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Loccy

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Posts posted by Loccy

  1. Posted · Edited by Loccy

    Direct4games have just whacked up their postage costs to a tenner and I resent paying that. If they want to charge more for a stick, charge more for a stick, don't just whack up the postage and expect people not to notice.

     

    Preferably, I want original design VCS/2600 sticks rather than a third party design, but I don't mind if they're newly manufacturered (eg. the Flashback 2 sticks, or these ones from ebay. Before I dive in and buy something from the US, I was wondering if any UKers had any bright ideas.

  3. Posted

    I'm finishing up the 4K version now. I was hoping for a Christmas release but I ran into some bugs. I'm down to about 4 bytes of ROM (only 3 usable) right now. I'm testing this to see if I can find any more bugs before I release it. When I played it last night on my 7800 I noticed some screen rolls when transitioning from levels and on a RESET press. Hopefully I've removed them today.

     

    I do want to claim some more bytes to add a pause between levels. I believe I can find them but it's going to take time (the fun part) :)

    Maybe you could fit some inter-level transitions into those 3 bytes!

     

    :D

  4. Posted

    Check your difficulty switches...one of them slows pac-man down to the normal pace

    ALL-FRICKIN'-RIGHT!!! Thank you! My excuse is that I've been playing it on Stella on my GP2X rather than on real hardware, so it never even occurred to me to check out the difficulty switches.

     

    You can relax a bit now, Debro, Hack 'Em with the difficulty set right is now fulfilling my immediate itch for decent VCS Pac-Man. Although don't think I'm letting you off the hook :)

     

    Now I just need a copy of Hack 'Em to play on real (preferably PAL) hardware. Anyone up for burning me a cartridge? ;)

  7. Posted

    I'm sure I'm just echoing the views of many people on the forum, but please prioritise this project. Having played your demo from October it's absolutely brilliant. I've thoroughly enjoyed Nukey Shay's hacks of various Pac-alikes (bizarrely, my favourite is his hack of Tod Frye's original Pac-Man, which I think plays better than Hack 'Em even if it's not as authentic to the arcade; Hack 'Em has the Pac-Dude flying around like there's a rocket up his arse). However, yours gives the Pac-Bloke what he needs - a recode from scratch. The speed is spot on in your version and all it needs is a bit of spit and polish. Finish it and I might even make it the first homebrew cartridge that I buy!

  9. Posted

    Never played Robotron, couldn't get into Tron.

     

    Back to Berzerk (and I freely admit, I've never done any 2600 coding), I don't think I'm asking anything that wouldn't essentially be reuse of existing code, just called in a different place. As for the regenerations, couldn't you just call the robot death sequence in a random location, then once it had finished, create a new robot in that position?

     

    My original idea actually was to retain the mazes (but with no exits), and have them change every so often (you'd probably need some kind of visual or audible indicator so you could get to a safe location, otherwise the new maze might materialise in your head). Again, that could just be existing code reuse - whatever code that randomly generates a new maze when you move to a new level could be called. However, I think that might make the resultant game too much of a headf**k and take away from the shootfest I had in mind.

     

    So, any takers among the hacking community? I think I might be asking too much for me to take it on as a first project!

  12. Posted

    Well that was a bizarre morning.

     

    Bought the £3.99 Maplins PSU; also had to buy another set of connectors as the PSU didn't come supplied with a 3.5mm mono jack. Got it home, plugged it into my new Woody fresh from ebay - nothing. Spent an hour watching the TV trying to tune into what was a non-existant signal. I'd actually got to the stage where I was thinking that either the PSU was faulty or the Woody was - I had noticed that as I plugged the PSU into the back of the Woody, there was a spark.

     

    Out of desperation, and I was about to give up, when I decided to flip the connector on the end of the PSU around. Now I am absolutely positive that in doing so, I was flipping the polarity to the WRONG setting, ie. center negative. Not expecting anything I set the TV tuning itself - and up pops 1981 Atari (the minimalist title screen of Yars Revenge).

     

    It was like coming home after 20-odd years.

  15. Posted

    Perhaps.

     

    Or maybe your aunt made a trip to Paris and bought it there?

     

    Would be interesting to know.

     

    Thanks for the info, Loccy.

     

    8)

    I actually telephoned her to ask about it earlier on. Unfortunately, she doesn't remember it. Certainly she insists she never ever bought a game outside of the UK for me (I must confess, I didn't think she would have done either). In fact she doesn't even remember EVER buying me a VCS/2600 game for Christmas either, so I might actually be on a loser anyway; maybe my memory is faulty as regards where the game came from. Mind you, I'm convinced that's where Base Attack came from, mainly because of the "it looks a bit shit so I don't want to put it in my beloved Atari" moment, which I remember quite vividly. So, somewhere, somehow, I still think my aunt bought Base Atack from a UK retailer.

     

    Unfortunately, it's all academic, as I don't have the cartridge any more :(

  16. Posted · Edited by Loccy

    1) Get rid of Otto.

     

    2) Get rid of maze exits. Perhaps even get rid of the maze itself, you won't need it (see 3).

     

    3) Have robots rematerialise constantly as they're destroyed. Have the speed increase over time in terms of both the time between death and rematerialisation, and also the speed of bullets and the speed of robots walking. Build up to 100% high-speed mode, whereby robots re-materialise instantly, and are constantly at maximum walking and shooting speed.

     

    I think this could lead to a pretty entertaining no-brainer-actioner, and a fun variation on one of (in my view) the classics.

     

    I don't think I'm asking anything too technically challenging -- any takers? (I'm looking at YOU primarily, Nukey Shay! :))

  17. Posted · Edited by Loccy

    Afraid not. Been hammering away at emulators for some years and more recently, hankering after the real thing. Unfortunately I'm starting from scratch today as a result of my mum giving away ALL of my Atari gear in the late 80s to the local pikie family (who I despised). Mum always said "well you don't play it any more" (I'd got into Sinclair Spectrums at that point!) "so you should be happy to give it to someone who'll use it". Use it my arse, I'm sure they immediately sold it and made a few quid.

     

    Still weird my aunt getting hold of Base Attack though - I'm based in the UK so what she was doing with a European cartridge is anyone's guess. Maybe someone imported them into the UK and sold them as cheapies?

  18. Posted

    Loccy, did you own this white one?

    http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...7272&MENU=2

     

    8)

    That was it! It was a present from an aunt one Christmas. I remember being a bit wary about actually putting it into my VCS, because the cartridge was the "wrong" colour and the packaging and overall production values looked so cheap compared to the predominantly Atari and Activision games I had. I was convinced it was a "fake" cartridge and it'd blow up my VCS. I left it until Boxing Day before I tried it (and that was under duress from my parents). Was actually surprised to find a bloody playable game underneath all that and it ended up one of my favourites.

     

    (god knows where my aunt found it though, looking on Atarimania that particular version was Belgian?! :?)

  21. Posted · Edited by Loccy

    Actually, there's not a lot in it, especially given that auctions for batches of games seem more common over the pond - ebay UK seems to deal more in individual games.

     

    Ebay USA has an auction for a 32 game packages that finishes in a few hours and is currently at $36USD. Let's say it goes for $50. That's £25 - less than a quid a game.

     

    Postage per game - note worldwide postage per game! - is $6.99 USD for the first game, and $4.99 thereafter. That's £3.50 and £2.50 respectively.

     

    That works out no more expensive - possibly cheaper - than most ebay UK auctions. Most people on there charge a couple of quid postage per game anyway and that's within the UK!

     

    Welcome to the wonderful world of rip-off Britain combined with the pound being particularly mighty against the dollar at the moment.

  22. Posted

    That's the game! Funny thing is though, I would swear on everything I own, that when I had the game as a kid it wasn't called Z-Tack, and I'm sure I would remember a company called "Bomb". The piece on Bomb the Company on the site does say there were more common in PAL regions (which is me) so maybe I just don't remember right. Were there any variants or clones?

  23. Posted · Edited by Loccy

    It was basically the reverse of Atlantis. You had a ship above a city, and you were bombing buildings within the playfield below. As the levels progressed "enemy" ships came and made life tough for you up in the sky. It was quite challenging in that the buildings/objects you were firing at were located behind quite thin gaps in an almost maze-like playfield, and you had to fire quickly because the buildings would fire back at you.

     

    I don't think it was by any of the big companies (eg. Atari, Activision, Imagic).

     

    One aspect I remember is that your ship would actually change shape as you moved (not by design I suspect, I think your "ship" was actually displayed by the programmer manipulating the playing field; given the limitations of the VCS it was probably a challenge for the programmer to keep the thing a constant size! maybe I'm getting too technical).

     

    I am almost certain I saw a hack of this game out there, but have just literally gone through the entire catalogue of hacked titles and can't find it.

     

    Has anyone got any ideas what it was?

  24. Posted

    The subject line says it all really - I've looked in the FAQ, but it seems to be oriented towards NTSCers with PAL cartridges. So, will NTSC titles run on a PAL 2600? My TV is capable of displaying NTSC, but as my Woody is a UK/PAL model, is there anything I need to know or do, or should I just avoid NTSC cartridges? (the ebay marketplace seems busier for NTSC :()

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