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I was looking for a few parts today and I came across my old Allen-Bradley mug. I thought I lost this small gem years ago when I moved!

https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.10-test6.zip https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.10-test6-src.7z Compiler changed to Visual Studio 2022. AltirraOS: Improved compatibility of KEYDEL handling. Custom Devices: Script compiler now parses and blocks ++ and -- operators to prevent them from being parsed as pairs of unary operators. Debugger: Fixed memory window horizontal scroll bar. Devices: Lifted internal PIA limit which could cause devices to break in unusual cases with too many devices connecting to the PIA inputs. Display: Retuned monochrome artifacting fix to high artifacting filter to restore comparable quality of color modes to 4.00. Display: Fixed broken text after toggling HDR on the fly. PCLink: Directory enumerations now report if the directory is root or a subdirectory. PCLink: Improve compatibility of path parsing compared to base SDX filesystem. Tape: C‌: SIO patch is now more flexible in handling of the transfer mode byte. Tape: Improved quality of tape resampler. Tape: Fixed incorrect rate handling of pwml chunks in CAS files. Tape editor: Fixed store waveform option not actually doing anything. Tape editor: Added Copy Decoded Data command. Tape editor: Restored previous version of FSK decoding so that there are both now block-oriented and freeform decoders. Disclosure, I did some pretty heavy refactoring to the internals of the input system to make it easier for devices to drive the controller trigger and paddle inputs.

Advanced Basic 4.08 for the Geneve 9640 has been released along with updates to the program by @insanemulti and manual updates by @hloberg. The Github repository has been updated at BeeryMiller/ABasic: ABasic for MDOS (github.com). Users can also go to https://www.9640News.com and get the latest updates as well. ENHANCEMENT LOG: --------------- V4.08 - Updated reference manual, very nice work by @hloberg! - Corrected RUN command to execute from within a program, without requiring the optional line number - Corrected RUN command, able to load programs from the current working directory e.g., RUN "FILE" and with MDOS device identification e.g., RUN "H:\GAMES\LOADER" in immediate and program modes. - CTRL-C now works when a program is loaded and auto-started - CTRL-C artifact is no longer printed when key is pressed - RANDOMIZE now generates different sequences at startup, when no seed is specified. System clock is used to set RAND16. A big thank you to Lee Stewart for reviewing the ABASIC random code! - Noted issues and potential gotchas based on testing ABASIC-408.zip

I wasn't gonna comment on this thing... again... but yeah, "cheating" has implicit moral judgement written all over it. It's not the right word. Personally I think the "problem" is making comparisons between games that use completely different technologies. Such comparisons are unfair and counter-productive. So, to me, it's nothing to do with the people writing the games on whatever platform they choose. It's all about people comparing (or more particular, judging) things that shouldn't be compared at all. It's like a 100 m race, where one guy is on a bicycle and the other is using a motorbike. The motorbike wins, and someone says "yeah, the motorbike guy is a better 100 m rider". Someone else says "but... he cheated... he had a motor!". And the point is that neither the guy on the bicycle or the motorbike are to "blame" here. It's the guy making the judgement that the motorbike guy is "better". And it's the guy who says "but the motorbike guy cheated!". It's actually those two guys who are the problem. These days I refuse to participate in the process, which I think is detrimental, and that's all I have to say about that.

Finally got some time this weekend to finish the preview for 128KB raycaster engine. features: -resolution: 80x48 -fish eye correction -proper wall slice scaling -fully adjustable controls -reworked weapons with (very) short animations 1. pick one of control presets or define custom controls 2. press ESC for 'game' (there's no game yet but you can walk around, switch weapons and shoot) 3. press START+SELECT+OPTION to switch between 'full' pixels and 'every other line is black' mode (there's roughly +5 fps gain with the later) 4. press START+SELECT+OPTION+some key to get back to Controls setup screen This is early work in progress so a lot of stuff just isn't there yet. It's both a preview and new controls test so if you find something not working properly as far as controls are concerned let me know. One feature that is missing is Settings screen so for now the fast turning has fixed speed, but in later versions it will be user-adjustable, also it will be possible to set fast turning as default. Other features in Setting screen will include weapon bobbing toggle, cross hair toggle, floor/ceiling presets + customization and more. Globe/GMG ps: It's probably clear from the title but the .XEX will only work on Atari 130XE and compatible with 128KB RAM or more. eng128 v16.xex

Almost two months without an update! That doesn't mean I have not worked on the StrangeCart. I have now what I believe is working audio. I also started to wonder how fast the StrangeCart could run TMS9900 code through emulation. That project got a life of its own, as I wrote an emulator for the whole TI. Or almost whole TI, it currently only supports most of the computer, enough to run TI Invaders. Or TI Basic, but without a keyboard in the devices pictured below this is a bit moot. The reason I went for my own emulator was to create something that can run with a relatively slow CPU and limited RAM. The two devices pictures below are from Pimoroni, their 32blit console running STM32H750 CPU (a quite fast processor) and the smaller one is their PicoSystem console, sporting the Raspberry Pi RP2040 chip. The RP2040 is Raspberry Pi's own silicon, with a Cortex M0 core. This is the lowest end Cortex M core there is, although on the PicoSystem the firmware runs it at 250MHz so it isn't exactly slow. The RP2040 has about 250k of RAM and the emulator runs in that. I don't think other emulators can run in that small memory footprint. Actually the framebuffer occupies 115K (the LCD is 240x240 at 16 bpp). Pimoroni's 32blit SDK is nice in that it can target both of these embedded devices, but also Linux and macOS. I guess it also supports Windows. All from the same codebase. So I developed the code on my Mac, and then test on the Mac and if things work I can very quickly cross compile and run it on these two devices. While working on those, I have not yet been able to answer how fast the StrangeCart could run TMS9900 code, as I went from CPU emulation to other hardware emulation. I need to port this code to the StrangeCart, to be able to find out what I was trying to learn... Code for this emulator is here on GitHub.

For anyone new to Atari Age that may be viewing this thread/topic: Please take the time to head to the Atari Age store to see the many high-quality Jaguar and ATARI legacy console games that are on offer and about to be released to show your support to the dedicated developers keeping these systems alive.

My times for the week: NES: Dragon Warrior III - 566 min. Sky Kid - 275 min. If beating Sky Kid is getting to kick the football, and I'm Charlie Brown, I'm not sure who Lucy is: the game itself, which is brutally tough; my own nerves, which gave out the one time I made it to the final level (26); or my NES, which crashed on my most recent run at the end of Level 24? Sigh. Or more accurately:

383470! Beat my score for the week, as well as my personal PB!

Amstrad CPC 6128 10th Frame - 10 minutes (nice, but excruciatingly slow) Roland on the Ropes - 8 minutes too long Shovel Adventure - 110 minutes SmashTV - 20 minutes Sorcerers - 45 minutes Thrust - 40 minutes ColecoVision Jumpman Junior - 120 minutes Montezuma's Revenge - 40 minutes Nibbli - 20 minutes Commodore 64 Millie and Molly - 50 minutes Neptune Lander - 45 minutes Tandy 1000sx (MS-DOS) Jumpman Lives! - 5 minutes (needs more horsepower to play at reasonable speed) Loderunner - 45 minutes Tandy Color Computer 2 Gold Runner - 100 minutes (LodeRunner clone) The Touchstone - 210 minutes Photo Album: https://ibb.co/album/fqrznT

Isn't "cheating" basically defined as breaking rules, breaching a contract or failing to honor a commitment? Of these, the only one that applies here is "breaking rules." Of course, when there are defined rules (such as in the demo scene) then yes, using an ARM would be breaking those rules. Outside of that, are there really any defined rules, and who makes them? I think there not only aren't any rules, there isn't even a general consensus as to what the rules should be. I found some attempts to define rules are (from strict to permissive): You can't use hardware that wasn't actually used in an actual cartridge during the commercial life of the console. You can use hardware that wasn't used in an actual cartridge, but you can't use hardware that wasn't physically available within the commercial life of the console. You can use hardware that wasn't physically available, but you can't use hardware that wasn't economically reproducible within the commercial life of the console. You can use hardware that wasn't economically reproducible, but you can't use hardware that wasn't theoretically reproducible within the commercial life of the console. You can use any hardware you like, but you can't use the console merely as a video driver for the hardware. You can use the console merely as a video driver for the hardware, as long as it's not merely using the console as a bitmapped/raster "video card." You can use the hardware as a bitmapped/raster "video card" but you can't use any hardware that bypasses console hardware and goes directly to video output. You can do anything you want as long as it plugs into the console and produces video through the actual cabling of the console. You don't even need a console, it can be emulator only, it just needs to have a similar feel to the original console. So unless most agree on a specific, general rule, there is no way to say ARM use is "cheating," is there?

Due to working on more music stuff I only have 2 games this week. In my emulation/PC gaming setup I made a switch from PS4 controller to PS5 controller after finishing Super Mario Land 2 but before starting Zelda. I found this controller used at the pawn shop for only $45. I find it more comfortable and feel like I am getting less input errors. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for Game Boy - 333 minutes Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins for Game Boy - 82 minutes Progress: Super Mario Land 2 - completed Easy mode with all 31 exits Zelda: Link's Awakening - completed with all items and hearts

It's all about what you value most. Forth is fast and efficient, which makes it effective at runtime, even on low spec hardware. The advanced data structures available in Pascal makes software development and maintenance easier. The cost is a bit lower performance at runtime. Mainly speedwise, since the UCSD p-system was developed when memories were small and is therefore pretty advanced when it comes to memory management. Something you have already seen, if you read my previous posts about the internal workings of the p-system. When I ramped up my use of the 99/4A, Forth was not yet available. I did a little in BASIC, then quickly moved to Extended BASIC, to get more value from the system. Tape recorder storage became too limited, so I moved on to expansion box, which I then equipped with everything then available (memory, RS232, disk system and p-code card). From that time, I did all work with the p-system, unless there was a need for it to be useful for people with less equipped machines too. Thus I learned how to use it well, what was fully doable in Pascal and how to support with assembly, for the things that were too slow. Like sorting a thousand integers in less than half a second. When Forth became available, and then I used what we called PB Forth (Programbiten Forth), a version developed in Sweden from TI Forth, I found it interesting, but not as well structured for software development as the p-system. I also noticed that execution time was less of an issue compared to development time for me. And Pascal excelled in development support and structure. As a side note, I think PB Forth was the first Forth version for the TI that allowed loading from tape. Thus it was enough with a memory expansion to run it. Nowadays, when I maintain software for more than a decade, software with tens of thousands of code lines, at work, I do appreciate tools that allow easy development and maintenance of the code itself more than utmost execution speed. With today's hardware, the latter is usually good enough anyway.

Arcade: Glass - 25 minutes. DO NOT SEARCH FOR THIS if you are concerned about your search history or somebody seeing it. I was playing the censored version on Evercade with salacious images like this: Joe & Mac Returns - 45 minutes. Hey, this is actually Tumblepop! Oh well, it's still a lot of fun. Cutscenes are kinda gross, though. Thunder Hoop - 25 minutes. World Rally - 75 minutes. What a fun game. Atari 2600: Frostbite - 100 minutes for HSC Atari Lynx: Raid on Tricity Second Wave - 15 minutes Super Asteroids/Missile Commands - 20 minutes. Playing for HSC, but I keep leaving it too late when I'm too wiped out to play well. LCD handhelds: Double Cross (GCE Chase n Counter) - 15 minutes. I love that this thing saves high scores. Treasure Trek (GCE Chase n Counter) - 20 minutes. Got to the wizard again. Milton Bradley Microvision: Star Trek Phaser Strike - 80 minutes One of the most reviled games on the Microvision, I felt it deserved a second look. I wrote a whole guide to making it fun in a rather odd character's voice. I'd like to build a game like this except with a fixed cannon at center screen and using the paddle to aim it. I think people would like it a lot more that way. Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom: Arkade Rush - 15 minutes. So stressful, and it's still day 1! Journey to Silius - 25 minutes. Talk about tough as nails. I think I am going to get out the Game Genie for this one. Moai-kun - 20 minutes. Very cute graphics. Absolutely uncompromising puzzling. It gets hard right away. One false move and you’re toast. Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti - 35 minutes. This is the best Splatterhouse game. That's just how it is. Super Homebrew War - 15 minutes of a simple but fun Smash Bros takeoff. Nintendo Game & Watch: According to Wikipedia, these are exact simulations of the physical units, and who am I to disagree? Oil Panic - 45 minutes Game A & B Donkey Kong - 20 minutes Game B Parachute - 25 minutes Game A. Man, losing in these is just brutal. And finally Parachute x Octopus - 55 minutes. This was a special crossover they made for Game & Watch Collection 2. As far as I can tell, it uses the same state machines as the LCD games, but if this should be counted as a DS game that's fine too. This raises the stakes and makes you work a lot harder to get as much gold as you can, and it makes you more desperate to stay alive. It takes two fun but a little bit brain-dead games and welds them into a much more challenging and interesting whole. Even if it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from a real world perspective Nintendo Game Boy: Chain Break - 20 minutes Sega Genesis: The Curse of Illmoore Bay - 45 minutes. I want to like this so much. Maybe on real hardware. Antstream has problems. Mega Man: The Wily Wars - 20 minutes of Mega Man 1. Sega Master System: Cloud Master - 35 minutes Sega SG-1000: C-SO - 35 minutes. Reminds me of Color Computer games, in no small part because I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Congo Bongo - 15 minutes Everybody but me hates this version, it seems... Monaco GP - 15 minutes What a strange thing to call a Bump n Jump clone. Tiger R-Zone: Independence Day - 35 minutes. Finally got this one, but my cartridge is corrupted somehow - the timer doesn't reset after finishing the first level, so there is no way to play the second level. Boo. This is an exact duplicate of the Star Trek: The Next Generation handheld, just with different art assets. Indy 500 - 45 minutes. Finally came in first in the first race! …whaddya mean I have to race several more? Not right now. Panzer Dragoon - 20 minutes I finally tried out my SuperScreen slide, and to my horror I realized it's somehow flexing the cartridge and making it go rainbow colored. Looks impressively psychedelic, but it is not very playable. Star Wars: Imperial Assault - 15 minutes Probably the best lightgun type shooter. Much better than Rebel Forces. I do feel bad about shooting down all those X Wings, though… Star Wars: Millennium Falcon Challenge - 20 minutes Definitely one of the best for the system. Not actually a Star Trek The Next Generation clone after all. Virtua Cop: 15 minutes Virtua Fighter 2: 10 minutes

Very early scaling support, I need to fix all the broken parts around it still. I know several people have asked it, so I'm trying to make it happen now simplescreenrecorder-2022-01-31_00.01.43.mp4

Week ending Jan 30 2022. 215 min INTV Shark Shark Didn't even improve my high score any for the High Score contest 69 min INTV Tutankhamun Started off next week's contest 33 min FC The General's Son it's a Korean famicom pirate fighting game released by Daou Infosys in 1992. I have been picking a few oddities from my collection to get to know a bit better. This one has decent graphics but the gameplay isn't very good.

Just an early placeholder score ,only being able to fire only forward or backward is just weird and a bad game design to me!

Hey, thanks for your first post way back. I paused to think about how my project (Geneve 2020) sizes up in those categories. Nostalgic Value Functional Value Collector Value Actual Value/Cost if I made and sold 10 of them I’d be happy. keeping my cost between $300-$500 for a working system is tough. Compatibility is also a very high bar. That’s where all the nostalgic value is generated. I don’t want to lose a single potentially interested person because of poor software compatibility. I’ve got several notebooks filled with my thinking on solving these problems. Some of them are very hard, like emulating the 8-bit memory mapped behavior, on a 16-bit bus. A factor of my own is: what does a next-gen computer give back to the 4A community? I considered it might become a fantastic programming and debugging platform for GPL or MDOS. But we already have awesome dev tools on PC and Mac. But exploiting new features is kind of the point. And takes the most programming time. I hope Geneve 2020 generates new interest in software that runs on a 9640 (I aim at 100% MDOS compatibility) or uses the 9958. Perhaps it will be a fun platform for F18A programming. (You could swap out the video card) I decided that all hardware that I make will be open source (OSH). On the slight probability of “back porting” to the 4A or maybe Geneve 9640.

There are already 10 categories for Atari 2600 games as it is. I don't think multiplying that by 4 (or whatever number) would be remotely feasible. However, I think the awards are still valuable even if they can't be made to be perfect by allowing for apples to apples comparisons of technology used. They are a review and celebration of that year's achievements in the homebrew community. Being declared the winner in a particular category is not the only beneficial outcome of the process. The homebrew awards can be imperfect, but still valuable for our community.

First score posted needed. Been from shark shark 17100

100% agree. Time arguing would be better spent developing instead.

There's no term that encompasses everything. I believe @Octavio Pinho Bokel was just saying that games in a competition should be marked with not just the ROM size, but any hardware-assistance used to create them (e.g. Game Name 32K CDFJ+). I believe entries were marked as such in previous years. I definitely agree that the word "cheating" should not be brought into the discussion in any way, as it is inaccurate and disrespectful of the work of developers.

new binaries in my first post and in PlusStore. changes: Fixed wrong REFPx on NUSIZx changed Add reset restrainer for game-over and endscreen PlusROM functions sent bonus scores to HSC backend The remaining plane shouldn't try to escape now. I have improved the recruitment process, but good kamikaze pilots are hard to find these days, they don't train them properly anymore. . should be fixed now too.

Sounds similar to my university experience which was around the same time. I was perfectly happy with my Atari ST for school work until my friend got a 486 and showed me Doom ?

I do not disable the ECS. The keyboard functions remain fully functional as does all ECS code. I just add the ability to use the controllers instead of the keyboard. I need to look into Super NFL Football. It would be nice to have all ECS games that do not really need the keyboard, to be updated,

Having recently completed Dark Chambers on the 7800 (via emulation), I've turned my attention to the 2600 version. I've gotten up to Level U and I'm stuck! I can't figure out where the exit is. I've gone through the level multiple times and I keep running into dead ends.

Atari 7800 Beef Drop, 30 mins. For HSC. Atari 5200 Joust, 30 mins. For HSC. Atari XL computer Donkey Kong, 30 mins. for HSC. Dreamcast Dead or Alive 2, 30 mins. The graphics and tight gameplay are perhaps the most impressive shown on Dreamcast. Dreamcast NCAA 2k2, 90 mins. Using similar engine as the NFL2K series, I've enjoyed the college atmosphere and slightly different playbook and feel from NFL. I need to dig out a VMU with some free space on it, been only playing exhibition games using Penn State and Pittsburgh teams.

Pretty much the bulk of my Classic Gaming was done on the Atari 7800; anything else wasn't really worth tracking. I am getting a lot better at Food Fight, tho! Atari 7800: Food Fight -- 420 minutes

I'd say that's definitely preferred, since then you know for sure that SBO 0 is the same bit as SBZ 0 further down. When you keep R12 the same all the time, that is.

According to the manual: A Magic Fish will appear near your score when you've racked up a certain high number of points. Watch for it! It is definitely around 100k, perhaps a bit more like you said.

Frostbite: 43690 This one was a lot of fun, barely earned enough to get a patch but I made it!

It is 100k.

Great work!

Frosbite: 7,400 Bonus: 2 zeros

Atari7800_MiSTer has been updated!

74,080

January 24th through 30th, 2022 More of the same on the modern side 135 minutes PC Teleglitch Died on Level 8 the blue walker.. had no armor piercing ammo of any sort after wading through all the laser squids and war walkers on this level.. Still haven't managed to crack this game! It has given me endless enjoyment and I have only ever made level 9 once and just barely. A new note I have never before obtained: level 6 Boss unloading it's machineguns on me.. sure could have used those 70 depleted uranium bullets on the blue walker! 60 minutes PC Lost Caves of Qud 445 minutes PC TIS-100 my algorithm for mode would work if I had like 3 more lines of space to put code in.. I managed to do the mode correctly for the first sequence but I used every line and can't reset mode counter for the next run.. I barely managed to optimize enough for 2 more lines to be able to output the mode I got for the first sequence and can't figure out how to get another 3! Great game! Highly recommended. Not at all a homework assignment in disguise.

What a game! It just clicked and my score kept climbing. Noticing that you get an extra life every 5k really helped me keep an immediate goal to reach. I’m pretty happy with this submission. Fr-fr-fr-frostbite - 82,680

18640

It could be an uninitialized variable; this is often hard to find and sometimes depends on the moon phase, bad karma in your vicinity, or uncontrolled butterflies causing weird effects. If you can build MAME by yourself, you could create a debug build, and the stack dump will contain precise information of the source code line where the error occurs. However, according to Heisenberg, you change the situation by your measurement, so the debug build may probably never fail. (This is why such errors are sometimes called Heisenbugs.)

34,030

Frostbite: 45300 Bonus: 2 zeros

I think it would be incredibly expensive, have high overhead, and wouldn't make any money due to the limited customer base. Of course, that's not what we all *want* to hear, but it's the truth.

Here are my times for this past week (January 24th through 30th, 2022) on classic systems: Arcade: Ikari Warriors - 40 min. The only classic game I played this week is Ikari Warriors. I made several attempts at it, and my top score was a bit over 40,000 points. After that I watched a playthrough of it on Youtube and came to the conclusion that I've cleared about 13-14% of the game since the total score of the playthrough is about 300,000 points (apart from the additional million you get for beating the game).

I will always remember one moment from my years at university as magic. I grew up with the Amiga 2000. It was a simple configuration. We had one 3.5" drive and one hard drive. My father used it for work while I used it for my games. When I got to university, I only knew that Amiga. So I bought what I knew in 1992, an Amiga 4000. It was great! I could use all of my old games and all of these new features. But I couldn't use any IBM software, something that my university loved. I didn't need any of it looking back. If I had done my research I would've found compatible software for my Amiga. But computers were still new to me. The only software I knew was what the store gave me and I could find from the computer club. The fledgling visual arts department was the only part of the school that even understood my Amiga. I went back to the store where I bought the computer. I remember seeing some cheap IBM compatible machines, the university told me all I needed was a PC AT compatible system. So I asked them about it. But, instead of showing me the IBM compatible systems, they showed me a circuit board. They said it would run my IBM software inside my Amiga. I didn't believe it. They assured me it would, that I could return for a full refund if it didn't. So I bought it. I went home and put it inside my Amiga. I went to the computer club with my system. I watched my Amiga boot MS-DOS. And I was even able to install Windows! It was like I was in the computer lab! That blew my mind. I didn't think it would work yet it did. I had two computers in one desktop case. That card turned out to be an A2386SX. I used it for my whole time at university. Of course it got blown out of the water by other systems. My roommate bought herself a Pentium system and played this little game called Quake in our senior year. I was so jealous of it. But at least I could run what I needed to pass my courses.

PS4: No Mans Sky: 1255min Jumped almost 100k light years toward galaxy center this week. In my second galaxy so no real story to progress, just lots of exploring. Organ Trail: 30min

Neo Geo AES: Blazing Star: 125min Garou: Mark of the Wolves: 40min Robo Army: 40min Shock Troopers: 30min Sengoku 3: 35min Sega Dreamcast: Phantasy Star Online: 80min NFL2k1: 60min Atari Lynx: Unnamed: 40min Qix: 20min

ATARI 2600: Assembloids (for HSC) - 27 minutes Frostbite (for HSC) - 53 minutes ATARI 7800: Beef Drop - 50 minutes ATARI 8-BIT: Donkey Kong - 10 minutes

Some serious competition this year! For those of you who hated: my design choices the mouse picture xbios the color palettes the flickering the potentially non skippable demo the phantom hardware checks the memory requirements my programmer's ego the disk loading speed the turban the cart loading speed ... Here's your chance to get back at me! ?