Bill Lange

quote I haven't looked up these folks. I've been more interested in getting programming books online. Though these books are great game review references if some can get permission to put them up. I remember having this book and the 1984 edition as a kid. Alas, I don't have them anymore.

Cafeman - What do you use to make animated gif files? I want to make a few gifs with two images that change every 2 or 3 seconds. Is there a good PD program to do this?

I don't believe they did any other Atari-related books. The Inmans did some other 6502 assembly books. Bob did over thirty books on PC related topics. WRL

Kevin Savetz and I were trying to track down a couple of authors of old Atari books so that we can get them on-line. We contacted Bob Albrecht and he gave us permission to put ALL of his old books online, but he also gave us some bad news: Don Inman died a few years ago. LeRoy Finkel is dead. Jerald R. Brown is dead. WRL

quote Can you do anything usefull with the "Real Overscan Scroller"? quote I can't remember off the top of my head how many scanlines there are, but the number 192 comes to mind. So if you draw a 193 scanline in your DL, then the picture starts to scroll? I am assuming this isn't in the overscan area, but actually off the bottom of the TV's internal workings.

quote I'll take another look at it. I am working on an 8-bit converstion of the 2600 Haunted House game. I use PMG for the player, ghost, bat, and spiders. Only one spider per floor so no more than 4 PMG players. I use redefined characters for stairs, lock/unlocked doors, scepter, key, urn and urn pieces as well as the funky numbers that HH used. I have all the PMG and characters drawn. I can move/animate the eyes. Right now its in mode 2, but I want to get it working in Antic mode 4. I'd like to get it to the point where I can use a map like in GETAWAY! One map for each floor. Maybe base the house on the mansion from Infocom's DEADLINE or something. Then hopefully someone can help me get the 8-bit source working on the 5200.

Shamus - I could have sworn that a whole wall of bad guys would bear down on me. It seemed like they moved more smoothly then char gr and that they were on top of each other. I'll have to boot that up tonight to refresh my memory! Popeye - I am running Atari800win Plus 2.8 on a 2 GH P4. I'll see if I can find the image for Popeye and see if it works. I also want to take a look at those musical notes that you guys were talking about. Nice thing about emulators, I can assemble a 1000 line program using the Atari Assembler Editor Cartridge in about 10 seconds as my computer runs the emulator at 1400% speed. It used to take 15 to 20 minutes to do it on an actual Atari. That is almost as bad as punch cards ... well, maybe not!

quote I guess since Antic mode 4 uses 4-bit wide characters instead of the usually 8-bit wide by 8 byte high, they characters move more smoothly since they only move across the screen 4 bits at a time. HMMMMM

quote I must have missed this one. I am more a 8-bit collector than a 2600 collector. And I guess I am more a player then a collector.

I download Popeye from XL Search and ran it on Atari800win Plus. Make sure if your in 800XL mode that you disable BASIC as it will crash. I took a screenshot of the first level and blow it up 800% in Paint and sure enough the hearts are 4 bytes high and 4 bits across. I didn't see more than 4 floating hearts at once.

10. Sadam Hussein's Mother Of All Battles (Wouldn't require a controller) 9. Bill Clinton's Walk The Dog 8. Bill Clinton's Hide The Cigar (Requires a joystick ...) 7. Pete Rose's Hall Of Fame Adventure (Prototype - can't get past the front door unless you have a ticket.) 6. The Laurana Bobbitt Adventure 5. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes 4. Usama Bin Laden's Hide And Seek 3. Ronald Regan's A Game Of Concentration 2. Tammy Fae Bakker - The Make Up Game 1. Princess Diana's Paris Racing (Also wouldn't require a controller)

Dan - Thanks for posting the source code. I plan on taking a look at it. Any chance that you can put the Byte articles on line?

Thanks for explaining how popeye worked. That was very interesting. How many times can you multiplex a player? If your player is 8 bits across and eight byes high, seems as though you can have 192 scan lines / 8 in single resolution. That would be about 24 objects in each player "ribbon" but they can not be on the same horizontal scanline. How does Shamus work? There seems to be 5,6,7 or more objects all bunched together. Doesn't seem to be character graphics.

quote I have the new Best Catalog at home and it talks about that exact thing. Sometime this weekend, I'll pull it out and let you know what it says.

quote That is a really good point, Gunstar. Man, Atari was the master at re-packaging their products. We are planning on going to the show in Vegas in August. Would there be dealers selling 130XEs in the box there? I don't really want to get it from ebay because the cost will be high and you don't know what your going to get until it shows up at your doorstep. I'll have to check out Best and B&C in the mean time.

quote Well, I don't think it is a secret anymore!

I've been thinking about replacing or actually adding to my Atari 800XL with either a 130XE or a XEGM. Is the XEGM a repackaged 130XE or maybe a 65XE? B&C has "new" 130XE machines for $150 and "new" XEGM systems for $100. Any suggestions?

I've been looking at the difference between Eastern Front 1941 and Getaway ... not in game play obviously, but in the scrolling play field. In EF, the objects are single color and appears to be Basic Mode 2 with about 3 X 3 screen fulls of data. Getaway has multi-color objects, so I am assuming that the game is done in Antic Mode 4 which allows for multicolor characters. Plus the game world is bigger. Besides having to design twice as many characters since MODE 4 characters are only 4 bits wide, are there any other draw backs to using Antic Mode 4 over Basic Mode 1 or 2.

I was reading this quote Is this part right? quote Shouldn't say this The originally planned sequel to the 2600 was a system called the 3200, but development was halted on it as being too difficult to develop for.

quote I don't think the problem is the amount that a disk can hold, but more the memory in an 8-bit. In an 8-bit machine, I believe that the first 28 pages of memory are used by the machine and DOS, except of course the infamous page 6 and a half dozen or so places in page 1. I don't know to much about the 5200 memory setup, but it doesn't use a disk drive or a DOS so there is more memory on the lower pages. How much memory does the 5200 have by the way? I meant page zero, not page 1! [ 01-10-2002: Message edited by: Bill Lange ]

What software makes use of the extra 64K? I mean I am not going to be using a word processor or running a BBS on it. I'd just be writing 6502 code and play games on it.

I contacted Kevin Savetz who put up the Digital Antic Project as well as the APX Archive sites. I'm going to donate my APX Classics By Antic - Bulletin Board Contstruction Set 2.2 floppies to him. I guess he will put them in the APX archives but we can atleast get the .atr files from him. If you haven't been to his sites, check them out - www.atarimagazines.com www.atariarchives.org

At my house, all the games are simultaneous two player games! I work the controller and my girlfriend tells me what to do! Matter of fact, I guess driving is a two player game also...

How hard would it be to port this game to the 8-bit computers? Since the machines are very similar, is it as easy as modifing the joystick routines or are the memory locations very different?

Saturday night, I was at Chuck E. Cheeses with my girlfriend and her family including her 1 1/2 newphew. I was wearing my new Atari Logo Polo from Best Electronics and some 15 year old kid who worked there asked me if I worked for Atari - in my mind, I said "Only in my wildest dreams.... and proceeded to give a disertation on how Nolan Bushnell's life was centered around making people happy ...", what I actually said was "No."