solidcorp

I thought about that, the font graphics are still a little low on the list at the moment. I really like the mixed case used in the Harmony cart, but am single case now. I have the bits and space to do mixed case... maybe later. Thanks! Scott

Re: er... except those that use missiles and the ball Scott

It's scrunched, the same 3x5 font I used in S.T.U.N. Runner on the LYNX - it gets a little dicey with "M", "N", and "W", they are distinguishable but context starts to become important. Two characters per player, just like all the other text routines (except those that use players and the ball). Each letter is 3 pixels wide leaving 1 pixel space between letters - most of the time - as I said there are spacing artifacts that, so far are unavoidable due to the intricate timing required and the use of the four 6507 byte registers. I find the text display acceptable. It is not as nice as the evenly spaced 24 and 28 character text displays, but it was a feat to get all that text to just to display on a single interleaved scanline - 8 players worth for 16 characters with venetian blinds effect coming. Scott

I will, I promise, but please let me clean it up first - I'll try to post a pic in a few days. Also, there are no HMOVE bars and missiles & ball are unused for text. Scott

Has anyone ever made a 32 character text display on the 2600? I've seen the 24 character display And I think Thomas Jentzsch did a 28 character display (used in the Harmony cart?). I've been working on one for several weeks and just got it working last night. It's not perfect, it's off center and has a minor character spacing artifact that I'm pretty sure is insurmountable but it's acceptable. I verified it works in both Stella and on the Harmony cartridge (hats off to the Stella team, this kernel uses the hardware in a weird way but the emulation is 100% true to the real platform). It truly can display 32 character strings of any text within the 51 character font. The interleaved text it 10 lines tall and it takes a little more than that to reload the 80 byte buffer. I found an art style/theme that really works within the quirky constraints, I'm not ready to show it though. I haven't finished the Venetian blinds or have it scrolling yet either, but those are details, technically the hard part is done. This will be part of the 64k StarCastle mega cart. By the way, the 64K cartridge hardware with 2 software programmable LEDs is working too. Scott Williamson

Saw one of those in a little Atari store in St. Charles IL. I can't think of the name of the place for the life of me. Was it the General Computer Store? Run by a guy named Ralph? Or perhaps it was the Compu-Cellar? Run by Don Bahr (my uncle)?

I shot it up well over 50,000 before I stopped...I bet I could rack up 100,000 on the finished product. We'll see about that. The collision bugs are fixed and progressive difficulty goes in tonight Mwah hah ha ha ha! D. Scott Williamson

Cool! What does Star Castle look like? ROFL

I'm sure this is old news too but have you guys seen distellamap? He disassembles cartridges intelligently and shows a dump of the code with graphics and jumps graphically illustrated. It's been around a looooong time, at least since 2005, but it's very cool nonetheless. Here's Atari 2600 Pac-Man D. Scott Williamson

That's a nice idea but it looks to me like jstella needs your ROM to emulate which it looks like it just downloads unprotected from your website. From your link... Even if it were more secure, Java would likely have a raw version of the ROM in memory to emulate it and a core dump would show the graphics and 6502 code pretty easily. D. Scott Williamson

Not that anyone here hasn't seen what may be the single most popular Atari VCS game of all time, but you can play Yars Revenge for free on Atari's website. Yars Revenge Other coin op and VCS games here: Atari Arcade

I really and truly appreciate the unexpected interest in this port of Star Castle I created but... Do your Wii and PSP emulation packages have DRM? Do they read and honor any kind of digital signature. I don't know of any emulator that honors a digital signature or DRM of any kind. In my opinion, DRM only hurts those people that are honest and want to use the media that they've bought in ways that they want to use it. DRM never deters piracy because pirates will always find away around it. Based on your posts you obviously understand this, and you're right...the only way to ensure that your game isn't played by someone that didn't buy it is to not make it available for anyone but yourself. The game looks great, and I'm sure you've enjoyed the challenge so far and proving that it can be done. As I'm sure you've noticed, the 2600 still has a dedicated following. We're always excited for new games, especially arcade ports from the 80's that were never released or developed. Congratulations on your (continued) success with Star Castle. I hope you enjoy playing it as much as you have enjoyed developing it. I humbly thank you Lord Helmet, D. Scott Williamson

It's a timing glitch actually. When optimizing the code, that section of the shields filled in solid so I left it thinking that having some solid was better than all louvered. It bugs me though so I'll probably rearrange the code to make the rings consistent all the way around. I do have one byte of ROM free so I could even insert a NOP It may be possible to make them solid but that would double the scanlines and since it's all one unsynced perfectly timed function, idk how I'd fit the cycles to add loops to double scanlines or alternatively double the code to render each scanline twice within ROM. D. Scott Williamson

There are only two other coin ops games I know that had no CPU, TailGunner and breakout were all TTL. I suspect other Cinematronics vector games including the other popular Tim Skelly games Rip Off and Armor Attack probably didn't have off the shelf CPUs either but I don't know that for a fact. D. Scott Williamson

I am currently analyzing the game mechanics and how the shields are drawn in Scott's game. Maybe, if someone comes up with a demo, this will encourage Scott to release his game before someone else does the same game. I strongly support the effort for others to try to make this game <edit...> - and for them to pave their own way for them to explore their own ideas. I don't mind having others try to recreate this work through the pictures, videos, and code conversations of my work presented here, I'm just saying so much of the reward is in solving these problems for yourself and you may end up with a superior product. I suspect you will find this particular title to be much harder to impliment than it looks. D. Scott Williamson

true, I found that out late in the project and I'm out of bits and code room. I'd need to recover 6 more bytes of RAM or figure out how to count from zero to two in one bit . It is and it was fixed last night. Very astute! D. Scott Williamson

It's pretty close, the shields and ship are too big for the screen though. D. Scott Williamson

It's comparing apples and oranges. Sure they are fruit, but they are just not the same. I think there is a core of us that will try to squeeze every byte out of the program while performing obscene tricks. The other group thinks we're nuts to not just expand the rom... simply because these days there is no real constraints on cost and it's a hella lot easier. But for us it's like the Clint Eastwood trilogy. How'd it go? Oh, yes... A Fistful of Bytes For a Few Bits More The Good, the Bad, and the Bit-Rot I agree with both of you with one caveat - with all the RAM and ROM in the world, the 2600 is still very tricky to program, you still need to work in 4k banks and the graphics and sound are so limited you know. D. Scott Williamson

I KNEW IT! Very cool,thanks. D. Scott Williamson

Wow, 12 bit RAM, I missed that. I went over the schematics quite a bit looking for the CPU and when I realized it was made from logic & ROM I looked even harder. D. Scott Williamson

Why do you really care, 16K is just fine? I should add I'm not sure how I'd even do it in 16K D. Scott Williamson

For those of you who think the 2600 is hard to program, there's harder. Here's the Star Castle Coin-op Manual. In it you will find that it didn't have an off the shelf processor, instead it was a collection of logic chips and ROMs. Programming was done in assembly in notebooks, converted to hex and typed in. Wow, humbling. D. Scott Williamson

Why do you really care, 16K is just fine? I really do care and I care because I did it to answer a challenge. Howard Scott Warshaw said it couldn't be done and I wanted to prove that it could have been done at the time he was to do it, I had to stay within the ROM limitations present in 1981. The harmony cart will do 16K or more and my cart will go up to 64K so ROM isn't practical modern concern (though I wouldn't want to develop without bank switching supported in Stella). Historically Yars Revenge was done in 4k but there were already two 8K cartridges published before it, Realsports Baseball, and Asteroids, and four of the five games that immediately followed were also 8K. (reference). It has been suggested that Howard Scott Warshaw may not have been able to convince his superiors that the new expensive 8K ROM was necessary especially since it was his first Atari 2600 game (isn't that remarkable?). His interviews never mention ROM size as a limitation though but he does insinuate that graphics and control were big concerns of his Ive been told that 8K ROM became the norm after after "the Pac-Man debacle" but Pac-Man came out 9 titles before Yars Revenge. I don't have a list of release or development dates and the "debacle" may have taken too long to unfold. I personally think Pac-Man could have been much better in 4K despite the insane deadline, at least with the a better palette, better Pac-Man frames, and better sounds (that horrible DENG, DENG, DENG still haunts me). Maybe something could have even been done to improve the multiplexing of the ghosts. The subsequent Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man Jr. were much better but I have to assume they were given more time and 8K ROMS. D. Scott Williamson

It has it. Each ring rotates an alternate direction. When all the segments of a ring are destroyed the ring below its shield sections and holes grow to take its place and all the rings change rotation direction. The growth is instantaneous though. I don't know of a way that the rings can change size and still do everything they need to in 8K. D. Scott Williamson

I really and truly appreciate the unexpected interest in this port of Star Castle I created but... Do your Wii and PSP emulation packages have DRM? Do they read and honor any kind of digital signature. At the very least I might be able to find out which individual gave it to two friends, who gave it to two friends, and so on, and so on. If that happened only 8 times there'd be 256 copies out there which is about the limit of what I could expect to sell and that's from just one person. Of course we are all good an honorable people here and I don't mean to suggest that any of you may be involved in such an illegal and immoral activity as software theft but consider this perspective... For me to get any satisfaction I'd have to find and bring charges against every pirate for that to work right? I'd have to find and stop the sharing of torrents, darknets, websites, ftps, emails and all other ways my 8k file might be shared all over the world right? And let's not forget that hackers are clever, there's a better than good chance that when they remove or workaround the signature and/or whatever copy protection's in place (which takes less than 48 hours if hackers want a title), they will likely compromise my ability to identify them, not that I had a chance in the first place. I have been making games for 20+ years, I'm privy to details I can't share here, but I can tell you piracy gets worse every year. For this project it's personal, there will only be one and it will be unique. D. Scott Williamson