davidbrit2
-
Content Count
551 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by davidbrit2
-
-
The Harmony is a cartridge emulator powered by an ARM processor. It spends most of its time emulating a cartridge and can also emulate a DPC chip, a DPC+ chip, and more . That leaves around 10% left for assembly programmers to use it as a co-processor to run game logic. Everything still must be passed back to the 2600 as a cart in 4K ROM spaces.
It is really hard to grasp that there is no physical DPC+ chip. And that it is an altered emulation (by the ARM computer) of the Pitfall II chip.
In conclusion, using DPC+ functions is using the ARM because the ARM is emulating the DPC+. I guess if you had enough money, a physical DPC+ chip could be manufactured and you could build a cartridge with a ROM chip, a RAM chip, and a DPC+ chip. No ARM required.
batari Basic DPC+ games are 24K 6507 Atari code by the programmer, the other 8K used by batari Basic language framework .
Right, I knew the ARM in the Harmony was handling all the DPC/DPC+ simulation. I could have sworn I had heard that Space Rocks (for example) was offloading some arbitrary snippets of ARM code to the cartridge to handle some of the calculations. I may have read it wrong, though.
-
DPC+ doesn't disregard the hardware limitations. The limitations are still there.
It just enables a few instructions to be run using less cycles.
Even the Pitfall II music can be done without a DPC chip, just in code.
Anyway, the 2 links in my signature are 2 games I've done.
One is batari Basic with the multi-sprite kernel, and the other is batari Basic with the DPC+ kernel.
Ah, I thought the ARM coprocessor on the Harmony was part of the DPC+ spec. That's entirely independent, then?
-
Its part of the standard bB kernel. It clears out the playfield registers between playfield blocks, if no_blank_lines hasn't been used.
This won't be present in bB games using alternate kernels, like DPC+, multisprite, or custom-built kernels.
I kind of suspected it was part of the standard kernel or some other init routine. I'm not quite as concerned about the ones with more complex kernels, as those are far less likely to require sectioning off in my "unfinished" directory.
More current, but still far from complete, list here: http://batarigames.statotronic.com/
Thanks, some of those look rather interesting.
On a related note, what bB DPC+ games are out there already? I'd love to see what can be done with a blatant disregard for the 2600's hardware limitations. Princess Rescue doesn't use DPC+, does it? Just 32K bank-switching?
-
Here's another place with completed games (incomplete clearly marked WIP):
Nice! Jumpman looks promising from the screenshot. I'll have to give that one a try. And Because It's There is pretty cool, sort of like a mix of Ice Climber and Spelunker.
-
1
-
-
Found one definite false negative: Aborigines' Revenge. That one's dated 2005 in my set, so maybe bB wasn't doing 7800 detection at that point, thus those bytes don't show up in the resulting ROM.
Of the bB games it was able to identify, I was able to test and move over half of them to a sort of "unfinished" directory. (No, I'm not going to name any. Any programmer has to start somewhere; it's more the sloppily curated ROM set that was the problem.)
Some of the more interesting ones I stumbled across in the process:
Arctic Landtran
Ature
Cold War
Evil Magician Returns
Go Fish
Lander
Money Man
Shield Shifter
Tron
EDIT: May have found another usable bB fingerprint, though I couldn't tell you what it is. A9 00 85 0E 85 0F 8A
-
I think this is the key thing to remember, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. If it comes down to having bB versus not having bB, I'd much rather have it.
I completely agree.
That said, definitely check out L.E.M., Ms. Snake, Alien Greed II, Heartbreak, Questforge and JumpVCS. All well done games that show what you can do with bB if you put a little effort into it.
Thanks, I'll check those out. None of those names rings a bell.
I did a search using the fingerprint RevEng suggested (78 D8 A0 00 A5 D0) and I'm getting 123 matches out of the 409 files in my homebrew directory. All but a couple of them are dated 2007 or later, so that's a good sign I'm not getting too many false positives. Not sure if it's missing any, but this ought to give me a good start at organizing things at least.
-
I already gave a link that you can go to. It has no batari BASIC detector though. You must download and play the games to see if it's worthy of your archive. http://www.atari2600homebrew.com/
There's also the homebrew section here:
http://atariage.com/forums/forum/29-homebrew-discussion/
Also, just search this section for homebrew marked as done. Make your own judgements based on your own personal review. My favorite might be your worst.
Well, part of the problem is that I've already got them pretty much all downloaded (I think there was a homebrew ROM set somewhere on AA that I grabbed shortly after getting the Harmony). Rather than trash and redownload everything individually, I can speed up the process by moving the bB ROMs to a dedicated bB or WIP subdirectory, then moving the good stuff back as appropriate, and outright deleting the stuff that's nothing more than a blocky title screen, and a crudely-drawn player sprite you can move the with the joystick (with the occasional grating sound effect if it collides with the playfield or some other bouncing object).
Another good one I forgot: Gingerbread Man. Gets hard as hell pretty quickly, though.
Lowering the barrier to entry is quite a double-edged sword. Think of all the awful VB6 and MS Access "applications" out there. But if you know what you're doing, you can use them to produce decent solutions in a lot less time than lower-level alternatives. Kind of the same "issue" with bB.
-
I know where you come from save2600. godzillajoe is even in my groove (even though he has been a harsh critic at times). I respect that you play games and give pointed feedback on those games. I don't respect others that give blanket statements that pizz on a whole community.
Utilities like the one the O.P. wants to make support a very narrow minded view and exacerbate it. Imagine someone takes this one step further and develops a "ROM cleanup" tool that rips out terrible first attempts like Drunken Pooper but also stunning games like Princess Rescue - all because "bB". That's sad.
You're reading way too much into this. Take a chill pill. There's some really impressive stuff like Princess Rescue, DK Arcade 2600, and Zippy the Porcupine. But the vast majority of bB ROMs in my collection are on the level of junk like Drunken Pooper. If I move all the bB ROMs to a separate bB and/or WIP directory, it'll make it a lot easier to sift through the assembly homebrews, and rummage through some of the bB stuff when the mood hits me, or I hear a game name worth checking out.
So rather than stomping your foot and slinging ad-hominems, how about pointing me to a list of the best bB games so I can give them a try?
-
YOU find a higher percentage because you can't sort out your own ROMs. That comment wasn't needed. It could have been entirely omitted from your query to this group.
"The [gentleman] doth protest too much, methinks."
DavidBrit,
I think the ratio isn't too different from the classic ROM collection. Best to just create a good folder and put the good games in there; finding them is part of the fun and cannot be watermarked
How does your filtering program work? Each game has a distinct audio visual fingerprint that is complex and must be experienced and interpreted though the senses; maybe a sentient Eliza-like program could be devised to actually try the games.
I just made something like grep that operates on binary files/patterns. I'm going to try feeding it that fingerprint that Rev Eng posted earlier and see how it fares.
-
That's your own opinion. You can make your own utility based on your own opinion. Personally, I think it's easier to just go to http://www.atari2600homebrew.com/ and download finished games and decide for myself. Why bring the hate directly to the batari BASIC section? Really?
I don't hate bB. Don't try to put words in my mouth. There's quite a few cool bB games out there. The problem is that the shitty ones seem to outnumber them by at least an order of magnitude. Those are the ones I want to get rid of.
-
My observation is that if you separate 2600 games into three categories - commercial releases, assembly homebrews, and bB homebrews - you will find a MUCH higher percentage of unredeemable garbage among bB ROM releases. As was said, it's like anybody who spent a couple hours with a bB tutorial thinks they've made something worthy of release. If I can move the bB ROMs to their own subdirectory, it'll make it a lot easier for me to find what's actually good among them and the assembly homebrews.
Anyway, I knocked together a simple search tool in C# this morning. I'll have to give it a test run later and see if it can identify them.
-
Just be sure not to bitch that it's cheating when we get some good bB DPC+ games:
randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-cheating.html
If you want better-looking games, bB DPC+ is the only way it's going to happen.
Doesn't bother me one bit. I just want to cull the crappy and unfinished ones.
-
Emu in Window-Mode and Explorer with Roms in the background.
Found something you want to get rid off --> load next game (not be able to delete a file that is running), ESC and delete.
Not that easy, but best I can think of, without writing a little prog..
I'm comfortable with knocking together something in C# if there's a consistent way to fingerprint the binaries. Maybe I'll just have to open a couple in a hex editor and see if I can spot anything.
-
Easy!
Load up in your favorite emulator and look for painfully ugly, blocky, drab looking crap that's devoid of color variation and has thin lines running through most of it.
<--- puts on flame retardant suit.
Well yeah, if the Harmony Cart menu had a way to directly delete files, I'd just do that.
Not that there aren't some good bB games out there, but man, the unplayable rubbish has to outnumber it at least 10-to-1.
-
2
-
-
My ROM set has a homebrew subdirectory which currently contains a ton of unfinished junk made in batari Basic. Is there any easy way I can identify ROMs made with bB so I can move them all to a separate batari Basic and/or WIP subdirectory? Any sort of consistent fingerprint within the ROMs that I could look for?
-
I can't think of any games where players alternate turns and collaborate. Do players really help each other in Dark Chambers, or do they just pursue their interests in parallel?
Well, their interests involve killing monsters and reaching the next level, so much like Gauntlet, you can definitely help each other to those ends.
And I can't think of anything with turn-based cooperative play either. You'd probably only see that in something like a strategy game or board game, and I don't think the 2600 has a lot of those. Does Bridge let you play with a partner?
-
Fall Down!
Best co op game ever
Looks like a cool game, but I'm not seeing the cooperative elements at first glance, i.e. one player being able to prolong the survival of the other by defeating some common threat.
-
Just wondering what other cooperative games there are for the 2600, and if I've overlooked anything good. I can only think of a few off the top of my head, and while many of them feature players competing against a common enemy rather than directly against one another, there's usually still an element of competing against each other for the higher score. I suppose the cooperative play style just wasn't as mature at that point.
Dark Chambers
Worm War I
Joust (Unless you want to play adversarially)
Mario Bros (Ditto)
G.I. Joe (Features both cooperative and competitive play modes)
Space Invaders
-
Honestly, it seems like somebody in marketing got ahold of an unfinished build, and said, "Good enough, let's ship it." (And this is coming from somebody that likes the 2600 version of Donkey Kong Jr.)
Personally, I think the C64 had the best version of the game, though the Colecovision version is excellent too.
-
I've had a weird intermittent issue (maybe 10-25% of the time) where I power on the CV FB, and the display will be shifted drastically down and to the right, to the point where some of the menu will be wrapping around to the left side of the screen. Usually messing with the power and reset buttons a bit sorts it out. Is that the problem you're seeing?
I've also noticed that in some games (Module Man in particular), sprites will disappear suddenly if they are moved over to the extreme right side of the screen. I'm not sure if this is a quirk of the original games, or an emulation issue.
-
Sky Skipper is playable in MAME, so somebody obviously got a hold of it. My understanding is it was released, but only in Japan. I have screenshots here.
I have to agree that once you've played the arcade game, the 2600 version is incredibly lacking. To me it competes pretty well with Amidar for the title of Parker Bros' worst arcade port.
No way. Have you played (or rather, attempted to play) Mr. Do's Castle? Sky Skipper is a little drab, and Amidar really needs some speed adjustments, but Mr. Do's Castle is just outright broken.
-
None can out-suck the 2600 version of Mr. Do's Castle. It's almost totally unplayable. Parker Bros. didn't exactly set the bar for 2600 development, but most of their stuff was pretty solid and playable. Except for that one.
-
1
-
-
I have Pacman Collection, if that helps. I also downloaded it on Wii-U.
That one's not bad, but it's a port rather than emulation, as far as I can tell.
-
I do not own a 3DS, but I had to check that version on YouTube. It looked pretty interesting.
I know the GBA Namco 50th Anniversary uses an emulated version, and it does all the arcade trickery. The 3DS on YouTube looked very similar to some other emulated versions. Good chance it's pretty solid.
The 3DS version seems to be pretty accurate, except it appears to run at 30 FPS rather than the true 60. The GBA version on Namco 50th is also really good, and you have a few screen modes to choose from: horizontal with scrolling, horizontal squished to fit, or rotated. The rotated view works great with a GBA micro held vertically. You could probably build a tiny little Pac-Man arcade cabinet using one of those.
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Easy way to identify ROMs made with bB?
in batari Basic
Posted
Okay, so DPC+ does allow for executing arbitrary ARM code on the cartridge, but there aren't any bB games taking advantage of this at the moment. That makes sense.