oky2000
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Posts posted by oky2000
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Mini releases of computers are pointless. With something like the SNES mini all you touch is the control pads which are full size. A computer though is all about using the actual keyboard. I have no interest in anything other than the full size machines outputing fully legal RGB SCART for CRTs. LCDs are not my thing and with an Atari 400/C64 mini you might as well just use a PC + emulator on LCD TV/monitor is my response. YMMV of course.
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Hmmm forgot about the sampled sound aspect. I think Starglider 1 is another and Gauntlet II had a much longer intro sample with a 1040, plus IIRC you got more in game samples on Gauntlet II if you had a 1mb ST.
What about games that had less disk swaps if you had 1mb? This was a thing on the A500, a little image of a trapdoor RAM exp would pop up indicating the game would use the extra 512k found and buffer more data for less disk swapping.
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On 9/9/2019 at 2:45 AM, Wally1 said:
I don't know about you,
but I make it a point to use software that does not have
the blatant 'cracked by so and so' splash screen.
that kind of stuff kinda really irritates me.
and then they wonder 'gee, what happened to Atari Corp.?'
I mean its great you are an ace hacker and what not
but really what happened to morals and decency anyway?
And earning a living?
Companies like Commodore and Atari actually improved sales of their computers due to piracy. Once Peter told his friend that he could get him any game he wanted on his ST/Amiga he was thinking of buying that was a massive incentive over getting a console, besides the ST is a better games machine than the NES/SMS IMO if the right talent is on the development team for that genre, plus all the unique home computer games.
Companies who made software, that's a bit of a grey area, some companies who had high quality coding/pixel art/audio engineers on their team deserved not to have their games cracked. All those horrible conversions of technically challenging games they shamelessly put out deserved to not see a penny and go bankrupt. My first three games I bought for my 520STM were below "commodore 64 average quality" I had enjoyed for over 3 years. In the UK software can not be returned for a refund by consumers, that is the law, they can only exchange it for another copy of the same pathetic game inferior to a decent ZX Spectrum game on tape.
I don't like cracktros on any system generally, unless the music is stunning, but trainers sure are useful if you ONLY want to play level 2 of Batman the Movie (although level 1 is technically lovely it's not my kind of game but driving the Batmobil is brilliant!). If the files are deprotected into standard ST format you can also replace the gaudy palette of games like Elite for something a bit more appropriate and less clown college/primary school painting class.
Some original games have protection that is so intrusive to the game that nobody can really enjoy it, which is kind of dumb seeing as every game gets cracked in a matter of hours by the 'sceners' and your average consumer is not the one doing the cracking anyway but his gameplay enjoyment is shortlived due to frustration at the copy protection method. Rocket Ranger is absolutely ruined with that stupid codewheel.
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Somebody was talking about Star Wars by Domark having more samples if used with a 1mb ST which I think I heard back then, also IIRC there was more samples for Gauntlet 2 if you had 1mb but not sure now. Is there a list of STFM games that are enhanced if the extra RAM is detected on boot-up?
I never had anything other than my 520STM + SF354 set up back then so although I had the games I never could have seen a difference.
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Thanks, It is indeed the last two videos but it's part 3 that has the demo on the Atari stand. I will see if I can find the other obscure streaming site it was on and see if the uploader has part 3 on there still. The part I remember now.
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I think this is a video I saw, possibly in 3 parts, and it was on Youtube and another streaming video site. You can't find it now but on the off chance somebody knows of a link to it somewhere else would be great. It's the video where they show the ST but also demo some sort of XE GUI type prototype or something I think.
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44 minutes ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:
Turbo Arcade will make its boxed debut at PRGE in about two weeks. There is a demo you can download from the Champ Games website here: https://champ.games/downloads
Here's the quote from John about 5 messages up the thread regarding the release:
- James
Many thanks, wasn't sure as I just watched a few videos of it, it's awesome, not just for the VCS but awesome for any 8bit system. Well done
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Couldn't see Turbo listed on the games in the Champ Games store, copyright problem?
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On 12/30/2011 at 10:50 AM, johncl said:
....as people have pointed out the special sprite to background priority was one of the nice features of the C64 but it had a fun little "quirk" in that both bit pairs 00 (background) and 01 (multicolor 1) was considered background, so that the sprite would be in front of these in all cases even when you set the sprite to be behind "chars". While some would "palmface" at this design constraint, games like Fist II used this to its fullest enabling the sprite to move in a charset environment with a somewhat detailed 2-colour foreground and 2-colour background imagery.
However a disadvantage was that multicolour char mode had a nasty limitation, you could only use the lower 0-7 colours as character color (bit pairs 11) as the colour set for that particular character defined whether the char was in multicolor mode or standard highres. So your normally 16 char colour option was reduced to the first 8 as the 4th bit in the char colour memory decides if its multicolor or not. Its a bit tricky to understand from writing, but essentially when you set the char colour to e.g. light blue, the actual char colour would be standard blue for the bit pairs 11 in the char data. For multicolor 1 and 2 as well as the background you could select any of the 16 colours.
The 2 colours = background, 2 colours = foreground is very useful. If you were to do a conversion of Konami's Chequered Flag arcade you would do the green and light green of trees as bit colours 10 and 11 but the road tarmac and shadows of the treetops on the road as colours 00 and 01 you get the effect of the car sprite driving on the road and over the shadows BUT driving under the tree tops for no CPU time at all. This is a feature few used properly, you have to fully understand how the VIC-II works to do the best of the best games.
The switching between hi-res and multicolor mode in a 16 pixel wide area is not a disadvantage either, if you are drawing in an area that is only two colours anyway say on the ground in a Zelda type top down scrolling RPG you can choose to go hi-res in that character block. This is also another unique advantage.
There is also extended background mode too, which with careful design you can get the benefits of 8kb hi-res bitmap modes (i.e. change both foreground and background colours every 8x8 pixel area) but only have to modify a 1kb screen. If you want to do Smurf Rescue from Colecovision this is the mode you would have to do, with raster splits for status displays back to regular text mode with 256 character combinations. The limitation of EBC mode being you can only specify character 0 to 63 to put on the screen. 64 used designed graphic characters for an actual game window is perfectly fine for some games. Delta only uses the non sprite pixels for the starfield alone, the rest of the display is a pure VCS style race the beam sprites everywhere (inc borders) type tech demo...with a free bullet hell rock hard shmup thrown in for free. If you can do everything Delta does with sprites and then max out the VIC-II non sprite pixel hardware you get games like Enforcer - Full Metal Blaster, which is easily as good as the best Famicom (Crysis Force) or SMS (R-Type?) shmups.
In the right hands you get games like Law of the West which had visuals that could only be replicated on EGA or Atari ST due to the sheer size of sprite pixels with independent palette and all the niceties of the C64 palette being fully used for foreground/background every 8x8 pixels in 320x200 mode.
Pain in the ass bitmap mode for doing games like Elite or Rescue on Fractalus (which is poorly coded by the n00b who wrote that C64 Shamus game as his 'experience') Demo coders have doubled the framerate on 4 colour multicolor fractal game engines already.
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Space Invaders on a product sold to Atari VCS fans should be supplied with the superior, due to many gameplay enhancements, VCS Space Invaders, it's that simple. If you don't see it like that then you are not a true lover of the VCS and I am not interested in comments from such people weren't there at the birth of the home video gaming explosion. Atari changed everything in 1980, this is the most important game in that achievement. ANY company that puts out anything other than a 100% perfect port of the version of the game that turned the VCS, and the console industry, into a going concern for the rest of time has no respect, or love, for the actual heritage of the VCS and the historical importance of that killer app kickstarting the whole revolution from 1980 onwards.
Whilst it may have 2 columns of invaders less and doesn't look/sound like the arcade the VCS port has many many advantages that take it from 10 minutes worth of occasional mediocre gameplay of the arcade to something both with more longevity and more nostalgia in a double whammy. Why just Space Invaders too, why not Pac-Man and Asteroids which are in far more desperate need of replacement with something more like the arcade.
Is it a licensing problem, perhaps the license for that port granted to Atari had a time limit in the contract. Either way seeing that garbage version on the Flashback 50th Anniversary is a slap in the face. Why go to all that effort in making the 50th Anniversary DVD and then bastardise the console.
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I noticed somebody had made some boxes for this, is it just the prototype version or did somebody later go in and add to the prototype game hence the box for it?
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On 7/8/2023 at 7:53 AM, Rybags said:
Is TIA sufficiently reverse-engineered for a proper FPGA implementation?
I know that even in the early 80s competitors had their own versions but there's all those quirks that aren't necessarily replicated properly and games can not work as a result.
Apparently the Coleco Atari expansion #1 used discrete components so it's got to be fairly do-able.
Like some others here I don't see the point, it's a bit like people who ripped out the BMW 220bhp engine from an M3 and replaced it with a 220hp Ford Sierra Cosworth engine. Law of diminishing returns and we already have VBXE as a bespokely coded for improvement to the A8 machines to juggle. This is the sort of thing you might do once, do a YT video about how you did it, and watch it go nowhere because it's an engineering challenge looking for a reason to exist in the world of retro-gaming really IMO. Interesting challenge though technically. Just spent a few days doing proper research about another early 8bit system that was hoping to get a shot in the arm in 1990 with some new abilities.
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14 hours ago, Rybags said:
Commands from debug:
F C30 L57 0
F D30 L57 0
The windows look to be programatically generated, probably at the start of each new level so you'd have to do it just after the ship launches.
On the subject, HTF do you abort the demo? I thought it was Esc but that does nothing in emulation.
This sounds like a winner, thanks
I think the emulator I use is Altira but this is a new PC and I haven't had a chance to copy my retro gaming backups onto this machine.
I haven't played it in a while so no idea how to get out of the demo, maybe one of the function keys like Start or Reset. I think it was those as the Function keys on this wireless keyboard are a pain to use when I run it on an emulator. -
Are the two vertical lines player/missile graphics the separate the 3 windows? If so is there a setting to remove just them in an emulator?
The status panel at the top is fine, the instrument panels on the bottom are fine. It's for an idea for a video I wanted to make to show just how much shows from the 70s could have benefitted from early 80s micro computer tech for their special effects. The two vertical lines will spoil the shots and 10x25fps would be a real pain to remove manually in a paint package!
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I don't know of any, which is criminal, just wondering if somebody out there gives the A8 as much love as some youtubers etc give to other 8bit systems on a weekly basis.
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On 5/17/2023 at 6:53 PM, Atari Nut said:
Why do you say this?
Just bad experience, old 8bit systems are perfectly designed around the way the electron gun works on a CRT TV, if you start using stuff that offers HDMI via some sort of emulation on a CRT it's usually not usually 100% cycle accurate and can run into problems. If you don't own 20+ CRT displays like me (or even 1) it's not a problem. It's just not for me, but the case is lovely and I would buy a replacement case for some of my 800XLs that aren't in good condition now like I said.
Obviously for some it makes no difference, just for me personally it's probably not going to be great from other similar FPGA etc based recreations. Not saying it's a bad product, just probably doesn't fit in with my personal requirements that's all.
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I lost interest the second I saw HDMI port. FPGA + REAL CRT TV = not good. YMMV but it's not for me.
If they want to sell me a mint condition case without the keyboard then YES! otherwise, *pass*
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Nah my question was about the game itself, not any bells and whistles like a side panel graphic/overlay.
I think there was an optimised version of the A8 Star Raiders that minimised slowdown of particle explosions?
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Thanks for the info people. The original loaded from an SD device is good enough for my budget
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As the title says really, what is it that people are playing on these youtube videos, nobody is using real hardware but if the enhanced/updated version is running on an Atari emulator can I run it on a real 800XL or something? Even worse would be if it's a 5200 cartridge image, not cool for real hardware people like me.
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There is a news item in Popular Computing Weekly magazine (1984) that pronounced sales of C64 AND VIC-20 were outselling ZX81 and ZX Spectrum games. I don't have the page scan any more (HD on old PC is long gone and they were stored on my desktop after trawling through hundreds of weekly magazines for research). Looking at prices for mid-late 1984 in the discount high street retailer in the UK known as Argos was quite revealing.
OK to be honest it's just an excuse to mess about with my A/V tools and make the most of the digital world we live in
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Could somebody do a mockup of Colecovision best possible attempt at C64 Law of the West graphics? That is easily the most impressive use of the most advanced of five possible screen modes with additional colour pixels from the huge sprites the C64 offered, but VIC-II was rarely used like this even for static games and even without sprites to make up the extra colours.
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Are there any decent fault finding videos for the woody VCS (4 or 6 switch or vader) ??
I know I have a few but only one 6 switch woody which is black screen dead (PSU works). Would like to get that 6 switcher working again as that's how I played VCS games all my life. The Jr is not for me although if there are parts I can pull from a working one that's fine, that's why I bought them decades ago
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Which joystick is recommended for 1040STfm?
in Atari ST/TT/Falcon Computers
Posted
Euromax Zipstik, there is no other arcade quality option. If you want a joypad, the Sega official 6 button Megadrive pad is technically the best in the world too.
Everything else is beneath those two options, both are dead easy to find.