Zach

Well, there are 18 rows at 10 lines tall. If I increased to 11 lines per row, that would be 198 lines for the play area. If the score were only 5 lines tall, that would make the picture 203 lines. Has anyone exceded 200 lines in an NTSC picture before?

Here's that BMP to Basic tool I mentioned. Let me know what you think. Gosub_Tool.zip

BTW, I had trouble running this on a Krokodile Cart. Something gets screwed up when a row is cleared and the game becomes unplayable. Has anyone else tried this? Since I'm going to ultimately overhaul things to use the standard RAM, it shouldn't be a problem later on.

I've been dropping a few hints about my latest project recently. First let me explain the title: Chetiry (Четыре) is the Russian word for four, and is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable. I strongly encourage everyone not to use the trademarked name when refering to my project. This version is a little buggy, but playable and good enough for a demo. It uses RAM plus bankswitching, which z26 and Stella should recognize automatically. I eventually plan to implement the game with just the regular 128 bytes of RAM. The kernel works without flickering, and it took me a long time to figure out how to do 10 colors in such a short span. I'll decribe how it works in my blog soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the demo! chetiry23Dec06.bin

I know it's late in the contest, but I could make up a quick BMP to text conversion tool for you this weekend. Interested?

Interesting article: Money makes you focused, not friendly

Don't forget his birthday is coming up...

Basically, except the PF is not mirrored. Basically X is set to $0F and is used to clear PF0_left. Then you load and store PF1_left, PF2_left, and PF1_right as usual. Then load a byte to A with PF0_right in the high nybble and PF2_right in low. Sta to PF0_right, and sax to PF2_right. I got it backwards - it's six stores and four loads, assuming you don't need to change X. See the blog entry if you want an example. It took me a long time to work out this scheme, and I couldn't have done chess without it.

I overlooked this before. Are you writing at cycle 48 because of mirrored symmetry? Have you looked at my chess kernel to see how I did a 32 pixel playfield with a transposed PF, six loads,only four stores, and flexible timing for PF updates?

Thanks! Well, for starters it was the inspiration for the Toyshop Trouble title screen, which actually became simpler because the lights did not need to blink independently.

I simply ordered a NIB power supply from Best Electronics for about $10.00.

John has done an incredible job, and I think it's safe to say that Toyshop Trouble will be worthy successor to Reindeer Rescue.

That stickynotes looks pretty cool. Let us know if anyone orders one with the first 990 digits of pi. (personally, I'd prefer hexadecimal.)

Try clicking the store link right now. It shouldn't be much longer. (The first Toyshop Trouble screenshot is out. )

I would never use a trademarked name like that!

Yep, 2006 has been a great year. It seems the Stella debugger has done wonders for the hobby. 26. Unannounced project. (I may have dropped some hints in recent posts.)

Good point. I think I'll start saving receipts from AA.

Just tried on a real Atari (used a Krok Cart), and z26 gives a more accurate picture than Stella. The flickering might look better if you do it Venetian style.

I can't give the official word, but I'm pretty sure Blip Football is a new homebrew that will be in the store for years to come

Is it a hack of something we know, or an original game this year?

For some of us, homebrewing simply is the hobby.

Say Hi to the pink neon elephant for me!

I think I know what you mean, It's not a criticism or anything like that. I've just been thinking about this game a lot lately, and it seems I'm not the only one.

We'll hear from T.J. any moment now.

It is my imagination, or have there been a lot of threads about Russian block games lately?