peteym5

Update : Started to work on sprite control routines, but still having problems with them popping up in the right areas. scrolldemo.zip

Atari 800? This is more geared toward an XL/XE machine because Turbobasic loads part of itself under the OS ROM which is leading to a few issues. I am using Turbobasic to setup and test out a few things. I am still undecided about the final product and which direction to go. Someone have suggested putting totally on a cartridge and use the screen. You can probably see I am pushing the color limits to extreme and have examined theories and methods to get even more onscreen colors. I did consider using GTIA modes mixed in, or using the Vert-Sync Swappy thing. I even wrote up a few routines but looked flickery and still felt I could do better with just a combo of DLIs and multicolor Player/Missile graphics. Maybe my final game can be ported to run on varients of the Atari 8-bit, only 64k machines, 800, 5200, machines with multiple Antics, Gtias, Pokeys, or even that Video Board XE. The only other computer I am familar with is a PC with DirectX. Of course this type of game is very easy to do on a PC. but I am looking to do things retro on older computers and game councils. Maybe someone can help port the game onto the 7800, however that system has a totally different chipset, higher res modes and uses sprites instead of PM graphics. I agree Atari made huge mistakes with delaying the 7800 system onto the market and not incorporating into a computer.

This Demo: Doing some animation with PM Graphics on different layers now. Animation is based of the timer in byte 20. Testing the ability to flash between two sprites in the same section if necessary. Will be working more specific control of hostile characters on the screen. APE OS Problem: Turbobasic uses the ram under the operating system rom and some operating systems like SpartaDos and maybe APE OS will have this problem. One of my ideals is hack the turbobasic exe and have it use an extended back (130XE) instead. Wonder if anyone ever done that. Music Question: Hopefully there will be enough room to do sound control within the VBI. I had a set of subroutines that came out of COMPUTE! Magazine around 1985, that simply cycled data through the sound chips. Had 1/60th resolution that should be good for music and sound effects. Planning to write a similar subroutine for sound controlling. scrolldemo.zip

I am trying to find the name of an Atari music player/editor. I remembered it played .mus files, when it played, it showed a music keyboard on a white screen. I had it on my atari computer years ago, but since then I lost all my origional disks. Would imagine someone has this player.

Well here is the next demo, managed to stabilize the scrolling DLIs better plus able to split up the player/missile graphics into several section to have more onscreen sprites. I admit it still needs alittle more work. I am estimating this game will probably have more than 30 colors. scrolldemo.zip

Thankyou for the information on these tools. You know I was considering doing a tile graphic engine here on the PC, but discovered a few were done. Mine was going to be based in Visual Basic.NET. I also created a 3D RPG builder software on the PC. It is semi-tile based, however the root database and game structure was based around something I did on the Atari 8-bit 20 years ago which were strictly text based games. Now all this can be doing in a virtual 3D world. > http://rmzone.petermeyer.net/ I also made a boulder dash clone http://www.petermeyer.net/ but never really gained alot of interest.

Thankyou for examining my demo and I am continuing to tweaking this into something that can be used for a game. Now I do not want to dedicate a whole lot of time from myself for this game project and hope others can maybe do a few things. Over the years I have heard my good sound and music demos and music players on the Atari 8-Bit and maybe I get someone to do the Music for this game. I will probably also be creating an editor to create the "Worlds" used for the game. I will personally be working on the core machine language programming. Of course if someone wishes to help me tweak my ML routines, they can also. I am doing this as an open source project.

New Demo available.

I have a completed font ready with some room for future additions and modifications. This latest scrolling demo sets up a test screen and shows how the game may look like. I am still tweaking the DLI ML routines to prevent the lines from jumping. I do wonder if it is a problem with the emulator. Once I get further I am planning on releasing the ML routines that are geared to run from Turbobasic and maybe others can write there one stuff. The final game is most likely will be a side scrolling type Pitfall/Mario fantasy world where you can run, jump, and climb around to collect things. scrolldemo.zip

Turbobasic XL!!! I used it for a long time, it can be compiled and runs faster than any of the alternatives. Only thing faster is assembly language. My game projects were Compiled Turbo Basic with ML routines to drive the PM Graphics.

Hello I have been reading up on this thread for the last couple of days. Now I do assume that since it is a RGB device that it will interface with ANTIC and GTIA chips that are either NTIA or PAL. I know a few did post concerning 80 column screens, but 80 column screens are more neccessary for a business or application software, use a windows based PC for that stuff. It seems that ANTIC, GTIA, with Video Board XE are more geared toward writing games and graphics software and increasing onscreen colors. I am wondering is there is going to be an American port for this board. Also been wondering if someone is going to modify an Atari Emulator on the PC to simulate the Video Board XE or the multi GTIA/ANTIC thing, or both. That would open the door up for developers such as myself to make a few games for this stuff. Yes I am one of those who were upset that graphics and sound hardware development halted when the ST hit the market. With like the AMY sound chip and an updated GTIA/ANTIC setup, Atari could have had a powerful system to rival the Nintendo and Sega systems years before those hit the market. The ST was a great machine, but was very pricey at the time were as the XL/XE series was already a well established cheaper alternative for alot of people. Oh some my alternatives for addressing this stuff is put it in the "Repeats" section that are above the ANTIC/GTIA/Pokey chips ($D080, $D440,$D480). I do not believe any software would be using it, if someone wanted to access those functions, they would just use the chips main locations and not the "Repeated" sections that are within the same page.

Update.... I have updated my scrolling demo and was able to stabilize the 'jumping' screen alot better. I needed a routine that not only can scroll, but can scroll DLI zones with it. I also started looking into the alternate methods mentioned by analmux and did managed to translate my assembly language over to an asm listing. Found out mac65 and xasm (or quick assembler) coding are not 100% the same thing. Took me almost a day to figure out some of the asm equilivents. I still do need some documentation on quick assembler and need to know how to include binary information from like a font file, sprites, sound effects, music, etc. I know its possible to do it with xasm but that right now only runs from the PC and does add some work of sending files back and forth from computers or to and from and atr image for an emulator. I have giving some thought about using graph2font to design some of the background, along with using a good font editor. scrolldemo.zip

I am planning on using compression routines to quickly expand and compress the tilemap screens and do plan to doing most of the animation done within ML and will take the burden off of doing most of the stuff inside of turbobasic. I was using Turbobasic for years and very familar with it, but plan to only using for setting up and doing floating point arithmetic when needed or other operations that are cumbersome in machine language. Maybe the game will end up being totally machine language, but using Turbobasic is good for testing things in action so I can stop, peek memory locations while things are in progress and see what is going on, etc. Maybe Turbobasic will be just keeping score. I will have to check out some of the tools that have been mentioned. I have tried quick assembler also which runs on the Atari. Would like to get around line numbers. The Machine Language Routines that need to be developed are complex.

This is what I developed for the scroller routine so far, it scrolls horizontally and vertically perfectly, places the DLIs and sets them up at the desired locations. I have started to do some work on the Player/Missile control ended of it. I am looking to do this with a floor every 4 character rows (32 pixels tall) with ladders, moving platforms, traps, monsters. Right now the screen is alittle jumpy and think its from the Display List being too big. The Source I provided includes the Mac65 code and a turbobasic source that tests the routine. I managed to stabilize it better, seems if your screen gets too tall, it becomes jumpy with the DLIs. I have the chbas point and screen memory pointing to like system area of memory so I have some randomized pixels. Going to start designing a customized font(s) and sprites for future demos' scrolldemo.zip

I sorted out the DLI section of it somewhat, guess I was trying to end a DLI routine with a RTS instead of a RTI and was scrambling up the screen. Now have to get it changing where DLIs begin, which palette to use, etc.

I got the scrolly thing worked out for the most part without the DLIs. I can scroll around in any direction. When I activated the DLI portion the thing crashes, still working it out. I would imagine It would get some interest once I get it working.

I rewrote the DOS files to the ATR image and then re-zipped them. I used MYDOS 4.5. The .TUR files requires you to be in Turbo Basic XL to load and view them.

What I've created. These are the 2 games I manage to restore from my Atari Programming Days. A Tetris and Asteroids Clone. I did some updating recently, created a new routines in Megaoids to move the Asteroids and PMGs better. The .TUR files are the Turbo Basic Source Code. PetesGames.zip

I have started coding a vbi scroller routine today. Going to do things step by step. Not totally sure how it will behave, but that is why I am going to test things via an emulator first from turbobasic, first going to test the scroller first without any DLIs, then test it with DLI, then finally test with the PM graphics. Also going to start with 16k size screen. I can see a few different applications for this routine once finished. As for coding onto a cartridge is a thought, but going to do this one step at a time.

Yes, I have checked out Bros, nice game, however I am looking to have my game scrolling and not 100% exactly like mario. I am looking at using the extended banks (128k, 256k, etc) for the screen file. Years ago I had a vbi routine that fine scrolled around a 16k screen in extended memory. With a DLI to switch the bank at a certain point, I can make the screen as large as there is extended memory. Also considering DLIs to get more onscreen colors. Like I say, the game I am thinking about will have elements of other games like Pitfall, maybe Sonic, etc. Think what you can do if you had like a 256k or 512k you can scroll around in, be really cool. I had ML routines to drive the PM graphics, sound effects, move blocks of graphics on the screen. A good example of a scrolling game on the Atari 8-Bit is BoulderDash, but used a small screen in the main 64k, think their screens used like 4k of redefined characters. If I do decide to get this project going, would not mind having some co-developers, I probably will write the custom ML routines, start the initial design of the graphics, make a screen editor, but let the co-developers do their creative stuff. I am looking to use redefine 4 color characters on a large scrolling screen with the option of having a 5th color for characters 128-255. The Floors will be like every 4 rows with a DLI giving the floor a different set of colors, leaving a different set of colors between each floor. On the Top floor will be ground level, maybe your jungle or forest, do some nice tree graphics. Underground or your cavern, can do a nice cave background. Have Ladders, moving platforms, etc. Between every floor will change the PM graphic registers so we can increase the # of onscreen sprites for the hostile creatures and stuff. This is similar to what is done in Pitfall II, but I am looking to scroll horizontal as well. Thinking about either overlapping 2 players for 3 color sprites or just 4 seperate players. But like I say, if you divide it up with DLIs, you can have alot on the screen at ounce. I have even seen where you can use the 5th player mode that sets all the missiles the same place behind a player for another color. Some other DLI tricks I am looking into is do a couple of hozsync waits and changing the colors part way down a character, where the top of the character can have a different set of colors then the rest. Like have grass on the top to pixel lines and the rest be like the soil and roots in the ground. So many possibilities here. My limitation is time of course, getting a co-programmer with some knowledge on ML and graphics. Basic concept of the game is go around collecting treasures, have the climb ladders, avoid creatures, jump over holes, etc. Maybe have locked doors and you have get keys to open them or do the 'lode runner' thing with the character hanging by his arms above the ground on a rope. Possible be a Compiled TurboBasic XL and ML combo thing.

Hello I am Peter, I have been making games on computers for almost 20 years now. I started off with Commodore and Atari 8-bit system and moved onto the PC. Now I was able to retrieve some of my old stuff recently. I was fluent in TurboBasic XL and 6502 assembly. Made a few games in compiled Turbo Basic with Assemble Routines to help drive the graphics. My computer was an Atari 130XE with 128k of ram. I did make a fast moving asteroids clone and improved a Basic Tetris Clone. I will be setting something up on a seperate webpage in the near future. I am considering making a side scroller type game, maybe something between Super Mario Bros and Pitfall II using multicolor PMGs, DLIs, and such to give lots of onscreen colors at once and make the graphics look really good. Now I have been reading up on grahpic upgrades for the Atari Computer, multiple ANTICS, GTIAS, POKEY chips, etc, and even that Video XE board. Wonder if any of those projects are still alive. Since I still retain source code for a few games, maybe I can port them over to take advantage of these upgrades.

I would like to know about the specs of this card (in English). I am a programmer and considering doing an Atari 8-bit game project pushing the graphics to the extreme. If I know more about hardware like the graphic card shown maybe I can write something that will support it.