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Zach

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Posts posted by Zach

  3. Posted

    Weston, Thomas, and Manuel, thanks for the compliments!

     

    Kirk, you're absolutely right about Go AI making chess look easy. The good news is that it is somewhat simpler on a 9x9 board. A smaller board means a smaller search tree. Still, the nature of Go makes it difficult to find a good heuristic for evaluating a given board position. With that said, I think it would be feasible to create AI that could challenge beginners. That will work out well for a homebrew because most of us around here, including myself, are new to Go.

  4. Posted

    :( OK this looks like it doesn't have anything to do with April 1st. Please accept my condolences, Gateway.

     

    I think it's smart for you to take some time before deciding what to do next. With that said, I don't see any reason to quit. This is why you made a backup Globetrotter, right? I know #1 and #2 were together for a while in Vancouver. Did they travel together on the way to Kelowna?

  5. Posted · Edited by Zach

    Thanks for scanning, Gateway. :)

     

    The captions to the Taiwan photos seem to have disappeared with the forum upgrade. The photos show the following scenes:

     

    The California state capitol in Sacramento (you can just make out the state holiday tree to the right.)

     

    Taipei 101, the current world's tallest building.

     

    An interesting sign in Yonghe, just outside of Taipei. Apparently Globetrotter is a Futurama fan. If anyone can read the Chinese, let us know.

  6. Posted

    Here it is, the game that gave Atari its name! Right now, the kernel just shows a single board position, and there is no interface. However, it is variable driven, and I can set up any position just by changing 27 numbers.

     

    It was not easy to manage 9 positions on a single scanline that could be a black stone, a white stone, or an empty position. In fact, there were many times when I thought the kernel design you see would not be possible.

     

    If anyone would like to take on the game logic and AI, let me know. This could be a good homebrew opportunity for someone who knows assembly, but hasn't learned Atari 2600 programming yet. Meanwhile, I'm going to take a break from Go, and shift my attention again to the project I know you all want me to finish.

     

    -Zach

    go9x9.zip

    post-2163-1112235475_thumb.png

  7. Posted

    I should add that there are ways to get around the RAM shortage. For instance you take advantage of the Superchip, as used in Dig Dug etc. Although PCB's for the Superchip are hard to come by, one can still use a Cuttle Cart or Kroko Cart. Another possibility is to make it a Supercharger game whereby you'd have 6K of RAM. This is all just something to think about for the future. You should have enough RAM in a regular 4K game to do Tank with paddles.

     

    Correction: you should have about 16 rather than 8 bytes of free RAM. I apologize for the error in my previous post.

  13. Posted

    Having worked on the Tank AI demo and Combat Redux, I feel qualified to respond.

     

    I can't comment on paddle control since I have no experience there, but in regard to everything else it seems doable. Offhand I can think of a few obstacles you would have to deal with. First of all, RAM is very limited. In the original Combat there are about 8 bytes free. In Tank AI, I was able to gain some extra RAM by having only one maze thereby freeing certain maze control variables.

     

    It will take some substantial changes to the kernel to add two more tanks, because you will need to keep track of their x-coordinates. The Stella chip has registers to store the x-coordinates of two player sprites, but it gets more complicated with higher numbers. Even though I only had two tanks, I added code to Tank AI to track the x-coordinates. One problem, which I haven't solved completely, is how to restore the x-coordinates when the tanks wrap across the screen.

     

    I surmise that Quadratank can be done, but it's more ambitious than you may think. My suggestion is to start hacking a two player Tank game with paddles, and if you still feel encouraged, continue onto 4 players. Good luck!

  16. Posted

    8)

    I'm just counting cartridges here, not the homebrews on my Krokodile Commander disk nor my Stella Gets a New Brain disk.

     

    Marble Craze

    Qb

    Holiday Qb

    Star Fire (+ patch)

    Seawolf

    Skeleton+

    Climber 5

    Thrust+

    Space Treat Deluxe

    Holiday Greeting Cart 2003

    Holiday Greeting Cart 2004

     

    I especially enjoy Space Treat Deluxe for its simplicity.

  19. Posted

    I tried hacking Dig Dug, and discovered that if I changed one byte pretty much anywhere, the game would turn to trash. Don't really know why (bankswitching? the other games I did were 4K).

     

    You're right that the problem is bankswitching. If you are hacking Dig Dug or any other superchip game, you'll need to run the emulator in superchip mode. The following command line works for Z26:

     

    z26 -g6 dighack.bin

     

    Good luck with your hacking. :)

  21. Posted

    I'm enjoying the Krokodile cart, and I hope everybody who wants one can get one. Still, I have a concern about the hardware:

     

    I don't know much about electricity, but I'm in the habit of turning off the PC before connecting anything out of a vague understanding that it is safer for the hardware. The KC is the first hardware that I connect and disconnect frequency. How risky is it to do so while the PC is on?

  22. Posted

    By the way,

     

    how does Video Chess display 8 pieces on one line? I know about the venetian blinds trick - but are missiles used along with the player graphics? Does it flicker? This could be a good example to work off of.

     

    Eckhard disassembled the video chess kernel at one point. Should be in the Stella archives. As I recall, it's pure player sprites and no flicker. (And surprisingly the board is only 7/8 playfield; the eighth column is the ball.)

  23. Posted

    INteresting thread, and nice work, johnnywc! If no one figures out a good way to draw nine sprites, a "mini-archon" could be cool. Compare to the 6x6 chessboard designed by computer scientists in 1956. (The pic is just a quick mockup.)

    post-2163-1108976726_thumb.jpg

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