Mr.Amiga500

I hate Yoda.

Yes, I hate MS-DOS. Of course I hate it. (who wouldn't?) But at least it boots fast, fits on a floppy, doesn't run a whole bunch of crap in the background and I can still boycott Microsoft if I use FreeDOS. Since there aren't BeOS or Amiga equivalents of these ATR programs, I don't have much choice. I hate BSD. I hate OpenSolaris. I hate NextStep. I hate IRIX. (note: I have all these operating systems, so I know exactly why I hate them) Haiku is still too buggy. That's why I'm using BeOS. PS. I hate Gnome. I hate KDE. I really, really, REALLY hate GRUB. What a piece of crap!

Yes... I'm starting to take this personally. I'd like to point out that I still have the highest score on a real Atari. (I need these small victories... I really do ) I tried Fandal's trick of bombing roof tops in the city, but just ended up smashing into the side of a building. (yeah... thanks for that tip) I just completed the game in one pass, in an attempt to increase my rating. I still only got Class 3 Squadron Leader. My score is lower than my last one, but that one has a lower rating. I still don't understand how it works.

OK, I'll believe you.... but I'm still cursing under my breath. I know what you mean about getting good at a game. I played Shadow of the Beast to death and I can play it backwards and forwards. (literally... there's a bug that causes the guy to run backwards) I know all your hints except the "300 points by killing enemy plane which is trying to bomb your base". The only time they bomb is when you're on the ground and can't kill them. Do you mean after taking off? I've done that a few times. What about ratings? Isn't there a "Blue Max" rating? I think I got it once.

[quote name=Sub(Function()' date='Tue Mar 9, 2010 7:24 AM' timestamp='1268133845' post='1959694] I am getting pretty close at the moment (only need it for Excel, and word) Problem in I don't know if I am just swapping Devils (I went Mac) Yes, I once thought Apple was the "good" one, but I quickly discovered that they are just as evil as Microsoft (or almost... 93.5% evil, by volume). Linux too, I once thought to be a force of good, but I now hate Linux more than poison. (...and I don't like poison) I hate Windows. I hate Mac. I hate Linux. That doesn't leave me much choice.

Whoa, thanks CharlieChaplin for that monster list of files. I'll check them out. I've already tested XDIR. It looks like something I was looking for, but unfortunately it only lists contents of ATRs. I was hoping it would be like a filemanager to add and remove files. Maybe one of those others will be what I'm looking for. I already tried those JPG viewers. Those are the ones that didn't work. They couldn't even read disks properly. Thanks w1k for the link. That looks almost exactly what I'm looking for, but is for Windows. I need something for DOS. The Franny program too looks like it is Windows only. It comes with a huge dll. (and if it worked in DOS, it would be too huge to fit on a floppy)

What?? How?? What?? I don't believe it. Are you using the same file version you gave me? Did you hack in a cheat code? I might have believed it if you had 45000 or something, but 100000? How many times did you go through the city? How did you fly that long without getting killed? How did you take screenshots with such perfect timing? (before AND after bombing that building and while it is in the middle of exploding??) What was your final rank? Where's the final screenshot? I'm waiting for answers... tapping my foot on the ground... staring at the ceiling... cursing under my breath.

I once did the ultimate (couple months ago): I had total damage (FMGB) and was running out of fuel, so I went as high as possible. I ran out of fuel and drifted. Amazingly, a runway came up at exactly the right time. I just barely made it. I didn't even have to lower the plane - I lost altitude as the runway came up. It was perfect timing. I then went on to complete the game.

It looks like AtariDsk is for working with real Atari disks. I just want to work with ATR files. I found a UNIX2ATR program that seems to work on Amiga. It's buggy (have to reboot after each use), but at least it makes ATR files that are readable. Unfortunately, there appears to be no ATR2UNIX on Amiga - which means I'd have to create ATRs with Amiga and extract ATRs from DOS floppy on PC. Damn, it's hard to boycott Microsoft. Off topic, but does anybody know of an Atari JPG viewer that actually works? (I was creating an ATR with JPG files to test the damn JPG viewer)

Can somebody help me find ATR manipulation programs? I need to be able to add files to ATR files and also extract files from them. I thought this would be a popular program with Atari 8-bit users, but apparently such a program is hard to find. I don't use Windows, so the program must be a small MS-DOS program that I can use from booted floppy. My Linux drive committed suicide, so I can't use Linux or Wine (...but I can still drink wine). I use BeOS and Amiga, so any ATR programs for those systems would be good too. The only useful program I've found so far is ATR2Unix which seems to work fine for extraction, but I can't find an equivalent program for adding to or creating ATRs.

"We're going to have to come in pretty low to land this thing." "Is that difficult, Ted?" "Sure, it's difficult. Coming in low is part of every textbook approach. It's just something you have to do... when you land."

What is Control+E being used for? That would make more sense to me for "Exit to DOS" than Control+O. Is there a feature like "convert text to inverse"? (sorry, I don't have the manual to read at the moment) A few times I wanted to make some text inverse to use as titles, and thought maybe it was possible to mark text, then convert to inverse characters.

11660 Class 4 Squadron Leader (higher score, lower class) I went through the city 4 times to try to improve my score, but it looks like this lowers the class. So... I wonder how you can get the highest score and the highest class at the same time.

A hint for all the "Runway Sweepers" out there: blue background on the bottom of the screen means you're at the same altitude of the enemy plane and you can shoot him. Brown background means you're at the altitude where you can strafe the tanks, turrets, cars and ships (stay mainly at this level). Flashing & beeping means you're too low and headed for imminent crash.

OK, this one is a bit better: 10370 Class 3 Squadron Leader. (class 3... I feel so low class) I had to go through the city twice - first time I missed the centre building. I got it the second time, even with bomb damage.

I just got 7170. I ran out of fuel. I had to leave the runway before I was refuelled because the enemy plane was just about to bomb me, then had the misfortune of getting hit with a fuel leak. I think I can do better. My record is double that.

Oh, crap! I forgot about the donation and I just bought a TAC-2 joystick with the money. OK, it's back to the bank for another transfer... Please wait another 12 days. (damn PayPal!)

I was already considering donating. (...money, not organs. If you want my spleen, you can forget it!) I'll slip you some "chump change" after my PayPal transfer. (I can't believe it takes 12 days to do a frigging bank transfer!) As for print preview, if it uses border colours, that's good enough for me. (I won't be using brown & beige, though... that sucks. ) I've noticed PAL screenshots of the blue Atari background always looks greenish. Compare your screenshot with dwhyte's avatar.

With SDrive, I suppose there's no way to load another disk image without rebooting, right? I mean, if you boot with only one disk image selected, there's no way to "insert" another disk? An example: say I loaded "The Last Word" disk, typed some stuff, then found out I have no space left on the disk - is there any way to select another empty disk to save on? I assume not, because the current program running would be using all the RAM and have to be swapped out for the SDrive program to run, right? That would be the first SDrive disadvantage over floppy that I've run into so far - no way to swap disks without rebooting. (I mean disks you didn't initially start with.)

Since 1987! Wow, you've been wrong that long, eh? I've always considered white to be maximum... whiteness... and anything less than that to be variations of off-white, cream, light grey... and so on. (But I'm probably a little too obsessed with that sort of thing. I refuse to have light bulbs in my house that are anything less than 6500K.) 12...we've got 12... anybody go for 13... we have a 13... do we have a 14....14... sold! I don't need the maximum. That'd probably cause too much artifacting with the black text. Just a notch or two up and I'd be fine. (actually, I'm not too concerned about it... really )

What am I thinking? Whatever Windows/MS-DOS utilities are out there will probably run on Wine or DOSbox in Linux. Thanks. I'll check those out.

Are you viewing in PAL? I've noticed lots of PAL screenshots have different hues and brightness. It looks grey to me - on 7-year-old CRT TV. Maybe also the latest LCD & Plasma TVs have "uber contrast" and are as you say, "headache-inducingly bright". Maybe that's what causes grey to look white to you. I never emulate. Emulation is for wimps and losers. Just kidding. Damn, it looks like I'll have to write my own program to do this.

Yes, but in that case it should be black text on white background, not grey (which looks a bit dingy). That doesn't really matter anyway. As it works now, Print Preview isn't very useful to me. (it would be if it was a multi-directional smooth scroller or page flipper - to easily read what I wrote) A bit off topic... does anybody know how I can properly extract text from ATR files? Say I wrote a long document with The Last Word, saved it in an ATR file (on SDrive) and then I wanted to transfer it to another computer (Amiga/PC). Is there a way to do that? (without formatting problems) Actually, I can probably answer my own question. I bet somebody made a Windows or MS-DOS utility for that. Unfortunately (but fortunately for my sanity), I don't use Windows. I mainly use BeOS and Amiga. Occasionally, I must use Linux. Has anybody heard of an ATR extraction utility for either BeOS, Amiga or Linux?

Hey, that makes me think... what about an option allowing you to use arrow keys without pressing Control? I use the arrow keys much more than "-+=*" symbols. I'd much rather use the arrow keys without holding Control and press Control when I want to type those symbols. What do you think?

Great... but now I don't even need to accomplish exactly what I describe. I've been playing around with colours and found a few schemes that work pretty well as it is - dark background, medium border and light text - using the same hue (blues or greens). I'm so glad The Last Word allows you to save/load multiple configurations. When I get tired of one colour scheme, I can just load another. (just like I used to do with Amiga prefs) Either pause after screen page or pause scroll on keypress would be useful. The ultimate would be pause scroll on keypress, backwards scroll on a up key, forward scroll on down key (esc to exit). That would make it similar to MuchMore on Amiga. It would be even better if it was possible to do this with a 1 pixel super-smooth scroll... though I don't know if Atari can do this, or if it's worth doing it. It would look great though. Print preview colours are a bit ugly though. (damn, I keep pressing Control to use the arrow keys when typing this, like on Atari... I've been using The Last Word too much )