mos6507

If he has any interest in profit, I hope he doesn't. I'm sure that the NUON userbase is even smaller than the Jag and Lynx userbase. The only thing in its favor is "latent' users who may have a Nuon DVD player and not know it can play games, but since the Nuon chipset really hasn't reached that much penetration, it's not a big market.

There are at least two lowercase fonts used. The 1st gen carTs have a connected lowercase e with a straight line whereas 2nd gen text label games (CIRCA 1980) like space invaders switched to a diagonal connector on the e and other letters that leaves a gap (looks like Mumbo). http://www.atariage.com/cart_page.html?Sof...ftwareLabelID=3 http://www.atariage.com/cart_page.html?Sof...wareLabelID=462

The best role for someone who is into games but can't write them is as a game tester. That's what I feel my role has been on Stellalist (at least until recently when I finally started writing assembly for myself). You can influence the final product of homebrewers by giving them feedback. They won't always follow your advice, but if you make a good enough case, they might, and so in a way you become like a co-designer. The better games that have come out of Stellalist were tweaked and altered at the behest of others on the list, not all of whom are active programmers. If you have any feel for what makes a game work or not work, and can express yourself concisely, then you can certainly do that.

Isn't that an elitist attitude? What's the difference between pop culture and culture these days, though? Should we just have collective amnesia from generation to generation? Should history textbooks only talk about geopolitical events and ignore any and all references to the evolution of entertainment and mass media? Atari may not be as important as, let's say, the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it's still history worth knowing, certainly more important than truly frivolous pop culture like 1-hit wonder bubblegum music.

Have you guys noticed that the edit box we use for posting does all its bolding, etc.. inline including URL? By inline i mean highlight text, click, and it inserts the markup on either end. It's a big improvement over the javascript input box and always shoving URLs etc... at the end of the textarea. This is progress. Give em time to work out the bugs. There is a lot that goes into website coding beyond the surface. A BB can be the most demanding part of a website. As AtariAge grows, they NEED to use software that will scale up with the load.

Note that Zap is riddled with misspellings, most notably (and annoyingly) with people's names (for example, I think they called Joe Decuir 'Joe Decure'). Unfortunately none of this has ever been fixed in the reprintings which is a shame.

quote: Originally posted by Atari freak 1: Pitfall 2 works fine on the new version of stella. cyberstella. Without sound, though, right?

I have been tracking the long development of Neverwinter Nights and the new demo video from E3 starts out "Bioware and Atari present"! Now sure, Atari is merely a boutique label of Infogrames, but this is the first I have heard that Infogrames is going to use the monicker for Neverwinter Nights, and I must say that it's got to be the highest profile title to carry the fuji since the Warner era. It's probably going to be the game of the year, at least for RPG fans! Pretty big news, I think.

Compumate FAQ Manual

What seemed like the biggest feat became a standard trick later on. The biggest breakthrough was the six-char routine that was used for scoring and other effects. This took the sprite copy feature which enabled games like Space Invaders and let you have individual shapes for each copy, basically 48 bits of highres bitmap graphics to work with. The way this is actually done leaves NO free cycles left. It's only _barely_ possible. But once you get there, it looks easy. That's what was used for all the scoring, control panel graphics and radars and all that other good stuff. There was also a lot of HARDWARE innovation. Being able to implement RAM on a cart slot with no read/write or clock lines was a feat in and of itself. So the Supercharger, CBS Ram+, and Superchip RAM are all amazing inventions, as is the Pitfall II DPC chip. The other trick is what's used in Galaxian and Robot Tank to get even more than six sprites on a line. You can actually fill an entire scanline with sprites that way. I guess the limit is like 14 or something. Another trick that was only used once was the Suicide Mission bitmap, which manages to fill the entire screen (albeit dithered) just with sprites using a combination of flicker, interlacing, and the Starpath RAM. Suicide Mission represents the ultimate capability of the 2600 hardware to paint with sprites. It's really amazing that with only the two player objects you can cover so much of the screen at once. I think the best tricks are possible only with RAM, since you can then do self-modifying code and all sorts of dynamic RAM lookup tables and bitmap tricks. RAM lets you overcome a lot of the timing constraints of the 2600. That's why most of the latter-era games from Atari Corp looked so good. They had a combination of 16K ROM and 256 extra bytes of RAM to work with.

quote: Originally posted by Pitfall Harry: If properly cared for, there's no reason why relatively simplistic, 2600 game ROMs should fail any time soon. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if I can fire up all my Atari cartridge games and play them without a hitch 20,000 years from now. Given that the Cuttle Cart design and the banking schemes for the 2600 are well documented, and given that the original Atari 2600 schematic exists, and given emulators and ROM images, it should always be possible to recreate the hardware down the road long after the originals are gone. The only time this isn't the case is with prototype EPROMs that have not been dumped, or have been dumped but for which only exists one fragile backup (on floppy or something else that can easily go bad).

quote: Originally posted by atarimusician1: Huh?! 16-bit machines for thousands of dollars?! I did some searching online and here are the original release prices for the various 16-bit platforms: Atari 520ST - $799 (this isn't including any other peripherals, of course) Amiga 1000 - $1295 Mac Plus - $2600 IBM PC XT - $3285 Yeah, the ST was the cheapest, but other than having better graphics than the PC and the Mac (which didn't count for much at the time) there wasn't a lot of capability there. The original ST used single-sided 360K floppies and its OS was not as slick looking as the MAC nor did it have the multitasking of the Amiga. The ST didn't have a lot of expansion options vs. the PC or even Amigas (all of which had expansion slots of some sort). And while the Mac was getting 040s in them, Atari was still shipping 8mhz 68000s in their STs. (Unlike the 8-bit I don't think there was a hardware dependency on the internal CPU clock.) That lack of progress must have infuriated those who chose to follow the ST line and build up a new software library investment vs. staying put with the 8-bit. At the time I didn't see anything new that was exclusive to the ST that compelled me to switch at the time. If I had taken a closer look at the Amiga I would have saved my pennies, though. The Amiga was really a better design and left itself more open to 3rd party expansion than the ST, so that even when C= started to ignore the platform, 3rd parties delivered bigtime to keep the machines fast and vital. Each ST is much more of a closed system so to upgrade you pretty much have to buy a whole new box, ending up with the Falcon.

"I think it would have been a bit nutty to spend big bucks on the 8-bit line heading into the late 80's with the big brother ST looming overhead. I'm sure some will hate to hear this, but I'm fairly satisfied with what the Tramiels gave us for 8-bit support." Between 1984 and 1990 or so, 16-bit machines were an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE more expensive than their 8-bit counterparts. We're talking thousands of dollars vs. hundreds of dollars. I think the original Amiga for instance was something like $3,000. 8 bit machines in the mid 80s including disk drive were only like 2-300 bucks. A great value considering that they could do pretty much everything people were using computers for in the home at the time about as well as need be. The whole idea of sub-$1000 computing began with the 8-bits. Only recently have we again seen new computers costing less than $1000. To most households, a computer purchase was for your kid and it's a luxury to spend that much money for what most parents thought of as a glorified toy. So it really wasn't until the early 90s that the mainstream started to come to terms with the pricepoint of 16-bit computing. During this transition, I would argue that the majority of home computer users (not business, in the home) were sticking to their cheaper 8-bits, although certainly there was a shift in the public mindset as PCs took over mainframes in the workplace and began to gain legitimacy with adults. This is when all the hobby hacker mags like Byte and Compute became suit-and-tie business PC type magazines. It really wasn't until after the crash that the C=64 hit its golden age. So you can't just say the 8-bit was put out to pasture due to obsolescence if the C=64 is sustaining a huge userbase over a similar timeframe.

quote: Originally posted by Thunderbird: Too bad that most other recent space battle games have been pretty to look at but SUCKED gameplay wise. The sucky play caused low sales which makes publishers shy away from proposed ports of BattleSphere. I'm not even sure they sucked gameplaywise as much as they didn't really break any new ground over the original Wing Commander formula. For instance, Freespace II is an excellent game. It's just that it's yet another scripted mission-based space game. I haven't tried the online multiplayer component, though. There don't seem to be anymore players online for that game, or X vs.Tie. It just seems that the genre has faded out of popularity. When I was a kid it was a dream come true to be able to play a game that made me feel like Luke Skywalker. Today it's sort of anticlimactic, at least when I'm thrust into the middle of a linear scripted scenario vs. a randomized freeforall ala Star Raiders and Battlesphere. I would the genre to perk back up when the space combat portion of Star Wars Galaxies is released, however.

quote: Originally posted by liquid_sky: [QB] Just because I had on a shirt that had a celtic cross on it (a dropkick murphys shirt) he was like, I was in the gulf war, you little punk ass kids dont know what the hell that cross means.. Well.. it was a celtic cross for eons before the nazis bastardised it. [QB] If you are talking about the swastika, I think that's a special case. You'll have a hard time justifying wearing it, regardless of any other meanings (celtic, navaho, whatever). BTW, I take issue with your avatar image. From what I've read about him, Che Guevera was little more than a more handsome and more idealistic version of Fidel Castro who had a nack for propaganda speeches that pushed buttons with the disenfranchised in the third world. Hardly a fit role model for anyone. He was just as much a ruthless killer as any other guerilla dictator. His writings have been used to rationalize just about every guerilla movement in latin america, causing endless violence in the region.

Even if you found them, the carts were supposedly crushed so at best you might be able to salvage a few PCBs that weren't ruined. There is also a landfill full of Atari 1400 series machines and if any of those were not completely destroyed you would have more valuable boards. I heard that Atari employees rushed into the pit and dodged bulldozers to save some of them. They were not happy to see their hard work destroyed.

Do you guys think the Tramiels intentionally killed the Atari 8-bits? I think they did. The 130XE was two steps forward and one step back because it was so flimsy. You could practically wring it like a wet towel the case was so thin. Really sad compared to the Atari 400/800 tanks and the keyboards were all crap including the original metal spring ones. It seemed like most 8-bit development was undertaken only due to pressure from the userbase to DO SOMETHING. (The XEP-80, the XF-551, and AtariWriter+) They never really put any effort into extending the functionality of the machine compared to what Apple did with the IIGS or C= did with the 128 and GEOS. It survived almost entirely due to 3rd parties. It seemed like they wanted to drag 8-bit users kicking and screaming to the ST, despite the fact that the ST lost a sound voice, had no hardware sprites, and couldn't produce 16 shades ala GTIA. This just created a rift in the Atari faithful at a time when Atari needed to hold onto their existing userbase. You had the loyalists who stuck to the 8-bit and those who moved to the ST. What do you think?

>> If that were the case, then how do you explain the popularity of new 2D games like "Hyper Force", "Soccer Kid", and "Protector"? << I'm not aware of Songbird's sale figures. Are you aware enough to classify these as "popular"? And aren't these mostly unreleased games that were just polished off and published? That's a lot less time and money required to deliver than a game from scratch. >> A small group of collaborators could reproduce games of this quality working part time in a matter of months. << But would they want to? Why write for the Jag if your games are basically equivalent to what you can do on an Amiga 1200? >> Asteroids coming from Sinister in the << The world does not need yet another asteroids clone. It didn't need it in 1984 with the 7800 and it doesn't need one now. I guess it's an obligatory project, but nothing to get that excited about. I can play Asteroids or Asteroids Deluxe in all their glory as emulations on my PC. If 2D games are going to be written, they really should try to be original.

quote: Originally posted by ndary: i wonder if with the AXLON memory upgrade or other all the XEGS carts work on the 400/800 computers??? I don't think the 400/800s are wired in such a way that you can add that last 16K of memory. That 16K block is normally where the OS ROM resides. To use it on the XL/XEs you have to temporarily swap out the OS. Banking on the XL/XEs are done via the lines previously servicing the extra 2 joystick ports. So 400/800 expanded memory is different.

>>So these ports are useful and are being taken advantage of. << The hype was that the PS2 was going to be Sony's digital hub. You'd be able to download movies over broadband to the internal hard drive, or use it like a TiVo, or do video editing by connecting Sony DV cameras to it via Firewire. You'd be able to use it like an MP3 jukebox, and copy songs to memory sticks. You'd be able to surf the internet (hopefully a little better than WebTV or the dreamcast). This would in fact cover most of the areas that a traditional home PC is used for these days, and provide back-door competition against Wintel. This was going to distinguish it compared to the very single-purposed GameCube, for instance. All of these things are possible but while I've heard tidbits here and there, movement in these areas is at a snail's pace, which is surprising given Sony's resources. Given how short a typical console's lifespan is, it's not a good idea to hold off on any of this sort of R&D. (By the time you are done with it the machine might be completely obsolete.) In fact, Sony should have been working in these areas since BEFORE the PS2 launched in Japan. Since the hardware designers saw fit to put all this capability on the unit, it must have been on their minds since the beginning, but they seem to be treating all this more as an afterthought than a priority. I also think as far as using the ports for games that they shouldn't have bothered with multitaps using the standard ports. They should have in fact migrated off of the standard PS2 ports and focused on USB peripherals so you could use PC-based gamepads, analog flight sticks, and the like. It saves money and provides a lot of choice. If the PS2 has any sort of hardware abstraction layer, then this would have been transparent to the games the way it is in a PC game that uses DirectInput. I also hear that Sony is working on a MMORPG for the PS2. Since Sony owns Verant, you'd think they'd have something ready by now. I also agree that a lot of the PS3 talk is naive pie in the sky--and makes me wonder just how grounded the guys at Sony are in reality. P2P computing is not well suited to real-time applications like games. File sharing is just about the only useful end-user application you can build with it so far. Client/sever broadband has enough potential in and of itself (MMORPGs and the like) that it should be fully pursued before going off on a distributed computing tangent. It's really software that drives consoles anyway. Sega's mistake is that they patched their wounds by releasing more hardware instead of focusing on software. Sony so far has made the right decisions on when and how to release new hardware. They should, however, make the most of what they've got before abandoning it for something new. [ 05-18-2002: Message edited by: Glenn Saunders ]

The PS2 has USB, firewire, an internal bay for a hard drive, ALL being wasted right now. Sony should focus on marketing a hard drive and a broadband setup for the PS2 before rushing to new hardware. A hard drive would help enhance the system in ways no read-only medium can. And consoles are really lagging behind PCs in the online multiplayer domain--embarassingly so at this late date.

The reason nobody uses their consoles to play audio CDs is that it requires the added inconvenience of having the TV on for the visual interface vs. a stereo component's built-in displays, or also for the audio depending on your setup. For DVD, a console is a more natural choice because you are going to watch it on TV, not just use the TV as a user interface.

Some Warner-era game boxes were intentionally B&W for artistic purposes. I think Night Driver was one. Not that this necessarily applies, though.

quote: Originally posted by Thunderbird: 1) Writing in assembly KICKS @$$! It's more fun than any other way to code! The VCS and 7800 and 5200 seem to ONLY be programmable in Assembly, yet they have droves of developers. I wouldn't say droves. The 5200 has only recently got a couple people homebrewing on it. There was nothing before. Sure, there are a lot of people on Stellalist but the output is few and far between due to the technical challenges in doing even the simplest games on the VCS. The average coder, let alone an assembly novice like me has the odds stacked against them. (We do, however, have a tightly knit community which may be lacking for the Jag. To a great extent all VCS homebrews are collaborations.) I think with the Jag the expectations are definitely higher. Sure, some people are writing simple applets and shareware games, but these people aren't getting the kind of attention someone who writes a Vectrex or 2600 game gets with a similarly minimalistic game. Even given the Jag's hardware compared to today, I think people (including the developers themselves) expect more to be done than is generally possible as a part time hobby affair. People are not going to get that excited about 2D Jag homebrews. The development time of Battlesphere is a perfect case study on how long it takes to get a sufficiently state of the art game done part-time on the Jag.

I think the only form-factor that makes sense if the intention is to clone the actual hardware is a portable. In the console world, the current consoles are more than adequate at emulating the 2600 at full speed and accuracy if necessary.