Propane13

FYI; here's the article in question: http://2600connection.atari.org/fatal.html So, has anyone ever finished the game? I know there have got to be some people on this list determined to do it (heck, some people invested time on 2600 Double Dragon!) -John K. Harvey

What about themes? My favorite was the urban city idea; you could have all sorts of odd ideas for holes (drainpipes, etc). Plus, you'd have all sorts of city-type obstacles. I think it would be fun to decide if you were going to go around a building or "play through". Then again, there would also be the city-driving range. It could simply be from the rooftop of a building, and you aim at the empty shy beyond; or the ocean near the city; but, I don't know how practical it would be to have a mode with ninjas attacking you whilst you try to finish off a bucket of balls with a 3wood. Perhaps other setting would be cool too. Or maybe even a Ninja-mini-golf! With mini-Ninja's. "Take that, shrimp!" Suddenly, your adversary is caught in the vanes of the windmill hazard. Ah.. the possibilities.... -John

How about adding club fatigue to the game? So, the more guys you hit with your clubs, the more bent-out-of-shape your 1 wood becomes. If you break all of your clubs before the last hole, you lose. So indeed, you may end up hitting the final hole with only a putter. -John K. Harvey

I have never seen a reference to this game anywhere. I always wonder how it managed to infiltrate the rumor mills It's definitely a genuine rumor, but one created by the community, methinks. -John K. Harvey

My favorite flaw is the fact that on one of the holes, you can get stuck in an infinite loop Remember, the ball only goes up and right. So, look for the green where there's a thin strip of regular terrain on the outside edge-- you can get the ball stuck in the corner. I was really bored to figure that one out. Never got anywhere in Kamikaze mode. I think it's a great game. I thought it would be a great game to remake nowadays-- 3d Ninja Golf. Imagine having to hit the ball in city-type areas, and having local gangs attack you for being on their turf. Could be fun! -John K. Harvey

In the Atari 7800 BIOS, there's some code that helps to put the the 7800 into 2600 mode, by cleaning out regs, RAM, etc. (I found a copy here: http://kontek.net/pp/technical/a7800/bios7800.asm.txt) I see this code, but it confuses me: BIT RSYNC BMI LF813 LF80A: LDA #$02 STA COLUBK STA LF112 BNE LF831 LF813: BIT WSYNC BMI LF823 Obviously, RSYNC ($03) and WSYNC ($02) are write-only. So, what does the read-only value pull? Is it some sort of shadow-reference to one of the collision or INPT registers? Thanks, -John K. Harvey

Hmm.. that'll get you the perspective of 2600-programmers, yes, but what about the 7800 community? Maybe they do not wish to infiltrate the stella list. Personally, I do not wish to re-join stella list. I left mainly because of 50+ emails a day, and most that were not relevant. Bin files fly in a lot, and every week there's the "hi, I'm a newbie" thread. Most conversation is just rehashing of things that could have been found by simply browsing the archives. I grew tired of filtering most of the emails into the trash. Note that a 7800 mailing list is something that I definitely do NOT want to miss out on. If I need to rejoin stellalist, I'll consider it, but I strongly object. Of course, this may be simply limited to my unique perspective and experience. Does anyone else feel this way? How much does an account at biglist count? I *may* be interested in helping to fund a separate 7800-biglist account, depending on price, and usage of the community-- but, if only 5 people use it, it may be easier (and cheaper) to grow this list as a simple email list without any real biglist archives until more people are on board. All that is really needed is a moderator. Archives can be kept later in the 7800 lifecycle, because I don't think they're too necessary at this stage. Would anyone be interested in doing it this way? That way, it can start small, and grow when needed. I have a fear of this dying out on the stella list, or of people changing the subject of these emails to make them 2600-related. It's too big, and the 7800ers are too few. I don't think it makes sense. Opinions? Thanks, -John K. Harvey

Thanks, man! -John K. Harvey

Are there any screenshots of the 7800 diagnostic cart anywhere? I know it's a lame request, but I thought it odd that I couldn't find it anywhere! Thanks, -John K. Harvey

Good idea. Some sort of 7800 development web repository should be opened up to the community, where the following documentation can be stored: 1) Latest software guide 2) Addendum to the software guide (list of bugs in the guide). Eventually this would get integrated into a new release of the software guide. This could even contain other information: (if someone was daring enough to use test modes A or B), SIO port info, POKEY equates, bankswitching schemes, POKEY installation on a cartridge, and a basic run-down of pros and cons for each screen mode. 3) Mess buglist with software examples 4) Any disassembly work I would be willing to contribute what I've got (which isn't too much, but at least a little bit); maybe people can add on. Regards, -John K. Harvey

Hey there. That was mine Eckhard and I both took 2 separate approaches and made 2 separate scrolling text demos. His became the engine for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (part 1) text demo, IIRC, and mine was released on Hozer (as Alphanumeric Madness and 2600-post-it-note). No one's contacted me about re-selling, tho... Regards, -John K. Harvey

Me too. I don't think the time has been right for awhile, and now it doesn't seem so bad. I think the 7800's finally starting to get the backing that it needs in order to promote its own homebrew community. Well now, it's not *that* much better than the 2600. There are a lot more pitfalls in the 7800 simply because of lack of knowledge. Plus, cycle counting may have gone away, but DMA timing has replaced it. There are also things that make programming the 7800 devastatingly painful. I've whipped up a few demos in the past (I started doing this about 2 years ago, before the encryption info was released, because backdoor.bin was available). I was forced to reduced my game code revisions into demos, simply because I'd eventually hit a wall with everything that I developed that couldn't be crossed. For example, one of my problems occurrend with a mode I chose to develop in. 320x2 (or is it 320B) mode looks to be the best mode for the system (hey, it could even rival Nintendo!). But, if you want to try to program anything practical for it, it's virtually impossible. You are limited to 2 palletes and a background, which is pretty bad (7 colors only per zone). Then, if you want sprites to cross each other's paths, you'll find a limitation with transparency in Kangaroo mode, so you'll be stuck with only 5 colors. This will make all of your 7-color effort end up shot, and you'll find yourself going mad trying to make the cutoff decision-- drop 2 colors, or disable transparency. It's these decisions/setbacks that stopped most of my development, because there is simply no good solution when these roadblcks arise. The lack of information is killer. I've hit walls with DMA cycle counting, pallete limitations, and Kangaroo mode, cycle counting (per frame; it does happen, surprisingly), and others. Even the manual is chock full of lies (the CTRL bit for color vs. black and white is inverted, as are others). Likewise, the emulator support (though EXTREMELY appreciated) still has holes. If you have transparency disabled in Kangaroo mode (320x2), it still appears as enabled in emulators. Though this is a minor inconvenience, you'll find yourself up nights trying to figure out why the stuff on screen doesn't match what's on your console. The only way I ever envision development happening for the 7800 is with a few things: 1) a Stella-List twin for 7800 homebrewers. It would need rules/moderation since the community is very small at this time. StellaList at its birth was VERY regulated: hacks were not allowed to be posted due to potential copyright infringement, and it had an exclusive feeling (strictly development, no OT ramblings on the list). Something like this would be a great help. 2) Emulator support. If we find bugs, it'd be great to create reports for the MESS team to inegrate changes. 3) A dedicated website with tools, doc's, demos, stella-list type archives, a FAQ on mode support, a FAQ on starting out, etc... Sorry to be more pessimistic than optimistic, but I'm pretty sure the lack of 7800 homebrews has a reason-- it's a lot harder than it sounds. But, I would be interested in joining a development community. Maybe I could help bridge some gaps so others wouldn't fall where I have. Regards, -John K. Harvey

Hey there, IIRC, the different versions of dasm should work the same way withe the different outputs from distella (-f or no -f). FYI, I'm glad to see someone actually using distella version 3.0 (as far as I knew, it didn't seem to take off too well). regards, -John K. Harvey

Raiders of the Lost Ark. 1) When I was younger, I'd remember waiting in the map room for 10 minutes for the sun to come up (leaving the room for a snack). Then, once the sun did come up, I'd forget which controller was which, and fall into the valley of the poison, either because I wasn't using the key when moving or becuase I'd use the correct controller, moving it a hair in the up or down direction. 2) That danged hole with with the branch over it; that's a nightmare to get past. 3) Once in the ark's mesa, getting the schovel stolen by a thief!! aah!!! 4) Once digging for the ark, getting the controllers messed up, and pressing the "drop item" button instead of the "dig" button. gaaah!!!! -John

ah, good call!

Hello, What is VCS spider? I'm having one of those days where I can't remember a PB game that this could be... Thanks, -John

what's the thing in the upper-left of the picture? I can recognize the diamonds and terrain elsewhere, but the other thing kind of confuses me... -John

Hello, When using DASM, if I have a snippet of code, followed by an ORG that forces a bunch of default bytes to appear, is there a way to change this default value (say, from $FF to $00)? Example: ORG $FF00 dc.b $01,$02,$03 ORG $FFFC // now, $FF03-$FFFB will fill with a default value, usu. $FF dc.word Start dc.word Start Thanks! -John K. Harvey

Hello, I need some information about the 6520 chip that the atari 8-bit computers use. I did some research, and it looks like the most useful parts for me are the following 4 bytes: PORTA PORTB PORTACTL PORTBCTL Problem is, I don't understand 1) what they do 2) the bit-level breakdown (i.e. if I set bit 6 of PORTACTL, what happens?) Can anyone aid in providing me this information, or a place where I can look? Thanks, -John K. Harvey

Hmm... Was this one just improperly dumped? It's mostly graphics data for every screen. Thanks, -John K. Harvey

Hello, I'm going through my bins that I downloaded when I got PCAE a long time ago, and there's this ROM file called mao17600.bin. It doesn't really work. Does anyone know if this is anything at all, or if this is just garbage that I should throw away? Thanks, -John K. Harvey

Hello, I posted this in the Atari ST forum, with little response. So, I figured I would duplicate the post here to see if I can catch any fish. I'm looking a little lightly into Atari ST programming (just to learn a bit about what's involved in the whole process), and I was wondering if anyone knows a good site where I can find some sample Atari ST code that shows how the ST does music on its POKEY chip. Anyone have any suggestions of where to find such info? I assume some source code music demos need to exist somewhere... Is there a general ST mailing list archive like the STELLA biglist for the Atari 2600 where I can start looking? Thanks everyone, -John K. Harvey

Hello, I'm looking a little lightly into Atari ST programming (just to learn a bit about what's involved in the whole process), and I was wondering if anyone knows a good site where I can find some sample Atari ST code that shows how the ST does music on its POKEY chip. Anyone have any suggestions of where to find such info? I assume some source code music demos need to exist somewhere... Is there a general ST mailing list archive like the STELLA biglist for the Atari 2600 where I can start looking? Thanks everyone, -John K. Harvey

Wasn't the Polo AI supposed to be pretty good, such that it was extra hard to win by more than 1 point? -John K. Harvey