EricBall

Lookin' good!

I'd recommend avoiding the issue by creating your own game rather than trying to recreate (port is only applicable if you have the original source code) a game. (Although you can certainly take inspiration from other games.) The reason I say this is because you will never be able to recreate the game perfectly and thus many will judge your work to be a failure - no matter what you've managed to achieve. And trying to match the gameplay is as difficult, if not more, than trying to recreate the graphics and sound. I am not trying to put down all of the wonderful ports & recreations which were done originally or by the homebrew community. But I'd much rather play a new game that Super Mario Bros on my 7800 when I can play the original on the real hardware or an emulator.

At one point I did a quick comparison of the 5200 & 7800 graphics processing: https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/atari-5200 I'd recommend you first learn & program the 7800 so you have a better understanding of its capabilities and weaknesses. And while having the source code will make porting much of the game logic easier, I think you will find the graphics are so dissimilar that anything dealing with graphic objects will need a major rewrite for efficiency.

So my wife, son & I have been playing CoC for the past 2 months. We have our own clan so we can send each other units. Our actual playtime per day has come down because of how long things take, but we're still having fun (although we've had to change how we define fun somewhat). I'm now up to Townhall level 6 and I'm slowly upgrading everything. While I'm under a shield (because someone attacked me successfully) I accumulate resources to upgrade. Ideally I spend the resources just before the shield expires (if I have enough resources & a spare builder & only one defense upgrading at a time). Once the shield expires, I raid then rebuild my army and raid again. Depending upon what units I build determines whether it takes minutes or hours to rebuild. I also have to balance spending elixir on building units (which I might recover via raiding) versus accumulating it towards an upgrade. Eventually I will have upgraded everything to TH6 level, then I upgrade to TH7 and continue the slog.

When Nintendo designed the N64 they went with cartridges as they could then control (and profit from) the manufacturing, whereas Sony went with a modified CD which allowed outside manufacturing. Going with cartridges also restricted the size of games and made storing pre-rendered video unattractive. However, from a raw technical standpoint, the N64 was more capable than the PS1 (faster processor, more RAM, better GPU). But given the PS1 outsold the N64 3:1, was released ~18 months earlier, games were cheaper to manufacture & Sony probably had fewer restrictions on third party studios meant more games were released for the PS1. And as you noted - while this means more bad games, it also means more good games. Personally I bought an N64 when it first came out - simply to play Super Mario 64. Then I suffered the long drought where few games were released (and even after games started to be released, there were very few worth buying). But the system still has many of my all-time favorite games.

From http://www.mediageek.net/2009/01/rumors-of-vhss-death-are-greatly-exaggerated/ the last major Hollywood release on VHS was 2006’s “The History of Violence.” Blank VHS tapes are still sold because people still have VCRs - although I suspect due to the move to broadcast digital TV / HDTV and the rise of PVRs for HDTV that the home market has declined pretty steeply. However, there's probably still a decent market for VCRs recording surveillance cameras. (Although, again, that market is going digital.) There are VCR-like DVD recorders, but they aren't that common. PVRs (e.g. TiVo) provide same or better quality, more storage, and features like the ability to pause live TV. The one advantage of the DVD-recorder is the ability to take the DVD with you, although there were TiVo models with built-in DVD recorders for this reason. These days there are other options for transferring or streaming the recording to other devices. Resume from last viewing is a pretty typical feature of DVD players (e.g. PS3) and you don't have to rewind the tape to go back to the beginning or skip to your favorite part.

Got this one for my son and I'm a little disappointed as I thought it was all of the NES games, not just Wario-Ware challenges (good comparison). Reverse SMB is kinda cool, but if I'da known beforehand I woulda gotten Captain Toad instead. (Of course, if I'd done some research I would have found this out before it got bought.) So I've put a hold on Lego Batman Wii at the library so I can install an NES emulator and play the actual games (see wiiubrew.org). The delay might be lag due to your TV (and/or A/V receiver if you have one between the WiiU & the TV). However, the emulator also might have some lag too. My son plays using the screen on the gamepad, and I see some lag there too (which isn't surprising given the video has to be sent over it's Wi-Fi connection).

Cool, now you can play around with the analog XY to direction translation. Maybe even do pseudo analog (e.g. sending down, none, down, none @ 60Hz) & rapid fire.

Actually the game.com uses a Sharp SM8521 microcontroller, which has an 8 bit CPU core. datasheet: http://www.sharp.co.jp/ic/datasheet/micon/pdf/sm8521.pdf

Don't be too hard on yourself. Creating a game requires a lot of time & effort with limited reward. It's often better to put that time & effort into other activities.

Based on my royalties, there shouldn't be many of the Hozer label variant of Skeleton out there.

I don't believe Skeleton(+) was ever released with a box. Of course, as the original Skeleton is no longer available, it's collectable along with the original release of Skeleton+ with the You Win glitch. And there's the ultra-rare Hozer Video release of Skeleton complete with unique label artwork.

I found a few articles about CoC on Gamasutra. Apparently (at least in Jan 2013) Supercell was making $1M per DAY from it's (at that time) two tiles (CoC and Hay Day, to which they've now added Boom Beach). So I guess I don't need to worry about not spending money myself as apparently there are enough impatient people in the world. And I can see the point. Yesterday I upgraded my Town Hall from level 3 to level 4 (which took a day to complete) which means I can add more stuff to my village and upgrade the stuff I already have, which all requires time (both to do the actual builds & upgrades and to collect the gold & elixir to pay for it). (And it gets worse the higher the level. Upgrading from Town Hall level 9 to 10 requires two _weeks_ to complete.) And yet, if you have the patience, I don't see why you can't play CoC indefinitely without spending real money. And apparently the whole trophy matching idea was a change from when the game was first released. So maybe the alternatives are worse in some way. I've just resigned myself to cheering when my village successfully defends itself and enjoying the benefits of the shield time when it gets smashed by a higher level player.

My son managed to convince mom to install CoC on his iPhone. After watching a little bit, I put it on my HTC. It's pretty cool, although I wonder how Supercell is making any money given lack of IAP pressure and the TV advertising. IAP - in app purchases, or the way "free-to-play" games make money. In the case of CoC, $$ buys you gems which can be used to: Instantly complete anything which would otherwise take time to complete. (More time requires more gems.) But if you're willing to wait then there's no requirement to spend $$. Buy gold or elixir which can then be spent to build & upgrade stuff. But again, if you're willing to wait then your gold mines & elixir collectors can give you the same. Certain cosmetic items. Builder huts, which impacts the number of things you can build or upgrade simultaneously. Again, this is primarily a time saver as after the tutorial you have two. So unlike a lot of other FTP games, it is feasible to play CoC without spending any real $$. (Although #2 might be more useful as other players can steal your resources.) The basic gameplay is you collect gold and elixir to build up your defenses & your attacking army. You then use that army to attempt to raid other player's villages and steal their resources - unless their defenses defeat your army. Other players try to do the same to you. Successful raids & defenses give you trophies; unsuccessful raids & defense lose trophies. However, an unsuccessful defense also gives you a shield which prevents other players from attacking you for a period of time, unless you attack, which can then be used to replenish resources you lost. This brings up the one problem with CoC (IMHO). Who you get to attack (and who attacks you) is based on the number of trophies each player has. So a common strategy for high level players is to purposely lose raids to reduce the number of trophies they have, then to smash some poor low level player with the full power of their army to steal resources. The game does try to limit this by restricting the percentage of resources the higher level player can steal, but . . . One of the challenges is defense design. You have limited resources (weapons & walls) and layout challenges (as each building takes up space, but weapons have finite range and there are insufficient walls to surround all available buildings). Then there are various attacking tactics.

From a pure capabilities perspective the 7800 has definite advantages over the NES & SMS - the number of sprites MARIA can generate (per line and total) is significantly above the NES & SMS. But in practice that raw sprite power is hamstrung by available CPU time. On the 7800 every tile & sprite reduces the amount of CPU available to game processing by a significant amount due to the shared bus & the need to build display lists rather than just updating simple tables.

A truly dynamic (i.e. no wasted RAM) DL builder is certainly possible. What you would need to do is to order your sprites by Y or loop through the list of sprites, picking out those sprites for the zone. IIRC I looked at the latter at one point and found the cycles required to loop through the list of sprites for each zone was huge. Maybe build a second table with just Y and sprite index which could then be sorted . . . still sounds like a lot of CPU cycles.

Ahh, found it: sample 7800 source code using (ZP,X)

Ctrl-G in the original Notepad will go to a line number. You can also turn on the status line which will show the line & character numbers. (Note: these features don't work if you have word wrap enabled.)

In http://atariage.com/forums/blog/7/entry-3089-7800-cycle-counting/ I mention using (zp,x) being more efficient and say "I'll modify the rest of the sample code and post it." Of course, there's no follow-up post (on AA at least). I remember trying to figure out the Robotron disassembly, but not getting very far. It's fundamentally a data structure & transform issue - how best to structure your data to make it efficient to transform into the 7800 display list structure.

Check the eBay buyer FAQ pages so you make sure you're following the process correctly.

Yes, look up tables are your friend; although occasionally an approximation will work well enough while being both more time & space efficient. (e.g. max(x,y)+min(x,y)/2 as an approximation for sqrt(x*x+y*y) ) For something like a golf game you could do a 256 entry LUT for a quarter of a circle so your player wouldn't be restricted to a small set of angles. I did a version of SpaceWar! for the 7800. Calculating the LUTs for gravity was a royal pain, but the end result was worth it.

gbatemp.net for all your DS flashcart information needs I bought an R4 (clone) back in 2012 http://gbatemp.net/threads/r4-ds-review.41279/#post-4239131 The big advantage was continuing firmware updates (Wood), although I don't know whether that is still true. The disadvantages are it won't work in the DSi & 3DS and it doesn't support SDHC memory cards (and 2GB cards are much harder to find these days).

Note: while the A8/5200 & 7800 use similar terms e.g. "display list", they are used in very different ways. See https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/atari-5200 The 7800 has a 25 entry LUT from a 256 color palette. Depending upon the graphics mode, a sprite may be 1 bpp (1 color + BG), 2 bpp (3 or 4 colors + BG) or 4bpp (12 colors + BG). In addition various strategies which take advantage of the way a TV processes the video signal may be used to create additional "artifact" colors. (e.g. Tower Toppler)

Never heard of a squirrel going after garbage. Mice maybe - they love to chew through cardboard and plastic bags to get to food. Raccoons, on the other hand . . .

Hmm... I wonder if you would have gotten the same capacity increase with just a 3TB drive. And since you've filled all of the slots, next time you'll need to replace one of the existing 3TB drives and won't get as much of a boost (maybe 1 TB as it finally uses the part of the 4TB reserved for expansion).