. I expect to have most of the games finished by the end of this week, and to have them all completed (including some extra games for these orders I still need to build) by the end of next week. This means having the games in finished, boxed form (nearly all of them are boxed, so they are going to take a ton of space!) and ready to ship. After that it will take about a week to get them all shipped. I will start posting photos of the games towards the end of this week. And I will continue to post updates every couple of days from this point forward. ..Al