playsoft

Hi Jason, In the October 2016 Update with new music - Various formats link you posted ab_cart.zip contains the MaxFlash 8mbit cart version. There are 3 files in the .zip: (1) atariblast.car - This is the ROM image with a cart header. This can be used with Electrotrains' Ultimate SD cart and it is also the best file to use under emulation (since it should run in pretty much any configuration). (2) atariblast.bin - This is the plain ROM image without any headers. If you had a MaxFlash 8Mbit flash cart and a MaxFlash USB Programmer this is the file you would use to flash the cart. Run MaxFlash Cartridge Studio and select Cartridge - Program - MaxFlash 8Mbit Flash Cartridge and select this file. (3) atariblast.atr - This is the "programming ATR" disk image which can be used to flash a MaxFlash 8Mbit flash cart without the MaxFlash USB programmer. However you do need something like SIO2PC to boot the disk image. Insert the cart in your A8 and power up, the disk will boot and you can proceed to flash the cart. Note that if the cart has been previously programmed it may prevent the disk boot. If this happens then try holding down the Option key when you power up (that is a convention for allowing the disk boot which might be supported). If that doesn't work then you will have to do a live insert of the cart - boot without the cart and insert it afterwards... I have one machine which is fine doing this but another which crashes more often than not. When we decided to move from disk to the MaxFlash cart we knew it would restrict it being played on real h/w. To offset that a bit we decided it should be limited to 16K RAM so that those with a MaxFlash cart could play it on any machine. The MaxFlash cart is the primary version, the Rambo 1088 and MegaCart versions were requests that I was able to support. It's just a hobby and I don't want to commercialise it by selling anything. However I do appreciate there may be people who do not want to flash a cart themselves. Currently the MaxFlash 8Mbit carts cost $40 + $6 p&p individually or $100 (free p&p) for 5: http://atarimax.com/flashcart/documentation/ If anyone in the UK wants a cart I am happy to buy one and flash it for you. With the current exchange rate the cost per cart is £16 ($100 = £80), add a jiffy bag and postage it will probably come to about £20. Or if you already have a MaxFlash 8Mbit cart but do not want to reflash it yourself you could send it to me with return postage (but make sure it is a 8MBit cart, not a 1MBit one). PM me if interested. Cheers, Paul

The cart versions of AtariBlast! run on a 16K machine (but you do need a 1024K MaxFlash cart or MegaCart).

They do have a lifetime guarantee so I'd contact Steve at Atarimax before doing anything yourself.

Erm... famous last words... although this is simply a different cart format - MegaCart 1MB ab_megacart.zip

Yes, very talented and very generous to donate the tunes.

No, it doesn't save to cart. MaxFlash and Ultimate SD are all I've got here. It is 1MB in size, the .xex/.atrs are smaller because they are uncompressed when loaded. However the 5200 version runs with 16K system RAM plus 512K in the cart, loading each level individually when it needs it into an area of the cart RAM (and as it loads from a SD card it is fast enough that you hardly notice it). So something like that could be done although I am not all that keen on working on another version.

Correct - the .xex and .atrs are just different ways of loading up the 1MB of RAM.

I received a kind donation of some alternative music which is included in this version. ab5200.zip

Here is the update containing the new RMT tunes that were very kindly donated. MaxFlash 8mbit cart version: ab_cart.zip Rambo 1088 versions: ab1088.xex SSSD.zip SSDD.zip ab1088_dsdd.atr

There was another one too, so I thought it best to set BOOT? rather than remove them in case there were any more. It does seem an odd change to make!

I don't know about this exactly, but I have seen the real time clock being checked before. I originally thought this must be copy protection from the original cart, but I just downloaded the image from atarimania and it does not access BOOT? In fact when the cart is running I think BOOT? would be 0 anyway. So now I wonder if this was something put into the RMT version?

And here is a xex file which will work with the Ultimate SD cart. What it comes down to is the BOOT? flag, the xex loader and some sneaky copy protection. The original cart uses BOOT? in a number places as a copy protection mechanism. It expects BOOT? to have a value of 1, any other value will result in problems (like rebounding off the ladders). When the xex file is loaded from the MaxFlash cart, BOOT? contains a value of 1. You can see the MaxFlash loader set it. When the xex file is loaded from the Ultimate SD cart, BOOT? contains a value of 3. I guess in most cases this won't cause a problem. All I have done in the attached xex is to add a new segment that sets the BOOT? location to $01, just before the run segment. The non-RMT version runs correctly from the Ultimate SD cart because it had all the BOOT? accesses replaced. DKRMT74_$09.xex

I see you are loading it from the Ultimate SD cart so I tried a couple of tests. From RespeQT it runs ok. From a MaxFlash workbook and flashed to a cart it runs ok. On the Ultimate SD cart you get your rebounding barrels. I then tried the original RMT version (i.e. without any of our changes) and that gave exactly the same results. Edited to add: If you add it to a MaxFlash workbook, export it to a .bin and turn it into a .car, that will run ok from the Ultimate SD cart. I have done that for you in the attached. dkrmt.zip

I am sure a lot of the code can be reused. It already contains some recycled code - the static display/sound for the level titles comes from one of my old A8 magazine games from 1986. The sprite multiplexer lends itself more to vertical games than horizontal ones, although I never explored single coloured sprites. Having spent a long time on this doing something different appeals more to me now, but in the future I'll probably want to try and do something else with it.

I did not have any luck using fcode.zip. I was trying to write to sector 12 and found that it erased but did not program. I noticed that setsec was storing the first bank number in cursec instead of the sector number and with that changed the sector now programmed. However I think I saw some other data changed that I was not expecting so I contacted Steve and he sent me the code he'd used on Ultima IV and said I should post it. example.s

There was much toing and froing with the music which ended up taking so much of my time that I'd just had enough. We received permission to use Flimbo's Quest, so it was either that or no music. At that point I should have asked publicly if anyone was interested in providing some music but I just wanted to move on with getting the rest of the game finished. Thank you so much for your offer but I have received a generous donation of a number of RMT files which are not original but are new to the A8. There will be a new release with those, see what you think then.

DLIs move with the vertical scroll so I would have had to factor that in when calculating which multiplexer slot to use. By using a POKEY timer the interrupts always occur on the same scan lines regardless of the vertical scroll which seemed like it would be a bit simpler. Also it was something I hadn't done before so that made it an interesting thing to do. I started off with 15kHz for scan line accuracy but I was having trouble with the sound effects. So I switched to 64kHz and configured the interrupts to occur as close as possible to the required scan lines. I was able to do this because the first two scan lines of each sprite are blank to give the interrupt time to set all the h/w registers, so I had a bit of flexibility. I posted the source code to the earlier demos here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/234237-what-made-crownland-so-colorful/?p=3172380 When I find some time I'll post a simpler example of what I finally ended up with.

Thanks for reviewing the game, it was really nicely done.

You always covered the demo versions and I wanted to say thanks!

I should have done Bop It! codes

Random - so you can play on normal but you may have to do it a number of times to see them all.

Ah yes, there are only bosses on the vertical levels, none on the horizontal which makes them seem shorter (although they are different lengths anyway, the shortest is 23 screens, the longest 58). I was not going to have any bosses originally, they came about as a means to fully replenish your shields. This made it a lot easier to put the level attacks together since I could work on two levels at a time in isolation.

These are the blast codes for normal difficulty.

To all things an end... or 4.