Retro Games That Help With Anxiety

[Retro Games That Help With Anxiety]

Got a call in the middle of the work day that a close family member was terminally ill.  Couldn't skip out of work.   The only thing that kept me level headed was the music from James Pond 2.

 

Nothing can stop the happy vibes from that soundtrack.  I hope others find their "happy tunes" and use it as a tool for bummer times.

[Digital Copies of Upp Stuck at Title Screen]

 

On 1/30/2021 at 3:24 AM, chewy said:

could we get a genesis controleller hack for this?

I'd still like to know what your original idea to use the Genesis controller was.  I love feedback to improve my games!

 

1 hour ago, chewy said:

does it get stuck on the title screen on harmony- can i play w/ genesis controller as the game is now?

Most 7800 and 2600 systems use original Genesis d-pads but games must be specially made to understand the "extra" buttons.  

The Harmony cart doesn't run using Stella so my extraneous paddle related code shouldn't effect it.

[Homebrews "In the Wild"]

I've seen more than a few homebrew at expos.  Picked up Oystron and Explosive Diarrhea a few years back.

 

I offer to autograph copies of my homebrew too when I see them in the wild.

[Digital Copies of Upp Stuck at Title Screen]

19 hours ago, chewy said:

could we get a genesis controleller hack for this?

 

The actively used parts of the joystick are LEFT, RIGHT, FIRE and RESTART  Plus the difficulty switches for easy/hard mode.

 

If either difficulty switch is set to A you start at level 8.  The laser launches really close to your position from now on.

LEFT/RIGHT steers your ship.

FIRE thrusts your ship up.  Also starts the game.

 

What would the extra Genesis button do in your vision?  The Genesis d-pad is one of my favs.

 

UPDATE:  Found a way to use the Genesis button!

DOWN or Genesis button C thrusts the player down.

[Eliminating the stairstep/waterfall effect when using both playercolor kernels with playfield colors?]

33 minutes ago, freshbrood said:

I wish I knew how to write kernels. Even if there was a way to start drawing the top row of playfield blocks only half as wide, starting lower on the screen if that saved time. (The green "health" bars. That would look better anyway.) And in turn use less sets of colors for the scanlines that it doesn't draw.

 

 

Also, if the 12th row of playfield blocks can't even be shown, why does the tia still waste cycles attempting to draw it? I realized that it's still there and can be displayed if you scroll the playfiled up 3 or 4? times. Then you get 12 rows with the top and bottom rows being half as thin. I don't know how to do it myself but I think I have a rudimentary understanding of the concept and that seems like a missed exploit.


 

 

The best way to test that theory is to try and make your own graphic kernel.  Tons of resources here.  I think Andrew Davies sessions might be a good starting point for your topics question.

 

https://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories.html#assembly_language

 

UPDATE:  I guess what I'm saying here is that if you want to second guess batari who made the kernel then follow his footsteps.  Get to know why he left that gotcha as is.  My hunch is that he knew this effect was possible but the CPU time taken to fix it would mean something else had to go.  Kind of like how the multi sprite kernel has no collision detection for virtual sprites.  Implementing soft collision would probably not leave much time for batari BASIC programmers to put in their own game logic.

 

[Eliminating the stairstep/waterfall effect when using both playercolor kernels with playfield colors?]

The advantages and disadvantages of canned graphic kernels are locked in.  When we batari BASIC users set kernel_options it chooses one particular graphic kernel to use.  Since CPU time is at a premium one graphic kernel may have better X at the expense of worse Y.  In this case the "stairstep/rolling lines effect" was a calculated tradeoff.  Kind of like games with that HMOVE bar (see Ms. Pac Man)

[New Batari one-line sprite Kernel / demo]

Very cool to see a new multi sprite kernel!

 

Is it player0 and 3 virtual sprites using player1?

 

Any chance for collision detection between sprites?  i.e. collision(player0, player3)

 

Also, any collision detection between sprites and playfield?  i.e. collision(player2, playfield)

[Jaguar Smells Like a Dead Animal]

Working with computers I know small rodents can leave "debris" in the most unlikely places.  Also, pets marking territory.

[Digital Copies of Upp Stuck at Title Screen]

Thank you for the second and third pair of eyes!  RevEng gave me some huge clues earlier that helped.  I redacted some paddle code from bB.asm and renamed some labels in the paddlemini.asm.  After that Stella 6.5.1 seemed to stop auto-detecting it as a paddle game.

 

Think I'll make a further improved version with more levels (and gameplay) to celebrate!

[Car Race]

Very nice spacing out of the virtual sprites so they don't flicker!

 

I noticed you can crash into the side of the road to halt movement of the other cars.  Basically, after that you can just rack up points (albeit slowly)

[Digital Copies of Upp Stuck at Title Screen]

13 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

 

Is the binary available? Then we can check. Else you have to check the pattern in Stella (ControllerDetector) yourself.

 

Yep.  The ROM is here: https://theloon.itch.io/upp?download

 

Do you have a link to the ControllerDetector utility?  Sounds handy for future use

[Digital Copies of Upp Stuck at Title Screen]

I've been getting feedback recently that digital copies of Upp/Upp Plus are getting stuck at the title screen.

 

In the instances I've seen the first controller has been detected as paddle in Stella.  The only solution I've found is to set the first controller port to Joystick manually.

 

To be clear I don't think this is a bug in Stella.  My hunch is that I have some code in Upp that triggers paddle auto-detection in recent Stella builds.

 

 

 

 

[Joystick multiplexer help]

How easy would this be for batari BASIC users to talk to?  Something like reading certain bytes of memory to see which inputs are pressed on joysticks 1-4?

[Cyberpunk 2077]

24 minutes ago, DJ Clae said:

This is the most whiney, entitled generation of gamers I've ever seen. More evidence the internet brings out the worst of humanity.

Not saying you're wrong.  In my experience current gen gamers are pretty compliant with brand names.  Defending them while getting their digital downloads yanked and not getting refunds half the time.

 

The whining comes mostly from the gaming media.  Casting whatever narrative keeps their sponsors and generates furious keyboard smashing.

[WM's Magical Game Factory: ProjectY for Mega Drive/Genesis]

37 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

So again I don't have the game in hand to confirm, but I'm reading that in order to have a CPU controlled 2nd player to help out, requires you to have a SegaCD attached as apparently the game uses the second CPU in that in order to handle the AI for the CPU assisted second player. 

 

That has got to be a first right?

 

 

I hope that means you don't have to do this to get a CPU sidekick?  I mean, I'd understand if it meant a tactically enhanced companion in comparision.  I must be reading that wrong.

 

[Atari SpeakerHat]

The AtariHat was the email they gave me after inquiring about developing games.

 

Maybe the "VCS" is just a ultra flat hat stand for their real product?

[PlusCart: Self host / Inject ROMs?]

For my use case automating compile and upload to a real VCS is very attractive.  My bungled style of development involves a lot of playtesting and iteration.  Might try both a PlusCart and the Harmony + WiFiSD route.

 

Sounds like Andrew Davie has a procedure I can work with.  Thank you for the help, guys!

[Combine 2 compiled 4k bB games?]

THIS almost worked with two copies of the same game.  When I put the source for two different games in it doesn't switch to the other bank.

 

For bank 1 the bank switch code looks like this:

 

 asm
 lda $1FF9
 nop
 nop
 nop
 nop
 nop
 nop
end

 

For bank 2 the code looks like this:

 

 asm
 lda $1FF8
 nop
 nop
 nop
 nop
 nop
 nop
end

[Games that should have a sequel?]

Something in-between Pitfall II and Super Pitfall.  Perhaps with side scrolling.

[Combine 2 compiled 4k bB games?]

I'm trying to combine 2 4k bB games I made years ago.  I have the source and tried to make sure the kernel settings and DIMs didn't clash between games.  I also tried using the 32k multikernel framework and no go switching to the 2nd game on the second bank.

 

I was wondering if I could do a DOS COPY to combine both games:

COPY GAME1.BIN+GAME2.BIN 2IN1.BIN

 

..making sure there is some inline assembly to arbitrarily jump to the second bank in the first gtame:

 

   asm

   some magic to switch to the last 4k portion of ROM

end

 

Does this make sense?  What would the actual inline assembly look like?

 

Thanks in advance for any clues, fellas!

[PlusCart: Self host / Inject ROMs?]

Is there a way to self host ROMs with the WiFi plus cart?  My feeble research seems to indicate things need to be submitted to.. a PlusCart host somewhere on the Internet?

 

I must be wrong.  How do people upload compiled ROMs to their own PlusCart on their own WiFi network?

 

[Preffered IDE or Text Editor for IntyBASIC in 2020?]

Did the usual forum search and Google with no definite results.  Thought I'd ask people who use IntyBASIC what their preferred IDE and/or editor is in 2020.

 

What's good these days?

["Dragonfly" preorder]

Please add me to the list.

 

Don't care about the color.  Just the basic unit with USB support so I can compile and test like a lazy crazy person

[C and RAPTOR resources?]

2 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

rB+ is locked to the v1 API, if you switch to assembler you can use the extra functionality and performance increases in the v2 API.

 

Already pouring over the _RAPAPPS.S from "EX-01a - Hello World".  Thank god for much better programmers than me who comment incredibly well 😛 

[C and RAPTOR resources?]

Thank you, Zerosquare!  I suspected that might be the route.

 

Actually, I'm fractionally more familiar with assembly than C at this point.  I get the feeling I might be doing it wrong learning C on the Jag.