[2003 AtariAge Holiday GreetingCart #6 on eBay]

That sort of SMUT should be banned from eBay. Shame on you!

You think I should put it in an adult category?

 

..Al

 

 

You're going to hell, you know that, don't you? One where all you can play is Sega Master System.

[2003 AtariAge Holiday GreetingCart #6 on eBay]

That sort of SMUT should be banned from eBay. Shame on you!

[Boulder Dash®]

Any news on this one?

 

Boulder Dash was developed to the point where the game mechanics were complete, and all of the levels of the original game were installed. I didn't complete the scoring or the title screen. But basically it's a fully functional playable game, with death, restart, etc. I just never got to the point where FSS and I had an actual agreement to release it.

 

There's a 15 minute MPG out there somewhere, showing all the levels being played -- but I don't expect the binary to ever see the light of day and I guess I'm really saying that this is now a dead project. Even though I fire it up occasionally and have a game or two It will probably continue to have the occasional showing at various Atari related shows.

 

Cheers

A

[NES Way of the Exploding Fist]

Wow cool find. So did Andrew ever get his little bundle back?

 

No. I can't discuss this further, as the whole thing is now in the hands of my lawyers.

[PSP homebrew... enjoy it again for the first time!]

What firmware did you have on the system before you performed the downgrade? I've got 2.7 myself.

 

JR

 

I had 1.53 or something like that. As part of the process you first have to upgrade to 2.0, then downgrade to 1.5.

Cheers

A

[PSP homebrew... enjoy it again for the first time!]

http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=33751

 

Man, when the hackers break Sony's firmware, they break it in half! They've found an exploit in the .TIFF graphic viewer, and this bug could potentially let nearly every PSP owner enjoy both recent official releases as well as homebrew games and emulators.

 

That's right, folks... you don't need another PSP. You don't need a GP2X. You don't even need a copy of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. You can have it all on just one system, if this exploit blossoms into a full-fledged eLoader.

 

JR

 

Yeah, I can confirm this works.

 

I used this (or a similar) hack to downgrade my PSP to version 1.5, and then allow it to emulate (?) any subsequent firmware version -- allowing me to run both homebrews and basically any firmware revision I like. Awesome that there's a buffer overflow exploit available on a handheld, and hats-off to those who figured it.

 

Cheers

A

[So....did anyone pick up a 360 Hard Drive for $14.99?]

I pick up three of them.

 

Sears ran in the ad for the week 360 Hard Drives on sale for $14.99, which you know was wrong (someone fucked up big time). Knowing that they wouldn't honor it, I took the ad to Walmart and pick up the three, and went to the checkouts, showed the ad to this 'floor manager' and she said okay and gave them to me at $14.99. Total for all three came to $47.67.

 

Getting them cheaply through a competitor honouring a misprint is shady, to say the least. Returning them to a different store for a 'full price' refund is simply stealing, thief. Nothing to be proud of. Have you no ethics or honour at all? Surely you can see that what you did is not only unethical, dishonest and unfair... but also just wrong.

 

Do you even understand right and wrong? I doubt it.

[I Can't Get DASM to Run]

Whenever I try to run DASM this briefly flashes on the screen before the program exits:

 

I've used the 2600IDE for bB to compile several things. Since batari basic uses DASM to assemble games (it does use DASM right?) I don't think there's anything wrong with my version of DASM.

 

I'm using Windows XP.

 

I downloaded the latest version of DASM, and extracted it into a DASM folder in C:\program files\DASM. I also tried extracting it into several other folders. None worked so far.

 

I'm using the bin>DOS>dasm.exe. So I tried downloading a DOS emulator (DOSbox) and opening dasm through that. This message comes up "This program cannot be run in DOS mode."

 

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong or a way to set up an IDE (preferably crimson editor since I already have and have used it) to use dasm?

 

 

You know you can't just click on dasm.exe from windows and expect it to work, right?

 

When you say it just flashes briefly and then exits, it looks very much like you're doing that. To run DASM as a DOS app (as opposed to calling it from within an IDE) you need to go to a DOS command window first. Start/RUN and type in 'cmd' if you're using XP/Windows. Then navigate to the directory where DASM is, and type in the appropriate command line.

 

Cheers

A

[2600 Defender Arcade - Pretty Much Complete!]

These are just little things oh but that color orange I don't know where that changed but it should be back to the red you had just before it, not the first red but the one just before it went to orange.

 

Eh, ship color is my "fault". The red was a bit too hard, so I lightened it up. Hue's not great, but with the 2:1-slope planet I think the brightness is good. BTW, I'm bummed that nobody commented about my title screen pic. I really wasn't joking (a WIP, but awesome even so)

 

Truly awesome

Cheers

A

[2600 Defender Arcade - Pretty Much Complete!]

Hey Atariboy2600

 

You already know how I feel about your work. I can't say enough good about what you can produce.

 

Also, when I do make carts for this, If I may use your label, I will get you a cart for only the price of the board and SARA chip.

 

Bob

 

 

Um. That doesn't sound like a great deal to me! You use his art and in return he get a free... assembly of a cart?

Nice art Atariboy2600. Need to work on the spelling/grammar a bit, though.

Cheers

A

[2600 Defender Arcade - Pretty Much Complete!]

We now have a color scanner (looking forward to trying this out on the real thing!) and all changes incorporated into this 16K binary.

 

I took your last binary and made some changes. The scanner code is largely rewritten so as to be much faster; hopefully it should no longer run overtime. It uses a couple 256-byte tables plus another that's over 128 bytes, so it's unlikely squeezed into 8K. The game logic sometimes runs slightly overtime (~1 scan line) during vblank, but that's not the fault of the scanner code (which runs during overscan).

 

I also improved the mountains' appearance. This was almost easy. The trouble came when the planet blew up but remained partially visible. So I changed some code so the planet explosion now removes the top 42 pixels of the planet instead of the top 28. This in turn required rearranging the data for the "GAME OVER" message so as to avoid some odd junk at the top of the screen.

 

Once I took care of that, I decided the planet explosion was rather wimpy. Not any more.

 

 

I had a look at this using z26 today, and it's looking very nice. Apart from the name on the title screen, which is just really really tacky. Get rid of it. Unfortunately, though, when I came back to my PC after about 2 hours or so, there was what I'd describe as a "red screen of death". The game had crashed, but Z26 had not, nor had my PC. So, methinks there's a bug in there somewhere.

 

Cheers

A

 

PS: And seriously, the name on the title screen... ditch it.

[compiling homebrew list]

So is a homebrew count even if it's not released on a cart? That seems a little too far cause sense BB came out little 4k "homebrews" are running almost as rampant as the shitty little "hacks" that keep coming out every 3 seconds.

Just my $0.02, but personally, I think a game should be released on a cartridge before being added to a homebrew game list, otherwise what would the criteria be? I mean, I've written several little programs (long before bB was released) that do things like display all 128 colors at once, but they aren't "homebrews" by any stretch of the imagination. And maybe there should be some additional criteria besides being released on a cartridge, because if only one actual cartridge has been made for a game or demo or hack, then it isn't like people can buy it. Maybe there should be a minimum number of cartridges, plus a printed manual for the game, or something like that?

 

Michael Rideout

 

And there are even exceptions to this 'rule'. How about 'Boulder Dash' which quite happily lives on a cartridge, is essentially complete, has released MPGs showing gameplay --- but due to copyright reasons just hasn't been released? Surely it belongs in the homebrew list!

 

Cheers

A

[Whould Like Someones Opinion]

Hi,

 

This is my first post on the Atariage forums. I Just wanted to ask you all which computer

do you think is better, the atari 800 or the commodore 64?

 

Having owned and loved an Atari 800 in its heyday, using the machine to learn how to program games...and having programmed the Commodore 64 professionally for a number of years actually writing games, I feel qualified to offer an opinion (an informed one!) on the subject.

 

The Atari 800 was a nicer 'feeling' machine to program for. But ultimately, the Commodore 64 had more graphical capability that allowed better games, and the hardware gave clever programmers much more to work with.

 

Cheers

A

[Trouble with DASM]

Update:

 

Even though I get a list of errors as mentioned such as "unknown mneumonics", etc. When I run the .bin file in Stella it works.

 

Why would I get those error statements from DASM?

 

Tony

 

An unknown mneumonic is probably a sphelling error.

Cheers

A

[EBAY going to start enforcing against excessive S&H]

I "bragged" about the feedback size because Andrew Davies stated he "had been on eBay for over 9+ years and has had hundreds of successful transactions bought and sold." Yet he only has around 205+, therefore I pointed out an inconsistency since he may have been on eBay longer, but I have had much more experience due to the amount of items I have sold, or did you completely forget he made that remark? That's almost borderline "dishonest" and "shifty" if you ask me, pretending 200+ is more than it is. Just taking quotes from both of you for my eBaying ways when you perceive to know nothing about me, but jump on my opinions as to why eBay sellers are charging the shipping rates they do.

 

Now there you go, confusing quality with quantity again.

 

I always leave feedback when the buyer informs me the item is safely received. I won't leave feedback for a seller who insists on the buyer leaving feedback first. Be that as it may, I have 239 positives which is, literally, hundreds of feedbacks. I have obviously done more transactions than I have feedback, as have you. I have been a long-term eBayer, and that I understand both buying and selling, having lots of experience in both.

 

eBay sellers are charging the shipping rates they do, because they can. Ethical eBay sellers see the practise of gouging money from buyers by the additon of packing and handling fees, and inflating the shipping cost, as just plain wrong, and against the long-term interests of themselves. You claimed that it was reasonable for sellers to include fees to recover costs, such as the cost of petrol to get packages to the post office, and to recoup such seller fees as PayPal transaction fees.

 

The bottom line is that you think it is reasonable to recover your perceived costs of selling by charging the buyer through additional fees on top of the auction price, combined with the shipping fee. The wonderful "handling fee", for example. I think this is not only wrong, it is clearly unethical.

 

Cheers

A

[EBAY going to start enforcing against excessive S&H]

Andrew Davie: No need to be insulting, but unbeknownst to you for some reason, stores have hidden costs to up the ante on many things, including rent, storage, other overhead costs, etc. This IS included in their increased cost that they add on to the consumer.

 

Also, keep in mind I WAS MERELY STATING FACTORS FOR INCREASED SHIPPING. No need to jump on me for something, especially since my shipping/handling costs are VERY fair, and I was merely stating a point as to how impossible it is to make money sometimes off of eBay.

 

Whether or not you increase the opening bid is not the point, the money is going to be made somewhere, but in order to keep the costs low, sellers will hype up the shipping.

 

Also, as for your "time consumed" remark, as jabanes said, if I have someone go to the post office, mail my stuff, package my stuff, etc, I am well within my right to ask for that part as shipping and handling, not to mention all the boxes, supplies, and other stuff I have to buy for shipping purposes. If was charging $10 a game, then of course you could complain, but $5? Please. Oh yeah, AND I combine shipping rates too. I'm not like other sellers with FLAT rates for each game, which I understand as well, but you definitely should not be jumping on me for any of this.

 

My insults are much more thought out and ambiguous, so don't get too excited

 

I have been buying and selling on eBay since 1996 (check my userID -- andrew.davie). I have been on eBay since before it was called 'eBay'. A long long time. I mention this so you'll understand that I have done many hundreds of transactions, both as a buyer and seller, and do understand the issues involved. Even after 10 years of eBaying, I still have 100% positive feedback from buyers, and there's a reason for that.

 

I put total focus on customer satisfaction.

 

As a seller, and an international one at that, I offer **FREE POSTAGE**. I do that to make it more attractive to buy from me, and because I understand the value of offering services that are perceived to be good value. The idea of gouging a buyer for the cost of petrol... not only is it something I'd never consider, it's something I find quite laughable. You are trying to justify the packing of YOUR costs onto the charges you make to the purchaser.

 

Ha! I laugh at your attitude. Ha!

 

The fact that you think it's reasonable to charge for your time and petrol (and even packaging) when you are the seller simply says to me that you really don't have a clue as to how to successfully make money on eBay. It's not about gouging every little cent you can from each and every transaction/buyer. It's about establishing excellent feedback, getting repeat customers, offering the absolute best service and value for money, describing thouroughly and accurately, shipping safely and (at worst) at-cost, and selling quality items. When I sell, I cover the cost of shipping, and packing. I'll take a loss on that, to make a better sale in future, and a happy customer today. I make damn sure the packing is top-notch. And I offer 100% satisfaction, or money-back (and I pay the postage). Nobody has ever returned an item, as they are always TOTALLY as described, and my customers are always happy. I make sure of it. It is MY responsibility to safely get an item to the buyer, because an unhappy customer reflects on my ability to make money in the future.

 

When you do these things, and establish glowing feedback from your customers, you find that your sale prices start going up -- you get more bidders, and higher prices. You need to know how to market and sell. I have made a lot of play money selling things on eBay, and I find your type of seller attitude exactly the sort of thing that has turned eBay from a wonderful place to buy and sell, into a quagmire of bad-deals and shifty sellers. But that's fine, because I can always out-sell these sorts of sellers (that is, your kind who place a monetary premium on their precious time required for packing and driving to the post office) with my service and approach.

 

When you whinge about your costs (packaging, petrol, etc), this just shows that you don't really have much of a chance of being a really successful seller. You don't have to offer free shipping, but you do need to make sure your customer is TOTALLY happy. The justifications you put up for increasing shipping charges are misguided, at best. The smart thing to do is to stop penny pinching (it's a false economy) and start focusing on being a teriffic seller.

 

Cheers

A

[EBAY going to start enforcing against excessive S&H]

2. Gas to and from post office.

 

It's expensive to drive these days. If you have to drop off packages, wait in line to drop off INTL packages, etc. This can be very time consuming. Yes, you can arrange to have USPS come pick up your items, but if you are working full time, and you have a lot of high end items with Delivery Confirmation, I would think you'd rather drop them off right in FRONT of a postal employee at the counter.

 

3. eBay/PayPal listing/final value/other fees

 

I'll probably be chastised for this one, but you HAVE to make up for the incessant charges eBay takes from three sets of fees. It's almost IMPOSSIBLE to make money on eBay unless you A) Have a crazy product everyone wants and you have a large quantity of them, and got them cheap, or B) Charge a higher shipping amount to make up for the loss of sale on your items.

 

4. TIME CONSUMED doing all this

 

If you have someone helping you package up, box up, go to Staples and pick up things, or even do it yourself, this takes time, and your time is valuable.

 

The buyer is not responsible for your petrol costs in delivering his package to the post office! That's your issue. You could live next door to the post office, or you could live 100 miles away. You do not have any right to expect the buyer to pay for you to get to the dropoff point for the package. Would you charge someone petrol to send them a letter? Absurd.

 

PayPal charges should be worn by the seller. It's YOU selling the item. Selling costs -- YOU are using the eBay service, and if YOU wish to allow people to use the PayPal service to make it easier to buy from YOU... then wear the cost of that service. It's exactly the same as using a credit card. It is the merchant who covers that 2.5% cost, or whatever it is. It's in the terms of service, both credit cards and in PayPal. As a seller you are NOT ALLOWED to cover paypal costs in your auction shipping, etc. Bad form, and just plain wrong.

 

Time consumed? Get real. Does a store charge you "time consumed" for how long it takes them to serve you when you buy something from them? When you buy stuff at a garage sale, do they charge you extra because it took longer to sell you something, than the other guy?

 

I mean, seriously, what planet are you from?

[AA Homebrews for 2600 Nearing Activision Titles]

And Qb was an "unplanned withdrawal" that had legal implications if not any direct C&D to AA.

 

 

Thank god for that; I knew there had to be a reason! I think I threatened to sue myself, and having dealt with me before... once bitten, twice shy. It was probably a wise move on my part, as I can be nasty when I have to be. It's all a bit vague, now.

 

Qb is possibly the most common homebrew... ever. There are over 450 carts out there. The market is super-saturated with this cartridge and variants, and the only reasonable prospect for the future is "platinum edition".

 

Cheers

A

[Spacewar creator dies]

That really is a shame... My condolences go out to him and his family...

 

 

It's customary to offer condolences to the family only!

[top 5 list with a twist]

It occured to me that most best-of 2600 lists consist mainly of arcade ports, so I am asking you to post your top 5/10 list of original 2600 games.

 

1) Qb

[NES Way of the Exploding Fist]

Yes, at a blustery Preston flea market! If you trace journies, I really wonder how it got there.

 

The game does pretty much seem complete aside from the graphical glitching, I assume it was finished when handed to Dick? Hopefully Jon can get this baby dumped in the near future...

 

 

The glitching is almost certainly a PAL/NTSC issue. There's no reason Dick would have had a PAL version in his hands, and the display system was *very* timing-critical. It bankswitches on 10 consecutive character-lines. Each character-line therefore had 256 characters available, into which every frame of the fighter's graphics (for that line) was super-packed. It was an interesting task. The switching of banks occurs at the end of the last scanline of the character, and obviously had to happen very quickly.

 

I can't wait for Jon to send me the cart and, finally, to have that baby back in my hands again!

 

Cheers

A

[Session 23: Moving Sprites Vertically]

Does anyone have any simple code for this Vertical Sprite Movement tutorial? I'm having some trouble figuring out the placement code. The tutorial says:

ldy #192

Picture

 ;Check if we need to draw code here..
sec
tya
sbc SpriteEnd
adc #SpriteHeight
bcs .MBDraw3
			
nop
nop
sec
			
bcs .skipMBDraw3
			
.MBDraw3
lda (SpriteTablePtr),y; Load the data from "y"... is this right?
sta GRP0
			
.skipMBDraw3
; End Vertical drawing

sta WSYNC
dey		
bne TopScreen

 

The placement on the y axis is right, but it is not drawing my data - just solid a block. I think it is because the y value in the drawing bit will be the value of the y scan line, not the line of data to be pointed at. Am i right in thinking this, or does the new addressing mode here work differently or... something...

 

Thanks!

 

nmoog

 

 

Your assumption is correct. And a way to correct this is to adjust where the sprite data pointer points to, before the scanline loop, so that when the Y register is used as an index, you end up pointing to the correct data after all! When Y is at the first scanline you want to draw on, you want your pointer + Y to point to the first data byte of your sprite shape. In other words, subtract the starting line from the pointer before the loop starts. That should do it.

[NES Way of the Exploding Fist]

Hi everyone

 

I found this cartridge today:

 

[Jon

 

 

TOTALLY AWESOME!!!

 

I wrote this. I thought it was lost forever, as I don't have a copy of the binary.

I'll be happy to answer questions. It was a speculative project, with no publsher. I took too long in development, and as there was no buyer, it was canned. I still remember a bit about how it was programmed.

 

Dick Lehrberg was BEAM's USA rep. He probably carried this cart around with him to publishers, trying to find a buyer. It's possible he left it with one on loan, and it just got forgotten, and eventually dumped.

 

I have to say, I'm *really stoked* that this has shown up after all these years.

 

Cheers

A

[2600 Virtual Pets]

It Would Be Nice to Be Able to Burn You're Own Carts/Play On Emulater

 

But can you write a shorter sentence with even more grammar and spelling problems?

 

A bit harsh, maybe. But please try to use "your" not "you're". The latter is short for "you are", and I'm sure don't mean "...to Be Able to Burn You Are Own Carts...". You're sure, too, I'm sure. It's not rocket science. And it's "emulator", not "emulater". Finally, sentences end with a full-stop. I won't even stoop to mention your most annoying over-use of capitalised improper nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.

 

Cheers

A

[The 256-Bit Generation?]

Call it the hi dif gneration.

 

I think the bit generations is near the end. I don't see a 512bit,1024 bit ,or 2048 bit generation happening. I don't think hd tv's are capable of doing 2048 bit. The 2048 bit generation would have to start around 2026 at least if every generation has 5 years for videogames like they do know.

 

The only way this could change with bits is having a tv that is even more high tech then it is now. Nintendo is on the right path. The days of improving graphics is near the end. What can be improved on is the speed and find new ways to do games by control. It will be about the games,not the graphics after this coming up generation or the one after that.

 

 

"bits" are not the same as "pixels". You appear to be confusing resolution with CPU bit handling. The Atari 2600, for example, is an 8-bit machine. It can handle a resolution of 40 x n playfield pixels on the screen. So when we're talking about a HD tv capable of doing "2048 bit" -- that's meaningless. You could (in theory) have an 8-bit CPU driving a HD screen 2048 pixels wide, no problem. The HD TV resolution is independant of CPU processor bit-width.

 

We're just at the beginning of the 64-bit CPU era. I expect this will last under a decade, and we'll see 128-bit CPUs come along in short order. After that, my guess is we'll start to see a change in architecture (eg: quantum computers) and I doubt we'll see 256-bit CPUs for some time. I'm sure there are significant cost disadvantages (pin count, bus bandwidth, etc) in developing higher-bit-width hardware. 8-bits is all anyone ever really needs, and 2048 bits is just insane.

 

Cheers

A