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Missile Command Arcade is another new game utilizing VBXE! Missile Command Arcade uses disassembled code from the arcade version of Missile Command. Combined with VBXE, this allows for a (near) arcade perfect experience on your Atari 8bit computer. Since the internal timing for the arcade version of Missile Command is 60Hz, this runs best for NTSC systems, as it will run slower on PAL, including sound effects and trackball response. I do not have a VBXE for my Atari 800XL, so I have only tested this with Altirra. If somebody with a VBXE, NTSC Atari, and trackball would like to help with testing, please DM me. You can change default settings in the menu screen using the Select button (F3 in Altirra) to choose which option to change and use the Option button (F4 in Altirra) to choose which option you would like to use. Note that if you choose trackball, you will need to use a trackball or else movements will be unpredictable. You can use the fire button (on a joystick or trackball) to fire from the base closest to the cursor. You can also use keyboard keys Z X C for firing from the 3 bases individually. In order to run with Altirra, you will have to configure a few things: 1) Go to System->Configure System. Set your system to NTSC by going to Computer->System->Video Standard. Next, go to Peripherals->Devices. Then click Add and scroll down to "Internal Devices" and select VideoBoard XE (VBXE) then OK. Keep the default settings (Core version FX 1.26 and Base Address of $D600-$D6FF) and click OK (Missile Command Arcade also works at $D700). Then click OK one more time to exit the setup for devices. 2) Missile Command has a resolution of 256x231 and Altirra normally cuts off the display at 224 lines (or so), so you will have to extend the display to see the bottom scrolling text and the "LOW" and "OUT" messages for the bases. Click View->Overscan Mode and set it to Extended (or Full with Blanking if the bottom scrolling line is cut off). 3) You have the option of using a trackball, so you will optionally need to also configure a trackball in Altirra. Under Input->Input Mappings, click Add. Then rename the default name for the mapping (it should default to something like Input Map XX) to Trackball. Then double click on the Trackball mapping that you just added and you will get a pop up for Edit Input Map. Click Add Controller. Under the Controller pulldown, choose Trak-Ball (CX80) - it's the last choice. Leave the defaults for Port 1 and click OK. You will then be at the Edit Input Map popup. Double click on Axis 1. For Source, select "Mouse Move Horiz". For Mode, change to Relative. Next move the Speed slider to 10 and leave Acceleration at 0. Click OK. Next double click on Axis 2. Change the source to "Mouse Move Vert" and the Mode to Relative and once again change the Speed slider to 10. Click OK. Now change the Button 1 assignment to a key for the trackball fire button. Double click on Button 1. For source click "Key: Left Ctrl" (or whatever key you want). Click OK twice. Now unselect any input devices that may have already been selected and check the box next to your next Trackball Input mapping. Then click close. Attached are .XEX, .ROM, and 16K .CAR versions of the game. Enjoy! Eric Anschuetz, Robert Anschuetz, John Weisgerber Missile Command Arcade.car Missile Command Arcade.rom Missile Command Arcade.xex

All, @InsaneMultitasker and I contacted Custodio Malilong who developed the Nano PEB and CF7 devices for the TI-99/4A to check what his current state was on development for the product. Custodio has given his permissions to release the source files to the Nano PEB as he is no longer working on it or making updates. So it is with great pleasure that Insane and I release the files we obtained from him to help anyone wanting to develop or improve or just see the method behind his madness. Enjoy! nanoPEB.s nanoSIO.s T16C550C.zip

In January 2024 there was a bit of discussion about games similar to Mario Kart: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/359151-another-youtube-video/?do=findComment&comment=5382710 That made me wonder what we could do on the TI. @TheMole linked to a demo on the MSX1 using the TMS9918A VDP, but I soon came to the conclusion that in order to produce something playable on the TI we needed help from the F18A. The F18A supports two types of bitmap layers that would be suitable for something like this: a 4 color bitmap with up to 256 horizontal pixels and a 16 color bitmap with up to 128 'fat' pixels. I decided on the latter in order to get a more colorful display. The image below is not included in the demo, but shows what the F18A is capable of. 3D view Mario Kart uses the ability of the SNES hardware to scale and rotate a 2D image to make it look like 3D (aka. Mode 7). The source images could be as big as 1024x1024 pixels. I thought the F18A GPU would be fast enough to do something similar, but where would I store the source image? The F18A has only 18K RAM, and a 1024x1024 bitmap would take 512K! And it takes 12K just to display a bitmap that covers the whole screen on the F18A, so after displaying the bitmap there would only be 6K left for the source image and everything else, like sprites and the GPU program. My first approach was to build the source image from 8x8 meta-tiles, which again consisted of standard 8x8 pixel characters/tiles (64 x 64 pixels in total). The meta-tile map for a 1024x1024 image would then only take 256 bytes, plus 1024 bytes to store 16 meta-tiles, plus the space to store the tiles they consisted of. However, my attempts to use this approach turned out to be way too slow for the GPU (drawing an image took several seconds). For my next approach I looked at Mario Kart, which has a 3D image at the top and an overview image at the bottom (also 3D but seen more from above). Maybe I could have a 2D overview image at the bottom of the screen and use that as the source image for the 3D image at the top of the screen? The source image would have a much smaller resolution than 1024x1024 (actually 128x128 fat pixels) so the 3D result would also be much more pixelated. But the transformation from one bitmap to another could be done much faster than the attempt to use meta-tiles. And it turned out to work even faster than I would have thought, actually more than 60 FPS when generating a 128x64 pixels 3D image. It took a lot of time to figure out how to make a proper 3D perspective transformation without any distortion such as fish-eye effects, but I'm not going into details about that here. The resolution wasn't bad either, although nowhere nearly as good as Mario Kart. At this point I had used 12K VDP RAM, plus some more for GPU code in the upper 2K RAM. Background I also wanted a horizontally scrolling background (trees, mountains) at the top of the 3D screen like in Mario Kart. I decided to do that using the normal tile mode and the hardware scrolling of the F18A rather than the bitmap layer in order to speed things up and perhaps save some VDP RAM. I had already used 192 vertical lines (64 lines for the 3D image and 128 lines for the source/overview image), but here the F18A ROW30 mode, which expands the vertical resolution to 240 pixels, came to my rescue, so the top 48 lines could be used for the background and to display other information like time and position. First I added a single layer with mountains, which took little VDP RAM since I only needed 16 characters/tiles plus 6 rows of the name table to implement this. Then I tried adding another layer using F18A TL2 with trees that scrolls at another speed, and I liked it so much I couldn't bring myself to remove it again. Unfortunately that took up much more VDP RAM since TL2 cannot be displayed below the bitmap layer, so I needed space for an additional, full name table, with mostly transparent tiles. All that used about 1.6K VDP RAM, so now I only had about 2.4K left. Still better than using the bitmap layer for background, which would have required about 2 times as much RAM. Sprites The last part of the graphics was to look at how to do the sprites for the player's karts, other karts, and other objects on the track. At first, I thought I could use hardware sprites for everything, but a single sprite pattern in 32x16 pixels 4 colors takes 128 bytes, and for any kind of reasonable 3D scaling effect I would need something like 16 patterns per angle per sprite. Already one sprite would take up the VDP RAM I had left, so I decided only to use hardware sprites for the player's kart, which consists of two magnified 16x16 sprites in 4 colors. The other sprites would have to be scaled and drawn on the 3D bitmap by the GPU. I could foresee two problems with that: firstly the GPU might not be fast enough to also draw the sprites, and secondly, since there was no VDP RAM left for double buffering, maybe the sprites would flicker horrible when the 3D image and the sprites were repeatedly drawn on top of each other? Back in the days scanline renderers, where everything was drawn one scanline at a time, were sometimes used, but I didn't want to go into that kind of trouble yet. But again, it turned out not to be a bad as I feared. Even though you see some flickering, it's not, for instance, hiding important details to the player. But how I wish I had some more VDP RAM to do some proper double buffering... The hardware sprites for the player's kart took 256 bytes for the patterns plus 128 bytes for sprite attributes, now there was only about 2K VDP RAM left for the software sprites. The current demo only includes 6 different software sprite patterns: 4 patterns for the other karts seen from different angles, one for the green oil drum, and one for the stack of tires. Together they take up about 1K, so there is still a bit of VDP RAM left to expand the demo, but not enough, for instance, to make different patterns for each kart. I also used hardware sprites for the top display of time, position, and laps, and for the small karts at the bottom of the screen. Interestingly, the F18A allows you to choose whether each sprite is 8x8 or 16x16 pixels, but the magnification setting is the same for all sprites, so the bottom sprites are magnified 8x8 sprites with very few pixels. What the TMS9900 is doing Although the F18A is continuously drawing the 3D image and the software sprites, there is plenty left for the TMS9900 to do: Reading the joystick Moving the player on the track Updating attributes for hardware sprites Checking that you stay on track Moving the other karts "Uploading" kart data to the VDP Playing sound and music Speech For the player's kart movement I asked in the forum (https://forums.atariage.com/topic/362756-physics-model-for-car/#comment-5425008) and @sometimes99er suggested this approach https://github.com/pakastin/car, which I adopted. All numbers are stored as 8.8 fixed point numbers, where the most significant byte contains the integer part. To move the other karts, I created a low resolution version of the map, where each byte value determines a direction or 8 at that position and whether it's inside the track. In addition to that, each other kart has a base speed and a setting for how much it drifts. This is enough to move the karts around the track for the demo, but hardly enough to make them interesting opponents. So a lot more work would be required to change this from a graphics demo into an exciting game. And here is a video of the current demo, which looks much better on real hardware. You will also find the demo in https://js99er.net under Software/F18A specific, or use the attached file on your real hardware. The source code is available from https://github.com/Rasmus-M/f18a-karts karts8.bin

Caterpillar colors: 77 plus src Atari8man_Pal_Caterpillar.xex Atari8man_NTSC_Caterpilla.xex

So my console and games arrived yesterday and I have never seen my son so excited - not even on Christmas. This morning, I go to the lounge to find this: The funny thing is he hasn't shown a massive interest in games until now. He does like to play whatever I'm playing (which is kind of annoying, lol) but this is the first time he's actively booted up a console to have a go himself. LOVES Mr. Run & Jump!

Cherries colors: 60 plus src Atari8man_NTSC_Cherries.xex Atari8man_Pal_Cherries.xex

Good gentlemen, I think you can find this important -or at least, appealing: https://www.atariteca.net.pe/2024/04/inminente-lanzamiento-de-mikie-para.html

Sun King colors: 41 plus src Atari8man_PAL_Sun_King.xex Atari8man_NTSC_Sun_King.xex

Been BETA-testing the new (unreleased) firmware I can confirm: No more failed USB transfers (Hooray!) An EEPROM save is now created correctly when a file is sent via USB (Hooray again!!) and.......

Hi everyone. I've been working in this game but not for making a cartridge. It's one of the games that will appear with full source code in my next book Stay tuned for more info!

Alien Commander colors: 44 plus src Atari8man_Pal_Alien_Comander.xex Atari8man_NTSC_Alien_Commander.xex

Just a heads up if anyone needs a reasonably priced replacement power supply. www.atarirepairparts.com has them for $15.

Quantum Effect colors: 42 plus src Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that describes the behavior of nature at and below the scale of atoms.[2]: 1.1  It is the foundation of all quantum physics, which includes quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science. Atari8man_Quantum Effect_.xex

After following the amazing VBXE Popeye port by @woj, I was inspired to try to port the actual arcade disassembly of my favorite game growing up: Missile Command. Missile Command came out in the arcades in 1980 just before my brother and I received our first Atari 400 computer while we were in high school. Most days after school, we would walk home to stop by the local arcade. Missile Command is a difficult game, but two 30-something players were by far better than everybody else. While most people were struggling to get 100,000 points, Larry and Bob would play doubles and regularly score between 300-500,000 points. One day, Larry had an amazing game going and had everybody in the arcade watching. He was nursing a single city until he reached 810,000 and all of a sudden he had seemingly unlimited cities. None of us had heard of this bug before then, but eventually it became known that if you reached 810,000 you could effectively play forever. While Robert was becoming great at Galaxian and John concentrated on Battle Zone, I practiced Missile Command every day and soon I also achieved 810,000. I could do this regularly, and once I played long enough to score 6,000,000 points and then walked away while it was still playing. Of course, Missile Command was one of the first Atari cartridges that my brother and I bought with our paper route earnings. The original developers did a good job, but definitely the graphics were lacking. Paul (@plee) did an amazing job modifying the original code in Missile Command+ to add three bases, a title screen, a demo attract mode, and "THE END". I used his disassembly for help with the trackball code. When the Missile Command arcade source code appeared on the internet a few years ago, I looked into seeing if I could get it running on the Atari 8bit. The fact that the resolution was 256x231 in 8 colors was one stumbling block. The other was that the code used some PDP-10 assembler with a lot of Macros, so I didn't even bother trying to get started. I looked at it again after seeing the Popeye port done in VBXE. I knew that at least I could get the graphics running in VBXE. Then I stumbled on Andy McFadden's amazing disassembly and detailed description of how the actual arcade hardware worked at this site: https://6502disassembly.com/va-missile-command/ The assembly language that was used was very similar to the MADS assembler that I use in the perfect WUDSN development environment from @JAC!, so I first got the code to compile binary perfect to the arcade ROMs. From there, I took a quick crash course in VBXE programming. I found a great introduction by @Yaron Nir here: Of course, none of this would be possible without @phaeron's amazing Altirra emulator and debugging environment. I don't even have a VBXE, but Altirra provided a perfect test environment. Finally, special shout out to VBXE's developers Tomasz Piórek and Candle`o`Sin and distributor Lotharek. I probably am using only 10% of the capabilities of this amazing daughterboard. I hope that Missile Command Arcade will inspire more developers to program for the VBXE. I can only imagine telling 16-year-old me playing Missile Command at the arcade and then going home to play it on my Atari 400 that one day I would be porting the actual arcade source code to run on an Atari 8bit computer - I wouldn't have believed it. I'm glad that it all worked out!

Portal Colors: 58 plus src Atari8man_Portal.xex

Each new image is my new favourite (do I even know how favourites work?!?)! Wow - am I happy with this one. 64 colours. Stephen_SaguarosAtSunset.xex

Heres my receipt for shipping 4 items... $334.35 1 box shipped to California, 1 box shipped to Canada, & 2 boxes shipped to Italy. *Winner is bretthorror with a guess of $350!.. only $15.65 difference. I honestly thought noone would even be close. I will be contacting winner for prize. Thanks everyone that participated!

@ti99iuc and I finished up the manual for Atlantis. It can be accessed on GitHub here: https://github.com/CheungChang7/TI99_HOMEBREW/tree/main/ATLANTIS/DOCS Along with the files for the cartridge label. The files can also be downloaded below for convenience. I want to thank ti99iuc for creating the manual cover and cartridge label as well as helping me to get the manual good enough for publication ATLMAN.pdf Atlantis Cart Label with cut lines.pdf

mrfish - einstein laughs.xex

This would make a great title screen - the 1991 Psygnosis logo, in 52 colours. Stephen_Psygnosis1991.xex

83 Colours - RedPanda Stephen_RedPanda.xex

Nanorobotics Colors: 63 plus src Atari8man_Ntsc_Nanorobotics.xex Atari8man_Pal_Nanoroboticst.xex

Red Wine colors: 80 plus src Atari8man_NTSC_Red_Wine.xex Atari8man_Pal_Red_Wine.xex

Bird - 105 colours. I did not mean to let this one run so long. I fell asleep and my poor machine was jamming away at 100% overnight. Stephen_Bird.xex

Here are all seven volumes—no calendars: YesterdaysNews.zip ...lee

This is a faithful conversion Gacek to C64, created in about 2 weeks and currently does not have any sounds . It works on emulators, but has not been tested on a real one. gacek.prg

Saw this posted in the BASIC group of FB programmed in Tektronix 4051 Basic and it looked like turtle graphics, so I thought I would try @apersson850's turtle unit and see if I can reproduce it. Here's the original image: Here's the UCSD Pascal code using the turtlegrahics unit: program spiral; uses {$u turtleunit.code} turtlegraphics; var a, w, r : real; begin page(output); grafmode; pen_mode(none); a := 0; repeat w := (a / 240) * cos(3.14159 * (a * 5.5) / 180); turnto(round(a)); r := 3 + a / 22; moveto(127, 99); move(round(r - w / 2)); pen_mode(draw); move(round((w * 1.5))); pen_mode(none); a := a + 4; until a > 1920; repeat until false; end. Not bad, considering the significant resolution limitation on the TI Classic99 QI399.065 2024-04-20 20-12-33.mp4 turtle.dsk PWORK.dsk

Bought this bundle days ago and today it came in and I eventually got it all working on my VIZIO Smart TV. It’s a milestone because it’s my next old console and my next Atari one. This is the 80s Darth Vader model that makes sense and contrasts with my woodgrain modern VCS. The visuals look like a grainy videotape having come from the 80s. I look forward to collecting more games and peripherals for it too.

Beta10 has been released: https://github.com/ilmenit/RastaConverter/releases/tag/Beta10 * pthreads dependency removed (laoo) * Added thousands separator in statistics * Added command line parameter to window title * Changed default auto-save to "auto" to save SSD disks life

That must have really been eating away at you!

Pink Floyd Dark side of the Moon Colors: 42 The Dark Side of the Moon is the eighth studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 1 March 1973 by Harvest Records in the UK and Capitol Records in the US. Developed during live performances before recording began, it was conceived as a concept album that would focus on the pressures faced by the band during their arduous lifestyle, and also deal with the mental health problems of the former band member Syd Barrett, who departed the group in 1968. New material was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios) in London. Atari8man_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon.xex

Behold! I am VERY pleased.

Cats colors: 76 Atari8man_Cats.xex

Nanorobotics Beetle colors: 83 plus src Atari8man_NTSC_Nanorobotics_Beetle.xex Atari8man_Pal_Nanorobotics_Beetle.xex

Fractal Nightmare Colors: 39 plus src Atari8man_Fractal_Nightmare.xex

Alien Conversation colors: 73 plus src Atari8man_NTSC_Alien_conversation.xex Atari8man_Pal_Alien_conversation.xex

That's what happens when you remove so many games from the store at once... I'm just glad people had an opportunity to buy them, but, damn, the number of games sold was just nuts, far exceeding what I was expecting! I'll go into some details soon about the various things I'm actively working on to greatly reduce the amount of time it takes me to get orders out. That's not really going to help with the Last Chance orderes, but as I mentioned above, the goal by this time next year (or earlier, really) is to ship 95% of orders within a week's time. ..Al

Hacker II colors: 57 plus src Atari8man_Pal_Hacker_2.xex Atari8man_NTSC_Hacker_2.xex

I am going to leave this thread pinned for a week to make sure people see it and can pay their respects should they wish*. The FP will be updated to include a link to the thread. * Not having done so in the past, I feel, is an oversight and I wish to do this going forward for our comrades when we lose them. Preferably, not frequently.

The attached zip includes the latest version of MDOS, Version 7.45 and a host of various utility updates for MDOS. Enjoy! MDOS745DIS.zip

Damn, I almost forgot to run this again through a visual translator. ... By God, this goes much deeper than I initially thought. I think we have only scratched the surface of this heinous conspiracy.

City Gold Colors: 50 plus src Atari8man_Pal_City_Gold.xex Atari8man_NTSC_City_Gold.xex

Creepy Skull Colors: 34 plus src Atari8man_Creepy_Skull.xex

Got these in the mail today from @bent_pin

American Knight colors: 43 plus src Atari8man_American_Knight.xex

I haven't sent out a new update yet, as others have surmised, I have my head down and furiously building games. Built another 250 Last Chance games over the weekend, and will get several hundred more done over the next few days. This work will result in shipping another large batch of orders next week, then it's time to rinse and repeat, and I can start on the next big batch of games. I'm shipping 100-200 orders in each batch. The orders vary quite a bit in size, some have just one game, and other orders can have 30 or more games. ..Al

Cool idea. Thanks for the suggestion! The roms I do sell supports the site. For those that download the free games, I just hope they play them and enjoy them. An email saying they enjoyed it would be the best payment. I can dream

Panda Colors: 49 plus src Atari8man_Panda.xex

Work In Progress Demo 3 of Time Wizard Deluxe has just arrived This time the following features have been introduced: Added on/off buttons. Previously there were buttons only for turning on or only for turning off. It helped me to simplify this horrible level 11 from the original game. Added buttons with timers. Now it is possible to use buttons which turn on or turn off something but for specific period of time up to 5 seconds. These buttons are time resist it means that you can use time manipulation to speed up your movements and be on time before the timer of the button will come to its end. Added following enemies. There are a little more smart enemies which follows your movements and try to block your passage. These new enemies are time resist, so you can cheat them by rewind or fast forward your timeline and be faster than robots. I hope that these new features will make the Time Wizard Deluxe more interesting than before. The updated level editor will be available soon.