Propane13

@AdamWozniak neat! I've always been a Sokoban fan. I got around to playing levels 1 and 2 today. I didn't notice any glitches, but I only played in an old version of Stella. I have a feature suggestion-- if a player pushes the joystick in a direction and holds it (say, left) for maybe 1 or 1.5 seconds, it'd be nice if it would automatically start moving in that direction at a quick pace, but then it automatically stops if you hit a wall / another box. It can be a bit tedious to push a box along a corridor by tapping the joystick repeatedly, especially for a stream of boxes. I agree with not having everything use that sort of method-- Sokoban needs precision. So, holding in a direction to trigger "fast move" may be a nice compromise. I'm also trying to think about a few things as far as how distracting they are. The sound of movement without boxes is fine, and the press against a wall sound is good as well. The ding of putting a box in its final place is fine, but the high pitch of pushing a box for a long distance is a little grating to me. I have a feeling I'd turn down the volume a little, so maybe pick a slightly lower pitch tone? Similarly, I don't mind the scrolling color effect for the boxes, but the heading at the top is a bit distracting-- maybe experiment with having the heading color change a bit more slowly? The box color change rate is fine; it's just the heading keeps drawing my eye to it, so making it a little more muted / subtle could be beneficial. Good job on this; it looks really good, especially considering it's running on a 2600.

I've got an old MacBook that's close to giving up the ghost, and I was considering replacing it with one of the new MacBook Airs. Trouble is, they are using the M1 chip now, which is ARM-based. I was curious if anyone has compiled 7800 content on one of the modern macs. If it's not possible, I may consider trying to track down an older mac just to get things working. I figured I'd ask here first. The toolchain I currently use is: 7800asmdevkit dasm a7800 emulator SDL2 I figure the answer is probably that it's a fringe case that maybe few people has tested yet, but there's no harm in asking. Additionally, if I do decide to get an M1 mac and compilation of certain binaries would be helpful or necessary for some open source projects, I'd potentially be interested in doing that. Thanks!

I know I could just try it myself to find out, but... can you tell us a bit more about the DMA usage per scanline feature?

156,600

I just played Food Fight today, and got an "Instant Replay" that can happen occasionally. What I didn't realize was if/when you lose the game and go back to the title screen, if you wait, the "attract mode" will show your most recent "Instant Replay" run. This is the first time I ever noticed that. Pretty clever use of resources, and a welcome surprise.

You definitely inspired me on this one. I feel like Scrapyard Dog gets a bit of a bad rap (and perhaps deservingly so). The end puzzle, that jump in 2-3... there's a lot that just needed a LITTLE more polish and thought and this could have been one of the greats. I feel like a lot of people give up on the game, so each time someone finishes it, it's quite an achievement. For those who don't know, a few of us worked on putting the maps together years ago: https://atari7800.org/scrapyarddogmap.htm I spent a lot of time figuring out all the bonus games, where all the hidden items are, and all the secret passages. I jumped in every single square inch of that game for hours. So... I MAY have played the game a little too much back in the day. I had always hoped that somebody would put together a one-shot 7800 magazine with all of the maps and secrets, sort of like Nintendo Power. Someday, that would be neat if it ever happened. For those who may be giving up, I certainly encourage you to take a look at the maps. There are a few hints about how to get extra lives, where to place yourself for jumps, hidden cans and money, where all the stores are, some secret passages (e.g. for 4-3), and even an answer for the final puzzle at the end. Falls in many holes Pixel perfect jumps? Come on. Wait, there is a map?

I was glad to see an old favorite of mine pop up. I haven't played this in years. 2,162,800 For the "end game bonuses": I believe each second of time is worth 10 points (I think, it scrolls so fast) Each extra life is 100,000 points Not sure how much hit shields are worth (I had zero) Each dollar is worth 10,000 points Each can is worth 5,000 points Each magic can is worth 20,000 points Each bomb is worth 20,000 points

This one's on my list to someday finish. But, I think I only ever got as far as level 4 or 5. Without a map, you're in trouble. I heard it has an actual ending (even if not much of one), so I think it would be fun to see that.

That's very interesting. I guess that begs new questions about collision detection-- is there a lot of leftover time available for such computations? Seems that would be a bit complicated than the old famous "check the registers" method, but I guess there's always the "consider everything as inside a box" method too. Just curious.

Oh! That reminds me-- I used to love Phantom II / Pirate. Pirate was really easy as a concept, yet strangely fun. I remember the author even made a special edition, but I never got it on cart. Maybe I should go find that thread...

Is there a list of when different homebrews for the 2600 were released (and what years)? It would be interesting to try to find some of these old favorites and fire em up again. It's been ages since I've played SCSISIDE, QB, Oystron, Mental Kombat, or Marble Craze; I'd be curious what else I've forgotten about.

Frogs and Flies is my go-to two-player game, and can be a lot of fun.

Looks fantastic! Really neat that it works on real hardware. Is there any leeway / time to be able to draw a player graphic and also potentially a missile graphic? If so, I could envision taking what you've done and making a really simple breakout-like game where you can move rotationally around the spinning planet and destroy chunks of it with a ball. Back in the day, a homebrewer was working on a game of circular breakout called "The Core" (https://web.archive.org/web/20000709161608/http://www.plethora.net/~paulo/thecore.html), and your demo reminded me of that. I assume the definition / rendering for the globes have to be done in advance, or does it happen on-the-fly? i.e. could you put a hole in a globe during gameplay and have it render the change? Just thinking about possibilities...

Since there is talk about potentially making an updated release that fixes some bugs, I thought I'd report a minor one that I found and didn't see captured anywhere. It's not a showstopper, but I figured I'd log it just in case. It has to do with the clown in the car (the one the manual talks about passing by). While you can't use the parachute from the car to the left of the clown to fly over him, I found that you CAN use the parachute on the right hand side of the rig that's just one more screen to the left. If you do that, when you float all the way over onto the clown screen, and then you'll witness an interesting graphical glitch. Anyway, I'm not sure if anyone else ever saw this. I don't have any expectation for a fix; I just thought it was a neat oddity.

Thanks for clarifying-- there's definitely a lot I've forgotten here. I had thought kangaroo mode = transparency, but rechecking my manual, it's the EXACT opposite. So, yeah, that's a problem. Kangaroo mode = no transparency = all zeros turn black, so holey DMA is a no-go. Definitely an issue. And, since kangaroo mode is set at the CTRL byte level, it can't be flipped on/off on the fly per scanline or zone, or at the DL level. So, yeah, that's tricky... Awesome that you have an idea. I'll keep an eye out and would be glad to help test.

Hey there! I'm REALLY rusty on 7800 stuff, so please forgive me if I say something technically inaccurate. For the "next" column in the right side of the screen, I assume you are keeping the tiles lined up with DLL zones? If so, maybe this would be an option: Instead of pointing to ONE indirect character map in each zone for the "next tile +n" (I assume you are doing this), you could point to TWO character maps and use holey DMA. Then, define one byte in RAM, let's call this the yOffset, and set it to zero. The initial topmost zone would point to the topmost sprite+offset AND the second tile-offset. With holey DMA, only the first sprite would show. Then, to slide things up, increase the offset by 1 gradually. The top sprite will show the bottom part of sprite1 AND the top part of sprite 2. Continue until yOffset hits the Zone height and then reset it to zero and move all the RAM locations up a zone (which you already have logic for). This is how I got my main character to move up and down through Zones in Get Lost. No transparency needed, no fancy RAM copies-- just another DL per DLL. Could something like that work? If I explained it poorly, please let me know and I can try again. As I said, I am rusty.

Hello there! I got to try out your game recently, and it's a great port. I'm not sure if you're open to feedback (since it's a port), but I have a few small suggestions: 1) Playing it as a novice, I had a really hard time determining which end of the right "pipe queue" was where new pieces come from. It took me two play-throughs to realize the top is the "latest" and that everything shifts up. I could think of a couple of ways to solve this: perhaps pug a "next" pointing to the top square or highlight it differently from the others. Or, put an arrow on the right of the queue pointing up so we know that's the direction things are going. Finally, if you felt fancy, you could have the queue on the right animate and "slide up" whenever a new tile is placed. 2) I have trouble seeing what's under the cursor, especially when the cursor "flexes large"-- maybe the pipe edges need to be a bit thicker so that the cursor doesn't obscure them? Or, maybe they need to be a bit of a different color. I like how things look, but I have to admit that I really have to squint and think / wait to see if what I placed was what I thought it was. If possible, it'd be nice if it was just instantly apparent. 3) I'd love an explosion graphic / sound when overwriting a pipe piece. Overall, I love the animation at the beginning, and the gameplay is fun and certainly takes me back to playing Pipe Dream on my gameboy. Thanks for making this port!

Hey there! I'm definitely late to the party, but finally got around to trying out the game yesterday. First of all, let me say that it is a wonderful port. I had a lot of fun playing it; the music is superb, and the controls are spot-on. I really like that you keep tweaking it to make it better, and I'm looking forward to picking up a finished product some day. It's fantastic. I wanted to ask about one gameplay-related feature that always bugged me about the 2600 version. Apparently, no matter what, taking the bottom-left escalator is a waste of time. It is always in your best interest to take the elevator to the second floor, run right, and catch the robber. I was curious if your port is going to stay true to the classic, or if there's potentially some sort of way to incentivize taking that escalator (besides points). I'm not sure if that's anything you ever thought about, but that corner has always felt wasteful to me. Maybe if there was a speed powerup or something over there, or the elevator was out-of-order on some levels-- I don't know. I recognize this is a nitpicky thing about the original, but thought I'd bring it up as an enthusiast since you pretty much have a blank canvas to work with. My second question-- when you're on the escalator screen with the Robber, in the 2600 version the Robber is automatically bumped to the next level, setting you behind just a little bit and making the rooftop chase a little more exciting. I'm guessing this was due to a sprite limitation. Honestly, I think I like your implementation better as it's more organic, but I thought I'd ask a bit more about it; I wasn't sure if it has any impacts to gameplay. Granted, I've only ever played the 2600 version, so maybe this is the norm on other ports. Thanks again for a wonderful implementation of an old classic.

Don't forget Mean Santa! Released December 2009 via the "2600 Connection".

For what it's worth, I really like enjoy following this thread and its updates when they occur. If the disillusionment is about the recent news where Atari is releasing "3 classics from 1983" and doing kind of a terrible job of it-- well, that isn't really Atari anymore from my perspective. They're long gone, but I consider this community to be the real heart of Atari. It's here where people are pushing hardware, communicating, teaching, and overall just keeping the spirit of things alive. I hope you keep on going; this is always fun to check in on whenever news occurs. And, I hope there's some new ship animations in the future-- those look FANTASTIC.

I may be wrong, but wasn't Yars' Return a homebrew from 2005 that was done by Dennis Debro? I could swear it was a pack-in that was specifically made for the FB2. But, the articles I find say that he made edits to the software, so I'm not sure of the origin of Yars' Return. I was pretty sure it wasn't a 70's/80's title that was never released.

Wasn't Yars Return a homebrew? I have a vague memory that Dennis Debro worked on it.

Hello! I'm starting to go through and reorganize my collection a bit, and I realized I'd like to put some of by boxes into longer-term storage. There isn't anything special here; it's all Commons that are taking up shelf space which I want to dedicate to things that are playable. Problem is, I'd like the boxes to be well protected when stored (i.e. sticking a bunch of cardboard boxes in a squishable cardboard box isn't a great idea). But, I also don't want to go overboard, i.e putting each box in a $20 hard-plastic sleeves and THEN packing them-- I'm really just looking for options for a nice sturdy box/case that can hold a lot of boxes safely at once where I don't have to worry about it. What do people do for long-term storage? I would love to hear what containers work best, and to also see what people have done. Thank you!

I just want to say that you're not alone in this. When I was a kid, I had $17 to my name when my parents showed me the Big Lots ad. I was shocked to see that they had games for $1, $2, and $3. I remember carefully going through the pile and picking up some 7800 games I had never heard of, and a few 2600 ones. I was very careful with my $17 to get maximum value. Sadly, I can't remember which ones I purchased that day. But, I DO remember that I saw Circus Atari in the bin for $3, and I was like "3 dollars! No way-- I can get 3 games for that" and I put it back. For decades later, I would have the occasional dream of going to Big Lots and rummaging the bins of 7800 games, only to find that when I went to the back of the pile, there was a copy of Broderbund's Solo for the 7800. I would buy it, ride home, open the packaging, plug in the cart and turn it on.... only to wake up. I always wanted to be one to help release a prototype from a bin hidden in the back of a Big Lots. I lived pretty close to where the Good Luck Charlie Brown 2600 prototype was found when I was younger, so I thought it was just a matter of time. Never happened, though. Anyway, I would also rate that single day of my childhood one of the best days of my life. It's been a while since I've had that recurring dream, which is a bit sad, but hey, at least reading the stories about Big Lots here on atariage have given me a bit of nostalgia for that one day and my well-spent $17.

Thanks! I'm definitely looking into it. These are great options!