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Cupcakus

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Posts posted by Cupcakus

  2. Posted

    My Grandfather at 84 had some serious heart problems and despite serious odds againsed him surviving he decided on open heart surgery this past Sunday. I agreed to spend the day there with him... and as he spent most of the day unconsious, I brought my Laptop along... This is the product of my day :-)

     

    I spent about an hour more on it today... Fixed the colon in the timer it looked like an = before. The game runs like garbage on the Flash Cart so I have to find where the problem is... and as such the code is so hacked up I don't have any good "In Game" screen shots to give you... so this is one I took in Z26 on my last test. And looks very close to the in game screen.

     

    Mattel released a card game last month called Boom-O, riding on their old work horse Uno... I played the game early in the morning with my mom at the hospital and decided it would make a pretty interesting and easy 2600 game.

     

    So here it is.... Binary should be released in a couple days when I fix the TV bug...

     

    It is a "card" game, however I am not using cards at all, more like "Symbols". Each player starts the game with 3 bombs. Players play cards in turn trying not to get the bomb timer over 60 seconds... if you do bring the timer over 60 seconds... you go Kablamo! and lose a bomb.

     

    A few other things can make you go Kablamo! as well... but as long as you are the last player with a bomb remaining... you are the winner!!!!

     

    More on this coming soon... just wanted to whet the appetite for those who might care about this silly little thing I started in my boredom.

     

    If I do make carts of it... all proceeds that I get will go to the American Heart Association...

    post-2302-1041994216_thumb.png

  6. Posted

    From the workshop of Cupcakus:

     

    Early 2003 releases:

     

    2600 In A Flash (Flash Cartridge)

    Quest (Homebrew)

    Kablamo(Homebrew)

    4 Player Multitap

     

    Do you have the controller rumble function working? I would like to incorporate it into one of the titles I am working on... but I won't be ready for it for a few months...

     

    No not yet... I can tell you how to code for them however, and I can sell you a couple prototypes for development purposes if you want.

  8. Posted

    Oh where do I begin... A couple years ago a largely ambitious project came out called WW2 online... Excited beyond believe of a persistant WW2 battle, I rushed to pick it up. After the $50 shock to my wallet to pick it up I hurried home and installed it only to find that if I didn't have more than 256 megs of RAM installed, the game takes over 15 minutes to load. When it finally did load the game was only 20% complete, and just about every feature the box said it had, it did not.

     

    Battlefield 1942 was supposed to be the answer to the void that left in our hearts. And it delivers.

     

    While WW2 Online was intended to be a realistic sim, BF1942 is more of an arcade action shooter. My first game of BF1942 involved getting into a tank driving about 20 feet and immedietly being engaged by an enemy tank. Another player jumped into the machine gun position of the enemy tank, so I jump out and pick him off with my sniper rifle, my tank explodes... so I run into the plane that just happens to be sitting there, and drop a bomb right on the enemy tank, fly over the enemy base, bail out, and call in an artillary strike on my way down, where I was promptly taken out with a rocket.

     

    I like to call it a cross between WW2 online, and Tribes. The online world is not persistant, and is as far from a WW2 sim as you can probably achieve :-)

     

    Tanks are remarkably easy to operate just use the arrow keys and mouse button to shoot. No gears to worry about... and they can scale most terrain with ease.

     

    Planes are equally as easy to operate, but take practice to get the hang of... There are no real controls, just the mouse for pitch and roll, and the arrow keys for speed and yaw. The landing gear automatically raises and lowers as you approach or leave the ground... but I can guarantee you you will not be landing... you will either lose control, get shotdown, or bail out in a strategic spot to beat the enemy there.

     

    There are a plethera of other vehicles as well... Jeeps, APC's, etc... There are also several stationary weapons that can be manned, Huge artillary cannons, machine gun bunkers, AA Flak guns.

     

    Most naval ships can be boarded and used as well... including submarines! Aircraft Carriers and Destroyers can be operated... as well as the personell carriers for launching an invasion of a beach, you know the kind :-)

     

    There are several game modes, including the never tired CTF, but the most popular and exciting game is Conquest. Conquest pits both teams on equal ground, fighting over control points in the center of the map. Each team is given an equal number of "tickets" at the start of the match. When you're team's tickets reach 0, you lose. Each team member that dies is -1 ticket... If your team controls more than half of the control points the opposite team will take ticket loss on a per second basis. Controlled points are also new spawn points for your team and can be used very strategically to win a match.

     

    The game simply is everything it should be... The absolute best WW2 online game ever made... period.

     

    But,

     

    It has some shortcomings... First... it's dang resource intensive. On a 1.6Ghz AMD, 64Mb Geforce 4, 384Mb RAM it runs unplayable at all but the lowest detail settings.

     

    The single player mode is boring, boring, boring... As expected it is just the same maps and modes (Excluding CTF) of the multiplayer game, with uninspired, weak minded, AI bots. Even on the hardest setting I was able to breeze through the single player mode without many problems.

     

    Network Lag... This is unfortunetly the only element of the game that makes it completely unplayable for most people. The game came out a month ago or so, and has sold a large amount of units, however there are only 1500 or so players online during peak play time. Why? Because Network Lag makes the game unplayable... and there is no way to avoid it. Scince the first day I bought this game, I have been unable to play it online for more than 5 minutes... Wait 20 seconds/Spawn/Lag/Die(repeat) is a typical online session. Sniper rifles and rocket launchers are pretty much useless online, as objects you are aiming at will be no where close to that when the projectile reaches it's target.

     

    Even on EA's own servers with only 3 other players, there was lag. 56k users... don't even try this one :-)

     

    I hold out hope that future patches to the product will address the lag, Tribes was laggy at the start too and became one of the best online games released... only time can tell. But this game is uninstalled from my computer until then, unfortunetly.

  10. Posted

    I recently got this and Battlefield 1942 from my bud at EA, and had a chance to play them for a few days... and I felt like expressing my thoughts on them.

     

    Earth and Beyond:

     

    The price is right to pick it up... $20 in store, or $15 for a reg code if you can find someone with discs for you. Both give you a free month of play. The $12.95 a month afterwards however is not recommended in my opinion. I've only been playing it for about 10 days... and while at first I couldn't stop playing it, it has most certainly become tiresome.

     

    The game takes place in a troubled MMO universe, set in space. You spend most of your time in 3rd person view behind your ship flying around the galaxy killing things, or trading goods. You can also land in one of the 30 or so space stations and walk around in 3rd person view behind your character. A plethera of emote actions exist for this mode, but it is rare to find anyone in this mode at all, so it comes off as a waste.

     

    Every character has 3 experience areas, Combat, Exploration, and Trade. To achieve the maximum level in the game (150) you have to achive level 50 in all three skills. When you start the game you are given a very rudimentary map to work with for each sector. The map is riddled with ? marks, as you explore these marks you make Exploration XP... Exploration XP is beyond easy to get... and ends up being how you spend most of your early life in Earth & Beyond... Most sectors are very dangerous and you will die exploring... but the XP you gain is worth the risk.

     

    Combat XP is the hardest skill to get... Unlike other games color coding telling you if you can beat a mob, this game just outright tells you the objects combat level. The problem is that anything less than 8 or 9 levels above you does not give peanuts for XP... so group hunting is a must, and for the non-combat characters (Tradesmen, Explorers) it is hard to find groups to accept you.

     

    Trade XP is also easy to obtain, but tedius, and boring... There is nothing to break the tention here... you simply fly to one base, buy goods, fly to another base, sell goods, continue... This never changes... at higher levels (75+) you can run Trade jobs which also give XP, but at an level below 75 the XP given for a job is extremely substandard.

     

    Ships and Character's are extremely customisable, and that is a very good aspect. My character has a bar code printed across his forehead.. :-) And my ship has custom made decals on it.

     

    You cannot really die in earth and beyond... if you happen to lose all of your sheilds and hull in a battle your ship will be disabled. You have only two options then... Find an Explorer class character to come and jump start your ship, and a Tradesmen character to repair your ship, or get towed to the last base you landed at for a substantial fee. In addition you recieve XP debt. The amount of debt incurred is based on your current level, and all experience gains you make from then on, half is placed againsed your debt and the other half you still recieve. Exploration is the easiest way to work off debt, and for me at least, only takes a few minutes to work off.

     

    The game has a small story line running... although it is not apparrent at all, and no other players can help you find the answers. There are no quests at all except for a scripted quest everyone gets at lvl 30, and the training you recieve when you start the game.

     

    Newbie training is top notch, but still leaves you clueless when you are set lose on the game afterwards... but it's easier to feel your way through than other games.

     

    Grouping is a necessity in a lot of things you do... Combat especially. Grouping in trade runs is a waste due to an experience cap placed on all trade runs the XP bonus given by grouping is pointless, however if you group with a Tradesmen you can sell your goods for 9% more at the end of the run...

     

    Almost every item in the game can be player made... and there is no reason to not play with player made items, as they are 100x better... especially weapons. Tradesmen can make just about everything but reactors, including high quality components to make the items. However to make components Tradesmen need raw resources which only Explorers can mine and refine.

     

    So to sum it all up and go to bed.... Earth and beyond is very much worth the $20 for a month, but if I can get to level 60 in 10 days or so (Only playing maybe 4 of them) and be utterly bored by now... it's not worth the $12.95 a month. I'd be happy to burn and ship my discs if you just want to go the reg code route...

  11. Posted

    Sony and M$ already made claims about their PS3/Xbox 2 machines... both are blowing smoke out their arse, but the info is there now.

     

    Rumors only fly about Nintendo, as they have not officially stated if they are staying in the console world or not. It would be sad to see Nintendo go... but life goes on.

  13. Posted

    yes

    I right clicked, went to propertiesm, then compatibility, then checked the box thingie, then tried 98 and 95.

     

    It starts then it exits quickly.

     

    Ha ha! Sorry :-)

     

    You have to run it from the command line, it's not a windows program.

     

    C:>distella -pafs pacman.bin > pacman.s

     

    Try that :-) Put correct directory in for C:

  17. Posted

    Radio Shack sells them... the problem is Radio Shack employees are morons, and have no idea that they carry anything other than Cell Phones, MP3 players, and DSS recievers. You're own your own in there... look again. You can also order from their web site

  19. Posted

    Before you can hack 2600 code you will need to understand it quite a bit. The Distella dissasembler works great in all OSes even XP but only works on 2k/4k games. It can be used on larger games but it is very difficult.

     

    For my "Cheaters Annonymous" hacks that I make for the hell of it, I actually load the ROM into a hex editor, and look for specific opcodes and just feel my way around the game code in hex form.

     

    I recommend you join the stella list, and work on your own homebrew project... ask questions when you have them... and then work on hacking the code.

  21. Posted

    Depends on the price... As-Is has a significantly lower value then tested and working. But flee markets are not reciept and return places... So if the joystick is priced accordingly, or if you can haggle it accordingly, or if you can give a similar "As-Is" item in trade, it may be worth it functional or not.

  25. Posted

    Thanks for checking up on me :-) it's always good to have fans of my work.

     

    I recieved the new boards in the mail a couple days ago (Thanks Al) and I will be soldering them in this afternoon after the last of my holiday crapiola is finished. Provided they work better then the hacked boards I have been using, I can finally make some more progress on the bankswitching... which I have yet to get working reliably.

     

    So I still have no real ETA, this whole phase was supposed to be done weeks ago, but a larger number of setbacks then expected have slowed me down... I blew out two EEPROMs, two inverters, and a line driver on two seperate occasions when a fleck of solder was in a vulnerable place. I will hopefully get F8/F6/F4 working tommorrow and will be able to post pics on the web site...

     

    Thanks Again!

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