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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/23/2021 in all areas

  1. In an effort to increase the distance of busy little hands from vintage hardware, I created an adapter that lets a WiiMote be used as a wireless controller. The current hardware supports two joysticks (directions, trigger, and both potentiometer signals) and uses an ESP32 for the bluetooth connection to WiiMote. Proof of concept Arduino code is working with one WiiMote that outputs to both joystick connectors. More details on hardware and design here: https://hackaday.io/project/179786-modernish-wireless-retro-joystick https://github.com/mulcmu/Modernish-Wireless-Retro-Joystick https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4899985 I am looking for some community support to help with the ESP32 code development. I have been unable to get multiple WiiMotes working with any of the existing Arduino libraries. Send me a PM if you are interested in contributing.
    10 points
  2. Fun fact: Did you know on April Fools Day of 1997, Jim Davis the creator of Garfield was invited to do a comic stirp with Dagwood Bumstead from Blondie, while Drake Young and his team from Blondie did Garfield and Jon Arbuckle.
    9 points
  3. Sorry guys, I'm all out of material. So you're just going to have to "like me for me".
    9 points
  4. Wen Hop? The Search for Planet X You're the very, very famous and dashingly handsome spaceman/explorer/all-round-good-guy, Mellon Husk. To save humanity from the "Great Filter" that you fear is coming soon, you are on a mission to find "Planet X" so that you can establish a new human colony and safeguard the future of humankind. Using your trusty rocket-ship, inspirationally named "ship", you are on a mission to visit the moons, planets, asteroids of the solar system to find that elusive new home. Your goal at each stop, to mine enough dogecoin (yes, in the form of actual physical coins) enable you to buy enough rocket fuel to continue your quest. Getting the dogecoins would be a matter of solving puzzles and avoiding aliens on the planet. It's going to be very much an action/puzzler. Each planet/location has its own gravity. Terrain will have different characteristics - for example, friction on an ice planet. Underwater swimming... I hope to spend some considerable effort on variations in controls. The terrain is fully navigable on a per-pixel basis rather than character graphics. That is, Husk's movement is freeform over the char background. You cannot dig underground, but you can follow existing passages, and of course you can use tools. You will be able to pick up and drop some "objects" such as explosives, and rocks. Use rocks to allow you to reach stuff, or to drop on enemies, or block off exits. Use explosives to open up new passages. Underground you can crawl along diagonal passages. You cannot move "up" - you have to jump or climb. There may even be some alien superstructure/buildings - maybe you can even go inside for a sub-level on the planet. Whatever I can implement. Maybe a rocket pack.... At the moment the player sprite is just there to allow me to scroll around. It is not coupled to the background. That will come soon. At the start of each planet, I plan to have a big animating ship (character graphics) landing you on the playfield. Out comes spaceman Husk and then you're in control. You try and collect the dogecoin by moving through the underground passages and using tools/explosives where necessary to get access. Once you get enough Dogecoin, you go back to the ship and it lifts off (huge animation) for the next adventure. The video shows what I have so far. Essentially, it's a graphics engine that has the following capabilities... * super-smooth playfield scrolling * Animating background character graphics * parallax scrolling.... pretty cool effect * lava * water * earthquakes / screen shake Objects/creatures/behaviour... this will be expanded... * water drips * alien eggs * various foe - chasers, huggers, etc * dogecoin Tools * rocks - can be lifted/carried * explosives - place underground to blast away soil/rocks So as a first pass I've worked on the dirt and made it so that it intelligently "rounds" the edges where appropriate. It gives the whole thing an organic (non-character-graphics) feel. I feel that I work better when I get feedback, and I do like to share new developments ASAP. So I hope/plan to occasionally update this thread with videos and very soon some playable binaries. What you see in the video currently runs just fine on actual hardware. I've tried to show a few of the features - lava (which destroys just about everything) and causes earthquakes. Rocks (eventually) explode when in lava. Water, which dissolves soil/dirt, and will perhaps enable access to areas you might not otherwise reach. In other words, you float/swim until you're high enough. Both water/lava can slowly rise in level. I'll be putting in what gameplay elements I can. Well, if you want to contribute suggestions for gameplay, feel free to do so. And if you "follow" this thread, that will let me gauge interest in the project. It's a CDFJ (32K) project, written mostly in C. I'm really pushing the hardware with this engine; it's incredible what you can make it do if you design to the capability. I'm already very short of space, so it's going to be a matter of optimising from here on in. Onward and upward!! wow so various such example wow so much blast such first so much objects such matter very necessary so physical such spaceman
    8 points
  5. @nanochess asked me this morning: -Hey, did you make a cover of Blinding Lights for Intellivision? -Nope -Ah, I thought that if -I'll make it later *Three hours later* And here's the ROM: blights.rom Note: ECS is required. Donations are appreciated: http://paypal.me/nyuundere
    8 points
  6. While @mulcmu presented his idea of an Wii - mote adapter, this could prevent double work or going a more costly route, I guess it's time to show what I developed and maybe put into this years Abbuc hardware contest. SNACK supports two operational modes: Classic and enhanced. The classic mode is fully compatible with the standard joystick and supports also the additional buttons from the https://github.com/ascrnet/Joy2Bplus project and the game-patches there. A third button is mapped to auto-fire. When switching to the enhanced mode (with SELECT + START + R (shoulder button) ), all buttons are mapped to a single controller port, in a quite clever but also easy to use way: VID_20210723_163234.mp4 Things get even more interesting when plugging an "8bitdo Retro Receiver SNES" https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01K1T9CZS/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_J2E10CQ41GV0R44RQDA2 into the port of the adapter: ...this way, a lot of Bluetooth controllers will work out-of-the box with my hardware development: VID_20210723_164634.mp4 (sorry for the jittery footage, it's not that easy to film and play single handed...) Costs for the adapter will be quite low, as the controller in use is below € 1,-. As the prototype is hand wired, I'm currently designing a PCB (actually two different designs) and write the documentation. Have fun!
    6 points
  7. Hi everyone, I wanted to present to you the collection that has fascinated me the most for a few years before putting everything up for sale. There will be a topic in the appropriate section with links as and when I put in sale Thank you for your interest
    6 points
  8. Well look what I found while sorting through my spares ? It's missing the French manual, though.
    6 points
  9. He definitely is not a genius! Geniuses don't release WIP version public because then you have to read a tons of shit instead of be productive. Not public tests are the best :]
    6 points
  10. Yes, though the old speech code was MAME's too! I never had enough interest in the hardware to do it myself. Means Michael Zapf finally has a credit in Classic99.
    6 points
  11. Now we just need JP's rambling and the cycle will be complete ? Is there some way we can blame this on xBios? Then we really could come full circle (jerk).
    6 points
  12. No way. Atari didn't kill him. First of all, they can't do anything themselves, they'd have to outsource it. And hitmen don't sue you when you refuse to pay, you just become an extra client.
    5 points
  13. When is @The Historian gonna cough up them deets? The tea must be spilled!
    5 points
  14. Hey everyone! Thanks for the interest! For the record, I'm a real doctor and I'm the one who has to send the invoices to everyone. Being a real physician, I've been rather busy so I plan to send the invoices over the weekend. Your interest is appreciated but I ask you be a little patient! Oh, for the record, I'm not Dr. Ports. My doctorate is not on software development! ?
    5 points
  15. Unfortunately that's the case. While I quite like the interlace "higher" resolution look of story book and the gold 1st letters, quite recently connected more modern (10 y/o or so ) LCD-TV 19", and it reduced flickering to zero, gave stable picture, which didn't look good. That said, there's no setting to change it, it just always does it. And as the time passes, with more and more displays we will face it, that the effect will be lost, while non-flickering version of storybook looks just bad. And watching the original/planned outlook only on emulator just doesn't cut it, so maybe reworking it to something else, without flickering, would be a sensible choice. You bought a crap monitor so I should change the flicker effect ? If it looks like the picture above on your monitor, it means it can only output at 30hz, that's not exactly a smart move if you want to use it with an Atari...
    5 points
  16. Here is another demo, this time, Bentley Bear, not on a Concerto but on a homebrew PCB with conventional hardware (EPROM, PLD.) Any day now Albert should have the first HOKEYs I sent him for use in homebrew games. Note, the HOKEYs that Albert has are "Basic" HOKEYs which are intended to be used on homebrew PCBs, and are not currently sold individually. It will be a couple of months before HOKEYs intended for other uses (such as for Concerto) are available. bb.mov
    5 points
  17. Hello 7800 fans and owners. So, I used to come to this forum and participate probably pre-2005 or so, though I have maybe commented in the forum once or twice over the last decade and a half. Many of you will know me as a regular in the Atari 8-bit forums for 20 years, or maybe the Jaguar forums I used to participate in up to about 5 years ago. I still own a Jaguar (w/CD unit) and love it. but I've had so much going on in the A8 world the last 5 years, since I fixed my Atari computers after about a 4-5 year hiatus, I just don't participate in the Jag community for that and other reasons. So, I owned a 7800 since about '86/87, from about Atari Corp.'s release of it until around 2005/6 when I sold off a lot of my vintage collection. I've slowly been rebuilding a more modest vintage console/computer collection again, and it finally came time for me to listen to the call of the 7800. Especially since it was a PAL 7800 that I could play those PAL titles never released in the states and repro's of the lost Tynsoft shooters (NOT an emulator guy, though I have used them occasionally on my Dreamcast, including 7800 emulator), and of course there are a few 7800 home-brews that interest me. I posted pics and news my ownership in my profile news feed last week. I guess I'll have to get one of these new-fangled SD/flash cartridges for my 7800 sooner or later. I only have Desert Falcon, Pole Position II and of course the built-in Asteroids Deluxe in the PAL 7800. I of course have a Vader 2600 and a half-dozen games with it on display under glass including some of my classic faves from Imagic: Star Voyager, Cosmic Ark, Atlantis and Moonsweeper...and the best 2600 game ever...Solaris. My old favorites for the 7800 included Commando, Into The Eagles Nest, Ikari Warriors, Xenophobe, Motor Pyscho, Fatal Run and Ball Blazer. Of course half of these and most of the rest of the 7800 library titles are on the Atari 800/XL/XE which I had prior to the 7800, especially the arcade classics and though some of them were better versions on the 7800, not better enough to justify my purchasing them again for the 7800, IMO. So the 7800 was always my "back up" system for a few games that never made it to the Atari 800 (well, some recently as both lost titles and home-brews), so most of the games I owned were ones I couldn't get on my 8-bit computer at the time. I did have the Euro pad controllers for my NTSC 7800 before I sold it, and an S-video/audio mod. This PAL unit came with a audio/video out mod, but it looks worse than RF, so whomever did it botched the job. I'll have to go back in... this unit came with one pad and one pro-line controller. I do very much prefer the large rainbow stripe and large Atari and Fuji on the metal trim over the NTSC version with the thin stripe and small Atari, Fuji and 'Prosystem' lettering. Almost as much as I like the Sears Video Arcade II or Japanese 2800 console versions of this prolific case. Another bonus for me returning to the 7800 these days is I happen to have half a dozen Pokey chips now, as over the past year I've been converting my Atari 8-bit computers from dual-Pokey upgrades to Pokeymax boards, so I've got plenty to put into 7800 titles that need them! The irony being that just over a decade ago I was stripping Pokey chips from Ball Blazer carts I bought off ebay for >$5 to make those dual-Pokey stereo upgrades!
    4 points
  18. I'm too busy enjoying it to nitpick it.... I remember when Sheddy got some flack for the flicker on Space Harrier....Seriously folks, you are playing bloody Space Harrier on the Atari with great music and samples, let alone amazing visuals, just ignore the blooming flicker or play it on Altirra with Frame Blending.. Do I see and issue with POP...Yes, I need MORE of it
    4 points
  19. Completely different in my opinion. PC gaming handhelds are a fairly new category and the machines released to date have been roughly double the price of Valve's offering because they've been put out by small companies. Valve's entry suddenly gives the category some gravitas and may be the harbinger of other big players stepping in. In any case, the Steam Deck is roughly the same power/quality as the more expensive options give or take. Contrast that with the VCS that is underpowered and overpriced in comparison to similar systems, e.g., the Xbox Series S with its developer's mode and rich game and app support, and it's easy to understand why it landed with a thud and has no real path forward (again, in my opinion). In other words, one is a dead end and the other is the start of something new and exciting.
    4 points
  20. I've merged the rocks into giant lumps - this has had the nice effect of emphasising navigable passages. The rocks can/should still break-off the lumps and fall... so the same functionality. Here you may also see the ground slowly disappear as the earthquakes (from lava and exploding rocks) are happening. I haven't got all the rocks operational in this video, but the general idea seems sound. EDIT/NOTE The video looks much nicer/brighter if you switch it to 720p/60!
    4 points
  21. I just had a few printed but they are all sold, if I knew there was more demand I would have had more made These are my last (personal for me) copies. If there is enough interest I can have more made.
    4 points
  22. Just have to offer my complements. My daughter, who is all of age 4, absolutely loves this game and I love that it gets her to use and appreciate my Atari. So just know, there is a 4 year old in Canada who loves the Ponies who adores this game. Thank you!
    4 points
  23. Yes! There are no integers in TI BASIC... Take care of the Option Base, if you want to store a matrix of 5 colums by 3 lines and that you declare: DIM MAT(5,3) You expect to have 5×3 = 15 numbers... But if you let Option Base 0, indexes start at zero. So you'll have 6×4 = 24 numbers (9 extra numbers consuming 9×8 = 72 bytes!). Guillaume.
    4 points
  24. I was so offended I bought it twice...
    4 points
  25. So there is one Dr. Ports and one Dr. Invoice?
    4 points
  26. is that exhaustion++ ?
    4 points
  27. Yes. A decision was made at Texas Instruments to attempt to lock-out any third-party software developers from making cartridges. They wanted total control over what games came on Cartridge. I think they saw the Mystique games on the 2600 prior to their decision. If, however, they had of allowed third-parties to make games, it would probably have helped push sales of the console.
    4 points
  28. "I am not only the president of Hitmen for Hire, I'm also a target." BLAM!
    4 points
  29. That was my misunderstanding, then, as I recalled it said the table was scanned downward. Which would not make sense given the results with line number tests. The code is tl;dr for me right now. Is auto-increment used throughout the search or just to pull the line number and address? I would add @mizapf to that list. As an aside, when I was a kid I thought he came down from Mount Cyanide. People tend to take things personally and make personal attacks, both unnecessarily. It is a real quick way to shit up a thread. I do not appreciate attacks in my threads and would appreciate if people would take a second and clean up their posts, preferably before posting but after the fact if need-be. This is not Facebook or Twitter -- we have (some) class around here.
    4 points
  30. (Edit) Rich, here are a couple of points to consider: 1 - Why would anyone think the line number table is being scanned downward? With even a rudimentary understanding of assembly you can look at the the code Rich posted in post #49, which clearly shows the table being scanned in an upward direction. This means autoincrement can be used (and it is), which seems to be the biggest complaint. 2 - I have made almost 70 trips around the sun, and have learned that when there is something I don't understand, my first reaction is not to assume it was created by someone who is a moron, an idiot, a fool, is insane, or doesn't have a brain cell. Instead, I wonder what I am missing and if there might actually be a good reason for it being done the way it was. Here are two possibilities: Remember that XB runs in VDP ram when there is no memory expansion. One possible reason for growing the XB program downward from the highest memory location could be that it just plain works better that way when running in VDP ram. There is stuff going on at v0958 that grows upward in memory and this might keep the program from colliding with that. When editing an XB program every entry involves moving blocks of memory to make room for the new line. As XB is written you move bytes down when you add program lines and this is slightly more efficient than moving bytes up to add program lines. Move >100 bytes down from >EF10 to >EF00 Move >100 bytes up from >EF00 to EF10 LI R1,>EF10 LI R1,>F010 LI R2,>EF00 LI R2,>F000 LI R3,>0100 LI R3,>0100 LOOP MOVB *R1+,*R2+ LOOP MOVB *R1,*R2 DEC R3 DEC R1 JNE LOOP DEC R2 DEC R3 JNE LOOP 3 - When Rasmus or Tursi says something don't argue. Consider anything they say to be as authoritative as Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with the 10 commandments. 4 - Calling people liars is not very polite and might lead to hard feelings. This could alienate the very people you want to help with your project, which is probably not the outcome you hoped for.
    4 points
  31. That is awesome! Might be able to fit those in the box. Can she make 500 of them? ..Al
    4 points
  32. Ok, I’ve got to say my luck has been quite a bit better than normal. I think part of that is that I’m now retired and watch eBay more than I used to. In the last few months I found a complete Cannon Man (Sears Atari) title at $25. This one was one of my ‘I will never have’ titles. Following that, I picked up the box in the above posts with a complete Learning Fun I for less than $100. Unbelievably, I just got another find in the mail probably better than the other two. I stumbled across a new listing for 6 Intellivision carts shown below I thought that looks like a nice upgrade for my Tower of Doom and the BIN was $90 so yeah…..I’ll probably get it. I went to look at other pics of it and the second picture said “do a buy it now and I’ll throw in these 2 kids games as well”. ??????? I kept expecting it to be a scam or them to cancel at the last minute, but no I just got them. The Tower of Doom is very nice. The 2 Learning Funs are really, really nice. Each has a small crease on the side though. Other than that almost perfect! Beyond excited for these. My current boxes are getting a HUGE upgrade!
    4 points
  33. Feel free to design and produce your own case and label if it offends.
    4 points
  34. Ok, my webpage (stil poor) had some info upgrade: http://sikorsoft.waw.pl/en/ From now on I will try to post information in both languages, Polish and English at the same time.
    3 points
  35. Quick update: Last night, I finished the last front side of the 165 trading cards. Not only that, but in the last few days, I added the game names, box types, card ID numbers and info icons to all 165 back sides. All I have left to add are the short descriptions, screenshots, and copyright texts. So still a couple of weeks of work ahead, but the project is progressing.
    3 points
  36. Awesome. Thanks man, I really appreciate it. It makes me happy that your daughter adores the game, and that it brings a younger generation to the old Atari computer. ?
    3 points
  37. 3 points
  38. Not even arguably in my opinion. They're all the exact definition of niche systems (specialized market segment), period. The Amico is the only one in a position to potentially break out as a more mainstream product, but a lot would have to go right for that to happen and the odds are against them in the current competitive - and thriving - landscape with three major console players, PCs, and mobile (iOS and Android). And to clarify, whenever I use "niche" it's no dig or slight in any way, just the reality. As long as the product is implemented well, including matching costs and production to demand in a sustainable manner, it can be quite successful whether it sells tens of thousands of units or millions of units. The Amico people have seemed to be fairly transparent about their modest break even requirements, so even if it's not 100% accurate, it's at least good to know that they have a plan for what they believe is a sustainable longer term strategy. I suspect the Playdate people have a similar plan, helped by the high price of their product (for the technology) and no doubt healthy margins on each unit.
    3 points
  39. Here's a new element -- "scalators". They're a kind of automated spiral elevator for moving up/down shafts. There's a slow downscalator left, and a fast upscalator, right. The idea is you can move into the shaft and the scalator carries you up/down, and exit when you want/can. I'll probably add short demo videos of each element as it comes online...
    3 points
  40. A few months ago I was talking about techniques for capturing screenshots of games that use flicker kernels. Today when I was implementing a pause feature for play-mode I was reminded that similar problems exist for the paused screen. My solution is to assume that a display is interlaced on a two-frame cycle and to continue the flicker through inference. I think the results are pretty good (video below) Of course, the same problems that arise when creating screenshots also apply here. So, displays that flicker on a three frame cycle or have elements that flicker at different rates will have suboptimal results. Also, displays that have no flicker but have moving objects will "shimmer" when paused. But IMO, this is better than showing a single frame which to the eye looks to have missing elements. Ideally, we would be able to detect what kind of kernel the ROM is using and use the appropriate method. However, this would involve an analysis of the pixels being pushed by the TIA I think and isn't at all trivial. But it is something to keep in mind I think. output.mp4 Game is Zookeeper from @johnnywc
    3 points
  41. A popular and efficient shuffle algorithm is Fisher-Yates. It runs in linear time. (I'm using it for instance in Defender of the Crown to shuffle the lords at the beginning of the game.) Quoting the pseudo-code from Wikipedia: -- To shuffle an array a of n elements (indices 0..n-1): for i from n−1 downto 1 do j ← random integer such that 0 ≤ j ≤ i exchange a[j] and a[i]
    3 points
  42. Dear eBay sellers: that RARE and VINTAGE light gun for the Atari 2600 you're all selling for stupid amounts of money? Yeah, those came bundled with swap-meet Famiclones. And they're complete and utter garbage. Happy to be of assistance!
    3 points
  43. This stuff might help. . . MBPII.pdf mbp clock schematic and hardware manual.pdf
    3 points
  44. Not surprising. Technology and I have not been getting along well for the past couple a few months. I forgot I have another machine I can test on, as well. Going to walk over there to do that in a few minutes. EDIT: not working there, either, neither from the shared location on the network nor a local fresh extraction.
    3 points
  45. My crocheted Bernie now has company as my daughter made me a little Bernie keyring
    3 points
  46. The fate of the Jaguar (and the 3DO) was basically sealed as soon as the PS1 was released. Including the CD right from the start would have delayed the launch and made the console more expensive, thus reducing even further the window during which Atari wasn't competing with Sony. Including the CD hardware right from the start also wouldn't have fixed: - Atari's lack of money - Atari's lack of understanding on why and how they should partner with developers - Atari's lack of understanding of advertising - Atari's lack of quality control (some first-party games were so bad they damaged the public's perception of the console) - the pitiful documentation and software support for the CD hardware (it's so bad that even existing developers didn't want to touch it) - the CD hardware's limitations (no extra RAM to compensate for the lack of cartridge ROM, so some games couldn't have been released on CDs) - the CD hardware's lack of reliability I strongly believe that it would have made the Jaguar fail commercially even harder.
    3 points
  47. A bunch of stuff went out today. I still have a large order printing. Apologies to anyone who has had an extended delay since they ordered!
    3 points
  48. Classic99 399.050 Yes, I skipped telling you about 049 - the only change of import there was I added a config option to the INI that lets you disable the Escape key. In 050, though: - rewrote SpeechDLL using the latest code from MAME - now emulates the correct speech chip. - fixed bug with speech cpu halt that was causing crashes - was broken in 399.037 - reworked the audio buffering as well for speech, now uses the main audio jitter buffer. This may add some latency but fixes the froggy sound - updated cartpack.dll just to remove the TE2 speech warning Yes, this means for the first time in Classic99's nearly 30 year history I consider the speech synthesizer functional. I still don't like it very much though. http://harmlesslion.com/software/classic99
    3 points
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