Steril707

Hello RayXambeR, at the moment I don't have much time to code homebrew-stuff, but my next project would be going on with my BombJack-Clone for the 2600 that I started a few years ago as well. And I have a C64-Christmas-game in works, that I hope to finish coding before Christmas actually arrives this year..

Hello Thomas, I just downloaded and tried it out in ParaJVE, and it works here... Did you encounter any problems? greets, Michael edit: Maybe I should have added the info that this is for the Vectrex, not the 2600...

Well, it's been a while, and I had this game lying on the harddisk on the several computers I had since 2006, when I coded it. I shied away from releasing it, since it was not in the state that I intended it to be when I began coding. I realized, I don't really have the will or the time to finish it in the way I imagined it way back then. But, well, before nobody will ever see it, here we go.. I cleaned up some stuff, and I hope it's kind of in a usable form now. Unfortunately I lost the vectorfile for the villain ("Mandarin") that appears on the last stage, so he just has a walking animation. And I hoped for a couple more of fighting moves for my hero in this game, but well, you can't have everything.. Yet, I hope you guys will have some fun with this game... Greets, Michael from rainy Munich/Germany Vec_Fu.bin

Well, it's been a while, and I had this game lying on the harddisk on the several computers I had since 2006, when I coded it. I shied away from releasing it, since it was not in the state that I intended it to be when I began coding. I realized, I don't really have the will or the time to finish it in the way I imagined it way back then. But, well, before nobody will ever see it, here we go.. I cleaned up some stuff, and I hope it's kind of in a usable form now. Unfortunately I lost the vectorfile for the villain ("Mandarin") that appears on the last stage, so he just has a walking animation. And I hoped for a couple more of fighting moves for my hero in this game, but well, you can't have everything.. Yet, I hope you guys will have some fun with this game... Greets, Michael from rainy Munich/Germany edit: THIS IS FOR VECTREX... Vec_Fu.bin

Awesome game, Ben.. Incredible Introscreen, nice Music, much content, pretty sprites.. I am really jealous of your skills, man... Thanks for the awesome (yet difficult) game.. Mike...

Some things... 1) Comparing the ST or Amiga to SNES or Megadrive is wrong. At the time the ST and Amiga reigned, around 85 to 90, there was basically the NES and the Master System around, which looked really poor compared to the mighty 16-Bitters from Atari and Commodore. The only system in that time, that compared or even surpassed the ST and Amiga was the PC-Engine/TurboGrafx, which came around 1988, and impressed with its almost arcade perfect R-Type port (not ocunting in the Neo Geo here, since that was really only a rich kids toy back then). 2) From todays view, it's nearly incomprehensible, why both companies, Atari and Commodore, were not able to release a new generation of machines with a competitive price around 1989, and instead traversing along their old design almost until their very end. I'd have loved to see a AGA specced Amiga released in the late eighties. The time AGA came out, I didn't care for Amigas anymore, because 386 ATs with 25MHZ, harddisks, VGA gfx capabilities were already crushing what little the Amiga or ST had to offer back then. All the cool games suddenly appeared for PCs, and not for Amiga or ST anymore, or just as halfassed ports (remember Wing Commander, Gunship2000, Doom, etc). Too little too late. But why? I mean, they (Atari) were able to solder together a competitive computer with a good price(the ST) in under a year in 85, so why didn't they do it again in 89/90?

I think the PS3 had a shaky start, but it seems to outsell the 360 in almost every market (maybe except NA) now by a small but increasing margin. It's just a price thing. The 599 Euro/Dollar price was utterly retarded, and now that they start to get into more normal price regions, PS3s get bought.

I think nobody would want to replicate Segas Strategy of abandoning a system too fast. They have seen where this road leads to... The backlash after Sony abandoning the PS3 for a newer model in too short a time would be tremendous... And for the other two companies, they don't have any reason too abandon their current systems yet. I guess Microsoft will be first too release a new console again though, but not in the next 4 Years...

What exactly are you implying? That Microsoft is still manufacturing the older chipset and boards as well as the new one??? Come on... the only way you could find the older/hotter chipset is if a system has been sitting on the shelf or a warehouse since fall of last year. The 3 year warranty on the new ones is for piece of mind for people that keep hearing the FUD some people are spreading about the possibility of getting an older model that will die. Gee... where would that be coming from? When I bought my brother a 360 for Christmas I had to have the store call all over the place to find a branch with one in stock. His was a Falcon with a power supply labeled for the older board and it wasn't from the first Falcon production run. I bought mine in February and I could barely find one in stock then. Microsoft had under estimated demand and I just happened to get one at a Target right after a shipment arrived. Mine is a Falcon... and if I remember right... 4 production runs later on the box than my brothers. FOUR. It's now August. Yeah, there are probably a few old ones somewhere but not a major retailers. (I *would* avoid GameStop's used ones) Well that's good news. I'm just really disappointed with the lack of exclusives on the PS3, compared to the 360, particularly with regards to RPG's-they aren't even getting Star Ocean 4!! And how in the world did they not manage to keep FF XIII as an exclusive?? And there are still some who just don't want to work with the cell processor, John Carmak being one of them-so the PS3 won't get Rage, either. I'm not saying that there aren't great games out for it, I love Ridge Racer 7, for example, but at this point I really question whether or not they can make it 10 years in this country. Where have you been living hte last weeks? Off course the PS3 gets Rage.

Bought Lost Winds, FFCC:MLAAK and Toki Tori. All played a fair amount of time. The biggest surprise was Toki Tori. Awesome puzzler... Lost Winds is kind of boring, and i really don't get the hype surrounding it. At least it seems to be short enough so i will probably finish it. Probably people got wowed by the really beautiful graphics, but the game itself is meh... My Life as a King is fun at first, but later on when you have your city built up i lack the willpower to continue, as it's very a repeating experience. And it's a first class timehole.

I have to admit, seeing that Manuel kind of left 2600 homebrewing is a little bit disheartening... But what can i say, i don't find any time to go on with my homebrewing stuff myself...

Last thing i heard is, that NES carts are very difficult to manufacture, any advances on this?

Just one big here from me.. (*laughing my ass off reading this thread*)

This is one the things that i really like on consoles compared to PC gaming... After a while the programmers get the hang of the machine, and start doing things that seemed impossible before.

Hey Martijn, you should do a new thread for Vexos also...

I just started working again in SKOB, so i remembered your post. Actually i tried it out now, and i wondered, why don't you just jump on the lower right platform, and jump up from there? Should be easy to reach that bomb from there... I mean, it's not necessary to do that, since you can already use the aforementioned high jump, but well, i just wanted to state it ...

I guess i will have some questions for you in the future...

Hehe, Wo hastn des wieder her?

Hello Stephena, thanks for the fast answer.... I guess you just need the Aros SDK, and those compiler files found at Zerohero.se if you want to have a try at compiling Stella Here is the link: http://www.zerohero.se/cross/aros.html The AROS/Amiga Filesystem is a little bit differing from UNIX.. here i something i found on aros.sourceforge.net on this topic: Information is a little bit hard to come by in the little AROS world, but i keep on asking a lot on the IRC channels. Hopefully some stuff gets more clear for me soon. greets, Mike

Hey Stephena, i tried myself on porting Stella to AROS a little bit, and everything seems to compile rather smooth, but i get loads of linker errors at the end... See yourself... Any idea what may be causing this, and what i can do to improve this somehow? I feel at a deadend at the moment... thanks and greets, Mike There are undefined symbols in 'stella': U _Unwind_SjLj_Register FSNodePOSIX.cxx:0 U _Unwind_SjLj_Resume FSNodePOSIX.cxx:0 U _Unwind_SjLj_Unregister FSNodePOSIX.cxx:0 U std::string::find_last_of(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int) const U std::string::find_first_of(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int) const U std::string::find_last_not_of(char, unsigned int) const U std::string::find_first_not_of(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int) const U std::string::find_first_not_of(char, unsigned int) const U std::string::find(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int) const ListWidget.cxx:0 U std::string::compare(char const*) const U std::string::compare(unsigned int, unsigned int, char const*) const U std::__basic_file<char>::is_open() const U std::basic_stringbuf<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >::str() const U std::basic_ios<char, std::char_traits<char> >::widen(char) const U std::istream::get(char&) U std::istream::peek() U std::istream::read(char*, int) U std::istream::seekg(long, std::_Ios_Seekdir) U std::istream::tellg() U std::istream::getline(char*, int, char) U std::basic_istream<char, std::char_traits<char> >::~basic_istream() U std::istream::operator>>(int&) U std::ostream::put(char) U std::ostream::write(char const*, int) U std::ostream::operator<<(std::ostream& (*)(std::ostream&)) U std::ostream::operator<<(std::ios_base& (*)(std::ios_base&)) U std::ostream::operator<<(bool) U std::ostream::operator<<(double) U std::ostream::operator<<(long) U std::ostream::operator<<(unsigned long) U std::string::_M_leak_hard() ListWidget.cxx:0 U std::string::_S_empty_rep_storage Cart.cxx:0 U std::string::_Rep::_M_destroy(std::allocator<char> const&) FSNodePOSIX.cxx:0 U std::string::_Rep::_S_terminal FSNodePOSIX.cxx:0 U std::string::append(char const*, unsigned int) U std::string::append(std::string const&) U std::string::append(unsigned int, char) U std::string::assign(char const*, unsigned int) FSNodePOSIX.cxx:0 U std::string::assign(std::string const&) U std::string::resize(unsigned int, char) U std::string::replace(__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<char*, std::string>, __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<char*, std::string>, unsigned int, char) U std::string::replace(unsigned int, unsigned int, char const*, unsigned int) U std::string::reserve(unsigned int) U std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >::basic_string(char const*, std::allocator<char> const&) OSystemUNIX.cxx:0 U std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >::basic_string(char const*, unsigned int, std::allocator<char> const&) U std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >::basic_string(std::string const&) FSNodePOSIX.cxx:0 U std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >::basic_string(std::string const&, unsigned int, unsigned int) U std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >::~basic_string() U std::__basic_file<char>::~__basic_file() U std::basic_filebuf<char, std::char_traits<char> >::open(char const*, std::_Ios_Openmode) U std::basic_filebuf<char, std::char_traits<char> >::close() U std::basic_filebuf<char, std::char_traits<char> >::basic_filebuf() U std::basic_filebuf<char, std::char_traits<char> >::~basic_filebuf() U std::basic_streambuf<char, std::char_traits<char> >::basic_streambuf() U std::basic_streambuf<char, std::char_traits<char> >::~basic_streambuf() U std::basic_stringbuf<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >::_M_stringbuf_init(std::_Ios_Openmode) U std::__default_alloc_template<true, 0>::deallocate(void*, unsigned int) U std::__default_alloc_template<true, 0>::allocate(unsigned int) U std::locale::~locale() U std::ios_base::Init::Init() FSNodePOSIX.cxx:0 U std::ios_base::Init::~Init() FSNodePOSIX.cxx:0 U std::ios_base::ios_base() U std::ios_base::~ios_base() U std::basic_ios<char, std::char_traits<char> >::init(std::basic_streambuf<char, std::char_traits<char> >*) U std::basic_ios<char, std::char_traits<char> >::clear(std::_Ios_Iostate) U std::__throw_out_of_range(char const*) U std::cerr U std::cout U std::basic_ostream<char, std::char_traits<char> >& std::endl<char, std::char_traits<char> >(std::basic_ostream<char, std::char_traits<char> >&) U std::basic_istream<char, std::char_traits<char> >& std::getline<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >(std::basic_istream<char, std::char_traits<char> >&, std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >&, char) U std::basic_ostream<char, std::char_traits<char> >& std::operator<< <std::char_traits<char> >(std::basic_ostream<char, std::char_traits<char> >&, char const*) U std::basic_ostream<char, std::char_traits<char> >& std::operator<< <std::char_traits<char> >(std::basic_ostream<char, std::char_traits<char> >&, unsigned char) U std::basic_ostream<char, std::char_traits<char> >& std::operator<< <char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >(std::basic_ostream<char, std::char_traits<char> >&, std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&) U std::basic_istream<char, std::char_traits<char> >& std::operator>><char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >(std::basic_istream<char, std::char_traits<char> >&, std::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> >&) U typeinfo for char const* U typeinfo for char* U VTT for std::basic_fstream<char, std::char_traits<char> > U VTT for std::basic_ifstream<char, std::char_traits<char> > U VTT for std::basic_ofstream<char, std::char_traits<char> > U VTT for std::basic_istringstream<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > U VTT for std::basic_ostringstream<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > U vtable for std::basic_filebuf<char, std::char_traits<char> > U vtable for std::basic_fstream<char, std::char_traits<char> > U vtable for std::basic_ifstream<char, std::char_traits<char> > U vtable for std::basic_ofstream<char, std::char_traits<char> > U vtable for std::basic_streambuf<char, std::char_traits<char> > U vtable for std::basic_stringbuf<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > U vtable for std::basic_istringstream<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > U vtable for std::basic_ostringstream<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > U vtable for std::basic_ios<char, std::char_traits<char> > U operator delete[](void*) U operator delete(void*) U operator new[](unsigned int) U operator new(unsigned int) U __cxa_allocate_exception U __cxa_begin_catch U __cxa_call_unexpected U __cxa_end_catch U __cxa_pure_virtual MD5.cxx:0 U __cxa_rethrow U __cxa_throw U __gxx_personality_sj0 FSNodePOSIX.cxx:0 make: *** [stella] Error 1

Sorry for the long silence. I have been into a new job, and that plus some interest in AROS (an alternate new Amiga OS) took my time for while. I will go on coding some more S.K.O.B. soon, when time contraints get a little bit more loose. greets to everybody, Mike

Stella would basically require SDL to be ported. After that, the Stella codebase itself would be quite easy to port. The code is 32/64 big/little endian clean, so I wouldn't expect many problems. I am by no means an expert on this subject, since i just started messing around with porting stuff to AROS, but i read in some kind of guidelines that SDL is okay, but OpenGL's a big no-no. Reading around the Stella page and inside the configure files i saw a lot of references to "OpenGL" written somewhere. Are you sure i would just need SDL? Thanks for your input, Mike Reasonably sure, since I'm the one that added OpenGL support Seriously though, the OpenGL option can be compiled out of the executable. Also, joystick, sound, debugger, and cheat support can be disabled at compile time. Stella can be compiled and run on very 'small' systems, and only have the base features. One other thing I just remembered, you'll need the zlib library as well, and you'd need to create a few OS-specific classes for file handling. But other than that, there shouldn't be many problems. Hehe ...Seems you really have some insider informations. I had some looks at the configure --help option and makefile, and i noticed about disabling opengl as well already. But at the moment i have some other issues, and i am not sure yet if these come from the aros specific gcc-compiler that i use, or something else. I still get lots of errors while compiling with the aros gcc that shouldn't be there, so i wonder if my compiler setup is somehow tainted. Anyway, it's good to know i can ask somebody (=YOU ) when i am getting into some of the deeper stuff in porting Stella. Thanks for your help, Mike

Stella would basically require SDL to be ported. After that, the Stella codebase itself would be quite easy to port. The code is 32/64 big/little endian clean, so I wouldn't expect many problems. I am by no means an expert on this subject, since i just started messing around with porting stuff to AROS, but i read in some kind of guidelines that SDL is okay, but OpenGL's a big no-no. Reading around the Stella page and inside the configure files i saw a lot of references to "OpenGL" written somewhere. Are you sure i would just need SDL? Thanks for your input, Mike

If anybody wonders, AROS stands for "AROS Research Operating System" and is the open source OS that is compatible with Amiga OS 3.1. at API level. So you could basically say an open source attempt at a modern Amiga OS running on a couple of platforms. Things are still in infancy on it on most aspects, but it looks and feels surprisingly good already, and since i don't expect all too much from the "official" Amiga OS4 and have a general love for hopeless causes, i feel being drawn to this.. Here are some infolinks and a pic: For general information: http://aros.sourceforge.net/ A nice blog about any news concerning AROS: http://arosshow.blogspot.com/ A site for downloading Aros programs: http://archives.aros-exec.org/ and here's a pic of my i386 pc running AROS with a Retro theme and Ken Lesters Icons, you can see various demos and a gui window etc... http://www.sendlingboogiebreaks.de/amiga.png So, i had the idea of porting DASM to this platform, and since an Amiga OS 4 port already existed it wasn't that much work. Granted, it doesn't make too much sense yet, since Stella isn't available for now (but VICE!!!), but that would be my next probable target at porting something. Now my questions, particularly being thrown at Andrew here, are: 1. Can i upload my DASM port to the above mentioned Aros Archives site? 2. If i upload the thing, can i just upload the DASM executable, or must i embed it into the archive structure that i downloaded priorly (e.g. /bin/Amiga/AROS/dasm) Reading your readme.txt in the archive it seems you are fairly mellow about these things, but i think i should ask before i tread on anybodies toes here... greets, Mike

Just checked it out.... This is really impressive...